people whose opinion of us is of consequence. I venture to take the view that the American people, as a people, do not know nor care anything about the subject; but that if they can be got to pay attention to it, they will care, and will care in the reasonable way. Yet it is not to be denied that there is a certain limited section of them, mainly in a single city, whose views upon sundry public questions are based on the assumption of national meanness and stupidity, whose thoughts seem to be ever directed, sometimes with the best of intentions, to finding some scheme which shall appear honest and still enable people to enjoy the fruits of dishonesty. The writer referred to, Mr. Pearsall Smith, has revived such a plan, already several times exploded, to let bold men bear the losses of testing new authors, and skulkers come in to share the profits on those proved to be good. Every such scheme is, in its nature, impracticable. The only practicable method is to defend the author's rights over the thing he has made, as you would the shoemaker's, and let details adjust themselves under natural laws. But Mr. Smith's plan is attracting some attention, and an attempt to make it work would delay anything better; so, though it has lately been well handled elsewhere, it must be examined again here. Its main provisions are to make illegal the publishing of books without royalty stamps, and to force the author, whether he will or not, to sell such stamps to any one who wants to publish a book, whether he knows how to publish or not. The promoter of the scheme brands an author's exercising any choice of publisher as, in the offensive sense, "monopoly," a word much used by a certain class of writers to arouse prejudice against any institution they do not happen to like. It has been much used in this way against an institution sometimes supposed to be rather closely identified with the progress of civilization, and known as private property. Mr. Smith, though the evident purity of his motives indicates that he is not aware of it, happens to be using that same term against that same institution. The case is not affected, any more than was the case of the Algerines before alluded to, by the fact that the foreigner's property is not recognized by the country's laws. Mr. Smith frankly ignores all such "abstract" questions, however, and confines himself to what he

is pleased to consider "practicable;" but that gives him no right to fasten the demagogue's favorite label upon a policy which seemingly he wishes himself to be considered as regarding "too good for human nature's daily food."

It is true that Mr. Gladstone so uses the expression too. But Mr. Gladstone's business interests in books are of such minor consequence to him that his other pursuits have never allowed him the time to understand them. Then, Mr. Gladstone's views are opposed by Mr. Huxley, a man of at least equal eminence for judgment, and with relatively vastly greater interests impelling him to understand this subject. To be consistent, those who attack monopolies in writings must attack them in inventions too. But a thought in things is more closely associated than a thought in words with what human experience recognizes readily as property. This scheme, however, not only ignores the whole tendency of civilization to defend a man's control over whatever he produces, but is directly in the face of all experience in this particular subject. No nation treats its own authors so, or even foreign authors, when it pays them any attention at all. How it could be made to work in our case does not appear; why it cannot, should not be very difficult to understand.

It seems to be gotten up in entire unconsciousness of the peculiarities of books as property. It assumes that the demand for them is practically unlimited; that the more made, the more can be sold. Thus Mr. Smith quotes, in its support, Sir Charles Trevelyan, who said, when fruitlessly advocating virtually the same scheme before the British Commission, in opposition to Mr. Herbert Spencer: "The more [publishers for any book] the better. It matters not . . . whether there is one or a hundred." Now it does matter. Authors cannot make money unless publishers do, and there is not one book in ten thousand out of which one publisher cannot make a hundred times as much money as a hundred publishers can. Take the case of even an enormously successful book, such as does not appear more than once in several years. Suppose, to use round numbers, that 100,000 copies sell, in ordinary shape, at a dollar each. The publisher would clear about $25,000, and any publisher would be

glad to contract to give an author $20,000 if the latter would

contract to give him such a book. lishers sell a thousand copies each.

Now suppose a hundred pub-
Not one of them would make

a cent, and, of course, not one of them could contract to give the author a cent. If the book were sold at a lower price (and very few can sell 100,000 at any price), the showing would be still less favorable.

And not only would Sir Charles Trevelyan's hundred publishers be supplied but once every few years with a book that they could all handle without loss, but, roughly speaking, ten publishers could not be supplied more than once a year with a book that they could all make money on, or five publishers with more than ten books a year; and, in fact, on only about one book in five can one publisher make money. Mr. Smith not only joins Sir Charles in erroneously assuming the contrary, but supports his assumptions upon some alleged facts which carry impressions that are not facts at all.

He says: "In so large a market for books as the United States affords, the circulation of popular books, within certain limits, increases in direct proportion with every reduction in price." "Popular books, within certain limits," is a phrase that may mean almost anything, and therefore may mean something concerning which the assertion is true. Of the vast majority of books, however, even of books considered popular, it is not true. But it would be of no consequence if it were true of all, for an increase of sale, "in direct proportion with every reduction of price," is simply a decrease of profit. To make it worth while to lower the price, the increase of sale must be not in "direct," but somewhere near geometrical, proportion, which it very rarely is.

He further says: "Of the reprints of the most popular novels, histories, and religious works, 500,000 low-priced copies, and even more, are sometimes issued." "Most popular" and "sometimes" are terms which may save this assertion. They cannot, however, if the assertion be applied to more than half a dozen novels since piracy began. I doubt if a single one has been sold in that number, and should not be surprised if of only five or six one half that number of copies had been sold. I should be astonished

L

to find the assertion correct regarding a single history, and doubt it regarding any religious work. The same paragraph asserts that large numbers in library styles are also reprinted. As a rule, the reprinting in library styles of novels is, under cheap competition, abandoned, and of other works vastly reduced.

The fact is that books are not, to any extent, like grain and cloth something of which the public will, in time, use, at some price, all that is likely to be produced. Even the publisher of the "Seaside Library" found that out when, if report speaks truly, some million copies, that he supposed he had sold, came back on his hands. Yet I wish to speak only of the demand for books published in the only way yet evolved for making them pay the authors. Books published in other ways do not touch our case, although Mr. Smith cites them as if they did; and there is reason, too, to suppose that even the pirated cheap series cannot be reasoned from as a fixed institution, any more than can the publications of the defunct " American Book Exchange" (which Mr. Smith also seems to allude to), for the series have depended so much on a rapid use of the accumulations of the past, that it is not unlikely that they may, in any event, soon have to suspend for farther accumulations. For all books, then, except one in many thousands, the demand, so far as we can see, will always be limited. They are among the first things that Economy generally attacks, and among the last that Luxury generally demands. To know the narrow fields they can reach, and to select those which are apt to reach those fields, is the first function of normal publishing. Somebody must do this in the first instance, even if the book is reprinted by somebody else as soon as the judgment is demonstrated wise. How able men could be got to make the judgment and invest on it, with that danger hanging over them (except as sometimes now in America, for the sake of a hoped-for future), Sir Charles Trevelyan and Mr. Gladstone do not show when they advocate the system for England. Until they show it their opinions on this subject are out of court.

The second function of normal publishing is to prepare the ways for the book to its relatively sequestered markets. The demand has to be sought out and developed more carefully, prob

ably, than the demand for any other class of articles generally known. The advertising in newspapers and periodicals, by circulars, free copies, letters, interviews, and other ways, should differ for every book in amount, character, and expense. To initiate and conduct it is in itself a difficult art. The mere selection of the papers in which to advertise a given book, requires experience and aptitude. To fit the expenses to the book is more difficult still. The greatest failure in the American book trade of this generation was probably due to wasteful advertising, as much as to any other one cause; the most enviable success, perhaps, is due, as much as to any one thing, to skillful advertising.

Moreover, so peculiar is the demand for a book, that form and price are very important. Some will reach their natural market at a high price, others can do so only at a low one. Almost any book published at ten dollars could, did circumstances seem to warrant, be published in a different form at ten cents; so could almost any ten-cent book be published at ten dollars. Where between these limits are the style and price to be fixed to strike the best demand? These questions require so much judgment that, in the offices of experienced publishers, they are more apt to be determined by consultation than by individual decision.

Yet Mr. Smith's scheme is based on the assumption that all the capacity a foreign author should be permitted to look for in an American publisher is the capacity to pay a moderate amount of royalty in advance; that anybody bitten with the mania for publishing—a mania more frequent than is generally supposed-who can scrape together money enough to buy some royalty stamps and get a printer to take a flyer with him, shall be legally invited to handle, in this country, for Mr. Huxley or Lord Tennyson, the difficult and complex interests I have described, and to break in upon and set at naught the delicate combinations devoted to their interests by the competent men of their choice. If the payment by the second publisher could compensate for the deductions forced from the payment that could otherwise be made by the first, the scheme would be less objectionable; if it could exceed them, the scheme would be commendable. But such results are against all experience and against the obvious conditions of the case. An opposition edition generally takes