g law providing as
follows--to wit: that at any time between the beginning of a book's
forty-first year and the ending of its forty-second the owner of the
copyright may extend its life thirty years by issuing and placing on sale
an edition of the book at one-tenth the price of the cheapest edition
hitherto issued at any time during the ten immediately preceding years.
This extension to lapse and become null and void if at any time during
the thirty years he shall fail during the space of three consecutive
months to furnish the ten per cent. book upon demand of any person or
persons desiring to buy it.

The Result:--The result would be that no American classic enjoying the
thirty-year extension would ever be out of the reach of any American
purse, let its uncompulsory price be what it might. He would get a
two-dollar book for 20 cents, and he could get none but copyright-expired
classics at any such rate.

The Final Result:--At the end of the thirty-year extension the copyright
would again die, and the price would again advance. This by a natural
law, the excessively cheap edition no longer carrying with it an
advantage to any publisher.

Reconstruction of The Present Law Not Necessary:--A clause of the
suggested amendment could read about as follows, and would obviate the
necessity of taking the present law to pieces and building it over again:

All books and all articles enjoying forty-two years copyright-life
under the present law shall be admitted to the privilege of the
thirty-year extension upon complying with the condition requiring
the producing and placing upon permanent sale of one grade or form
of said book or article at a price of 90 per cent. below the
cheapest rate at which said book or article had been placed upon the
market at any time during the immediately preceding ten years.

REMARKS

If the suggested amendment shall meet with the favor of the present
Congress and become law--and I hope it will--I shall have personal
experience of its effects very soon. Next year, in fact, in the person
of my first book, 'The Innocents Abroad'. For its forty-two-year
copyright-life will then cease and its thirty-year extension begin--and
with the latter the permanent low-rate edition. At present the highest
price of the book is eight dollars, and its lowest price three dollars
per copy. Thus the permanent low rate will be thirty cents per copy. A
sweeping redu