 Section 134 of Mark Twain in the New York Times, Part 4, 1900 through 1906. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain read by John Greenman. December 8, 1906, Mark Twain in white amuses congressmen, advocates new copyright law and dress reform, wears light flannel suit, says at seventy-one dark colors depress him, talks seriously of author's right to profits. Special to the New York Times, Washington, December 7. Mark Twain spent a busy afternoon at the Capitol today, and for half an hour entertained the newspaper correspondence with a characteristic talk. Despite the blustering wind which swept down Pennsylvania Avenue, the author wore a suit of white flannels, in the member's gallery which he first visited to watch the proceedings of the House, he attracted general attention. Later Mr. Clemens visited the speaker's room, and while awaiting the arrival of Uncle Joe entertained a dozen congressmen, including Groverner, Payne, Dalzel, and Foster, who hastened to pay him their respects. With the speaker Mr. Clemens discussed briefly the pending copyright bill. With William Dean Howells and a party of other authors and publishers, Mr. Clemens came here to be present at the hearings on this bill, which are now being conducted in the Senate reading room at the Congressional Library, by the Committee on Patents of the Senate and the House. With Mr. Howells, Edward Everett Hale, Thomas Nelson Page, and a number of other authors, he appeared before the committee this afternoon. The new copyright bill extends the author's copyright for the term of his life and for fifty years thereafter. It is also for the benefit of artists, musicians, and others, but the authors did most of the talking. F. D. Millet made a speech for the artists, and John Philip Sousa for the musicians. Committee Enjoys Twain Speech Mr. Clemens was the last speaker of the day and its chief feature. He made a speech the serious parts of which created a strong impression, and the humorous parts set the senators and representatives in roars of laughter. "'I have read this, Bill,' he began. "'At least I have read such portions as I could understand. Nobody but a practiced legislator can read the bill and thoroughly understand it, and I am not a practiced legislator. I am interested, particularly and especially, in the part of the bill which concerns my trade. I like that extension of copyright life to the author's life and fifty years afterward. I think that would satisfy any reasonable author because it would take care of his children. Let the grandchildren take care of themselves. That would take care of my daughters, and after that I am not particular. I shall then have long been out of this struggle, independent of it, indifferent to it. It isn't objectionable to me that all the trades and professions in the United States are protected by the bill. I like that. They are all important and worthy, and if we can take care of them under the copyright law, I should like to see it done. I should like to see oyster culture added, and anything else. I am aware that copyright must have a limit because that is required by the Constitution of the United States which sets aside the earlier Constitution, which we call the decalogue. The decalogue says you shall not take away from any man his profit. I don't like, he explained, to use the harsh term. What the decalogue really says is thou shalt not steal, but I am trying to use more polite language. The laws of England and America do take it away, do select, but one class, the people who create the literature of the land. They always talk handsomely about the literature of the land, always what a fine, great monumental thing a great literature is, and in the myths of their enthusiasm they turn around and do what they can to discourage it. I know we must have a limit, but 42 years is too much of a limit. I am quite unable to guess why there should be a limit at all to the possession of the product of a man's labor. There is no limit to real estate. Dr. Hale has suggested that a man might just as well, after discovering a coal mine and working it 42 years, have the government step in and take it away. Says publishers never die. What is the excuse? It is that the author who produced that book has had the profit of it long enough, and therefore the government takes a profit which does not belong to it and generously gives it to the eighty-eight million of people. But it doesn't do anything of the kind. It merely takes the author's property, takes his children's bread, and gives the publisher double profit. He goes on publishing the book, and as many of his confederates as choose to go into the conspiracy do so, and they rear families in affluence, and they continue the enjoyment of those ill-gotten gains generation after generation forever, for they never die. In a few weeks or months or years I shall be out of it. I hope under a monument. I hope I shall not be entirely forgotten, and I shall subscribe to the monument myself. But I shall not be caring what happens if there is fifty years left of my copyright. My copyright produces annually a good deal more than I can use. But my children can use it. I can get along. I know a lot of trades. But that goes to my daughters, who can't get along as well as I can, because I have carefully raised them as young ladies, who don't know anything, and can't do anything. I hope Congress will extend to them the charity which they have failed to get from me. No limit on families. Why, if a man who is not even mad, but only strenuous, strenuous about race-suicide, should come to me and try to get me to use my large political and ecclesiastical influence to get a bill passed by this Congress, limiting families to twenty-two children by one mother, I should try to calm him down. I should reason with him. I should say to him, leave it alone. Leave it alone, and it will take care of itself. Only one couple a year in the United States can reach that limit. If they have reached that limit, let them go right on. Let them have all the liberty they want. In restricting that family to twenty-two children, you are merely conferring discomfort and unhappiness on one family per year in a nation of eighty-eight million, which is not worthwhile. It is the very same with copyright. One author per year produces a book which can outlive the forty-two year limit. That's all. This nation can't produce two authors a year that can do it. The thing is demonstrably impossible. All that the limited copyright can do is to take the bread out of the mouths of the children of that one author per year. The books that live. I made an estimate some years ago, when I appeared before a committee of the House of Lords, that we had published in this country, since the Declaration of Independence, two hundred and twenty thousand books. They have all gone. They had all perished before they were ten years old. It is only one book in a thousand that can outlive the forty-two year limit. Therefore why put a limit at all? You might as well limit the family to twenty-two children. If you recall, the Americans in the nineteenth century who wrote books that lived forty-two years, you will have to begin with Cooper. You can follow with Washington Irving, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Edgar Allen Poe, and there you have to wait a long time. You come to Emerson, and you have to stand still and look further. You find Howells and T. B. Aldrich, and then your numbers begin to run pretty thin. And you question if you can name twenty persons in the United States who in a whole century have written books that would live forty-two years. Why, you could take them all and put them on one bench there, pointing. Add the wives and children, and you could put the result in two or three more benches. One hundred persons. That is the little insignificant crowd whose bread and butter is to be taken away for what purpose? For what profit to anybody? You turn these few books into the hands of the pirate and of the legitimate publisher too, and they get the profit that should have gone to the wife and children. Property in Ideas When I appeared before that committee of the House of Lords, the chairman asked me what limit I would propose. I said, perpetuity. I could see some resentment in his manner, and he said the idea was illogical, for the reason that it has long ago been decided that there can be no such thing as property in ideas. I said there was property in ideas before Queen Anne's time. They had perpetual copyright. He said, what is a book? A book is just built from base to roof on ideas, and there can be no property in it. I said I wished he could mention any kind of property on this planet that had a pecuniary value which was not derived from an idea or ideas. He said real estate. I put a suppositious case, a dozen Englishmen who travel through South Africa and camp out, and eleven of them see nothing at all. They are mentally blind, but there is one in the party who knows what this harbour means and what the lay of the land means. To him it means that some day a railway will go through here and there on that harbour a great city will spring up. That is his idea, and he has another idea which is to go and trade his last bottle of scotch whiskey and his last horse blanket to the principal chief of that region and buy a piece of land the size of Pennsylvania. Laughter. That was the value of an idea that the day would come when the Cape to Cairo railway would be built. Every improvement that is put upon the real estate is the result of an idea in somebody's head. The skyscraper is another idea. The railroad is another. The telephone and all those things are merely symbols which represent ideas. An and iron, a wash tub, is the result of an idea that did not exist before. So if, as that gentleman said, a book does consist solely of ideas, that is the best argument in the world that it is property and should not be under any limitations at all. We don't ask for that. Fifty years from now we shall ask for it. And then he tells a story. I hope the bill will pass without any deleterious amendments. I do seem to be extraordinarily interested in a whole lot of arts and things that I have got nothing to do with. It is a part of my generous liberal nature. I can't help it. I feel the same sort of charity to everybody that was manifested by a gentleman who arrived at home at two o'clock in the morning from the club and was feeling so perfectly satisfied with life, so happy, and so comfortable, and there was his house weaving, weaving, weaving around. He watched his chance, and by and by, when the steps got in his neighborhood, he made a jump and climbed up and got on the portico. And the house went on weaving and weaving, but he watched the door, and when it came around his way he plunged through it. He got to the stairs, and when he went up on all fours, the house was so unsteady that he could hardly make his way. But at last he got to the top and raised his foot and put it on the top step. But only the toe hitched on the step, and he rolled down and fetched up on the bottom step with his arm around the Newell Post, and he said, God pity the poor sailors out at sea on a night like this, an advocate of dress reform. While waiting to appear before the committee, Mr. Clemens talked to the reporters. Why don't you ask why I am wearing such apparently unseasonable cloths? I'll tell you. I have found that when a man reaches the advanced age of seventy-one years, as I have, the continual sight of dark clothing is likely to have a depressing effect upon him. Light-colored clothing is more pleasing to the eye and enlivens the spirit. Now, of course, I cannot compel everyone to wear such clothing just for my special benefit, so I do the next best thing, and wear it myself. Of course, before a man reaches my years, the fear of criticism might prevent him from indulging his fancy. I am not afraid of that. I am decidedly for pleasing color combinations in dress. I like to see the women's clothes, say, at the opera. What can be more depressing than the somber black which custom requires men to wear upon state occasions? A group of men in evening clothes looks like a flock of crows and is just about as inspiring. After all, what is the purpose of clothing? Are not clothes intended primarily to preserve dignity and also to afford comfort to the wearer? Now, I know of nothing more uncomfortable than the present-day clothes of men. The finest clothing made is a person's own skin. But, of course, society demands something more than this. The best-dressed man I have ever seen, however, was a native of the Sandwich Islands who attracted my attention thirty years ago. Now, when that man wanted to don a special dress to honor a public occasion or a holiday, why he occasionally put on a pair of spectacles? Otherwise, the clothing with which God had provided him sufficed. Of course, I have ideas of dress reform. For one thing, why not adopt some of the women's styles? Goodness knows they adopt enough of ours. Take the peek-a-boo waist, for instance. It has the obvious advantages of being cool and comfortable, and, in addition, it is almost always made up in pleasing colors which cheer and do not depress. It is true that I dressed the Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur's Court in a plug hat. But let's see, that was twenty-five years ago. Then no man was considered fully dressed until he donned a plug hat. Nowadays, I think that no man is dressed until he leaves it home. Why, when I left home yesterday, they trotted out a plug hat for me to wear. You must wear it, they told me. Why, just think of going to Washington without a plug hat. But I said no. I would wear a derby or nothing. Why, I believe I could walk along the streets of New York—I never do, but still I think I could—and I should never see a well-dressed man wearing a plug hat. If I did, I should suspect him of something. I don't know just what, but I would suspect him. Why, when I got up on the second story of that Pennsylvania ferry boat coming down here yesterday, I saw Howells coming along. He was the only man on the boat with a plug hat, and I tell you, he felt ashamed of himself. He said he had been persuaded to wear it against his better sense. But just think of a man nearly seventy years old who has not a mind of his own on such matters. Asks Uncle Joe to get it from Congress quickly, too. Special to the New York Times. Washington, December 8. Mark Twain, who is here doing what he can to get the new copyright bill passed, finds that he is handicapped as a lobbyist by not being able to go on the floor of the house and talk to congressmen while the house is in session. He finds that, aside from ex-office holders, the only outsiders who can get in are persons to whom the thanks of Congress have been extended. So he wrote the following letter to the speaker today. Dear Uncle Joseph, please get me the thanks of Congress, not next week, but right away. It is very necessary to accomplish this for your affectionate old friend, right away. By persuasion if you can, by violence if you must, for it is imperatively necessary that I get on the floor for two or three hours and talk to the members, man by man, in behalf of support, encouragement, and protection of one of the nation's most valuable assets and industries, its literature. I have arguments with me, also a barrel with liquid in it. Give me a chance. Get me the thanks of Congress. Don't wait for others. There isn't time. Furnish them to me yourself and let Congress ratify it later. I have stayed away and let Congress alone for seventy-one years amn't entitled to its thanks. Congress knows it perfectly well, and I have long felt hurt that this quite proper and earned expression of gratitude has been merely felt by the House and never publicly uttered. Send me an order on the sergeant at arms. Quick! When shall I come? With love and benediction. Mark Twain. End of Section 135, December 9, 1906. Twain Pleads for Thanks. Read by John Greenman. Section 136 of Mark Twain in the New York Times, Part 4, 1900 through 1906. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain read by John Greenman. December 10, 1906. Editorial. A Humorist at His Best. Mark Twain was the star performer for the authors and publishers at the copyright hearing in Washington last week, and it was certainly a star performance that he gave. Wearing a white suit on a cold December day was a new development of his humor, but we would all do that if, as Mr. Clemens has apparently come to be, we were as wise as the polar bears. The bears, however, wear white not only because it keeps them warmer than black wood, but because it enables them to traverse the arctic landscape unseen by their watchful dinners, and the amiable humorist could not have had that motive when he selected garments for this journey. His white suit did not enable him to leap unexpectedly upon the senators and representatives forming the committees on patents, but it may have helped him in some mysterious way to emphasize the magnificent speech he made in vindication of the author's property right in the product of his brain. That speech presented the copyright subject most pleasingly variegated by shifting lights of many colors and made it absolutely interesting, which was a great achievement for copyright arguments are apt to be rather dull, and to hurt us by revealing that the authors whom we so much revere do not write wholly for fame and a cause, as we would like to believe, since it would decrease the price of books. Mr. Clemens was not modest in his demands, for he confessed that only a copyright running forever would really content him, but he said that he was willing to compromise on a robbery of the author that should not begin until it affected only the author's grandchildren. He will probably get something less than that, for we didn't all have pirate ancestors for nothing. End of Segment 136, December 10th, 1906. A Humorist at His Best. Red by John Greenman. Section 137 of Mark Twain in the New York Times, Part 4, 1900 through 1906. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain, Red by John Greenman. December 11th, 1906, Mark Twain Lobbyist. He cuts loose from artists and musicians on copyright bill. Special to the New York Times. Washington, December 10th. Uncle Joe Cannon did not comply with Mark Twain's request to get him the thanks of Congress in a hurry, so that Mark, in his new capacity as lobbyist, could go on the floor and seek votes for the copyright bill. Uncle Joe would have done it if he could, for he would do anything for Mark, but even as Tsar's power is limited. However, he did the next best thing. He turned his private room over to Mark Twain today to do his lobbying in. As soon as the speaker spread the tidings, congressmen began to pour in. Mark Twain talked incessantly for five hours and a half. He saw a hundred and eighty members, very nearly half the membership of the House. All the leaders of both parties came in. Grovener, Dalzel, Payne, Williams, Champ Clark, and all the rest. Mark Twain did not try to be funny with these a hundred and eighty congressmen. He fired solid argument at them, and when he got through, he had learned something as well as they. He had learned that the authors had made a mistake in tying up their cause to that of the musicians, artists, and other professional men. He discovered that not even his influence and popularity were great enough to save the musicians and artists, that they were doomed anyhow, and that the authors were likely to fall with them unless the bill were split. He also learned that if it was split and the authors got a bill of their own before Congress, it would pass. Endow, Section 137, December 11, 1906, Mark Twain, Lobbyist, read by John Greenman. Section 138 of Mark Twain in The New York Times, Part 4, 1900-1906. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain read by John Greenman. December 12, 1906, Twain's plan to beat the copyright law and Watterson says freely that he is a jingo. Twain's plan to beat the copyright law will run autobiography in new editions of his old works, to put pirates to route. His task as a lobbyist finished, so he will return to New York today. Special to The New York Times, Washington, December 11. Mark Twain has the copyright law beaten to a frazzle. It is from pure altruism, pure interest in authorship as a profession that he is here booming the copyright extension bill. It doesn't affect him. He has a scheme which puts his children beyond the reach of want till they shall be old ladies, and makes the present copyright law look like a very sick and discomforted pirate indeed. The weapon whereby Mark Twain has vanquished the copyright law is his much heralded autobiography. Hitherto the manner of publication of that work has been shrouded in mystery. It has been given out that it would not be published in book form or published at all in its entirety until after Mark Twain's death. He consented to the publication of a few extracts in the North American Review where it is now running. Mark Twain looks upon the copyright law as pure robbery. He believes that it is not designed in the interest of the public, but is simply a mechanism whereby after the author has enjoyed the fruits of his labor for forty-two years, his property can be taken from him and handed over to a lot of publishers who had nothing to do with it. He considers it a law for the robbery of an author's children in the interest of the publishers. This is a tolerably conservative statement of his views. A radical statement of them would cause this issue of the times to be excluded from the males. For years Mark Twain has devoted his intellect to the question how to beat this law, how to foil this robbery, how to ensure to his children the profit of their father's labor, and prevented from being handed over by the government to some publishers who have never done anything for Mark. How the scheme is worked. And he has devised a way. He has written between a quarter and a half a million words of his autobiography and is adding to it continually. As soon as the copyright expires on one of his books, Mark Twain or his executors will apply for a new copyright on the book with a portion of the autobiography run as a footnote. For example, when the copyright on Tom Sawyer expires, a new edition of that book will be published. On each page a rule will be run about two-thirds of the way down the page, and below these lines will be printed the autobiography, or so much of it as is designed for publication in that volume. About one-third of this new edition of Tom Sawyer will be autobiography, separated from the old text only by the rules or lines. The same course will be followed with each book as the copyright expires. So far as possible the part of the autobiography will be germane to the book in which it appears. For instance, the part which is printed with Innocence Abroad will be mostly that section which relates to the trip of the innocence and to Mark Twain's other European visits. The part printed with Tom Sawyer will be made up chiefly of Mark Twain's early life in the Little Missouri town where he, the real Tom Sawyer, lived. The part printed with Roughing It will consist largely, if not entirely, of the author's life in the West. All arrangements and provisions for the carrying out of this plan, which Mark Twain means as seriously as any man ever meant anything, have been made, and long after his death the autobiography will continue to appear in this form. It is not true that no part will be published in his lifetime. If he is living in 1910, and he certainly looks as if he intended to be alive and lusty then, the first part of the autobiography will appear in that year, for in 1910 the copyright on his first book, Innocence Abroad, will expire. It is true that The Jumping Frog was published first, but that was only a collection of sketches not lending itself to Mark Twain's present purpose. The copyright on Innocence Abroad will expire late in that year, and the new edition will appear as soon as it does. A new copyright can be obtained on each of these books. Of course it will not entirely prevent piracy, but Mark Twain figures that it will vitiate the sale of editions which do not contain the autobiography and make them worthless. He calculates that it will be as difficult to sell an edition of Innocence Abroad, which does not contain any of the autobiography, as it would be to sell an edition which contained only half or two-thirds of the chapters in the original Innocence Abroad. Got the Idea From Scott He is confirmed in this by the experience of Sir Walter Scott, from whom he got the germ of his idea. Scott kept his copyrights alive by publishing new editions with commentaries. The result was that all editions which did not contain the commentaries were a drug on the market. Nobody would buy them. Mark Twain is certain that what was done with mere commentaries can be done in a much-sure fashion with an autobiography. There is no compunction in Mark Twain's mind for the dismay his scheme will spread among the publishers. He holds that they are waiting for his copyrights to expire to rob his daughters, and that after much thought he has devised a way to save his daughters. About its success he has no doubt in the world, and he has planned his execution in the most methodical and elaborate way. He believes his scheme will ensure a copyright of eighty-four years instead of forty-two, and, as he said the other day, the children are all I am interested in, let the grandchildren look out for themselves. He finished his legislative work in behalf of the copyright bill today, and will return to New York tomorrow morning. My duties, as an occasional, unsalaried, professional lobbyist, are at an end for the present, he said. He spent the day seeing Senators, Mr. Lodge having turned over his committee room for the purpose, as Mr. Cannon had turned over his own room yesterday. In the afternoon he and Albert Bigelow Payne, his secretary, went out to Rock Creek Cemetery for a drive. Strangers paw him. His stay here has been a sort of triumph. Wherever he has gone, crowds of people have hurled themselves upon him to shake his hand. He cannot appear in the lobby of the Willard without becoming instantly the center of a swarm of men and women, strangers to him, who fairly paw him in the exuberance of their joy. This morning he registered his opinion of the elaborate Thingamabobs, out of which one has to pour cream in high-toned hotels. Payne, he said, after he had tried to pour some cream into his cup and had landed it in the saucer, damn this, damn, Payne, I am frightfully short of adequate profanity. This article has been edited to include only the portions related to Mark Twain's letter. Waterson says freely that he is a jingo. At a dinner in his honor the editor wraps Roosevelt. Kentuckians, his hosts. He says the Constitution was framed to shut off arbitrary powers. Home state, God's country. Colonel Henry Waterson, who is soon to sail for Europe, had a farewell last night from the Kentuckians, who gave him a dinner in the grand ballroom of the Waldorf Astoria. Cheered him repeatedly, praised him unstintingly, and listened to a speech by him in which he said that the Constitution of the United States was the organic law of the land, in the light of which the events of the times must be read. He quoted as his view the opinion of Justice Harlan of the Supreme Court that the Constitution was drawn for the purpose of making arbitrary power impossible. The ballroom was filled with upward of two hundred Kentuckians, and in the boxes above the diners were many southern women. The decorations were composed only of American flags. John G. Carlyle presided, and Colonel Waterson sat on his right. Mark Twain writes, before introducing Colonel Waterson Mr. Carlyle read this letter from Mark Twain. I am sorryer than I can convey in words that I shall have to be absent when the Kentuckians foregather to do honor to my age-long friend and kinsman Henry Waterson, but such is the case. My sixteen years of annual bronchial attacks have consolidated, in accordance with present-day policy, and become a permanent trust, carrying on business all the year round, without vacations. Therefore my physician has forbidden me to attend public gatherings at night this winter, this with the idea of saving what health is left to me. May Waterson long keep his superfluidity of it, since it comes of his being about the best man in the country at the present time, and as far as I think the only one without sin. End of Section 138, December 12, 1906, Twain's plan to beat the copyright law, and Waterson says freely that he is a jingo, read by John Greenman. Section 139 of Mark Twain in the New York Times, Part 4, 1900 through 1906. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain read by John Greenman. December 23, 1906, Twain and the Telephone. He hears the tellharmonium and, incidentally, tells a story. The trouble about these beautiful novel things is that they interfere so with one's arrangements. Every time I see or hear a new wonder like this, I have to postpone my death right off. I couldn't possibly leave the world, until I have heard this thing again and again. Mark Twain said this as he lounged on the keyboard days in the tellharmonium music room in Upper Broadway, swinging his legs yesterday afternoon. The instrument has just played the Lowengrin Wedding March for him. You see, I read about this in the New York Times last Sunday, said he, and I wanted to hear it. If a great princess marries, what is to hinder all the lamps along the streets on her wedding night playing that march together? Or if a great man should die here? I, for example, they could all be tuned up for a dirge. Of course, I know that it is intended to deliver music all over the town through the telephone, but that hardly appeals as much as it might to a man who, for years, because of his addiction to strong language, has tried to conceal his telephone number, just like a chauffeur running away from an accident. When I lived up in Hartford, I was the very first man, in that part of New England, at least, to put in a telephone, but it was constantly getting me into trouble because of the things I said carelessly, and the family were all so thoughtless. One day, when I was in the garden, fifty feet from the house, somebody on the long-distance wire who was publishing a story of mine wanted to get the title. Well, the title was the first sentence. Tell him to go to hell. Before my daughter got it through the wire and through him, there was a perfect eruption of profanity in that region. All New England seemed to be listening in, and each time my daughter repeated it, she did so with rising emphasis. It was awful! I broke into a cold perspiration, and while the neighbourhood rang with it, rushed in and implored her to desist. But she would have the last word, and it was hell, sure enough, every time. Soon after, I moved to New York. Perhaps that had something to do with my moving. When I got here, and asked for a fire-proof telephone, the company sent up a man to me. I opened up all my troubles to him. But he laughed, and said, it was all right in New York. There was a clause in their contract, he said, allowing every subscriber to talk in his native tongue. And, of course, they would not make an exception against me. That clause has been a godsend in my case. End of Section 139, December 23, 1906, Twain and the Telephone. And end of Mark Twain in the New York Times, Part 4, 1900 through 1906, read by John Greenman.