book. The materials and labor used have their fixed price in the market; but, when the book is produced, the publisher arbitrarily determines what it shall sell for. He is at liberty to fix the scale of his own profits, and as a business man he will always do it with sole reference to his own interest. Various considerations may influence his decision; but the most important fact is, that the copyrighted book will encounter no competition in the market. For these reasons it is of the greatest moment to publishers to make such arrangement with authors as will secure them the large possible benefits of copyright. If the author's interest in a book is represented by ten per cent., than the publisher's interest is represented by ninety per cent.; that is, the publisher is nine times more concerned to get this advantage than the author. Hence the strong desire of foreign publishers to get into the American market under cover of their authors' rights.
Now, Mr. Collins comes over here as the virtual agent and attorney of his English publishers. He first makes an outcry about the violation of his rights as an author in this country, and then he includes as one of these rights the liberty of carrying his publisher with him wherever he pleases. He will only be satisfied with an international copyright law in which this is conceded. But he here asks for a privilege, a convenience, a very profitable condition to his friends, and not for a guarantee of justice to himself. Mr. Collins has rights which ought to be regarded and defended in this country by international arrangements; his English publisher has no such rights, nor can he claim on any principle of justice that our Government should so shape its conventions that he can supply our market, if he pleases, with only English editions of his books. If there were no other way for the Americans to obtain his works, it might be different. Mr. Collins might well demand that there be no impediment to the supply of his publications that would hinder his realizing the full benefit of American sales. But, so long as there are plenty of publishers in this country eager to make contracts with him, it is no wrong—not even a hardship—for him to get what he rightfully asks, on the condition that his books shall be published here.
Mr. Collins unwittingly concedes the case when he undertakes to define his claim. He says: "The object of international copyright is to give me by law (on conditions with which it is reasonably possible for me to comply) the same right of control over my property and my book in a foreign country which the law gives me in my own country. In Europe this is exactly what we have done. When I publish my book in London, I enter it at Stationers' Hall and register it as my property—and my book is mine in Great Britain. When I publish my book in Paris, I register it by the performance of similar formalities—and again my book is mine in France. In both cases my publisher (English or French) is chosen at my own free will." But the same right of control over his property in his book in a foreign country that the law gives him in his own country is exactly what it is now proposed that he should have. His native protection stops with the British Islands and hardly extends to the provinces; his French protection is bounded by the limits of France; and his protection here would be coextensive with our nationality. What more, then, can he ask than an international copyright treaty that shall enable him to register his book in Washington, by which it becomes his American property, with the liberty of playing his free-will from the Atlantic to the Pacific in the choice of a publisher?
Nearly fifty English authors of the highest character have recognized that their rights of property in their books in this country should not be complicated with the interests of their home
