A Brief History of Printing. Part II: The Economic History of Printing

by Frederick W. Hamilton

But there was another far more important difference. The products of the printing press materially affected the human mind and through it influenced human action. When men began to read and printed matter began to be cheap and plenty, the individual in particular and the state at large entered an entirely new phase of existence. Minds of men might be filled with information or misinformation, with noble or with base desires and purposes, with high thoughts or low by the products of the press. They might be roused to patriotic action or stirred to rebellion. Their religion might be deepened, altered, or destroyed. Immense and unimaginable influence might be and, as soon appeared, was exerted by this new agency.

These facts gave rise to certain problems peculiar to the industry. What right had the publisher to control his product and be protected against a ruinous competition from other printers? Had he any such right at all? Had the author any right to control the printing, publishing, and sale of his works? Had he any right to be secured in the receipt of some remuneration? How could that right be protected? Was the printing press to be allowed to pour out anything its owners pleased, regardless of its effect upon citizenship, religion, or morals, or should the product be controlled so as to secure the helping and not the hurting of mankind? If it was to be controlled, who was to decide upon the measures and standards of control, and on what ground? What was helpful and what was harmful?

The attempted solution of these problems, of course, grew out of the accepted commercial usages of the time. Patents and copyrights as we now know them, regulated by general laws and accessible to all inventors and authors, were unknown. Their place was taken by monopolies which, as we shall see, sometimes had much the same effect as a modern patent or copyright.

A monopoly, sometimes called a privilege, was a grant to a certain person of the sole right to sell or to manufacture a certain thing, to trade in a certain locality, or do something of a similar nature. Monopolies survive today in certain countries, though mainly as governmental monopolies; for example, in Italy the sale of matches is a governmental monopoly. No individual is allowed to sell them except as a government agent, and the traveler is not allowed to take any across the frontier, even in his pocket. In Russia the sale of vodka was a governmental monopoly until the outbreak of the Great War in 1914, when its sale was prohibited. In the middle ages, however, private monopolies were very common. It is important to know that these monopolies or privileges were literally what the latter name indicates. Very often they were given to royal favorites as a means for their personal enrichment. They were purely acts of grace and did not imply any recognition of right on the part of the person to whom they were granted.

Those trades which could not obtain the protection of monopoly attempted to protect themselves when possible by trade secrets. This was a much more important protection in those days than it would be now. Combinations and processes, tricks of the trade which had been discovered experimentally by some clever workman, could hardly be discovered by his rivals unless they could hit upon the same thing by a tedious course of experimentation or could in some way secure betrayal of the secret. Very few trade secrets can be hidden from modern science, but modern science did not exist in the fifteenth century. The apprentice was sworn not to betray his master’s secrets, and the consequences of such betrayal were very serious. As we have already seen, Gutenberg at first attempted to keep printing a trade secret, but the obvious impossibility of doing so led to other methods of protection.

Fortunately for the new art the great men of the time were interested in it and, as a rule, it was not difficult to obtain a certain amount of protection by privilege. Venice was perhaps the most advanced state in Europe in the middle of the fifteenth century, certainly it was one of the most advanced. The intelligent business men and astute nobles trained in public affairs who made up the body of citizens of the Republic of Venice were not slow in perceiving that a condition had arisen which must be immediately attended to. The matter was therefore taken up by the Council of Ten, an executive body which had large functions in the government of Venice. Their methods of dealing with the matter may be divided into four heads.

The first was the monopoly under which only one printer was allowed to work in a given town. Such a monopoly was granted John of Spire who, in 1469, was given the sole privilege of doing printing in Venice. Fortunately the unwisdom of this particular method of protection was soon seen and other printers were allowed in Venice.

The next was a form of privilege something like the modern copyright. Under this a publisher or even an author was granted the sole right to print or cause to be printed a certain book. The first one of these copyrights was issued to Antonio Sabellico in 1486. Sabellico was the official historian of Venice and the copyright covered his history. Unlike modern copyrights, which cover but a single book, these privileges might cover anything that an author had written or might write. It is clear that such a blanket copyright in the hands of a publisher might be used very injuriously, and there is evidence that they were so used either to extort money or to impede publication. It is probable that in many cases this form of privilege involved some arrangement between the author and the printer whereby the author shared the profits.

Copyright privileges ran from one to twenty-five years and were sometimes extended. Not infrequently copyright privileges were issued with limiting clauses or conditions, such as that the books should be sold at a “fair price,” that the work copyrighted should be published within a year, or that a certain number of copies should be printed per week, and the like.

The third method of protection was by a privilege like a modern patent, covering certain processes or certain kinds of printing. For example: Aldus was granted the sole right to use the italic character, while others were given the sole right of printing in some foreign language.