Read Ebook: Papers and Proceedings of the Twenty-Third General Meeting of the American Library Association Held at Waukesha Wisconsin July 4-10 1901 by American Library Association General Meeting Editor

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Six months ago the curtain descended upon what is likely to be accounted the most memorable century in the annals of mankind. So salient are three of its characteristics that they challenge the eye of the most casual retrospection. First of all, we see that knowledge was increased at a pace beyond precedent, to be diffused throughout the world with a new thoroughness and fidelity. Next we must observe how republican government passed from the slender ties spun in the times of Washington, Jefferson and Adams, to the intimate and pervasive cords of to-day, when, as never before, the good of the bee is bound up with the welfare of the hive. Parallel with this political union of each and all there was a growth of free organization which, in every phase of life, has secured uncounted benefits which only joined hands may receive. Fresh torches of light fraternally borne from the centers of civilization to its circumference have tended to bring the arts and ideals of life everywhere to the level of the best. These distinctive features of the nineteenth century were in little evidence at its dawn, but they became more and more manifest with each succeeding decade. In American librarianship, as in many another sphere of labor, more was accomplished in the last quarter of the century than in the seventy-five preceding years.

It is as recently as 1852 that Boston opened the doors of the first free public library established in an American city. Its founders were convinced that what was good for the students at Harvard, the subscribers to the Athenaeum, was good for everybody else. Literature, they felt, was a trust to be administered not for a few, but for the many, to be, indeed, hospitably proffered to all. To this hour, by a wise and generous responsiveness to its ever-growing duties, the Boston foundation remains a model of what a metropolitan library should be. As with the capital, so with the state; to-day Massachusetts is better provided with free public libraries than any other commonwealth on the globe; only one in two hundred of her people are unserved by them, while within her borders the civic piety of her sons and daughters has reared more than six score library buildings. The library commission of the state is another model in its kind; its powers are in the main advisory, but when a struggling community desires to establish a library, and contributes to that end, the commission tenders judicious aid. The population of Massachusetts is chiefly urban, an exceptional case, for taking the Union as a whole, notwithstanding the constant drift to the cities, much more than half the people are still to be found in the country. For their behoof village libraries have appeared in thousands. Still more effective, because linked with one another, are the travelling libraries, inaugurated by Mr. Melvil Dewey in New York in 1893, and since adopted in many other states of the Union, and several provinces of Canada. All this registers how the democracy of letters has come to its own. Schools public and free ensure to the American child its birthright of instruction; libraries, also public and free, are rising to supplement that instruction, to yield the light and lift, the entertainment and stimulus that literature stands ready to bestow. The old-time librarian, who was content to be a mere custodian of books, has passed from the stage forever; in his stead we find an officer anxious that his store shall do all the people the utmost possible good. To that end he combines the zeal of the missionary with the address of a consummate man of business. Little children are invited to cheery rooms with kind and intelligent hospitality; teachers and pupils from the public schools are welcomed to classrooms where everything is gathered that the library can offer for their use; helpful bulletins and consecutive reading lists are issued for the home circle; every book, magazine and newspaper is bought, as far as feasible, with an eye to the special wants and interests of the community; information desks are set up; and partnerships are formed with expositors of acknowledged merit, with museums of industry, of natural history, of the fine arts. Not the borrowers only, but the buyers of books are remembered. The Standard Library, brought together by Mr. W. E. Foster, in Providence, is a shining example in this regard.

The sense of trusteeship thus variously displayed has had a good many sources; let us confine our attention to one of them. During the past hundred years the treasure committed to the keeping of librarians has undergone enrichment without parallel in any preceding age. We have more and better books than ever before; they mean more than in any former time for right living and sound thinking. A rough and ready classification of literature, true enough in substance, divides it into books of power, of information, and of entertainment. Let us look at these three departments a little in detail. Restricting our purview to the English tongue, we find the honor roll of its literature lengthened by the names of Wordsworth, Tennyson and Matthew Arnold, Carlyle and Ruskin, Emerson and Lowell. And not only to authors such as these must our debt be acknowledged. We owe scholarly editors nearly as much. In Spedding's Bacon, the Shakesperean studies of Mr. Furniss, and the Chaucer of Professor Skeat, we have typical examples of services not enjoyed by any former age. To-day the supreme poets, seers and sages of all time are set before us in the clearest sunshine; their gold, refined from all admixture, is minted for a currency impossible before. In their original, unedited forms, the masterpieces of our language are now cheap enough to find their way to the lowliest cottage of the cross-roads.

It is not, however, in the field of literature pure and simple that the manna fell most abundantly during the past hundred years. Mr. Alfred Russel Wallace, the last of the great students who took all natural history for their province, declares that the advances in discovery, invention and generalization during the nineteenth century outweigh those of all preceding time. Admit this judgment, and at once is explained why the records and the spirit of science dominate the literature of the last ten decades. And let us note that while books of knowledge have increased beyond measure, they have appeared with a helpfulness and with merits wholly new. For the first time in the history of letters, men and women of successful experience, of practised and skilful pens, write books which, placed in the hands of the people, enlighten their toil, diminish their drudgery, and sweeten their lives. Cross the threshold of the home and there is not a task, from choosing a carpet to rearing a baby, that has not been illuminated by at least one good woman of authority in her theme. On the heights of the literature of science we have a quality and distinction unknown before these later days. The modern war on evil and pain displays weapons of an edge and force of which our forefathers never dared to dream; its armies march forward not in ignorant hope, but with the assured expectation of victory. All this inspires leaders like Huxley, Spencer and Fiske with an eloquence, a power to convince and persuade, new in the annals of human expression and as characteristic of the nineteenth century as the English poetry of the sixteenth, in the glorious era of Elizabeth. The literature of knowledge is not only fuller and better than of old, it is more wisely employed. In the classroom, and when school days are done, we now understand how the printed page may best direct and piece out the work of the hand, the eye and the ear; not for a moment deluding ourselves with the notion that we have grasped truth merely because we can spell the word. To-day we first consider the lilies of the field, not the lilies of the printer; that done it is time enough to take up a formal treatise which will clarify and frame our knowledge. If a boy is by nature a mechanic, a book of the right sort shows him how to construct a simple steam engine or an electric motor. Is he an amateur photographer, other books, excellently illustrated, give him capital hints for work with his camera. It is in thus rounding out the circle which springs from the school desk that the public library justifies its equal claim to support from the public treasury.

In the third and last domain of letters, that of fiction, there is a veritable embarrassment of riches. During the three generations past the art of story-telling culminated in works of all but Shakesperean depth and charm. We have only to recall Scott and Thackeray, Hawthorne, George Eliot and Thomas Hardy, to be reminded that an age of science may justly boast of novelists and romancers such as the world never knew before. No phase of life but has been limned with photographic fidelity, no realm of imagination but has been bodied forth as if by experience on fire, so that many a book which bears the name of fiction might well be labelled as essential truth. Within the past decade, however, the old veins have approached their bounds, while new lodes do not as yet appear. Of this the tokens are the eager sifting of the rubbish heap, the elaborate picturing of the abnormal and the gross. Pens unable to afford either delight or cheer have abundant capacity, often with evident malice, to strike the nerves of horror and of pain. If at the present hour high achievement in fiction is rare, if we hear more echoes than ever and fewer voices, quantity abounds to the point of surfeit. With an output in America alone of 616 works for 1900, all fears of famine may well be allayed.

The main fact of the situation then is that the librarian's trust has of late years undergone stupendous increase; this at once broadens his opportunities and adds to his burdens. Gold and silver, iron and lead, together with much dross, are commingled in a heap which rises every hour. Before a trust can be rightly and gainfully administered, its trustees must know in detail what it is that they guard, what its several items are worth, what they are good for. And let us remember that literature consists in but small part of metals which declare themselves to all men as gold or lead; much commoner are alloys of every conceivable degree of worth or worthlessness. There is plainly nothing for it but to have recourse to the crucibles of the professional assayer, it becomes necessary to add to the titles of our catalogs some responsible word as to what books are and what rank they occupy in an order of just precedence.

This task of a competent and candid appraisal of literature, as a necessity of its trusteeship, has been before the minds of this Association for a good many years. A notable Step toward its accomplishment was taken when Mr. Samuel S. Green, in 1879, allied himself with the teachers of Worcester, Massachusetts, that they and he together might select books for the public schools of that city. The work began and has proceeded upon comprehensive lines. Such literature has been chosen as may usefully and acceptably form part of the daily instruction, there is a liberal choice of books of entertainment and inspiration worthily to buttress and relieve the formal lessons. The whole work goes forward with intent to cultivate the taste, to widen the horizons, to elevate the impulses of the young reader. Mr. Green's methods, with the modifications needful in transplanting, have been adopted far and wide throughout the Union. Already they have borne fruit in heightening the standards of free choice when readers have passed from the school bench to the work-a-day world.

In times past our bibliographies have begun to need enlargement the moment they left the bindery; in the present case that need is for the first time to be supplied. Mr. Larned's titles come to the close of 1899; beyond that period current literature is to be chosen from and appraised with the editorship of Philip P. Wells, librarian of the Yale Law Library, who will issue his series in card form. We hope that he may be ready with his cards for 1900 at the time that Mr. Larned's book appears. Thereafter Mr. Wells' series will probably be published quarter by quarter. Beginning with 1897, Mr. W. Dawson Johnston, now of the Library of Congress, has edited for us a series of annotated cards dealing with the contemporary literature of English history. Both the form and substance of his series are capital. In so far as his cards go directly into catalog cases, where readers and students must of necessity see them, they render the utmost possible aid. If subscribers in sufficient array come forward, Mr. Larned's book may be remolded for issue in similar card form, with a like opportunity for service in catalog cases. In the Cleveland Public Library and its branches useful notes are pasted within the lids of a good many volumes. It is well thus to put immediately under the reader's eye the word which points him directly to his goal, or prevents him wasting time in wanderings of little value or no value at all.

It is in the preponderant circulation of fiction, and fiction for the most part of poor quality, that the critics of public libraries find most warrant for attack. They point to the fact that many readers of this fiction are comparatively well-to-do, and are exempted by public taxation from supporting the subscription library and the bookseller. The difficulty has been met chiefly in two ways; by curtailing the supply of mediocre and trashy fiction; by exacting a small fee on issuing the novels brought for a season to a huge demand by advertising of a new address and prodigality. Appraisal, just and thorough, may be expected to render aid more important because radical instead of superficial. In the first place, the best books of recreation, now overlaid by new and inferior writing, can be brought into prominence; secondly, an emphasis, as persuasive as it can be made, ought to be placed upon the more solid stores of our literature. "Business," said Bagehot long ago, "is really more agreeable than pleasure; it interests the whole mind, the aggregate nature of man more continuously and deeply, but it does not look as if it did." Let it be our purpose to reveal what admirable substance underlies appearances not always seductive to the casual glance. Lowell and Matthew Arnold, Huxley and John Fiske, Lecky and Goldwin Smith are solid enough, yet with no lack of wit or humor to relieve their argument and elucidation. A New York publisher of wide experience estimates that the average American family, apart from school purchases, buys less than two books a year. Newspapers and magazines form the staple of the popular literary diet. What fills the newspapers is mainly news; their other departments of information are often extensive and admirable, but within the limits of the hastily penned paragraph or column they cannot rise to the completeness and quality of a book carefully written and faithfully revised. The plain fact is, and it behooves us to reckon with it, the average man, to whom we bear our credentials as missionaries, looks upon a book as having something biblical about it. To sit down deliberately and surrender himself to its chapters is a task he waves away with strangely mingled awe and dislike. So he misses the consecutive instruction, as delightful as profitable to an educated taste, which authors, publishers and librarians are ready and even anxious to impart.

We hear a good deal in these days about the need of recreation, and not a word more than is true, but let us remember that the best recreation may consist in a simple change of work. Behold the arduous toil of the city lawyer, or banker, as on a holiday tour he climbs a peak of the Alps or the Adirondacks, or wades the chilly streams of Scotland or Canada a salmon rod in his hands. Why does he undergo fatigues so severe? Partly because they are freely chosen, partly because they are fatigues of an unwonted and therefore refreshing kind. So in the field before us to-day. Truth is not only stranger than fiction, it is more fascinating when once its charms are recognized and entertained. Our public schools throughout the land prove that a true story of exploration, of invention or discovery, of heroism or adventure, has only to be well told to rivet a boy's attention as firmly as ever did Robinson Crusoe or Treasure Island. When readers take up from instinctive appetite, or wise incitement, the best books about flowers or birds, minerals or trees, an art, a science, a research, they come to joys in new knowledge, in judgments informed and corrected, unknown to the tipplers and topers whose staple is the novel, good, bad and indifferent. And why, if we can help it, should public money ever be spent for aught but the public good?

With a new sense of what is implied in the trusteeship of literature, if we endeavor in the future to ally ourselves with the worthiest critics of books, we must bid good-bye to the temporary expedients which have cramped and burdened our initial labors. The work of the appraisal of literature requires a home, a Central Bureau, with a permanent and adequately paid staff of editors and assistants. The training of such a staff has already begun; in addition to the experience acquired by those enlisted in our present bibliographical tasks, instruction is now given in advanced bibliography at the New York State Library School at Albany, and doubtless also at other library schools. And at the Central Bureau, which we are bold enough to figure to ourselves, much more should be done than to bring books to the balances. At such a home, in New York, Washington, or elsewhere, every other task should proceed which aims at furthering the good that literature can do all the people. There might be conducted the co-operative cataloging now fast taking form; there should be extended the series of useful tracts begun by that of Dr. G. E. Wire on "How to start a library," by Mr. F. A. Hutchins on "Travelling libraries." At such a center should be exhibited everything to inform the founder of a public library; everything to direct the legislator who would create a library commission on the soundest lines or recast library laws in the light of national experience; there, moreover, should be gathered everything to arouse and instruct the librarian who would bring his methods to the highest plane. Thence, too, should go forth the speakers and organizers intent upon awakening torpid communities to a sense of what they miss so long as they stand outside our ranks, or lag at the rear of our movement. In the fulness of time such a bureau might copy the Franklin Society, of Paris, and call into existence a needed book, to find within this Association a sale which, though small, would be adequate, because free from the advertising taxes of ordinary publishing. To found and endow such a bureau would undoubtedly cost a great deal, and where is the money to come from? We may, I think, expect it from the sources which have given us thousands of public libraries, great and small. Here is an opportunity for our friends, whether their surpluses be large or little. When a gift can be accompanied by personal aid and counsel, it comes enriched. It is much when a goodly gift provides a city with a library, it would be yet more if the donation were to establish and maintain an agency to lift libraries everywhere to the highest efficiency possible, to give literature for the first time its fullest acceptance, its utmost fruitage.

In a retrospective glance at nineteenth century science, Professor Haeckel has said that the hundred years before us are not likely to witness such victories as those which have signalized the era just at an end. Assume for a moment that his forecast is sound, and that it applies beyond the immediate bounds of science, what does it mean for librarianship? It simply reinforces what in any case is clear, namely, that it is high time that the truth and beauty of literature known to the few made its way to all the people, for their enlightenment, consolation and delight. If the future battles of science are to be waged less strenuously than of yore, if scholarship has measurably exhausted its richest mines, let us give the broadest diffusion to the fruits of their triumphs past. In thus diffusing the leaven of culture the public library should take a leading, not a subordinate part. Its treasure is vaster and more precious than ever before. The world's literature grows much like the world's stock of gold, every year's winning is added to the mass already heaped together at the year's first day. In the instruction, entertainment and inspiration of every man and woman there is a three-fold ministry, that of art, of science, and of letters. Because letters bring to public appreciation, to popular sympathy, both art and science, and this in addition to their own priceless argosies, may we not say that of art, science and letters, the greatest of these is letters?

It is my purpose to speak plainly and, if possible, forcibly, concerning what seems to me a grave menace to the progress of science, but in all that I shall say, I would have it understood that I have only the friendliest feelings personally for the gentleman who has brought forward what seem to me dangerous proposals. I appreciate his zeal for progress and his self-sacrificing efforts for human advancement in various directions, but I think that in this particular case--namely, the evaluation of literature, or the establishment of a judicature of letters, my friend is working against his own ideals.

I admit freely that the readers in our public libraries very generally need help in the selection of books, and that great assistance may be rendered them by judicious advice. Much time is wasted by those who read scientific and serious works which do not present the results of recent investigations: furthermore, as another consequence effort is misdirected and instead of producing beneficial results may do positive damage. The question may be asked: "Shall I read Adam Smith's 'Wealth of nations?' I hear it mentioned as one of the great works in the world's history." Probably many a librarian has had this precise question asked him. In giving an affirmative answer it will be most helpful to offer a few words explaining the circumstances under which it appeared one hundred and twenty-five years ago, and its relation to the subsequent development of economic schools and tendencies. Doubtless this work is frequently perused as if it were fresh from the press and were to be judged as a work appearing in 1901.

I further admit the harm which has come to individuals from the study of the so-called "crank" literature in economics and sociology, as well as in other branches of learning. Doubtless many a man is working vigorously in a wrong way and attempting to force society into false channels who might be doing a good work had his reading been well directed in a formative period.

But the magnitude of the interests involved in the proposal which greets us requires caution and conservatism in action. We must take a long, not a short, view of the matter, inquiring into remote and permanent results.

It is proposed, as I understand it, to have so-called expert opinions expressed concerning books, new and old; to secure as precise and definite estimates of their value as possible, and then by means of printed guides, and even card catalogs, to bring these opinions and evaluations before the readers in our libraries.

Let us reflect for a moment on what this implies. It means, first of all a judicial body of men from whom these estimates are to proceed. Have we such a body? Is it in the nature of things possible that we should have such a body? I say that so far as contemporary literature is concerned, the history of knowledge gives us a positive and conclusive negative answer--a most emphatic "No." Let anyone who knows the circumstances and conditions under which reviews are prepared and published reflect on what the attempt to secure this evaluation of literature implies. Many of us know a great deal about these circumstances and conditions. We have written reviews, we have asked others to write reviews, and we have for years been in contact with a host of reviewers. We may in this connection first direct out attention to the general character of the periodicals from which quotations are frequently made in the evaluation of literature. I say nothing about my own view, but I simply express an opinion of many men whose judgment should have great weight when I say that one of the most brilliant of these periodicals has been marked by a narrow policy, having severe tests of orthodoxy along economic, social and political lines, and displaying a bitterness and vindictiveness reaching beyond the grave. I mention no names, and the opinion may or may not be a just one; but it should be carefully weighed whether or not, or to what extent, the evaluations of such a periodical ought to be crystallized as it were: that is, taken from the periodical press and made part of a working library apparatus, to last for years.

Another periodical, an able magazine, which makes much of reviews is under the control of a strong body of men, but they stand for scarcely more than one line of thought among many lines. And sometimes very sharp and very hard things are said about those who believe that scientific truth is moving along one of these other lines. Indeed, the discreet person, knowing personally the reviewer and the reviewed, will not be convinced that there is always in the reviews, here as elsewhere, an absence of personal animosity. Let us for a moment reflect on this personal element in reviews, as it has surely fallen under the notice of every man with wide experience in these matters. As a rule, the reviewers are comparatively young and inexperienced men, frequently zealous for some sect or faction. Sometimes great leaders of thought write reviews, but generally they are unable to find the time to do so. As a result in our reviews in the best periodicals it will frequently be found that an inferior is passing judgment on a superior, and furthermore, reviewers share in our common human nature, and the amount of personal bias and even at times personal malignity found in reviews and estimates of books is something sad to contemplate. An unsuccessful candidate for a position held by an author has been known to initiate a scandalous and altogether malicious attack in a review.

In the next place, I would call your attention to the absence of objective standards. Necessarily are the standards personal and subjective; particularly and above all in economics, but in high degree in sociology, ethics and philosophy in general, and religion. Biological reviews have displayed in marked degree the subjective personal element. Chemistry, physics, astronomy and mathematics probably are best of all fitted for evaluations free from personal bias.

Librarians as librarians must watch with impartiality the struggles among tendencies and schools of thought, and above all things, endeavor to keep open a free way for new truth.

BOOK COPYRIGHT.

In order to keep within the time limit provided in the program I have been obliged to refrain from even touching upon many points, but have endeavored to present certain general principles governing copyright in books. I shall, therefore, only attempt to make clear, as briefly as possible:

The copyright statutes enumerate the articles or classes of articles subject-matter of copyright, and first in the list stands "book." The first consideration is, therefore, What is to be understood by the term "book" as thus used? or, in other words, What is a "book," as that designation is employed in the copyright law?

Orderly arranged information produced in a form which would commonly be termed a chart cannot be registered under that designation which in the copyright law is applicable only to a chartographical work, but may properly be called a "book"; while a so-called book of coupons, or railway tickets, or of blank forms, cannot be thus entitled.

It has occasionally been intimated that the efforts made by the public libraries to secure the constant circulation of the same book is a trespass upon the rights of the author, as he is presumably thus subjected to the loss of readers who would otherwise also become purchasers of his book. A case has just been decided to test an author's right to object to having copies of his own copyright editions of his books sold in a manner not indicated by himself as volumes of a so-called collected edition of his works. The decision, on first hearing, was adverse to the author's contention.

A few countries still grant copyright in perpetuity, but usually the term of protection is limited either to a certain number of years, or to a term of years beyond the date of the author's death. This last provision is the more general, and the term varies from seven years after the author's death in England, for instance, to eighty years after the author's death in Spain. The two most common terms are thirty years to fifty years beyond the life of the author. Our own legislation provides for two possible terms of protection. The first being for twenty-eight years from the date of the recording of the title in the Copyright Office, and the second, an extension of fourteen years from the expiration of the first term.

Besides the time limit, copyright--especially as far as the authors of the United States are concerned--is limited territorially, not extending beyond the boundaries of the United States. Whether the protection which follows registration and deposit shall extend so as to include Porto Rico, Hawaii and the Philippines is a matter of some question. Probably as regards the Philippines the answer would be in the negative, but as concerns Porto Rico, since the passage of the "Act temporarily to provide revenue and a civil government for Porto Rico" and Hawaii, since the taking effect of the "Act to provide a government for the territory of Hawaii," the response would be in the affirmative.

The obtaining of copyright protection by a compliance with the United States statutory requirements as to registration of title, deposit of copies, and printing of notice of copyright, does not secure extension of this protection in the territory of any foreign country, the United States not being a member of the International Copyright Union. An American author must comply with the requirements of the copyright laws of a foreign country, just as if he were a citizen or subject of that country, in order to obtain copyright protection within its borders. Presumably, however, the obtaining of valid copyright protection in one of the countries of the International Copyright Union, England for example, would secure protection throughout the various countries of that Union.

The clerical service for thus recording the title requires the payment of a fee, which should accompany the title-page when transmitted to the Copyright Office. The fee for this, as fixed by law, is 50 cents in the case of the title of a book whose author is a citizen of the United States, and in the case of a book whose author is not an American but is a citizen or subject of some country to whose citizens the privilege of copyright in the United States has been extended, under the provisions of the Act of March 3, 1891. If a copy of the record thus made of the title is desired, an additional fee of 50 cents is required in all cases.

In order to have this essential record of title properly made, in the form exactly prescribed by the statute, it is necessary to furnish the Copyright Office with certain information, namely:

The second prerequisite to copyright protection is the deposit in the Copyright Office of two copies of the book whose title-page has been recorded. These copies must be printed from "type set within the limits of the United States," and the deposit must be made "not later than the day of publication thereof, in this or any foreign country." The stipulation as to American typesetting applies to works by American authors as well as to those written by foreign authors.

Under existing legal conditions, in order to secure valid copyright on a book in this country and in England, the following steps should be taken, and in the order stated. 1. Record title in the United States Copyright Office. 2. Print book from type set within the limits of the United States. 3. Deposit two copies of such book in the United States Copyright Office. 4. Send sufficient copies to London to

If any one, wishing to use a given form of title but desiring to avoid possible duplication of one previously used, writes to the Copyright Office asking whether such a title has already been recorded, an answer is made stating what is disclosed by the indexes of the office. It must be frankly explained, however, that an absolutely conclusive statement as to whether a given title has been previously used cannot always be given. The copyright records of entries of title previous to July 10, 1870, are but indifferently indexed and rarely by title, usually only under names of proprietors of the copyright. The copyright entries since July 10, 1870, to May 31, 1901, number 1,217,075. The index to these entries consists of more than 600,000 cards, many of which contain a number of entries. These cards index the entries primarily under the names of the proprietors of the copyright, and this proprietor's index is understood to have been kept up continuously and to be complete, so that under the name of each copyright proprietor there is a card or cards showing the titles of all articles upon which copyright is claimed. In addition to the proprietor's index there are cards under the titles of periodicals and under the leading catchwords of the titles of other articles, besides cards under the authors' names for books. Unhappily there are periods of time when what may be called the subsidiary index cards were not kept up.

Much might be said for an increase in the period of protection. It is for a shorter term of years than that provided by most modern copyright legislation, and the trend of such lawmaking has been in the direction of an increase in the length of time during which the author or his heirs could control the reproduction of his work. It should be borne in mind that for books of little value the length of the term of protection is of no great consequence. "Dead" books are not affected by the length of the term of copyright. In the case also of popular new books, the great sales and consequent disproportionate remuneration comes within a short period of time after publication, and are not likely to continue during a long term of copyright. On the other hand, many books of great and permanent value not unfrequently make their way slowly into popular favor, and are not fully appreciated until many years after publication. For such books--the results, perhaps, of long years of study and labor--an equitable return cannot be secured except by a long term of protection.

Perhaps the most urgently desirable forward step in respect to copyright is the adhesion of the United States to the Berne convention, thus securing the inclusion in the International Copyright Union of our country, the leading one of the three great states not yet members of this admirable association of nations. Were the United States a member of the Berne Union a compliance with the statutory provisions of our own laws alone would secure copyright protection not only within the limits of the United States, but practically throughout the whole book-reading world--Great Britain, all Europe , Canada and Australia, India, Japan and South Africa--thus increasing the possible reading public of American authors many fold. It would seem that considerations of justice to our large and constantly increasing national contingent of literary and artistic producers requires this advance of such great practical importance. It is the easier of accomplishment because it involves the adoption of no new principle, but only the extension of the principle embodied in the Act of March 3, 1891, namely, reciprocal international exchange of copyright privileges, and in return for the advantages which would accrue to our own citizens, only obligates the extension of copyright in the United States to the subjects of such countries as are members of the Union. Of the members of the International Copyright Union, all the great nations already enjoy copyright in the United States, and it would only remain to extend this privilege to the citizen authors of the six minor states that are members of the Union, namely, Hayti, Japan, Luxembourg, Monaco, Norway and Tunis.

THE RELATIONSHIP OF PUBLISHERS, BOOKSELLERS AND LIBRARIANS.

Casual observers have come to regard publishers as bookmakers or manufacturers, who merely put the product of authors into merchantable form, and distribute it to dealers, for sale to the reading public. If this were the only function of the publisher, his task would be an easy one; indeed we might soon expect to see all publishers supplanted by one great co-operative factory, to which authors might take their manuscripts, and have them transformed into books and distributed through the ordinary channels of commerce, like any other commodities. Some superficial observers have recently made bold to conjecture that this will be the final outcome of the present troubled state of the general trade of publishing and selling books. But, alas! the actual making of the book--giving to it an appropriate, artistic and really attractive form--is perhaps the least of the publishers' trials, though this, in itself, is a difficult task, requiring an artistic taste, well trained and skilful judgment, and much technical knowledge.

Thus books are made, not after a given pattern, like certain fabrics, but each is a creation in itself. The responsibility of the publisher, for the character of the creation, is by no means unimportant. He acts as arbiter of the standard of excellence that must be attained by an author before he is introduced to the public. The publishers' criterion is simply a question of cash. "Will the public buy the book and pay for it?" Nor can any other standard be adopted with safety. The whole question of supply must always depend upon public demand.

But the publisher is not infallible. He often makes mistakes. Between him and the readers is the dealer. The retail bookseller stands closest to the reading public. He acquaints himself with the essential character of the new book, points out to his customer enough of interest to cause him to glance through it, and finally sells it to him; for the intelligent bookseller knows the taste and reading habits of his customers. He has his leading customers in mind from the time he orders a new book till he has shown it and sold it to them. If they are pleased with it, and recommend it to their friends, who call at the store for it, the bookseller re-orders it, and, if he is so fortunate as not to be restrained by unfair local competition, he advertises the book and pushes its sale with energy, so long as interest in it can be kept alive.

Thus the retail booksellers in every city and hamlet throughout the country, standing close to the reading public, knowing what their customers will buy, are the real monitors of the publishers.

When the publisher considers the advisability of bringing out a new book, he cannot undertake to look beyond a few hundred booksellers. It is through them, and only through them, that he has learned to gauge the taste of the reading public. The paramount question for him to decide is, "How many copies of this particular book can I sell to dealer A, dealer B and dealer C; how many copies of this book can I hope with certainty to sell to all of my customers in the trade?" The publisher well knows that the dealer is governed by the same criterion as himself: "Will it pay; will this book be a ready seller, or will it cost me all of the profit I make on it to sell it?"

Thus the product of the author is subject to the immutable laws of supply and demand from the time he submits his first immature manuscript until he makes two, three, four or more trials, and finally has a manuscript accepted. But even then the publishers prepares only a small edition for a new author, and the dealers are very conservative in ordering a new book--especially by an unknown author. The conscientious bookseller awaits the verdict of certain patrons, knowing that, if the book is commended by one whose judgment is respected by local readers, he can safely re-order a goodly number.

Thus the author is dependent upon the publisher for the standard of excellence he must attain in order to achieve success; the publisher is dependent upon the dealer, not only in forming his judgment of the character of books that will sell, but also for the number that he may safely print; while the dealer is dependent upon his best and most critical patrons. Hence the relation of author, publisher and dealer is so close--indeed they are so mutually interdependent--that one factor could not be removed without vitally crippling the other.

A distinguished librarian, who has been a pioneer of progress in the library movement, has recently suggested the propriety of abolishing book stores and allowing public librarians to receive orders and forward them to the publishers. If the distinguished gentleman did not have in view visions of personal gain for public librarians, he should have carried his philanthropic suggestion farther, and proposed to abolish both booksellers and librarians, and to allow the public to procure their books directly from the publishers, thus saving that moiety of gain that would be made by either in return for the service rendered. It cannot be supposed that so able and conscientious an administrative officer ever contemplated maintaining an extra corps of assistants, at an extra expense to the municipality or to those liberal benefactors who have endowed public libraries, in order that opulent citizens may still further indulge their tastes by purchasing larger private libraries, without paying the small commission or profit that is usually allowed to retail booksellers. On the other hand, if this proposal was made for the purpose of allowing libraries maintained by taxing the municipality, to engage in gainful occupation, this is carrying the socialistic idea farther than even our populistic friends have ever yet proposed.

However, inasmuch as this question has been raised, we are bound to treat it from an economic point of view. The question is, "Shall the bookseller be abolished and his office merged into that of the librarian, and can the librarian perform the offices of the bookseller?"

Again, the public library gives a larger opportunity and a wider range than is possible in the private collection; and scholars, historians and students of all classes are daily made grateful to the trained, professional librarian, who has so classified the contents of the library as to make the whole available at a moment's notice.

Still another inestimable feature of the public library is that it maintains a public reading room for children as well as adults.

The circulating department of the public library is now supplemented by others that are conducted for cash profit. These have sprung up in many cities. And now we have the "Book-Lovers' Library," a corporation with capital stock, engaging in business for profit. It has the advantage of certain trust features. It proposes to organize branches in all of the principal cities and towns in the country. For five dollars a year it proposes to supply fifty dollars' worth of reading to each subscriber. An automobile is employed, with an attendant to deliver the books to subscribers each week and take up those that have been read. Having paid five, ten or more dollars, at the beginning of the year, the subscriber can read from morning till night, while the new books come and go with the lightning speed of the automobile.

As in many other circulating libraries, new copyrighted fiction is the chief staple supplied by the "Book-Lovers' Library"--the sweetest pabulum automatically administered.

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