University of Virginia Library

The Chace Act and Anglo-American Literary Relations
by
James L. W. West III [*]

The long battle in the United States for passage of an international copyright law ended finally in March 1891 with the passage of the Chace Act, the first American international copyright statute. Historians have regarded the bill as a milestone, an indication that the United States was renouncing its stance as an international pirate and was entering into normal copyright relations with other civilized countries. Literary scholars have followed this lead and have assumed that the Chace Act more or less ended the long feud between the intellectual establishments in England and America over international copyright. The reality, as we shall see in this article, was somewhat different.

Throughout the nineteenth century American publishers had battened on unauthorized resettings of British books. This practice had robbed British authors of royalties and had placed American authors (who were protected by domestic copyright statutes and thus had to be paid) at an unfair disadvantage in competition with their British counterparts. The situation had been helped somewhat by an arrangement known as "Courtesy of the Trade," an informal agreement among major American book-publishing houses not to poach on each other's British authors. Courtesy of the Trade, however, was only a gentlemen's agreement, and it tended to break down whenever the American book market descended into one of its periodic price wars or whenever the British book in question was a particularly attractive prize. The Chace Act, it has been assumed, now established order and legality in international copyright dealings between British and American publishing houses. Piracy was no longer permitted; American authors could compete on equal footing with British writers; and British writers would no longer be robbed of American royalties.

There is some truth to these generalizations, but, as one might suspect, the realities were rather more complex. Certainly it is true that novels by the better-known British writers could no longer be seized immediately by American pirates and manufactured in cheap, shoddy editions for the U.S. market—as was done, for example, with virtually all of Dickens' books. But the provisions of the Chace Act were drawn in such a way that the statute

was not a true international copyright law. It by no means granted free access to the American book market for all British publishers. The Chace Act was in fact a relatively restrictive law, especially in its provisions for the manufacture of books eligible for U.S. copyright.

In this paper I should like to explore some of the implications of the Chace Act as they played themselves out over the last few years of the nineteenth century and the early decades of the twentieth. The Chace Act, as it turns out, had the effect of shielding the American market from British books; also, curiously enough, it protected the British cultural establishment from a backlash effect that might have opened it more fully to American influences and ideas. Finally, for the textual editor, the Chace Act had a strong effect on how some American books were typeset—on their orthography and pointing and their "editing for taste."

The key to understanding the influence of the Chace Act is to realize that it contained a "manufacturing clause." The clause read as follows:

Typesetters' unions in America had played a major role in framing the bill and had agreed to support it only if it contained this clause. These unions had feared quite naturally that the American market, if opened entirely to British publishers, would soon be flooded with books which had been typeset in Great Britain. Compositors in the American printing industry (traditionally one of the best-organized groups within the labor force) believed that such a circumstance would rob them of business and jobs. They therefore fought vehemently in congressional copyright hearings for a more restrictive and protective law. They were successful in their arguments: under the Chace Act, the text of a publication had to have been typeset in the United States if it were to secure permanent American copyright. Consequently it was impossible for British publishers to ship their bound or unbound stock, or even their stereotype or electrotype plates, to America and still enjoy the protection of copyright for the publication. Moreover, a customs duty continued to be imposed on books which had been manufactured abroad. The practical effect of the manufacturing clause, and of the customs tariff, was to prevent American publishers from becoming large-scale distributors for books issued by British publishing houses.

British publishers had long eyed the vast American book market with envy; clearly they had hoped that international copyright, when it came, would open that market fully to them. That it did not nettled them. Some American publishers were also unhappy about the situation. George Haven

Putnam, for example, seems to have wanted a comfortable arrangement under which he and other established American publishers could derive income simply from the distribution of British-printed books in the United States. Putnam found, however, that the voices of the publishers were not the strongest ones in the congressional hearings. He complained later that "the Congressmen had not only called into their councils the representatives of the manufacturing concerns, but had shown themselves more ready to give weight to their arguments and to be guided by their contentions than they were to listen to authors, artists, or composers."[2]

The practical effect of the Chace Act was to require American publishers to decide, early in the game, whether they wished to issue a British title in a copyrighted edition in the States. If a British book were apt to do well on the American market, it was necessary to protect it by copyright; this meant that the American publisher had to invest his own capital and have the book manufactured by domestic typesetters and printers. If a British book were expected to sell only moderately well in America, copies could still be imported from the British publisher (or, less frequently, plates could be sent over), but the book, when issued, would be in the public domain. This made both British and American publishers hesitate over marginal titles. The effect over the long term, according to British publisher Stanley Unwin, was that only about five percent of the books published in Great Britain, exclusive of fiction, were also published and copyrighted in separate editions by American publishers.[3] Consignments of other British books, printed from type set in Great Britain, were handled by American publishers and distributors in small quantities, but the numbers were not significant enough to make a very great difference to British houses. Thus the American printing industry was protected from British competition, and the American book market remained relatively inaccessible to British publishers.

If he were willing to put his wares on the American market without benefit of copyright, a British publisher could still ship stereos or electros to an American house, but even here there were problems. British plates, according to Haven Putnam, were of inferior quality, and American printers did not like to use them. Putnam writes:

British publishers, for their part, did not especially want to go to the trouble of casting duplicate plates and shipping them to America unless sales promised to be substantial. On 8 July 1905, for example, Frederick Macmillan wrote to his brother Maurice that George P. Brett, who headed their American branch in New York City, was unhappy about a recent arrangement over duplicate plates. "I hear that Brett has written to complain of the price we charged him—(2/- a sq inch) for electros," noted Macmillan. "I should not advise that we make any concession on this point. If the result is to make Brett hesitate about asking for electros from our books, I shall be glad."[5]

The Chace Act had an effect on British compositors and printers as well. When the measure had first gone into effect in 1891, they had feared that its manufacturing clause might rob them of business. They themselves were unprotected by a similar regulation in Great Britain: their assumption, therefore, was that all books which promised to sell well in both the United States and in Great Britain would be manufactured entirely in America, thus qualifying for copyright in both countries. The British "edition," in such cases, would be a consignment of overrun sheets from the American impression with the British publisher's imprint on the title page. Theoretically the fears of British printers were justified, but, according to publisher William Heinemann, the anticipated difficulties did not emerge. "The manufacturing clause has not materially affected the English printer," he wrote in December 1892; "it has driven only very little of the 'making of books' out of the country, and I believe that this little will—on account of the difficulty of inducing American printers to keep type standing, and also on account of the higher wages paid to compositors on the other side—be still further reduced when English publishers have had longer experience in this experiment."[6] Heinemann proved to be correct: the Chace Act never did redirect much printing business from Great Britain to America. The difficulties of overseeing, from London, the setting and printing of a book in New York or Philadelphia, and of orchestrating an American production schedule with a British promotion and distribution campaign—these challenges were too much for most British publishers to undertake. Better to have their editions manufactured by their own domestic printers and let the American market take care of itself.

The only British publishers to benefit markedly from the Chace Act were those who had offices on both sides of the Atlantic. For example, John Lane, founder of The Bodley Head, used the new law to considerable advantage.

He opened a New York branch in 1896; thereafter, any of his titles with potential for both the British and American markets were manufactured in the United States and copyrighted in Washington, while overrun sheets were sent to England, bound there, and copyrighted for the British market. Lane thus avoided the expense of a separate British typesetting.

The procedure, however, could have a peculiar effect on the text of an American author. As an example we might consider the case of Theodore Dreiser. Lane signed Dreiser to his list after Dreiser fell out with Harper & Brothers over The Titan in 1914. Thereafter Dreiser's publisher in both America and England was Lane. Oddly, this meant that his typescripts began to be edited, in New York, by a British editor. The rationale was obvious: if the text were to be printed only once, for both markets, it had to conform sufficiently well to British orthography, usage, and taste to be acceptable to readers in "the home country." One sees evidence of this kind of editing, for example, on the typescript setting-copy of Dreiser's novel The "Genius", published by Lane in 1915. Dreiser's editor for the novel was the Englishman Frederic Chapman, and the typescript of The "Genius" is heavily marked by his red pen. Chapman introduces much phrasing that is British in feel; he is also alert for expressions that an Englishman might find vulgar. Thus, for example, the character Carlotta, who is described by Dreiser as a "sex enthusiast," becomes (more mildly) a woman who is "passion driven." Or, to give only one other instance from many that are available in the typescript, "advertising solicitors" become "advertising canvassers" to avoid confusion over the British usage of the term "solicitor." Dreiser and Chapman frequently spar in the margins over American slang, for which Chapman seems to have had little appreciation. Often he writes such comments as "quite meaningless to an English ear" or "incomprehensible, to an Englishman at any rate." Dreiser usually gives in and revises. Probably he was not happy over this treatment of his text, but he had no real choice, given the copyright laws under which his publisher was operating.[7]

A somewhat less severe effect of the Chace Act was to impose a modified system of British spelling on many books that were manufactured in the United States. American readers, as a rule, seem not to have been particularly sensitive to British orthography and usage. Thus it appears to have had little effect on the reception or sales of a book in America if it were printed from British plates or were composed of overrun British sheets. (Such books were not protected by U.S. copyright, as noted earlier.) The reverse, however, was not true: British reviewers and readers apparently did complain if books with American spelling and usage were sold to them in British bookstores. American literary agents, who did a good bit of transatlantic business, were very much aware of the problem. New York agent Paul Revere Reynolds, writing to publisher Henry Holt in March 1897, for example, specified that a book

destined for joint American/British publication "must be set with English spelling." Reynolds added, "This is absolutely essential as Heinemann is not willing to take a book except on those conditions. Otherwise English reviewers slash a book and hurt its sale."[8]

The net effect of such attitudes was to require American publishers to have some of their books typeset in a style of British orthography known as "modified Oxford spelling." If there were a pre-publication arrangement for sale of the American-set text in Great Britain—or even if there were only a chance of such a sale—then the American publisher would employ this system of anglicized spelling, or one very like it. Such forms as to-day and to-morrow would usually be introduced, along with theatre and centre and catalogue. Some words ending in -or would be rendered with -our, such as colour and glamour, and the middle e in acknowledgement would be retained. Punctuation would follow American practices for the most part: periods would appear after Mr. and Mrs., and double quotation marks would be employed in dialogue. Commas or periods would be set inside the closing quotation marks, but there would be a spattering of hyphenated words throughout that in ordinary American usage would appear as a single word or as two separate words.

This style of typesetting was imposed on the texts of a great many American writers of the nineteen-teens and -twenties, including F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ellen Glasgow, Ernest Hemingway, and Willa Cather. Original manuscripts survive for most of these writers, and editors can deduce from these documents each author's habits of spelling (or, in Fitzgerald's case, misspelling). But in the instance of Cather, we have very few original manuscripts because she destroyed them, along with much of her correspondence, before her death. At the very least, knowledge of the effects of the Chace Act on the typesetting of her novels might cause editors to cast a skeptical eye on the British spellings in her first editions, even if these editions were perforce to be used as copytexts for a scholarly re-editing of her novels.

The Chace Act had significant effects on British writers as well, and those effects were quite often unfavorable. Perhaps it would be best to begin with those authors least damaged by the 1891 statute. These were established British writers whose new works were sure to be manufactured and copyrighted in the States. Of course the Chace Act did nothing to protect their previously published writings, a serious matter for some of the great Victorian authors who were nearing the ends of their careers. The great bulk of John Ruskin's work, for example, continued to be pirated in America; publisher George Allen, to his consternation, was able to enjoy the full protection

of American copyright on only one Ruskin book—Verona, and Her Rivers, a collection of old lectures which appeared in 1893.[9] Many of the other great Victorian writers suffered similarly under the new law.

One possible tactic for established British writers was to bring old books up to date and copyright the revised editions in America. There was a section of the Chace Act which permitted such a strategem:

British publishers of such revised editions quickly learned that their authors were fully aware of these new benefits of the Chace Act. With copyright secure in the U.S., these authors could demand higher royalties on American sales. James Bryce, for example, whose book The American Commonwealth was one of the steadiest sellers for Macmillan in the States, began to press for higher returns on a newly revised edition. Frederick Macmillan added this postscript to a 10 December 1891 letter to George P. Brett in New York: "I am sorry to say Mr Bryce has been demanding an increased royalty on the American copies of his book. We don't want to give him anything more if we can possibly help it; but I dare say in view of the new Copyright Bill he and other English authors will do what they can to squeeze the publishers."[10]

The British authors most seriously damaged by the manufacturing clause were young writers who were as yet without reputation in America. In order to secure U.S. copyright for the books of these authors, American publishers ideally had to decide before publication to have the texts set and printed in the States. For unknown authors, however, this was impractical and financially risky. If, therefore, a book blossomed late in England and an author's potential on the American market were consequently recognized only after a small consignment of British-set copies had been imported and sold in the States, then there was no way ever to secure copyright for that writing in America. The author's early work was in public domain, available to any publisher. Even if the author had a subsequent copyrighted success in the U.S., his early writing remained unprotected and was sure to be pirated.

Anthony Hope Hawkins explained the problem in an 1896 letter to S. S. McClure: "Ever since the date of the Act, it is practically impossible for beginners over here to secure copyright in your country. . . . The result is that the earlier (and probably less capable) stories are at the mercy of the first comer. The author has no power of selecting what he will or will not reprint. . . . So, far from 'forcing unworthy stories' on the American public,

he is himself forced to stand by and see all that he wrote pitchforked on to the market."[11] The alternative frequently followed after 1891 was to withhold the writing of promising young British authors from the American market—to be scrupulous about not permitting even a token shipment of British-set copies to be sent to America. But this, of course, denied the beginning author the chance to build a modest initial following in the States, the kind of following which might justify later, properly copyrighted editions of his writings.

A 1909 revision of the Chace Act changed matters slightly by introducing the concept of ad interim copyright. If a work in the English language, manufactured outside the United States, were deposited in Washington within thirty days of its appearance abroad, it received ad interim protection for a further thirty days, during which time an American edition might be set, printed, bound, and copyrighted by the usual methods. The basic manufacturing clause remained in effect for English-language books typeset in Great Britain, however, and it continued to irritate both British and American publishers. Henry Holt called the 1909 revision "infernally narrow," and Haven Putnam considered it "defective, inconsistent, and inadequate." British publishers in general found the statute to be frankly discriminatory against them.[12]

Holt, the Putnams, the Scribners, the Dodds, and other American publishers of the period believed that U.S. international copyright laws restrained free intellectual intercourse in order to satisfy the demands of the unionized laboring classes. Undoubtedly they were correct. But with hindsight one can see that the Chace Act, with its manufacturing clause, did have some side effects which might be considered beneficial. American compositors, without intending to do so, had put a protective barrier of sorts around the American intellectual establishment. Publishers in the United States were encouraged by the Chace Act to cultivate their own territories and resources, and to publish books by their own scientists, historians, philosophers, and fiction-writers. Relatively few titles from the British market would justify the risk of a fresh American edition. Marginal British publications were imported only in small quantities or were kept off the United States market altogether. In this way the manufacturing clause in the Chace Act played a role in America's cultural and literary severance from Great Britain after 1900.

It can also be argued, again with hindsight, that the manufacturing clause was probably good for the development of British intellectual life during the twentieth century. If the trade in books between Great Britain and the United States had been unrestricted, British scientists and humanists would— initially, at least—have exercised a dominating influence over American education and culture. But eventually the cumulative power of the American

market, so much larger and more various than the British market, would almost surely have begun to work in reverse. British publishers would have had to consider tastes and interests in the United States as an important factor (perhaps as the most important factor) in many publishing decisions, and British authors would have felt this same pressure. Without the temptation of the American market, and with the stability in prices brought about by the Net Book Agreement after 1900, British publishers could continue to do business in the old way—publishing books by their own native intellectuals and writers and selling them primarily in Great Britain and in the commonwealth markets of Australia, India, and Canada.[13]

The Chace Act, then, had a mixed effect on Anglo-American literary relations. It did end the worst forms of international piracy, but it was a source of irritation to many British and American publishers. Books typeset in America for distribution both in the U.S. and Britain retained an overlay of British orthography and usage and had to conform to British standards of propriety. American publishers had to decide early on whether to copyright British works in the States by having them typeset here. British authors, especially fledgling ones, could still see their works appear in America without the protection of copyright. Older British writers still had no way to recover U.S. copyright on their earlier writings. The only recompense for all of these groups was that their intellectual establishments were inadvertently protected from one another. But that was a beneficial side effect apparent only in hindsight—a democratic influence on culture which De Tocqueville would have understood, but which he could not have predicted.

Notes