be lightly challenged by anybody. But he doesn’t know any more about the human being than the President does, or the Pope, or the philosophers, or the cat. I wanted to give him a copy of my privately printed, unsigned, unacknowledged and unpublished gospel, “What is Man?” for his enlightenment, but thought better of it. He wouldn’t understand it.
ON POSTAGE RATES ON AUTHORS’ MANUSCRIPT
R eader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself. Simply suppose you were a member of Congress. And suppose you started-up what you believed to be your faculties, and worked out the draft of a law to cover the needs of some industry or other which you did not know anything about. What would you do with that draft—submit it to somebody who did know something about it, and get instruction and advice? Yes?
It is natural to think that; but the member of Congress proceeds differently. He drafts that law to cover a matter which he knows nothing about; he straightway submits it to the rest of the National Asylum, who are similarly ignorant concerning the thing; they amend-out any accidental clearnesses or coherences which may have escaped his notice; then they pass it, and it presently goes into effect. It goes into effect, and of course it begins to confuse and hamper interested parties, because they do not understand it. But this has been foreseen, and has also been provided for—in a most curious way. Each public department at Washington keeps a minor asylum of salaried inmates whose business it is to invent a meaning for laws that have no meaning; and to detect meanings, where any exist, and distort and confuse them. This process is called “interpreting.” And sublime and awe-inspiring is this art!
Consider one specimen, then we will move along to the main purpose of this article: The law forbids the importation of pirated American books—intends to, at any rate; it certainly thought it forbade such importations. Well, Postmaster General Jewell entered into a convention with the Postmaster General of Canada which permits pirated American books to be sent into this country in the United States mail! and more than that, the United States government actually levies and pockets a duty on this contraband stuff! There, you see, is a law whose intent—though poorly and pitifully supported, as to penalties—was in the interest of the citizen; but the interpretation is wholly in the interest of the foreigner, and that foreigner a thief. And who gets any real benefit out of it? The thief makes a hundred dollars, the United States get a hundred dollars, and the American author loses a thousand, possibly ten thousand. How long will the thing remain in this way? Necessarily until a Congressman who is not a fool shall re-draft the copyright law; and have at his back a sufficiency of Congressmen also not fools, to pass it; and by luck hit upon an interval when they chance to be out of idiots in the interpretation-retreat of the Departments, and consequently no immediate way available to misconstrue its language and defeat its intent. Six hundred years, think? Or would you be frank, and say six hundred thousand?
And now let us stop prefacing, and pass to the real subject of this article. In old times, postage was very high: ten, fifteen, twenty-five cents on a single letter. Take fifteen hundred pages of manuscript, for a book, and apply those rates to the package, and what is the result? We have a couple of historical illustrations. An American girl shipped her manuscript book across the ocean to get Sir Walter Scott’s “candid opinion” upon it—that is to say, a fulsome puff. She discreetly left him to pay the postage, which he did—twenty-five dollars! But, being afraid that that copy might chance to get lost, she shipped him a duplicate by the next vessel. He paid the postage again—twenty-five dollars. In this case, Sir Walter paid; but if the girl had sent her book to a
ON POSTAGE RATES ON AUTHORS’ MANUSCRIPT
R eader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself. Simply suppose you were a member of Congress. And suppose you started-up what you believed to be your faculties, and worked out the draft of a law to cover the needs of some industry or other which you did not know anything about. What would you do with that draft—submit it to somebody who did know something about it, and get instruction and advice? Yes?
It is natural to think that; but the member of Congress proceeds differently. He drafts that law to cover a matter which he knows nothing about; he straightway submits it to the rest of the National Asylum, who are similarly ignorant concerning the thing; they amend-out any accidental clearnesses or coherences which may have escaped his notice; then they pass it, and it presently goes into effect. It goes into effect, and of course it begins to confuse and hamper interested parties, because they do not understand it. But this has been foreseen, and has also been provided for—in a most curious way. Each public department at Washington keeps a minor asylum of salaried inmates whose business it is to invent a meaning for laws that have no meaning; and to detect meanings, where any exist, and distort and confuse them. This process is called “interpreting.” And sublime and awe-inspiring is this art!
Consider one specimen, then we will move along to the main purpose of this article: The law forbids the importation of pirated American books—intends to, at any rate; it certainly thought it forbade such importations. Well, Postmaster General Jewell entered into a convention with the Postmaster General of Canada which permits pirated American books to be sent into this country in the United States mail! and more than that, the United States government actually levies and pockets a duty on this contraband stuff! There, you see, is a law whose intent—though poorly and pitifully supported, as to penalties—was in the interest of the citizen; but the interpretation is wholly in the interest of the foreigner, and that foreigner a thief. And who gets any real benefit out of it? The thief makes a hundred dollars, the United States get a hundred dollars, and the American author loses a thousand, possibly ten thousand. How long will the thing remain in this way? Necessarily until a Congressman who is not a fool shall re-draft the copyright law; and have at his back a sufficiency of Congressmen also not fools, to pass it; and by luck hit upon an interval when they chance to be out of idiots in the interpretation-retreat of the Departments, and consequently no immediate way available to misconstrue its language and defeat its intent. Six hundred years, think? Or would you be frank, and say six hundred thousand?
And now let us stop prefacing, and pass to the real subject of this article. In old times, postage was very high: ten, fifteen, twenty-five cents on a single letter. Take fifteen hundred pages of manuscript, for a book, and apply those rates to the package, and what is the result? We have a couple of historical illustrations. An American girl shipped her manuscript book across the ocean to get Sir Walter Scott’s “candid opinion” upon it—that is to say, a fulsome puff. She discreetly left him to pay the postage, which he did—twenty-five dollars! But, being afraid that that copy might chance to get lost, she shipped him a duplicate by the next vessel. He paid the postage again—twenty-five dollars. In this case, Sir Walter paid; but if the girl had sent her book to a
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