ny
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 reduction like this is what Congress from the beginning
has desired to achieve, but has not been able to accomplish because no
inducement was offered to publishers to run the risk.

Respectfully submitted,

S. L. CLEMENS.

(A full and interesting elucidation of Mark Twain's views on Copyright
may be found in an article entitled "Concerning Copyright," published in
the North Amer