CXXX. COPYRIGHT AND OTHER FANCIES
The continued assault of Canadian pirates on his books kept Mark Twain's interest sharply alive on the subject of copyright reform. He invented one scheme after another, but the public-mind was hazy on the subject, and legislators were concerned with purposes that interested a larger number of voters. There were too few authors to be of much value at the polls, and even of those few only a small percentage were vitally concerned. For the others, foreign publishers rarely paid them the compliment of piracy, while at home the copyright limit of forty-two years was about forty-two times as long as they needed protection. Bliss suggested a law making the selling of pirated books a penal offense, a plan with a promising look, but which came to nothing.
Clemens wrote to his old friend Rollin M. Daggett, who by this time was a Congressman. Daggett replied that he would be glad to introduce any bill that the authors might agree upon, and Clemens made at least one trip to Washington to discuss the matter, but it came to nothing in the end. It was a Presidential year, and it would do just as well to keep the authors quiet by promising to do something next year. Any legislative stir is never a good thing for a campaign.
Clemens's idea for copyright betterment was not a fixed one. Somewhat later, when an international treaty which would include protection for authors was being discussed, his views had undergone a change. He wrote, asking Howells:
Will the proposed treaty protect us (and effectually) against
Canadian piracy? Because, if it doesn't, there is not a single
argument in favor of international copyright which a rational
American Senate could entertain for a moment. My notions have
mightily changed lately. I can buy Macaulay's History, three vols.;
bound, for $1.25; Chambers's Cyclopaedia, ten vols., cloth, for
$7.25 (we paid $60), and other English copyrights in proportion; I
can buy a lot of the great copyright classics, in paper, at from
three cents to thirty cents apiece. These things must find their
way into the very kitchens and hovels of the country. A generation
of this sort of thing ought to make this the most intelligent and
the best-read nation in the world. International copyright must
becloud this sun and bring on the former darkness and dime novel
reading.
Morally this is all wrong; governmentally it is all right. For it
is the duty of governments and families to be selfish, and look out
simply for their own. International copyright would benefit a few
English authors and a lot of American publishers, and be a profound
detriment to twenty million Americans; it would benefit a dozen
American authors a few dollars a year, and there an end. The real
advantages all go to English authors and American publishers.
And even if the treaty will kill Canadian piracy, and thus save me
an average of $5,000 a year, I'm down on it anyway, and I'd like
cussed well to write an article opposing the treaty.
It is a characteristic expression. Mark Twain might be first to grab for the life-preserver, but he would also be first to hand it to a humanity in greater need. He could damn the human race competently, but in the final reckoning it was the interest of that race that lay closest to his heart.
Mention has been made in an earlier chapter of Clemens's enthusiasms or “rages” for this thing and that which should benefit humankind. He was seldom entirely without them. Whether it was copyright legislation, the latest invention, or a new empiric practice, he rarely failed to have a burning interest in some anodyne that would provide physical or mental easement for his species. Howells tells how once he was going to save the human race with accordion letter-files—the system of order which would grow out of this useful device being of such nerve and labor saving proportions as to insure long life and happiness to all. The fountain-pen, in its first imperfect form, must have come along about the same time, and Clemens was one of the very earliest authors to own one. For a while it seemed that the world had known no greater boon since the invention of printing; but when it clogged and balked, or suddenly deluged his paper and spilled in his pocket, he flung it to the outer darkness. After which, the stylographic pen. He tried one, and wrote severally to Dr. Brown, to Howells, and to Twichell, urging its adoption. Even in a letter to Mrs. Howells he could not forget his new possession:
And speaking of Howells, he ought to use the stylographic pen, the
best fountain-pen yet invented; he ought to, but of course he won't
—a blamed old sodden-headed conservative—but you see yourself what
a nice, clean, uniform MS. it makes.
And at the same time to Twichell:
I am writing with a stylographic pen. It takes a royal amount of
cussing to make the thing go the first few days or a week, but by
that time the dullest ass gets the hang of the thing, and after that
no enrichments of expression are required, and said ass finds the
stylographic a genuine God's blessing. I carry one in each breeches
pocket, and both loaded. I'd give you one of them if I had you
where I could teach you how to use it—not otherwise. For the
average ass flings the thing out of the window in disgust the second
day, believing it hath no virtue, no merit of any sort; whereas the
lack lieth in himself, God of his mercy damn him.