“It appears to me that a great deal of what is said in opposition to the view of those who favor an international copyright is, like the statement of Mr. Hubbard, purely hypothetical. He tells you that it would make books dearer. I do not think he has the slightest evidence on which to show you that it would make books dearer. My own decided opinion is that it would make books cheaper. When he says, also, that it is an attempt of publishers to make large profits on small editions, instead of small profits on large editions, I think he should have a more general knowledge of the book trade—nay, of the modern tendencies of trade in general—before he makes an assertion of that sort. It is based on the practice in England of publishing one expensive edition, and even in England the price of the book very soon falls. But the custom there has been pretty much dictated to the publishers by the owners of circulating libraries; and already there is a revolt against it, which is becoming intensified on the whole, and I believe a reform in that respect will take place there.
“I have one practical example to offer on the other side. For instance, Mr. Douglas, of Edinburgh, reprints a great many American books and pays a copyright for them. He prints them beautifully in little volumes of most convenient size, and sells them for a shilling. That is not very dear. He pays his copyright, remember. I myself am perfectly satisfied that the reading public in America, being much larger than in England, and demanding cheap books, the result of a copyright law, if we ever get one, will be to transfer the great bulk of the book trade from England to this country, and with it the publishing of books. That is my firm belief. But that is purely hypothetical, like Mr. Hubbard’s argument. Yet it seems to me there would be certain reasons for thinking so in what we know of the instincts and tendencies of trade. If the larger market be here, and if books have to be printed in a cheaper form in order to suit that market, I think they will be so printed and so far as the American public is concerned, it appears to me that if they get their books cheaply it does not so much matter where they are printed.
“I, myself, take the moral view of the question. I believe that this is a simple question of morality and justice; that many of the arguments which Mr. Hubbard used are arguments which might be used for picking a man’s pocket. One could live a great deal cheaper, undoubtedly, if he could supply himself from other people without any labor or cost. But at the same time,—well, it was not called honest when I was young, and that is all I can say. I cannot help thinking that a book which was, I believe, more read when I was young than it is now, is quite right when it says that ‘righteousness exalteth a nation.’ I believe this is a question of righteousness. I do not wish to urge that too far, because that is considered a little too ideal, I believe. But that is my view of it, and if I were asked what book is better than a cheap book, I should answer that there is one book better than a cheap book, and that is a book honestly come by. That would be my feeling.”
A series of questions and answers followed which travelled over a good deal of space, from the habit of book-buying in the two countries to the rights and wrongs involved in copyright, and Lowell drew upon personal experience and observation in a way to confirm emphatically the title which he once gave himself, “I am a bookman.” “My own impression is,” he said in the course of this conversation, “that the gathering of private libraries is diminishing; at least I think it is on the whole, according to my own observation. I mean to say that fewer persons, in proportion to the number of educated people in a community, collect libraries now than formerly, because large libraries are now more readily within the reach of so many people.... There [in England] the collection of libraries has also diminished very much, but is still large in country houses and so on. People who are rich wish to have a handsome copy of a book in their library, and for that purpose this handsome edition is published. But if you will pardon me for digressing for a moment from this subject, it seems to me there are a great many ways in which our laws about books are very disadvantageous to the country. I think, myself, that the tax on books is a barbarism.” Senator Teller here asked him if he meant the revenue tax. “Yes; it has prevented me from buying a great many books in the course of my life which would have been very valuable to me, and the imprints [reprints?][93] were comparatively valueless when I got them. I cannot at this moment as I could if I lived in any other country of the world, even Turkey, subscribe to a foreign society and receive its publications without the trouble of going to the post-office and paying the duty; and, as I happen to live up in the country now, that is very inconvenient. To be sure, as they know me, I am able to get the books sent up to the post-office of the town where I am living and pay my tax there, but it seems to me a very bad system.”
The chairman asked Lowell if people who read the cheap reprints of English books preserved them to any extent; to which he replied: “No, I think they are not preserved at all. It is a marvel where they go to. Those books get out of print quickly. I remember that I religiously preserved all the books that were sent me early in my life in order to give them to the college library, because I said, whether worthless or not they will disappear; and many of those books have disappeared, and cannot be bought at all, or procured, except the copies preserved there. They go back to the paper maker as waste paper. I wish to say before I sit down, in reference to the gentleman who is to follow me,[94] that I doubt if there is a class in the community who have a more profound sympathy with the typographical unions than we have. It is not that we wish to deprive them of their bread. I personally have a very strong sympathy with all labor organizations, and I think, as I have said, the result of a copyright law will be to give them more work rather than less.”
Both authors and those publishers who sympathized with the movement were concentrating their efforts at this time to secure the passage of an act which should effect international copyright. There was considerable diversity of opinion, especially regarding the clause which required all foreign books to be set up and printed in this country, if they were to be protected by copyright, but the largest support was given to the bill introduced by Senator Chace and stands now as law, practically as then drawn. The editors of the Century collected vigorous expressions of opinion from the most representative writers and published the testimony in the number for February, 1886. In response to the request for an opinion, Lowell came into the editor’s office one day, said he had something in his head, and wanted a pen with which to write it out. Then he sat down and wrote the famous scorcher:—
“In vain we call old notions fudge,
And bend our conscience to our dealing;
The Ten Commandments will not budge,
And stealing will continue stealing.”
This was printed in facsimile at the head of the testimony. But though Lowell was an uncompromising advocate of justice in this matter, perhaps because he was so uncompromising, the most active advocates of the bill had to use a good deal of finesse in making his support available. The act for securing international copyright was not a partisan measure, but it was in the hands of the Republicans in Congress, mainly, and Lowell with his emphatic independence in politics was not at this time a persona grata with Republican politicians, who were incensed by the falling out of the ranks of men of character and influence. The act was passed finally 3 March, 1891.
There was one form of public appearance which Lowell reluctantly allowed himself to take up in this winter of 1886. The rage for Authors’ Readings had set in, and under the guise of charity of one sort or another, society compelled its favorites to stand and deliver their old poems. “I am having proof sheets,” he wrote to Mr. Field, 30 March, 1886, “and I have been reading in public with O. W. H. and oh, don’t I wish I had never written a verse! Take warning by me, old boy, and if you make a rhyme by accident, duck yourself in holy water to wash the Devil clean out of you,—or they’ll have you on a platform before you can say Jack Robinson, or even d—n.” A keener thrust came to him now and then when he was urged to read poems which others could read, it might be, with equanimity, but which were for him like raising the lid of a coffin.
The proof sheets to which he refers in this letter were of the small volume “Democracy and other Addresses,” a volume which appeared in the spring of 1886, just before Lowell went back to England for the summer. Here he gave himself up to those pleasures which he could enjoy but sparingly when he was in the official harness. His friends welcomed him most cordially, and he made a round of visits. He looked on upon the game of English politics with the eye of a trained observer, but resisted all enticements to write or speak for the English public, though he did preside at one dinner. “I made an epigram (extempore) one day on the G. O. M.,” he writes to his daughter, “and repeated it to Lord Acton.