INTERNATIONAL IN AMERICA 359
pie basis of reciprocity; the Chace bill required regis- try within fifteen days and deposit of the best Ameri- can edition within six months from publication abroad, at a fee of $1, to be used in printing a list of copyright books for customs use, the prohibition of importa- tions and the voiding of copyright when the Ameri- can manufacturer abandons publication. The Ameri- can Copyright League, of which James Russell Lowell was president and Edmund Clarence Stedman vice- president, favored the Hawley bill, which was practi- cally a modification of the Dorsheimer bill, and it was introduced into the House by John Randolph Tucker of Virginia, January 6, 1886.
Hearings were held for four days by the Senate Congres- Committee on Patents on January 28, 29, February ^ional hear- 12, and March 11, 1886, at which Mr. Lowell, Mr. ^s^' ^^86 Stedman, " Mark Twain" and others appeared on be- half of international copyright. A memorial signed by 144 American authors, was presented in the follow- ing terms: "The undersigned American citizens who earn their living in whole or in part by their pen, and who are put at disadvantage in their own country by the publication of foreign books without payment to the author, so that American books are undersold in the American market, to the detriment of American literature, urge the passage by Congress of an Inter- national Copyright Law, which will protect the rights of authors, and will enable American writers to ask from foreign nations the justice we shall then no lon- ger deny on our own part." The memorial was pre- sented to Congress in fac-simile of the signatures of the authors and was reproduced in that form in the Bowker-Solberg volume on copyright of 1886.
It was at this time that Mr. Lowell wrote his fa- Mr. Lowell's mous quatrain on "International copyright," which epigram presented effectively the fundamental argument:
