labors a fair and reasonable time; then extinguish the copyright and thus make the book cheap--this for the benefit of the public. I repeat, to insure cheap editions for the public: now, wasn't that the intention? and wasn't it the whole and only intention? Q. It certainly was.

A. Well, that intention has often been defeated. In many a case, the publisher has not lowered the price; in other cases, so many publishers issued editions of the unprotected book that they clogged the market and killed the book. And often it was a book that could have survived but for this misfortune. The remedy that I would suggest is this: that, during the 42d year of the copyright limit, the owner of the copyright shall be obliged to issue an edition of the book at these following rates, to wit: twenty-five cents for each 100,000 words, or less, of its contents, and keep said edition on sale always thereafter, year after year, indefinitely. And if in any year he shall fail to keep such edition on sale during a space of three months, the copyright shall then perish.

Q. That seems to cover the ground. It meets the Government's sole desire to secure a cheap edition for the public.

A. Why, certainly. It compels it. No existing law in any country does that.

Q. You would not put a price upon the publisher's other editions?

A. No; he could make the others as high-priced as he chose. Q. Would you except books of a certain class?

A. No book occurs to me that could not stand the reduction—I mean a book that promises to live 42 years and upwards. It could not apply to unabridged dictionaries, for they are revised and newly copyrighted every ten or twelve years. It is the one and only book in America whose copyright is perpetual.

Q. Your own proposition makes all copyrights perpetual, doesn't it?

A. It does not. It extends the limit indefinitely. But there is still a limit; for in any year after the forty-first that the cheap edition fails, during the space of three months, the copyright dies. Q. The proposed rate seems excessively cheap. How would the thing work out? About how much of a reduction would it make? Give me an illustration or two.

A. Very well, let me cite my own books-I am on familiar

ground there. "Huck Finn" contains 70,000 words; present price $1 50; an edition of it would have to be kept permanently on sale at 25 cents. "Tom Sawyer," 70,000 words, price $1 50; the imagined cheap edition would be 25 cents. Several twovolume books of mine contain a trifle more than 100,000 words per volume; present price $1 75 per volume; the cheap-edition price would be 75 cents per volume-or 75 cents for the complete book if compressed into one volume. My "works," taken together, number 23 volumes; cheapest present price of the set, $36 50. To meet the requirements of the copyright-preserving law, I would compress the aggregate contents into 10 volumes of something more than 200,000 words each, and sell the volumes at 75 cents each-or $7 50 for the lot, if a millionaire wanted the whole treasure.

Q. It is a reduction of four-fifths, or thereabouts! Would there be any profit?

A. The printer and the binder would get their usual percentage of profit, the middle-man would get his usual commission on sales. The publisher's profit would be very small, mine also would be very small.

Q. Then you are proposing commercial suicide for him and for yourself-is that it?

A. Far from it. I am proposing high commercial prosperity and advantage for him and for me.

Q. How?

A. First of all, the books would remain my children's possession and support, instead of being confiscated by various publishers and issued in cheap form or dear, as they chose, for the support of their children.

Q. And secondly?

A. Secondly-let us not overlook the importance of this detail -the cheap edition would advertise our higher-priced editions, and the publisher and my orphans would live on canvasback duck and Cape Cod oysters-not on ham-and-not-enough-of-it, the way certain Government-robbed orphans of my acquaintance are doing

now.

Q. Why don't you and your publisher try that cheap edition. now, without waiting?

A. Haven't I told you that almost all the profit would go to printer, binder and middle-man? And has this Government ever

heard of a publisher who would get out a dirt-cheap edition without being compelled to do it? The Government has tried persuasion for many a year, in the interest of the public, and achieved no cheap edition by it: what I am after now is compulsion.

Q. Are you guessing at cheap-edition possibilities, or are you speaking from knowledge?

I know

A. From knowledge. Knowledge and experience. what it costs to make a book and what it costs to sell it. Q. If your figures on cheap editions should be challenged by the trade-how then?

A. I could prove my case, and would do it.

Very respectfully,

S. L. CLEMENS (MARK TWAIN).

OUR ANTIQUATED METHOD OF ELECTING

A PRESIDENT.

BY SIMON NEWCOMB, LL.D., UNITED STATES NAVY.

BEFORE the inhabitants of the United States retired to rest on the evening of Tuesday, November 8th last, it was heard on all sides that Theodore Roosevelt had been elected President of the United States. A visitor unacquainted with our Constitution, listening to the talk of our citizens, would never have suspected that he was witnessing anything else than an election of a President by the people, who had proceeded on the same system as if they had been electing the Governor of a State. Of course, we all know that a President was not elected, nor even voted for, on November 8th, and that the election will not occur until Monday, January 9th, when the electors will meet in their several States to cast their votes. But few of us reflect how devoid of legal force is the mandate of the people as expressed on November 8th, and how completely all responsibility for the choice of a President is vested in a body of men who will not have met even up to the time when this article shall be published. We have fallen into the habit of thinking of the actual election as a mere formality, like the counting of a vote on a specified day some weeks after an election. It may, therefore, be wholesome to point out how far this way of thinking is wrong, and what danger may arise at any time by the continuance of what we are too apt to regard as a mere formality.

The men who framed our Constitution found the task of devising a satisfactory method of electing a President to be one of great difficulty. It was believed that any system which provided for the direct choice of a President by a vote of the people at large would produce a degree of popular excitement "subversive of the order and peace of society." As late as 1823, it was still a ques

tion whether some danger of this kind might not esult from the direct choice even of electors by the people. The plan which commended itself to the Convention was, therefore, one by which the President should be chosen by a selected body of men, removed as far as possible from sinister influences, either on the part of the public on one side, or on the part of foreign emissaries that great bugbear of the founders of our Constitutionon the other. It was not thought safe to have the electors meet as a single body, because the latter class of influences could then be most easily directed against them. Their choice was, therefore, made exclusively a function of the several States, the legislators of which were quite at liberty to make the choice themselves, or to have the electors voted for by the people. It is noteworthy that the latter system did not become universal until after our Civil War, the State of South Carolina, at least, up to that time providing that the choice should be made by its Legislature.

The preceding and other considerations are very fully set forth by Hamilton in "The Federalist." It is of especial interest to notice how careful the framers of the Constitution were to protect the electors from being tampered with in advance, and to prevent the votes of one State from being influenced by those of another. The electors were to be free from suspicion of too great devotion to the President in office. Hence no Senator, Representative nor other person holding a place of trust or profit under the United States, could be an elector. Hence, also, they were to meet on the same day in all the States. It would thus be "found no easy matter to suddenly embark them, dispersed as they would be over thirteen States, in any combinations founded upon motives which, though they could not properly be denominated corrupt, might yet be of a nature to mislead them from their duty."

Some results of these precautions are not without interest at the present moment. One is that there is as yet no candidate for the Presidency legally entitled to recognition on January 9th. Under our present system of official ballots, political parties are recognized, whose candidates as Governor, legislators and members of Congress are legally entitled to have their names printed on the ballot. But there are no such candidates for the position of President and Vice-President, because the people have no vote for these officers, and the States vote for them in a way distinct