On Postage Rates on Authors’ Manuscript- Mark Twain Reader, 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 publisher, she would have been careful not to invite his prejudice—she would have prepaid. When the publisher declined it and sent it back—a thing which publishers usually did then, and usually do yet—he would be sure to leave her to pay again. So she would be out of pocket the probable value of the book and forty-nine dollars besides. The same with the friends who had been incautious enough to lend her the money. Would she stop there? No. We never do. She would go on shipping that MS. to publisher after publisher, until she had tried the whole thirteen then existing in this country—if her friends continued to believe in the immortal merit of the book; and they always do. Six hundred and fifty dollars gone for postage! No, let us call it six hundred and twenty-five, and consider, for the sake of argument, that the thirteenth publisher is a dare-devil, and accepts the book. He reads the rough proof, but sends a “revise” containing scattering markings, to her. The markings turn it into constructive manuscript, and so she has to pay letter postage on it—say a dollar a batch, twenty-five batches, in all. She corrects the revise, returns it with markings of her own—and pays another twenty-five on it. Now the sum total has really reached six hundred and fifty dollars for the item of postage on the book. When it is published will she get the money back? In most cases, no. Here was a very heavy burden laid upon a few individuals, and they of the recognized pauper class. In those days, forty-six books were accepted and published, per year, in the United States, and some fraction under fifteen hundred thousand rejected and returned. Please figure on that; I have lost my pencil. But any way it was somewhere along about seventy-five or eighty million dollars a year for book-postage, you see. The government finally took hold of the thing and passed a law which afforded an immense relief. It said that “Authors’ Manuscripts” should pass through the mails at the rate of a half cent per ounce—and I think it was still cheaper than that, at first. But even at that rate you could send a book manuscript clear across the country for half a dollar or a dollar. The law also allowed proof-sheets to come under the head of “Authors’ MS.” There was high rejoicing among the literary tribe. Such a mighty impulse was given to literature that—but, I must not venture to reveal how many billions of books were offered and rejected during the next few years, lest I be disbelieved. All went swimmingly for a time. Then the Department-idiot went to interpreting the law; possibly, also, the Asylum fell to amending it—as to that, I do not know. At first, everything designed for publication was Authors’ MS. Except, I believe, newspaper correspondence. I remember trying, a long time ago, to send a daily newspaper letter from San Francisco as Authors’ MS., and not succeeding. The lopping and barring-off began pretty early, and proceeded swiftly. Presently, one could send nothing but book and magazine MS., and proofs and revises. By and by magazine MS was shut off; and in 1871 I was refused permission to send a “Galaxy” article for other than letter postage, but was allowed to receive and return proof-sheets of it at the Authors’ MS. rate!
Posted on: Tue, 27 Aug 2013 06:49:54 +0000