Page:The Cambridge History of American Literature, v4.djvu/135

International Copyright 547 by the Harpers, and in The New World, and in Brother Jonathan, and the price went as low as six cents. The better class of publishers on both sides of the Atlantic tried to do at least a nominal justice to the authors they republished, and instituted a system of payment for advance sheets or copies.' Such luxuries of conscience, however, were not indulged in by many; and as soon as a reputable American publisher had issued a book that held the promise of a sale, the pirates rushed out an edition. Sometimes owing to the uncertainty of the ocean transit they were even able to get out the first one. In self- defence the respectable firms began a retaliatory war of under- selling ; and having a sounder financial basis, they won in the contest. Then ensued an arrangement, more or less irritat- ingly defective, known as trade courtesy, whereby an un- derstanding with an overseas author was respected. But after the Civil War, under the stress of economic readjustment, chaos came again. In 1837 the first recorded movement in the United States was taken towards international copyright. In the next five years numerous petitions for a law, signed by many prominent authors on both sides of the Atlantic, were presented to Con- gress. Some of the publishers soon became interested in the movement, one of the first and most aggressive being G. P. Putnam. Opposed to it for some time were, most prominently, theHarpers ; but the chief centre of opposition was Philadelphia. For a while, ending with 1850, the British laws had been inter- preted so as to protect American interests, but the golden op- portunity was allowed to pass. On the part of the opponents of the law there was a tendency to confuse it with the protective tariff; and above all did they contend that American education would be injured by the increased price of books and by the fact that European works could not be adapted to our needs. Through the American Copyright League founded in 1883 and the American Publishers' Copyright League (1887) especially was the struggle finally brought to a victorious close in 1891. The chief effects up to the present of the law seem to be three- fold. There has been a tremendous and immediate widening of the circle of readers the average author may address. Branch ' For the relative value of British authors to American publishers see J. H. Har- per's The House of Harper, p. 115, and E. L. Bradsher's Maihew Carey, pp. 93-94-