s in
commercial value many of the great staple products of our fields, are the
only producers who have no distinct property in their products, who are
not protected in holding on to the feeble tenure the law gives them, and
whose quasi-property in their works, flimsy as it is, is limited to a few
years, and cannot with certainty be handed down to their children. It
will be said, it is said, that it is impossible for the author to obtain
an acknowledgment of absolute right of property in his brain work. In our
civilization we have not yet arrived at this state of justice. It may be
so. Indeed some authors have declared that this justice would be against
public policy. I trust they are sustained by the lofty thought that in
this view they are rising above the petty realm of literature into the
broad field of statesmanship.

But I think there will be a general agreement that in the needed revisal
of our local copyright law we can attain some measure of justice. Some of
the most obvious hardships can be removed. There is no reason why an
author should pay for the privilege of a long life by the loss of his
copyrights, and that his old age should be embittered by poverty because
he cannot have the results of the labor of his vigorous years. There is
no reason why if he dies young he should leave those dependent on him
without support, for the public has really no more right to appropriate
his book than it would have to take his house from his widow and
children. His income at best is small after he has divided with the
publishers.

No, there can certainly be no valid argument against extending the
copyright of the author to his own lifetime, with the addition of forty
or fifty years for the benefit of his heirs. I will not leave this
portion of the topic without saying that a perfectly harmonious relation
between authors and publishers is most earnestly to be desired, nor
without the frank acknowledgment that, in literary tradition and in the
present experience, many of the most noble friendships and the most
generous and helpful relations have subsisted, as they ought always to
subsist, between the producers and the distributors of literature,
especially when the publisher has a love for literature, and the author
is a reasonable being and takes pains to inform himself about the
publishing business.

One aspect of the publishing business which has become increasingly
prominent during the last fifteen years cannot be over