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ARGUMENTS BEFORE THE COMMITTEE ON PATENTS
OF THE
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ON
H. R. 11943,

TO AMEND TITLE 60, CHAPTER 3, OF THE REVISED
STATUTES OF THE UNITED STATES RELATING TO COPYRIGHTS.

MAY 2, 1906.

COMMITTEE ON PATENTS, HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,
FIFTY-NINTH CONGRESS.

  FRANK D. CURRIER, NEW HAMPSHIRE, _Chairman_.

  SOLOMON R. DRESSER, PENNSYLVANIA.
  JOSEPH M. DIXON, MONTANA.
  EDWARD H. HINSHAW, NEBRASKA.
  ROBERT W. BONYNGE, COLORADO.
  WILLIAM W. CAMPBELL, OHIO.
  ANDREW J. BARCHFELD, PENNSYLVANIA.
  JOHN C. CHANEY, INDIANA.
  CHARLES McGAVIN, ILLINOIS.
  WILLIAM SULZER, NEW YORK.
  GEORGE S. LEGARE, SOUTH CAROLINA.
  EDWIN Y. WEBB, NORTH CAROLINA.
  ROBERT G. SOUTHALL, VIRGINIA.
  JOHN GILL, JR., MARYLAND.

  EDWARD A. BARNEY, _Clerk_.

WASHINGTON:
GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE.
1906.




ARGUMENT (CONTINUED) ON H. R. 11943, TO AMEND TITLE 60, CHAPTER 3, OF
REVISED STATUTES OF THE UNITED STATES, RELATING TO COPYRIGHTS.


  COMMITTEE ON PATENTS,
  HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,
  _Washington, D.C., May 3, 1906_.

The committee met at 11 o'clock a.m., Hon. Frank D. Currier (chairman)
in the chair.

The CHAIRMAN. I have received a telegram regarding the bill now before
the committee from John Philip Sousa, which reads as follows:

    NORTHAMPTON, MASS., _May 3, 1906_.

    _The Chairman and Members of Congress_,

    _Committee on Patents, Washington, D.C._:

    Earnestly request that the American composer receives full and
    adequate protection for the product of his brain; any legislation
    that does not give him absolute control of that he creates is a
    return to the usurpation of might and a check on the intellectual
    development of our country.

    JOHN PHILIP SOUSA.


STATEMENT OF MR. A. R. SERVEN, ATTORNEY FOR THE MUSIC PUBLISHERS'
ASSOCIATION--Continued.

Mr. SERVEN. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, during the
last hundred years and more the inventors of the country have been
liberally dealt with by the lawmakers, and the result is to-day no
country in the world stands higher in everything in the line of
mechanical and industrial development than the United States does, and
I think you gentlemen who have this matter of patents in charge may
justly take pride in yourselves that your committee in the past has
done such magnificent work for the wealth, the prosperity, and the
reputation, and the ability of the United States at home and abroad. It
is conceded, I think, to-day all over the world that the American
inventor is the most industrious, the most ingenious, and is the most
valuable part of the real wealth of the United States, and that is so
because from the very start the laws have been most liberal to protect
the American inventor for every bit of the right of property which he
could possibly have in anything that is the creation of his brain and
his genius.

Now, unfortunately, as I remarked yesterday, the record is not just
that way in regard to the musical inventors--if I may use that term--of
the United States, and that, and that alone, is the reason why we have
to-day almost no names of composers that have a world-wide reputation.
Perhaps the sender of the telegram we have just heard read is as well
known in other countries as any composer we have; possibly his music
has been heard by more people than the music of any other composer of
the United States; and yet the musical critics all over the world say
America has no national music because she has no national composers. It
is true that there is not in existence to-day, perhaps, a single
ambitious musical drama that can claim popularity and reputation that
may be expected to be handed down as one of the musical classics that
had as its composer a citizen of the United States. I am informed by
these musical gentlemen that probably the greatest composer we ever had
was