OKAIIFO/?^ \\\E-UNIVER%. ^SHHnVWtf^ ^((MITCHO^ V vjaOS ANGELA ^OKALIF(% ^OKAIIF(%, ^ l^v-t dL/2\i t\/c\t I I -< iii ! I II ,\\EUNIVERS/A - "b *\EUNIVERS/A vvlOS ANGELA , ^^% |>^-^^ I 1 -svlOSANGElfj) i I \\EUNIVER% I ?? 0. o u_ A TREATISE COPYRIGHT OF DESIGNS, Ill DIORAMA. A TREATISE ON THE COPYKIGHT OF DESIGNS FOR PRINTED FABRICS; WITH CONSIDERATIONS ON THE NECESSITY OF ITS EXTENSION AND COPIOt'S NOTICES OP THE STATE OP CALICO PRINTING IX BELGIUM, GERMANY, AND THE STATES OF THE PRUSSIAN COMMERCIAL LEAGUE. BY J. EMERSON TENNENT, ESQ., M.P., HAIKMAN OP THE COMMITTEE OP THE HOUS] O.X THIS COI'YIUaH'l' OP DESIGNS. " That it is the opinion of the Committee that it is expedient to extend the copyright of designs." Report of the Committee of 1840, p. 3. LONDON: SMITH, ELDER AND CO. LONDON : PRINTED BY STEWART AND MURRAY, OLD BAILEY. StacK Annex TO WILLIAM HENRY, ESQ. ISLAND BRIDGE, DUBLIN. MY DEAR SIR, AT this moment, when strenuous efforts are making to direct public attention to the manufac- tures of Ireland, there is no one to whom I can so appropriately dedicate a volume written with an earnest regard to the interests of one of the most important branches of our national industry than yourself; to whom, more than to any individual living, Ireland is indebted for the advancement and possession of Calico Printing. Your energy, your abilities, and your capital, have served to retain in this country this important manufacture, which was rapidly leaving it, and your large establishment, created altogether by your own individual exertions, has reached and maintained a British reputation, and has introduced the manufactures of Ireland into our colonies and distant markets, to which, but for your enterprize, they could never have pe- netrated. 2030039 DEDICATION. But I have another and an equally appropriate reason for selecting your name, with which to launch a trea- tise upon the amendment of the law of copyright. The evidence given before the Committee of the House of Commons, exhibits you as by far the most aggrieved sufferer from its present evils and imper- fections, and, therefore, the most directly and deeply interested in its improvement. And I sincerely believe, that there is no Irish Representative in Par- liament, who reads in the Report of that Committee, the details of the wrongs and injuries inflicted through you, upon the struggling industry of his country, who will hesitate for one moment to grant that measure of redress, of the want of which your individual case alone affords so painful an illus- tration. I remain, My dear Sir, Yours, most sincerely, J. EMERSON TENNENT. Seech Park, Belfast, Jan. 1, 1840. CONTENTS. PAGE CHAP. I. INTRODUCTORY - The Bill of 1840 The Com- mittee The Parties The Argument The Object . 1 CHAP. II. STATE OP THE LAW OP COPYRIGHT IN OTHER COUNTRIES AND IN ENGLAND . . . .10 Sect. 1. France .''"' . . . . .10 Sect. 2. Belgium, Germany, and the United States . 13 Sect. 3. Great Britain . . . . .15 Sect. 4. The remedy at law in England . . .21 CHAP. III. VALUE OF DESIGNS FOR CALICO PRINTING, AND THE NATURE OF THE INJURY INFLICTED BY PIRACY . 23 Sect. I. Mode of preparing designs . . .23 Sect 2. Remarkable demand on the part of the public for variety and novelty . . . . .24 Sect. 3. Cost of engraving and block-cutting . .27 Sect. 4. The value of a design not to be estimated by its mere first cost . . . . . .30 Sect. 5. Nature of the injury inflicted by piracy . . 32 Sect. 6. Inducements held out to the copyist . . 33 CHAP. IV. PREVALENCE OF PIRACY AND ITS RUINOUS EFFECTS UPON TRADE . . . . .37 Sect. 1. Injury inflicted upon individuals . . .37 Sect. 2. Injury inflicted upon art . . . .44 Sect. 3. Injury inflicted upon the character of British goods abroad ....... 52 Sect. 4. The prosperity of the trade not dependent upon copying . . . . . . .53 Vlll CONTENTS. PAGB CHAP. V. EXPOSURE OF THE INADEQUACY or THE PRE- SENT TERM OF PROTECTION . . . .60 Sect. 1. General insufficiency of three months' copyright 60 Sect. 2. Three months insufficient for the HOME TRADE 63 Sect. 3. Three months insufficient for the FOREIGN TRADE 64 Sect. 4. Three months insufficient for the JOINT HOME and FOREIGN TRADE . '. . ^ ' . .67 CHAP. VI. CASE OF THE EMBROIDERERS AND TAMBOUR- WORKERS '>;;<-: . ' "." , . . .69 CHAP. VII. CASE OF THE PRINTERS OF FURNITURE CALICOES 75 Sect. 1. Greater expense for " making out" . . 76 Sect. 2. Greater expense for block- cutting . .77 Sect. 3. Extent of piracy . . ' . / '.77 Sect. 4. Three months copyright useless . . .78 Sect. 5. State of the law injurious to art . . .80 CHAP. VIII. CASE OF THE PAPER STAINERS . 81 CHAP. IX. THE REMEDY FOR THESE EVILS is TO EXTEND THE COPYRIGHT TO TWELVE MONTHS . . 84 Sect. 1. Extension will improve the art of design . 85 Sect. 2. Extension will encrease the number of new designs 88 Sect. 3. Extension will give encreased employment to artists . . . . . . .90 Sect. 4. Extension will encourage SCHOOLS OF DESIGN . 91 Sect. 5. Extension will augment consumption . . 93 Sect. 6. MORAL OBJECTIONS to copying and piracy . 94 CHAP. X. REASONS ALLEGED AGAINST THE EXTENSION OF THE COPYRIGHT . . . . .97 Objection 1. " That the extension of the copyright would have the effect of creating a " MONOPOLY" in the article protected, and thereby enable the proprietor to demand HIGHER PRICES" . . . . .99 Objection 2." That the extension of the copyright will lead to litigation in contesting ORIGINALITY or priority of property in a design" . . . . .107 Objection 3." That the copyist will be injured by the sup- pression of piracy" . . . . .120 CONTENTS. IX PiQB Objection 4. " That the retail trade will suffer" . 123 Objection 5. "That there is no newly arisen necessity for extension" . . . . . .123 Objection 6. " That the amended law will be inoperative" 126 CHAP. XI. GROUNDLESS APPREHENSION OF INJURY FROM FOREIGN COMPETITION IN THE EVENT OF EXTENSION OF THE COPYRIGHT ..... 131 Sect. 1. Circumstances that have created the alarm . 134 Sect. 2. The export of copper rollers . . .137 Sect. 3. English designs not available to foreign printers 139 Sect. 4. Inability of foreigners to produce as cheaply as England . .... 144 Sect. 5. Groundless apprehension of a diminution of the general trade ...... 150 Sect. 6. Goods of the " same style" sufficient in executing a foreign order . ..... 153 CHAP. XII. THE ACTUAL CONDITION OF THE TRADE OF CALICO PRINTING IN BELGIUM. Notes of Mr. Thomson 156 CHAP. XIII. ERRORS IN THE STATEMENTS MADE TO THE COMMITTEE OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS RESPECTING CALICO PRINTING IN THE STATES OF THE PRUSSIAN COMMERCIAL LEAGUE . .... 210 Sect. 1. Prussia 210 Sect. 2. Saxony . ..... 245 Sect. 3. Bavaria, Wurtemburg, Hamburg . . 251 CHAP. XIV. REGISTRATION .... 259 Sect. 1. As to publicity . . . . -260 Sect. 2. The fee . . . . . .261 Sect. 3 The stamp . . . . .262 CHAP. XV. OPINION OF THE TRADE ON THE EXPEDIENCY OF EXTENDING THE COPYRIGHT OF DESIGNS . . 264 APPENDIX . 271 TO THE HONOURABLE] THE COMMONS OF THE UNITED KINGDOM OF GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND, IN PARLIAMENT ASSEMBLED, The humble Petition of the undersigned Printers of Calicoes and other woven Fabrics, Merchants, Manufacturers, Engravers, and others, carrying on business in and near Manchester, in the County of Lancaster. Sheweth, That your Petitioners have learnt with the greatest satisfaction the introduction of a bill into your ho- nourable house for extending the protection given to original designs, or patterns, printed upon woven fabrics, from the term of three months to twelve, thereby giving to the original inventor, or proprietor of such designs, a right of property for a reasonable time in the produce of his skill, or capital, of which he has hitherto been unjustly deprived. That your Petitioners are all deeply interested in, and many of them wholly dependent on the welfare and prosperity of the print trade, which is one of the great staple manufactures of the country, and they most respectfully and earnestly submit to the consi- deration of your honourable house, that whilst the various fabrics themselves enjoy that natural protec- Xll PETITION OF tion which the law affords to property, yet, by a strange anomaly, the original designs or patterns which give to these fabrics a great portion of their value, and which are equally the produce of labour, skill, and capital, are left almost wholly unprotected, the inventors or proprietors of such designs having no proprietary interest in them beyond a few weeks, when they become the common property of the trade. That your Petitioners are aware of the just repug- nance of the Legislature to the granting of new, or the extension of old monopolies, or of giving to one class exclusive privileges which are denied to others ; that your Petitioners want no exclusive privileges, nor do they seek to profit by the taste and fancy of designs successfully applied to industrial art before the inventor himself has been remunerated for his expense, or rewarded for his talent ; but they con- fidently ask not only for themselves, but for every man who applies himself to the art of design, that protection for their labour which some branches of industry already enjoy, and they do implore your honourable house to defend them by new enact- ments from the depredation of those who live on the invention of others. Four years ago, a Select Committee of your ho- nourable house investigated the subject of arts and manufactures, and in an interesting Report, accom- panied by most important evidence disclosing this CALICO PRINTERS, &C. xiii humiliating fact, that however much the manufacturers of this country surpass their continental rivals in the goodness and cheapness of their productions, they are immeasurably below them in the taste and elegance oj their designs. The fact is incontestible, and your Petitioners ascribe it mainly to the want of adequate protection, for no one will devote much time, atten- tion, and money, to an object of which, if unsuccess- ful, he must bear the loss, and of which, if it suc- ceeds, he must share the profit with the public. Without protection, Schools of Design, your Peti- tioners venture to predict, will accomplish nothing ; protection, without schools, may do much, but both united would give a stimulus to this deficient branch of our national industry, which would soon place the productions of this country on a level with those of the most distinguished nations. Your Petitioners wish to proceed on no new prin- ciples, nor to establish any new precedent not here- tofore recognized. Copyright in patterns and de- signs has existed for half a century, and the legisla- tion of the last session sanctioned the extension of it to twelve months. Your Petitioners look with confidence, therefore, to your honourable house, to place the branch of industry in which they are en- gaged, on a footing not less favourable. With the confidence of men who understand thoroughly their position, your Petitioners tell your honourable house most respectfully, that with you rests the question of XIV PETITION OF whether the taste in industrial art, as regards the printing of woven fabrics, is to be improved or not. Your Petitioners beg leave to remark, that the copyright for three months, first granted in the year 1794, was for the protection of the London printers, who worked almost wholly for the trade of the me- tropolis, and was found then barely sufficient to protect their interests, the shorter period of two months having been previously found by experience to be wholly inadequate. The state of the trade, and the circumstances of your Petitioners, are greatly changed from those of the period alluded to. From a small and insignificant beginning, this industry now gives employment to thousands, and instead of one market at home, most of the great markets of the earth are supplied by this kingdom. The natural progress of civilization, refinement, and intercourse, is to assimilate the wants and tastes of different and distant countries thus, in articles of dress there is at this day not much difference be- tween London, Paris, Vienna, and New York j and the printed muslins, challis, cambrics, and other fabrics manufactured by your Petitioners for the first of these cities, are well suited to the last. Such, however, is the perverse, injurious, and un- foreseen operation of that law framed originally for the metropolis, which limits the term of Copyright to three months, that the merchants of this country cannot send goods to the United States, which are CALICO PRINTERS, &C. XV also intended for the London or home market, without losing their Copyright at home ; the period of its duration not sufficing to cover the time re- quired for both markets, and the rapidity of steam navigation across the Atlantic, bringing back the patterns to this country long before the period of their publication here. The same may be said of all the European markets nearer home, and with still greater force of all the more distant markets of the earth. Three alternatives present themselves under these circumstances : first, to abandon the foreign demand in order to secure the home market; or, secondly, at a very great expense to prepare a dis- tinct set of designs for the foreign trade ; or, lastly, to run the risk of piracy and plagiarism at home. Such are the hardships to which your Petitioners are re- duced by this most oppressive law, and which they feel the more keenly at this moment, when they are struggling with difficulties of no ordinary kind, to find employment for their people. The natural remedy for these evils, the most simple and the most effectual is, in the opinion of your Petitioners, an extension of the copyright from three to twelve months. Wherefore your Petitioners humbly pray that the Bill now before your Honourable House may be passed into a Law, And your Petitioners will ever pray. A TREATISE, CHAPTER I. The Bill of last Session Mr. Labouchere agrees to an extension to siz months Sir Robert Peel suggests a Committee The two par- ties in the trade, original designers and copyists A third party, honest but deceived Argument on the ground of the Home Trade abandoned Erroneous assertions regarding the Foreign Trade refuted The danger of foreign competition, an argument in favour of extension rather than against it No new law sought No mono- poly And no injury to the public. EARLY in the Session of Parliament 1840, my atten- tion having for some time previously been directed to the imperfect state of the present law of copyright of designs for printed fabrics, and its insufficiency to realise the objects professed by the legislature in its enactment, I introduced a bill in the House of Com- mons to extend the time of protection from three months to twelve. Even on the necessarily imperfect statement of facts which I was enabled to lay before 4 ON THE LAW OF COPYRIGHT OF the House in the circumscribed compass of a speech in debate, the Minister of Trade, Mr. Labouchere, admitted the necessity for an alteration in the present state of the law ; but, alive to the importance of the question, and aware of the inadequate information which the public possessed upon the subject, he suggested, as a safe and cautious amendment, the enlargement, in the first instance, of the period of copyright from three months to six, instead of at once extending it to a year, as I had proposed. But as I felt confident in my own mind that the term which I had suggested (being a rational medium between a monopoly injurious to the public on the one hand, and a mere nominal protection only delu- sive to the inventor on the other) was that best calculated to realize the intention of the legislature, of stimulating invention by protecting success, I was reluctant to adopt an expedient which I knew to be insufficient to accomplish the object I proposed. Conscious at the same time that it only required a full acquaintance with the facts of the case to induce others to take the same view of it with myself, I at once acceded to a suggestion of Sir Robert Peel, that I should refer the whole subject to a select committee above stairs, with instructions from the House to examine persons practically experienced in the trade of calico printing, as to the deficiency of the existing law, and the most effectual means for its amend- ment. A committee was accordingly appointed, whose investigations extend over the greater part of the Session, from February to the latter end of July, DESIGNS FOR PRINTED FABRICS. 3 and who closed their labours by reporting to the House their opinion in favour of extension. The length of time consumed by the enquiry arose not only from the vast details of the subject itself, but from the fact of there being two parties concerned, with opposing views, both of whose statements and opinions it was essential fully and impartially to examine. There are two classes of persons engaged in the print trade in this country. The first, "few in numbers, but high in reputation, and the foremost in the race of competition," who design, or employ designers for themselves, aim at once at originality and excellence, and contribute, by their talents and their enterprize, to elevate the character of British art and British manufactures. The second, more numer- ous and less scrupulous, abstain from retaining de- signers of their own, but carry on their business by copying and pirating the designs of others, feeding the demands of their trade by fastening on every successful invention of the others so soon as it appears in the market, regardless of the property of its proprietor, or the injury they inflict upon him. The former class are the petitioners for extension of the copyright and effectual protection for their designs the latter are the active opponents of any further security being given, and even of all copyright what- soever, which is, under any limitation, an obstruction to their peculiar pursuits, and a check upon their law- less trade. There is also a third section who have lent their aid to the opponents of the measure, but who are by no means to be identified with those with B 2 4 ON THE LAW OF COPYRIGHT OF whom they have incautiously allied themselves in resisting it men who, from imperfect views of the interests of the manufacture at home, and most erro- neous representations to its condition abroad, entertain vague but strong apprehensions of some injury, which they can neither clearly comprehend nor define, from foreign competition, in the event of any prompt pre- ventive being applied to the prevalence of copying in England. To the sincere and conscientious opinions of such persons, especially when acting, as they avowedly do, in opposition to their own personal interest, every deferential and respectful consideration is manifestly due ; and it is not without a hope that with these gentlemen the facts which I shall presently have to communicate will have their natural influence, that I am induced to solicit their attention. The voluminous body of evidence published by the committee contains a full development of the views of each of these contending parties; but still, extensive as are its details, they were, at the period of the closing of the committee, imperfect in some important points, respecting which it is one of my objects in the present volume to supply their deficiency; and widely erroneous in others, which I hope to be equally successful in correcting. The arguments put forward by the opponents of the contemplated measure resolve themselves into two great heads 1st, as affecting THE HOME TRADE, and 2nd, as regards the fear of FOREIGN COMPETI- TION. As to the former class, those who advanced them were themselves induced, before the close of the DESIGNS FOR PRINTED FABRICS. 5 investigation, to admit that they had over-estimated their importance, and that for the effects of extension upon the home trade they ceased to entertain any fear from the extension of the copyright. But as regards the foreign trade, the difficulty suggested by them, supposing it to be just, was not to be disposed of by any counter-evidence immediately at hand. Some gentlemen, who had, immediately before, made a visit to the Continent with an express view to ascertain the condition of calico printing in the various countries in which it is practised, made reports to the commit- tee of what they had seen and heard in Belgium and Prussia, the two great points whence competition was to be apprehended, which, although it was difficult to reconcile their statements with what was already known of the state of the trade in these countries, there did not exist the means, at the moment, to test as to their accuracy, or to expose in their errors. And here I would observe, that even had all these statements been incapable of refutation, and did they faithfully exhibit the full extent of the compe- tition to be expected from abroad, they would not have altered in the slightest degree my views as to the course to be pursued for ensuring the prosperity of the trade at home. But it is possible, that with others their arguments and assertions, however falla- cious and incorrect, may have made a different im- pression, of which it is desirable to disabuse them. In regarding the effect of a perfect law of copyright, I do not stop short at the early stage which discovers in it merely a moderate remuneration for the enter- 6 ON THE LAW OF COPYRIGHT OF prize of a successful man of talent ; but I recognize in the wise policy which thus assures to genius the reward of its own inventions, the grand and only means of communicating a genuine impetus to the career of national improvement, and the onward march of national manufactures. And it would not be, at a moment when it had been demonstrated to me that we had most to dread from foreign compe- tition, that I would relax in my exertions to obtain, what I believe, to be the most unerring stimulant to domestic improvement. The more rapid the advance- ment of our rivals, and the more formidable their threatened attack, the more vigorous should be our exertions to complete our means of defence at home, and place ourselves in an attitude of successful resistance. Such would have been my argument had the full case of foreign competition been corroborated and sustained in each, and in all its details ; but others may have taken a different though an erroneous view, and I have seen reason to rejoice, that, yielding to the necessity imposed upon me by the lateness of the period at which the committee reported, and the im- possibility of carrying a bill through all its stages in the brief remnant of the session before the rising of the House, I determined to suspend my proceeding till its re-assembling, and thus give time to the public to examine and weigh for themselves the information that had been amassed. During this interval, in the course of an excursion to the Continent, undertaken with a view to understand the commercial position of the DESIGNS FOR PRINTED FABRICS. 7 Prussian League as regards its machinery and manu- factures, I have been able to take Belgium in my way to Germany; and thus visiting every State in which printed calicoes are produced, I have, on the spot, taken the trouble at the same time, of verifying the statements made before the committee on the copy- right of designs, and, exhibiting to the parties them- selves, the assertions which have been published by the House respecting them, their works, their cost of production, their prices, and the extent of their trade ; I have obtained from the very individuals named by the various witnesses, corrections under their own hand, and documents written by themselves, explanatory of their real position as regards a com- petition with Great Britain. The nature of the information I have thus obtained, it is necessary for me to premise, is calculated in every particular to utterly explode the idea of any thing formidable to be apprehended from the rivalry of these countries with the printers of England. And the exposition which I am thus enabled to offer re- specting them, must have its natural weight with that respectable class to whom I have already alluded, whose opposition to the amendment of the law springs from no unworthy motive, but from a conscientious and disinterested alarm, excited by the false and de- lusive representations of others. I am likewise anxious for the information of those whose attention has not yet been directed fully to the subject, to present in as condensed a form as possible, such information as is essential to a distinct compre- 8 ON THE LAW OF COPYRIGHT OF hension of the subject and arguments brought to bear upon it; the origin and nature of the copyright sought the state of the trade as affected by the imperfection of the law its influence upon the art of design as applied to manufacture the advantages sought to be obtained by their amendment as well as the possible injuries which suggest themselves to the apprehensions of those who have hitherto opposed it. These I shall endeavour to sum up with as much impartiality as is at the command of one, whose own investigations have led him to a distinct conclusion in his own mind upon the subject. And here, on the very threshold, I would distinctly disclaim all intention to introduce any new law or any new principle into the existing law ; the principle I wish to see carried into effect, has been recognised by the legislature and embodied in a law passed half a century back, which the progress of events has ren- dered inoperative for its own purpose, and to which it is my desire to give its legitimate force and effect. Again I seek to give no conceivable advantage to any one individual to the prejudice or exclusion of all his competitors. In a branch of industrial art in which each professes to produce the creations of his own invention, adjusted to suit the tastes and de- mands of the moment, the intention of a law of copy- right, is to hold out to ALL the same stimulant to aspire after excellence, by securing to any one who may claim it the same reward for his enterprize, and the undisturbed and inviolate enjoyment of the reason- able profits of his own labour. I DESIGNS FOR PRINTED FABRICS. 9 Nor is the reward to be levied at the expense or to the injury of the public, in full accordance with the principle, that the fruits of all individual improvement should ultimately go to swell the aggregate of general advantage, the law assigns to the original discoverer, inventor, or designer, an exclusive property in his own creations, during such a limited time only as may suffice to remunerate him in his enterprize and his expenditure ; the reversion in every instance being secured to the public, and the expiration of a brief copyright being the signal for all competitors to share in the profits of its re-production. The question at issue then is, not whether there shall be a copyright or not, for that has been de- cided in the affirmative by Parliament fifty years ago, but to fix on such a natural and rational term for the duration of the protection, as, whilst it secures the public from the effects of monopoly, may at the same time supply to the artist and the manufacturer, an incentive to exertion in the reasonable remune- ration of his efforts. This is a question which it is impossible to determine, arbitrarily or theoretically, but upon a calm and careful investigation into the local circumstances of the manufacture, and its relation with the general welfare of trade, not only at home, but as affecting our competition with those who are our rivals in the same production abroad. B5 10 CHAPTER II. STATE OF THE LAW OF COPYRIGHT IN OTHER COUN- TRIES AND IN ENGLAND. Sect. I. France. THE French, in every department of Art as applied to manufactures, stand pre-eminently at the head of all the nations of the world. In FRANCE the law of copyright for the protection of designs is the most comprehensive and effectual in Europe, giving the artist an exclusive property in the profits of his own inventions for THREE, FIVE, OR FIFTEEN YEARS, and even if he desired it, for life. If the latter circumstance be not the cause of the former; if the fostering influence of the copyright be not the foundation of their supe- riority in all the walks of taste, it at least proves this, that the most liberal legislation upon the subject is perfectly compatible with the highest excellence in the manufacture, and the utmost prosperity in the trade. " A century ago,"* says Mr. Thomson, of Primrose, * A Letter to the Right Hon. Sir Rolt. Peel, Bart, on Copyright in Original Designs and Patterns for Printing. By James Thomson, F.R.S., &c. &c. London, 1840, p. 6. LAW OF COPYRIGHT, &C. 11 himself a distinguished calico printer, " a century ago, in the year 1737, was passed the first act of the French government, for the protection of designs in manufactures. This act, and a subsequent one in 1744, had reference to the silk trade alone, and to the city of Lyons only, whence we may conclude, that at that day it was not only the chief seat, but perhaps the only one of the silk manufacture of France. " Fifty years afterwards, July 14th, 1787, a decree of the royal council extended this protection to the whole silk manufacture of France, which in that interval had made considerable progress. The words of this decree are remarkable, and I shall beg leave to quote a part of it : " ' THE KING in Council having caused to be laid before him the representations and memorials of the manufacturers of Tours and Lyons, respecting THE ATTACKS UPON THEIR PROPERTY, and the general interests of manufactures, by COPYING AND COUNTER- FEITING DESIGNS, his Majesty recognizes that the superiority which the silk manufacture of his kingdom has acquired, is principally due to the invention, cor- rectness, and good taste of designs ; AND THAT THE EMULATION WHICH ANIMATES THE MANUFACTURERS AND DESIGNERS WILL BE ANNIHILATED, IF THEY WERE NOT ASSURED OF REAPING THE FRUITS OF THEIR LABOURS that this certainty, in accordance with the rights of property, has maintained this manu- facture to the present time, and secured for it A PRE- FERENCE IN FOREIGN COUNTRIES.' 12 LAW OF COPYRIGHT IN OTHER " Then follow the regulations, in eight articles, establishing a copyright in fabrics of silk of various descriptions, of FIFTEEN YEARS, for such as are des- tined for the hangings and ornaments of churches; and of six years for all those intended for dress, or other uses. Heavy fines are imposed upon workmen and upon designers for selling the patterns entrusted to them, or copying them for others ; and a registra- tion of patterns is also established for the first time. In 1793 the French legislature extended the provi- sions of the act of 1787 TO ALL THE DIFFERENT PRO- DUCTS OF INDUSTRIAL ART, formally including in the list of those entitled to the benefits of this now gene- ral law, designers, without any distinction of kind whatever. " In 1806, the French legislature continued their labours, and established, for the settlement of disputes relating to manufactures, those tribunals called Con- seils de Prudhommes, to which were especially re- ferred all questions of infringement of copyright. The duration of copyright in designs, was also specially fixed by this important act, making it at the will of the manufacturer, either one, three, or five years, or in perpetuity. The promulgation of the penal code in 1810, added something to the law; and lastly an ordonnance of Charles the Tenth, in 1825, relative chiefly to the depots for registration, completed the legislation on this subject. " France has reaped the advantage of her system; and the soundness of her views, and the correctness of her means, are fully proved by the results, which COUNTRIES AND IN ENGLAND. 13 have placed her, as regards industrial art, at the head of all the nations of Europe, in taste, elegance, and refinement." Sect. II. Belgium) Germany, and the United States. In BELGIUM the same law of copyright in designs prevails as in France, the entire code, with all its ac- cessories of registration and tribunals of Prud'hommes, having been extended to it by Napoleon in 1810, during its occupation as a department of the empire, and continued and enforced by every government since. The following passage from the constitution of the Conseil de Prud'hommes, at Ghent, will suffi- ciently explain the nature of the copyright law, whose enforcement is confided to them. Sect. III. De la conservation de la propriete des dessins. XIV. Le conseil de Prud'hommes est charg6 des mesures conservatives de la propriete des dessins. XV. Tout fabricant qui voudra pouvoir revendi- quer par la suite devant le tribunal de commerce, la propriete d'un dessin de son invention, sera tenu d'en deposer aux archives du conseil de Prud'hommes, un echantillon plie sous envelloppe revetus de ses cachet et signature, sur laquelle sera egalement appose le cachet du Conseil de Prud'hommes. XVI. Les depots de dessins seront inscrits sur un registre tenu ad hoc par le conseil de Prud'hommes, 14 LAW OF COPYRIGHT IN OTHER lequel delivrera aux fabricans un certificat rappellant le numero d'ordre du paquet depose, et constatant la date du depot. XVII. En cas de la contestation entre deux ou plusieurs fabricans sur la propriete d'un dessin le Conseil de Prud'hommes procedera a I'ouverture des paquets qui auront etc deposes par les parties; il fournira un certificat indiquant le nom du fabricant qui aura la priorite de date. XVIII. EN DEPOSANT SON ECHANTILLON, LE FA- BRICANT DECLARERA s'lL ENTEND SE RESERVER LA PROPRIETY EXCLUSIVE PENDANT UNE, TROIS OU CINQ ANNEES, OU A PERPETUITE! IL SERA TENU NOTE DE CETTE DECLARATION. XIX. En deposant son echantillon, le fabricant acquittera entre les mains du receveur de la commune une indemnite qui sera reglee par le Conseil de Prud' hommes, et ne pourra exceder un franc pour chacune des annees pendant lesquelles il voudra conserver la propriete exclusive de son dessin, et sera de dix francs pour la propriete perpetuelle.* Throughout the states of THE PRUSSIAN COMMER- CIAL LEAGUE there is as yet no uniform legislation upon the subject. In Saxony no law of copyright exists ; and in Prussia the protection which is nomi- nally given is found in practice to be imperfect and inoperative. But in every country of Germany I * RECEUIL des Lois, Dcrets Imperiaux et Arret6s concernant les attributions du CONSEIL DE PRUD'HOMMES tabli a Gand, en vertu du dScret imperial du 28 Aout 1810. A GAND, chez F. et E. Gyselynck. COUNTRIES AND IN ENGLAND. 15 have found the strongest desire to have one general system enacted, applicable to every state comprised in the Zoll-verein ; and at this very moment the authorities at Berlin are occupied with the subject, with a view to the adoption of measures for the effectual protection and encouragement of the art of design for every branch of manufacture. In the UNITED STATES it is stated that no law of copyright exists, and the art of design is greatly neglected, exhibiting cultivation in medium goods alone, all superior articles being copied from the French, and even for these they are obliged, " where- ever art is required, to employ English, Irish, or Scotch workmen." * Sect. 3. Great Britain. The original seat of calico-printing (which was only introduced into ENGLAND about the close of the 17th century) was at London and on the banks of the Thames in its vicinity, where it continued to flourish so long as it was a mere manual operation, dependent for its excellence upon the taste and dex- terity of the workman. But when by degrees its processes became simplified and production facilitated by the application of machinery to that which had formerly been effected by the hand alone, the great mass of the trade was transplanted about 60 years ago into Lancashire, the locality in which fuel and labour were to be found in the greatest abundance, * See Mr. Royle's evidence in the Report of the Commons on Copy- right of Designs : Questions 6481, 6506. 16 LAW OP COPYRIGHT IN OTHER and where the inventions of Watt and Arkwright opened a new era, and gave a new complexion to the whole system of manufacture. The printers of Lon- don were then the most eminent in the kingdom for the good taste and elaborate finish of their designs ; and the productions of that early period are still looked upon as those of " the old masters of the English school of design in calico-printing." But as the avowed object of the new colony which had sprung up in Lancashire was cheapness of production, not beauty of design, they at once commenced a system of indiscriminate piracy upon the new inven- tions of their London competitors, and hence the origin of the law of copyright in England. " I have been informed," says the same excellent authority which I have already quoted,* "by the late Jonathan Peel, Esq. of Accrington House, who was deeply engaged in this industry, and with whom I was myself in after-life associated in business, that such was the incredible activity and despatch with which the productions of the London printers were copied in Lancashire, and poured back into the London market, that they were driven to seek the protection of the legislature against this ruinous piracy ; when, after several acts renewed and amended, a copyright of three months was in 1794 finally and permanently * A Letter to the Vice-P 'resident of the Board of Trade, on Pro- tection to Original Designs and Patterns. By James Thomson, F.R.S., Vice-president of the Manchester School of Design, and Member of Council of the Government School at Somerset House. Clitheroe, 1840, p. 3. COUKTRIES AND IN ENGLAND. 17 established. Thus was given for the first time " THE RIGHTS OF PROPERTY" to original patterns and de- signs, which, being like the husbandman's spade, the product of labour, skill, and capital, ought to have been equally sacred and secure. The town printer, by this law, was protected, in his own market, during three months of the principal demand in spring, and a corresponding period of autumn. It secured him against the ruinous depredations of unchecked piracy, but it did not give to him the full enjoyment of his OWN; and he had often the mortification of seeing the most successful of his patterns most in demand long after the protection had expired, and affording profits to his servile copyist, when, by such competi- tion, he had ceased to receive profit from it himself. Under such protection, however, imperfect as it was, the trade flourished ; nor did the printers of Lanca- shire, in consequence of the new law, fall back, as was predicted ; but, guided by the more refined and cultivated taste of their London rivals, they continued to prosper, till, under the circumstances of a singu- larly favourable locality, affording cheap labour, cheap fuel, water-power, and conveyance to every part of the globe, they finally absorbed nearly the whole trade of London. One small remnant, and that the choicest, still exists, sheltered only by superior taste and fancy. It was never pretended, at that day, that the trade would be driven abroad if one portion of it were not allowed to pilfer the other; and the school of piratical-economy was not then founded, which has since arisen, building its tenets 18 LAW OF COPYRIGHT IN OTHER on the practice of the pirates of Manchester and Glasgow." The first law for creating and protecting a property in designs for woven fabrics, by conferring a copy- right in this country, was passed in the year 1787, (27 Geo. 3. c. 38.) and secured to the original in- ventor the sole right of printing and reprinting a new and original design for the term of two months. This Act, which was but for one year, was continued in force by the 29th Geo. 3. c. 19. and subsequently, by the 34 Geo. 3. c. 23. its operation was made per- petual, and the term of protection extended to three months, at which limit it has continued to the present time. The provisions of these Acts, which did not extend to Ireland, applied to linen and cotton fabrics alone, being the only description of woven goods then printed, ad did not include silks, woollens, or mixed fabrics, to which the process had not then been ap- plied as a branch of trade in this country, and which, notwithstanding their having subsequently grown into a manufacture of great importance, had no protection whatsoever till the passing of two Acts in 1839, in- troduced by Lord Sydenham, then President of the Board of Trade, viz. the 2 Viet. c. 13, and 2 Viet. c. 17. By the former of these, the same term of pro- tection of three months was given to printed designs upon animal substances, which had before been given to the vegetable, and the law was made applicable to Ireland ; and by the other a copyright of twelve months was given to woven designs upon any textile COUNTRIES AND IN ENGLAND. 19 fabric, except lace and cottons, and a system of registration was established for the enrollment and identification of designs. It was originally proposed to the calico printers by Lord Sydenham, to give to all printed designs, upon whatsoever fabrics, whether of silk or cotton, the same protection of twelve months, provided they submitted to the same process of registration ; but the amount of printed designs being much more extensive in point of number of patterns compared with those which are woven and are formed in the loom, the calico printers, apprehensive of the expense of registering each design at the high rate of fees then contemplated, and the system appearing to them objectionable from the de- posits being open to public inspection, as well as from other grounds of apprehension, in the details, deemed it more prudent to decline the proposal for the mo- ment, and to remain as they were, with a three months' copyright, till the operation of the registra- tion system could be fairly tested, and its objections, so far as practicable, removed. The law, therefore, as it at present stands, exhibits a discrepancy of nine months between the protection extended to woven designs, upon silks and woollen fabrics, as compared with printed designs upon these and linen or cotton, and even between the same de- sign when woven and when printed ; and as it fre- quently happens that the identical figure is both woven into and printed upon the same piece of cloth, the in- ventor has for it in the one case a copyright for twelve months^ and in the other for only three! and this too 20 LAW OF COPYRIGHT IN OTHER whilst printed designs being more easy of imitation than woven, require the more prompt and effectual security against it. For this distinction the only reason which has been offered is, the circumstance already alluded to, of the calico printers having originally, from objections to the mode of registration as then proposed, considered it prudent to decline accepting a twelvemonth's pro- tection, if coupled with the condition of submitting to registration along with it. But as the objections which they then entertained have been already in part, and are at present in process of being altogether removed, they now seek to be admitted to the same protection with the proprietors of woven designs upon silks and wollens, as they are prepared to accept it upon the same conditions with a modified system of registration. It is in fact somewhat remarkable that calico print- ing, one of the most important branches of British art, and giving employment to a greater number of designers than all the others conjoined, should have the shortest term of protection allotted to it of any in the entire range, and that whilst literary property, a farce or even a ballad, have a copyright of twenty- eight years, and musical compositions, a song or a waltz enjoy the same, the only protection extended to the artist on whom one of the main arms of our manu- factures rests for its favour with the world, is the trifling and insecure one of three months ! An en- graving, a caricature, a common map or a chart be- comes the exclusive property of its author for twenty- COUNTRIES AND IN ENGLAND. 21 eight years ; a model in stone, or a cast in plaster of Paris, for half that period ; a design for or-molu cast- ings, a spoon or candlestick, endures to its inventor for twelve months, but a design for the decoration of a dress, is the property of the artist for but twelve weeks if he prints it upon his cloth, though if he prefer to weave it into it, he may claim twelve months. Surely there is impolicy as well as injustice in this ground- less distinction. Sect. 4. The Remedy at Law. Under these Statutes the remedies for infringement of copyright were, by the several Acts of Geo. 3, the retrospective one of an action on the case for damages, (a course which has been resorted to only in one in- stance for fifty years,) and the prospective one of an application to the Court of Chancery for an injunc- tion to restrain a copyist from proceeding to vend his imitations of a pirated design. To these, by the last Act of Lord Sydenham, was added a summary remedy for the protection of the peculiar fabrics included under its provisions, before two magistrates, and the power to amerce an offender in any sum from 51. to 201. The proceeding by injunction has been complained of on the grounds of the heavy costs which it entails both upon the injured party seeking redress, and upon an innocent party who may be vexatiously dragged into court by its instrumentality. At the same time the cost of an injunction in a case of piracy cannot be greater than in any analogous 22 LAW OF COPYRIGHT, &C. question of right, and no one case has ever occurred in which it has been vexatiously or oppressively resorted to, whilst it has been found most prompt and effectual for the protection of the copyright; and that it would be resorted to much more fre- quently by the trade, were it not that the term of protection is now so brief, that it is not worth the while of the injured party to seek redress before so high a tribunal, as in many cases the right which he desires to have protected would have expired almost as soon as the remedy could be applied. From the same feeling of the insignificance of the present pro- tection, many parties have also declared their un- willingness even to take the trouble to protect them- selves, by stamping their names upon these goods as the Act directs, or to avail themselves of the existing law at all, who would do so if the term was extended to twelve months. On the other hand, the remedy under Lord Syden- ham's Act by the adjudication of two justices of the peace has been questioned as to its efficacy, from the possible local predilections or personal interests of the magistrates, and some other tribunals have been sug- gested as preferable ; but that enactment has not yet had a sufficient trial, and my business at present is rather to exhibit the inadequacy of the basis of the law a three months' protection, than prematurely to suggest amendments in its machinery. 23 CHAPTER III. VALUE OF DESIGNS FOR CALICO PRINTING; AND THE NATURE OF THE INJURY INFLICTED BY PIRACY. Sect. 1. Mode of preparing Designs. DESIGNS for calico printing are supplied from two sources ; being furnished either by designers in the constant employment of one house, and working for it exclusively ; or by persons who have constituted their talents in this branch into a separate profession, and supply the trade generally with patterns of their own production. It is stated, that there are probably five hundred designers of both classes in Manchester and its immediate neighbourhood ; but the employ- ment of those working on their own account seems rather on the decline, as the printers have no ade- quate security or confidence that the patterns they purchase from them may not have been already dis- posed of to some other house. Patterns of a par- ticular class are sometimes furnished by the en- gravers themselves, which they bind themselves to sell to no other house in the trade, but of which the 24 VALUE OF DESIGNS purchaser is to have the sole and exclusive use for twelve months or a longer period. By this practice those parties who resort to it, contrive indirectly to secure for themselves a virtual copyright for twelve months at least, in these "engaged patterns" as they are termed, inasmuch as it ties up the engraver or designer from furnishing copies of them to any rival house. No ill consequences have been attri- buted to this system, nor has it tended either to raise the prices of these patterns by creating monopoly in the hands of their proprietor, or to hold out any extra inducement to the copyist at home or abroad to assail them. Sect 2. Remarkable demand on the part of the Public for variety and novelty. The testimony of every witness examined by the Committee of the House of Commons, and the expe- rience of the entire trade, tend to show that in the production of patterns for printed calicoes, novelty of conception, and constant variety of effect, are of equal importance with elegance and beauty of execu- tion ; and that a perpetual succession of designs is indispensable in order to meet the passion for novelty which prevails, not only in the home market, but in every country to which we export calicoes. Mr. Kershaw,* in his enormous trade of nearly a million of pieces per annum, states, that he produces * Evidence of Mr. Kershaw, 3650, 3651, 3670, 3734. FOR CALICO PRINTING. 25 new designs every week, " week by week," and ' month by month ;" and Mr. Lee,* a dealer of equal extent, confirms this statement by a similar account of the production of fresh varieties week after week, and frequently " within the week," in his own esta- blishment, the foreign trade especially calling for a constant succession of novelty, and a printer being " seldom able to sell the same design a second time to the same individual." These observations apply chiefly, however, to medium goods, and those for export ; those of a more costly character continuing somewhat longer in vogue, and undergoing less rapid changes in public favour, unless exhausted by ex- tensive piracy, or vulgarised by unworthy copies. It is remarkable that, with perhaps the single exception of the Orientals, this rage for novelty pre- vails in every country which either consumes or pro- duces printed goods. Its inconveniences are, how- ever, chiefly felt by those countries which have but a circumscribed market for the disposal of their pro- ductions; even in England and in France it cannot fail to exercise an influence upon the prices of printed calicoes, and upon the profits of the manufacturer ; but in Saxony, and some other countries of Germany, it was complained of to me as a serious check to the advancement of their trade, that, selling, as they do perpetually, to the same narrow circle of consumers, a fresh series of designs and styles was constantly * Evidence of Mr. Lee, 4452, 4456-r, 5060, 5133, 5135, 463 Mr. Ross, 6036-7-8, 613, 614. C 26 VALUE OF DESIGNS demanded, before the consumption of the first could sufficiently remunerate the producer. To a moderate extent this passion for novelty is easily accounted for, but it exists in the print trade to an excess, which to one not personally acquainted with the economy of the manufacture would be scarcely credible ; even excellence itself is not suffi- cient security for the permanence of public estima- tion, as articles of the purest taste, and most faultless execution, are found to yield in favour when brought into competition with those of inferior merit, but en- dowed with the charm of more recent publication. Under a sound system of the copyright law, and in a healthy state of the trade, this predilection for variety on the part of the public, if limited within rational bounds, could not fail to prove favourable to the progress of art, and to give a powerful impetus to the advancement of design ; but it is one of the crying evils of thejpresent imperfect state of the law that even this, which might be looked to as one of the great fountains of improvement, is, by the vicious influence of the existing state of things, converted into an active agent of deterioration. Parties who despair of a successful competition in the walks of taste and beauty, are, nevertheless, quite competent to engage in a contest of mere variety, and those who fail to charm by the purity and elegance of their conceptions, undertake boldly to startle and seduce by the novelty of their conceits ; whilst the eye of the public, uneducated by habitual association with the productions of genius, is easily fixed by the tinsel FOR CALICO PRINTING. 27 of fancy. It is true that in this encounter between taste and fashion, the former, if left to defend herself by her own arras, would not fail to be ultimately vic- torious; but it is the peculiar injustice of the existing system that it encourages her rival in treacherously turning her own weapons against herself, the artist and his employers being effectually discouraged from the production of elaborate efforts, which are instantly to be laid hold on by the copyist to carry on his own contest with their original inventor. Genuine taste, were her offspring duly protected from viola- tion and disfigurement, would maintain such a suc- cession of objects of legitimate beauty perpetually before the contemplation of the public, as would in the end awaken them to a sense of her superiority, and finally vindicate her own ascendancy over the vapid reign of fashion. But under the present re- gime true taste is postponed for mere variety it occupies but a secondary place, and the character of our national productions, with which it is identified, sinks along with it. Sect. 3. Cost of Engraving and Block-cutting, The general custom is to select from the entire mass of designs, either furnished by artists in regular employment, or purchased from others, (and which for some establishments amount to some thousands,) so many as promise to be successful in the market ; and in estimating the annual expenses of production, the cost of those rejected, and on which equal ex- c2 28 VALUE OF DESIGNS pense and care may have been bestowed, must of course enter as an element into the calculation of the value of those adopted and engraved. The pro- portion between those chosen and those set aside, as stated in the evidence taken, is from one-fifth to one-tenth of the entire number drawn. But, as even the most experienced judgment can- not, from the mere inspection of a pattern upon paper, form a correct decision, as to its precise appearance, when transferred to cloth,* and cannot possibly anti- cipate all the caprices of public taste on which the favourable reception of a pattern depends, it constantly occurs, that of the number, even of those selected de- signs, only a proportion attains a successful sale, the remainder either never being in demand at all, or only to such a limited extent as to be un remunerative to the producer. Thus of five hundred patterns produced in one year by one house, one hundred alone were decidedly suc^- cessful, and only fifty moderately so, the rest being failures. f And here again it must, of course, be on the sale of the successful that the printer must rely for compensation for the loss of those which fail ; and if his property in these be not secured from infringe- ment, the ruinous consequences to his entire trade must be sufficiently obvious. As to the joint cost of designing, engraving and * See Evidence, questions 2091, 2203, 1758, 1801, 8779, 1797, 1959, 2199. - t See Evidence of Mr. Potter, 120, 122, 2093, 220S, 812, 3282. FOR CALICO PRINTING. 29 cutting, it is difficult to arrive at an accurate calcu- lation, as it varies according to the economy and ar- rangements of different establishments ; but from the evidence given by gentlemen examined by the com- mittee, as to the expenses of their several houses in this particular, it appears that it amounts, on an average, to from 5/. to 10/. each for those employed for garment printing, but for furniture prints the expense is much greater, averaging from 10Z. to 35/. each, and many in both branches costing considerably higher than either of these relative estimates ; whilst, for designing alone, apart from engraving, the expense is equally variable, and ranges from a few shillings to 20Z. per pattern. The preparation of designs and patterns for some establishments is stated to occupy nearly three months in each year; and the successful patterns which are the real product of that period may be copied by a pirate in a few weeks at a consequent saving of what is of equal value with money, its equivalent, time. Taking the expenses of designing alone, the cost of a single pattern, if spread over the entire extent of its sale, would appear to be a very trifling element in the production of printed goods. By this means Mr. Kershaw* makes the cost of his designs, upon his vast production of 884,000 pieces, amount to but one halfpenny or three farthings per piece, and Mr. Ross to something above five-eighths of a penny. But this mode of estimating the real value of the designf must * Evidence, questions 3623, 3627, 3646, 3648, 3867, 3657. t Evidence of Mr. Kershaw, 4313, 4322, 4331. 30 VALUE OF DESIGNS necessarily be fallacious, as the cost of the pattern would appear least per piece upon those whose ex- tended sale had proved their value by the test of public favour and approbation, whilst the cost of the unsuccessful would be augmented in the same ratio. Those who undervalue the merit of a design may be strongly suspected to have never known the labour and the anxiety of producing one, and like the harlot in the judgment of Solomon, would rather see it scorned and mutilated than secured to its natural parent. Sect. 4. The Value of a Design not to be estimated by its mere first Cost. But the real value of a design, that property in its exclusive use which it is the object of copyright to create and confirm, is by no means to be estimated by the actual outlay in wages upon its production, which may in some cases be a mere trifle in amount, whilst the merit of the idea, and the profit of its sale, may be of the highest class.* It is, in fact, the simple and inartificial designs which are in general the most successful with the public, requiring at once the least labour and expense to invent and the least possible cost to copy them. One pattern, known in the trade by the name of the " Diorama," was produced by an accident, and at no cost whatever for designing, and yet sold to the ex- * Evidenceof Mr. Lee, 5109, t seg. 5115, 5122. FOR CALICO PRINTING. 31 tent of 25,000 pieces in one day.* Another, known, as "Lane's Net," consisting of a very simple ar- rangement of right lines, was equally a favourite with the public. A simple figure upon a pattern for neckcloths which cost but a few pence to invent, and a few shillings to engrave, and might be copied for 2L, was so successful that the proprietor states it in his estimation to have been worth to him from 200/. to 300/. A popular class of productions, known in the trade by the name of" Excenlrics," are produced by a machine combining a peculiar adaption of the excentric chuck, with Bate's process for engraving fac-similes of bas reliefs, which at once delineates the device and perfects the engraving at a trifling ex- pense.f Some houses likewise publish no designs except those apparently of the most simple and ine- laborate kind ; but these are conceived and applied with so much skill and judgment, the result of long study of the public taste, that the inventors have es- tablished a peculiar reputation for their production, and obtain a more extensive sale, and of course a greater amount of remuneration in consequence. In all cases the design, like the handwriting of an individual, invariably exhibits some feature peculiar to its author, and participates in the general character of the taste which pervades the productions of his house ; so that the invasion of his copyright, by the piratical imitation of his works, is not merely an ap- propriation of that which has cost him a certain por- * Evidence, questions 795, 817, 4325, 5113, 5115, 4324, 4323. t Evidence of Mr. J. Lockett, 634, 6876. 32 VALUE OF DESIGNS tion of his capital to provide, but it is in some degree a trading under his firm, and a gratuitous participation by a stranger in the profits of that reputation which has cost him years of study and labour to acquire and to establish for himself. Sect. 5. The Nature of the Injury inflicted by Pi- racy upon the original Producer. But in addition to this, the piracy of his patterns is accompanied by many annoyances to the inventor, much more serious than the mere loss of a portion of his time and capital,* inasmuch as it interrupts and and deranges the entire economy of his business, driving him to produce fresh designs at a moment when he calculated on the consumption of those wrested from him, impeding and sometimes alto- gether destroying the demand for those articles on whose sale he relied to meet his payments, and undermining the confidence of his customers in his house by having imitations of his goods thrown into the market at lower prices than he had already sup- plied them ; or those which were designed for the higher and wealthier classes of consumers vulgarised and deteriorated in value by the multiplication of coarse imitations, and by their application to inferior purposes.f * Evidence, 1729, 4337. t 1080, 1827, 1833, 2103, 8, 238, 3454, 2568, 4348, 6958, 238, 1082, 8490. 'See Stirling, 3321, 948, 5381, to 5585. FOB CALICO PRINTING. 33 Sect. 6. Inducements held out to the Copyist. The saving of the mere first cost of the design is in reality one of the least inducements to the copyist to invade the property of the original in- ventors.* He selects, for this purpose, not the doubtful or untested patterns of the house, but the successful, and those which have already acquired a firm footing in the market, so that he gets rid of all possible risk of failure in the speculation, which the inventor must encounter ; nor has he, as in his case, to load the price at which he offers the successful patterns with the cost of those which fail to sell.f In addition to this, his charges for engraving, both directly and indirectly, are lessrj directly, as he saves all expense and loss of time iii making out and adopting the sketch to scale before transferring it to the block or the cylinder, (a process which may cost the original proprietor hours, or even days, of labour ; the produce of which the copyist can appro- priate in a few minutes, by the use of a sheet of tracing paper) ; and indirectly, as he has to charge each pattern merely with the expense of its own engraving, totally irrespective of those originally produced along with it, but which have never sold in the market. The pirate has, besides, no trouble 3404, 4337. See Kershaw, 4334, et seq. 123, 316, 235, 239. t 2338. t 126, 235, 2340-3, 2358, 2577, 313, 3416, 3430-2. Lee, 4586-8, 126. c 5 y means of a more extended sale, when exempted from the interference of the copyist, and when they would likewise be enabled to print the same goods both for the home and the export trade, which is now impracticable compatibly with legal protection, and they are consequently compelled to lay an increased price on both, from having to invent two sets of designs, the one for the home and the other for the export trade.f Besides, the fear of being speedily copied may occasionally induce a printer to lay such a price on the first pieces worked off from a design as will insure him against ultimate loss from assault by a pirate, a necessity from which he would escape when once removed from the apprehension of interference. J Mr. Kershaw himself states it to be the principle of his trade, that in proportion to the length of time, and the number of pieces he is enabled to work off within it, from any pattern, he is likewise enabled to reduce the price of each ;^ and Mr. Ross states it to be " the principle of his house," to look for moderate profits upon extensive sales, by which he not only defeats the assaults of pirates at home, but thinks that See Evidence, 137, 948, 983, 1012, 1163, 1232, 1254, 1431, 1548, 1740, 2431, 2497, 455, 3075, 3082. Kershaw, 3645, 3732, 4127, 4306 t See Evidence, 1475-6. J Ib. 135-6, 1. $ See Evidence, 3645. EXTENSION OF THE COPYRIGHT. 107 copying may be successfully defeated and prevented abroad.* OBJECTION 2. That extension of the copyright will tend to litigation in contesting the originality or priority of property in designs. As in the case of the objection just disposed of, this is an apprehension of something supposed to be incidental to the contemplated law, which a moment's reflection must show to be equally existent under the present one. In order to protect the property which may now be confided to their guardianship, the ad- ministrators of the present law of copyright must be equally prepared to decide between an original and a copy, and to determine who is the pirate and who the legitimate producer. But the tendency to dis- putes of this nature, we are told, will be augmented by such an amendment of the law as I have ventured to suggest, because, as an increased value will thereby be given to the proprietor's interest in his designs, his disposition to claim for them the protection held out by the law, may lead to an increase of litigation, and to the institution of frivolous and vexatious proceed- ings in contesting the point of originality as between him and a supposed copyist, f This is a question of extent alone : every man will be disposed, in proportion to the interest he is * Ross, 5665, 5478, 5516, 265, 1452, 1467-8, 1475, 1649. Lee, 5262. t Lee, 4515, 4625, 4623. Ross, 5563, 5631, 3742. 108 REASONS ALLEGED AGAINST THE possessed of, to be more or less active in its protec- tion, and the increase of value given to the copyright may, and it is desirable that it should, operate to induce greater vigilance on the part of the original inventor, inasmuch as the present state of the law is shown on this very point to be unsatisfactory, it being admitted on all sides, that although' the wrong is inflicted to a serious extent, the instances are of ex- tremely rare occurrence in which the remedy has been resorted to ; the brief term of protection not being sufficient to warrant the cost and trouble of appealing to a court of justice for redress. But it was stated repeatedly to the Committee, that during the 50 years which have elapsed since the passing of the original law, not a single case has occurred of a vexatious or frivolous resort to legal proceedings,* nor is it more likely that men will institute fictitious suits in the cases of copyright, than in regard to other spe- cies of property and privileges, which are equally the subject of legislation, the law itself having placed the most effectual checks to fraudulent litigation. Another objection of this class was, that a printer about to cut a design which he may have purchased from a designer not in his own employment, will have no means of knowing, of himself, whether it has not been already sold and registered as the property of another; and that the difficulty of framing such an index to the deposits in the registry as to render them easily accessible for the purpose of consultation in such a case will be insurmountable, from the circumstance * See Evidence, 7790, 1, 2, 3, 669, 686, 693. 730, 113, 1189, 1367, 1599, 1867, 2116, 2134, 2242-3, 772, 869, 1739, 7836, 7850. EXTENSION OF THE COPYRIGHT. 109 of there being " half a million to a million of patterns to wade through in order to ascertain the fact." The apprehension likewise extends to the interests of this class of designers themselves, which, it is feared, will suffer from the caution of parties unwilling to incur the risk of dealing with them ; a hesitation which it is suggested, however, may be removed by their re- gistering their patterns before they offer them for sale, and thus sustaining the confidence of the pur- chaser. But besides the necessity which will be imposed to regard the character of the designer from whom a printer will purchase, or to guard against risk by keeping artists in his exclusive employment, this apprehension is ill founded, as the number of deposited designs will never exceed the aggregate accumulation of twelve months, and, by means of a cypher which it has been suggested to substitute in lieu of the present stamp,* the index for their consultation may be rendered available without trouble or delay. The difficulty, however, which seemed to those who suggested it most to demand consideration, was as to the means of deciding between two designs which was the original and which the copy ; a point fraught, as they appeared to believe, with insurmountable ob- stacles, inasmuch as all designs are but combinations of the infinite objects of nature and inventions of art, which are alike accessible to all ; orrepetitions in diffe- rent arrangements of subjects, which had been already produced by the French or by former printers in Great Britain. But here again they seemed to have over- looked the fact, that the necessity of pronouncing * See a subsequent Chapter on the subject of RKOKTRATIOI*, 110 REASONS ALLEGED AGAINST THE that very decision is one incidental to the law which exists at the present moment, and as the abstract question of what constitutes originality, is one which cannot be altered by any temporary circumstances ; the difficulty, if any, can in no wise be augmented by a mere alteration of the term of copyright from three months to twelve. The subtle inquiry into what constitutes identity, is in fact, a question utterly be- side the consideration of the contemplated amend- ment; but for all practical purposes, the means of deciding what is a copy and what an original in calico printing, can be pointed out without hesitation. In the first place, in the case of copies from the French. As the productions of their artists are open to being imitated, or copied in whole or in part by designers in this country, and as their patterns are periodically received by almost every printer, being forwarded by a regular agent immediately on their publication, as well for the sake of information as to the general aspect of the trade, and the prevailing styles of the season, as for the express purpose of being imitated by those who receive them, it is doubted whether a remedy would apply for their protection in the event of two parties appropriating portions of the same pattern ? The answer, however, is sufficiently distinct ; that, as the parties seeking for protection, under the present as well as the contemplated case, must, in order to entitle them to claim it, prove by affidavit, that their design was both " new and origi- nal," they would not have the power, and they them- selves disclaim the disposition, to resort to law for the EXTENSION OF THE COPYRIGHT. Ill protection of what was a mere copy from the pro- ductions of another ; but they contend that if parts alone were taken, and such combinations made of them as to give them an entirely new character and form, they would be entitled to protection as origi- nals, as much as if the component materials had been selected from the garden or the greenhouse.* But again, in copies from old designs, as the figures of new patterns are frequently extracted from old ones, and the materials, generally, for all designs are to be found in the unlimited number of objects in nature and art, which are common to all, and used freely in the designs of others, it has been questioned whether a copyright could be maintained for patterns drawn exclusively from such sources ? To this it is replied, that the essence of originality in a design consists, not in its abstract elements, which may be the property of any one, but in the * 7316. Mr. Williams. I believe you are aware that it is customary for all the calico printers of Lancashire to make a point of getting all the foreign patterns they can, as well as English patterns, from which to draw their designs 1 Mr, J. Lockett. Yes. 7317. Suppose two or three French patterns were sent, as is the case, to all the different calico printers, that would take the taste of several of them, and they were to give the pattern-drawers orders to draw patterns from those, varying the objects upon them ; would you consider those parties entitled to a protection by copyright on those patterns 1 Decidedly ; it is the arrangement and combination which constitutes the claim to originality ; there is nothing new, that is quite clear, as to the ideas ; we do not make them ; we receive our impres- sion from regarding some object, we compare that object with some other object, the result is a certain combination, that combination en- titles him to the claim for originality ; that is my view of it. Report, p. 420. 112 REASONS ALLEGED AGAINST THE conception and general effect of their combination and arrangement into new forms, of which, like the notes of music, they are susceptible of in endless variety, whilst each combination will have a character pecu- liar to the mind of the artist himself.* It has been demonstrated by experience, that even where pre- cisely the same materials have been given to any number of artists, their several designs have borne little relative similarity to each other, and could each and all be designated new and original ; and it is distinctly alleged that it is as unlikely, if not more so, that two artists, from precisely the same ob- jects, should produce two separate designs, identical in every point, as that two kaleidescopes, charged with the same figures, could, in simultaneous turns, pro- duce the same combination of them.f In practice, indeed, the most extensive employers of designers distinctly assert, that there never yet occurred an instance in which two artists, working apart, but from identically the same materials have been known to produce identically the same combination of them.J * See Evidence, 1901, 36, 566, 698, 700-1, 702, 756, 759, 1071, 1126. 2565, 3034. Holdway, 2743 to 2750. Kershaw, 3656. Lock- ett, 7317, 3039. t J. Lockett, 6974-5, 7306-7, 7320-25, 7336-7, 7340. t " What is an original design f is a question which appears difficult to all but those who are conversant with patterns. It is unquestion- ably true that there is no quality or character by which the originality of a pattern can be recognized or discovered, independent of experi- ence. An original pattern is one which has never been produced before ; and considering the great number daily and hourly brought forth, it would appear to those unacquainted with the subject, that nothing is more likely than that designers should often hit upon the EXTENSION OF THE COPYRIGHT. 113 " Close imitations and servile copies are made de- signedly, that is piratically, with the original pattern before the eye, and are never produced accidentally." These and collusive or colorable variations are copies in the eye of the law, and have been so decided ;* and these alone it is the legitimate object of copyright to prohibit and prevent. The idea that there must necessarily be an identity of design, because there is an identity of materials, is not in fact tenable for one moment ; it is the combina- tion and arrangement that forms the design, not the same thing, or things that have been done before, and yet nothing is more improbable. The chances are so remote, that in practice it amounts to impossibility. In all my long experience, I never saw an instance of two patterns produced by different designers apart from and without communication with each other, which could by any pos- sibility be confounded, or considered as approximating to identity. * * * Sometimes in spite of the efforts of a poor and barren imagination to avoid it, imitation of each other's patterns takes place, when designers of inferior talent work together, but never when they work apart. My practice in drawing is, first to select the type, and place it successively before two or more designers, apart from, and at ^such distance from ench other, as to preclude all possibility of com- munication. Each impresses on the style the character of his own hand, and the chances are INFINITY to UNITY that they do not produce, whatever number of patterns they draw, or however long they work, two so nearly alike asL 'nvade the principle of copyright." Thom- son. Letter to Sir Peel, . 18. " It is a legitimate consequence of what I have before stated, that the accidental production of the same design by two different hands is impossible, and that in all cases where two patterns resemble each.other so closely as to involve a question of invasion of copyright, this is in every case the result of premeditation and design ; one has preceded and served as the type of the other, but which is the origi- nal, is an affair of evidence entirely." Ib. p. 22. 114 REASONS ALLEGED AGAINST THE disjecta membra, which the genius of the artists is em- ployed to unite. Were this doctrine to prevail, it might with equal reason be contended, that " Coleridge's Ancient Mariner " was not an original poem, because every individual word of which it is composed may be found in Dr. Johnson's Dictionary. The quarries of Carrara supply the same marble for a palace and a statue, and yet no one presumes to trace an identity between the labours of the architect and the sculptor. That " intellectual property," which the law seeks to cherish, is to be sought in the mind of the artist, and not in the inanimate materials on which he is to work. But no better practical commentary can by possibility be adduced than the subjoined testimony of Mr. J. Lockett, the most eminent and experienced engraver in England, and one who has been more extensively employed in the execution of designs than perhaps any other individual in Europe. I ex- tract it from the Report of the Committee of last session. Chairman. 6972. The hon. Member for Coventry asked you, a few moments ago, whether the patterns' which had been pirated of Messrs. Hoyle were ori- ginal designs; now, as an engraver, in the constant habit and conversant with designs, have you ever found any practical difficulty in deciding what was an original and what was a copy? Mr. Lockett. None whatever. 6973. Does your facility in doing so depend on experience or on theory? On experience; I could not describe how it is to be done. EXTENSION OF THE COPYRIGHT. 115 6974. From the long experience you have had, on a pattern being thrown down, could you tell dis- tinctly from the style who the proprietor was, or who the designer was, who was likely to have produced it ? In a great number of cases I could ; it is as easily to be discovered to a person practised in it, as it would be to you to recognise the handwriting of your friend. You may take the same idea, and give it to a dozen parties, and they would just produce the same variety of forms and characters as a drawer would. 6975. The first idea being offered to two of those parties, equally expert as designers, is it your opinion that the designers producing them would approach in similarity? There is no doubt they would ap- proach in similarity; they would produce a similar style, but there would be nothing like identity. I could instance a case in point. As I described before, we are in the habit of receiving French patterns, which we put in a book which lies on our counting-house table; our friends come in, and we discuss the vari- ous patterns which are before us. I said to one friend, " There is something very good in that a very good idea in that, just observe it; if you were to apply that so and so, you would get a very good effect, excellent and cheap." He immediately seized the idea ; in fact, I gave him a piece of the pattern to keep the thing in his eye. He went home, set his drawer to work, and drew a set of patterns. Another gentleman came in in the same way ; I described the thing, and expressed myself in the same terms, and 116 REASONS ALLEGED AGAINST THE gave him a piece of the same pattern ; and each party have brought me patterns to engrave, not in the least identical, quite dissimilar, but the process of produc- ing them would be just the same; the effect will vary, the style the same, but the result is entirely different ; which clearly proves that it is not the ma- terial which constitutes the pattern, but the arrange- ment of it. You may give a rose to a thousand different persons; I may say we have engraved the rose pattern and the rosebud a thousand times, and I will produce a thousand patterns with the rosebud engraved, and I will defy any man to say that there is the least identity in them. 6976. Have you any objection to state who the two gentlemen were ? I have no objection to state one ; it was Mr. Ross. 7304. Mr. W. Williams.'] Do you employ pattern- drawers yourself IMr. J. Lockett. We do to a cer- tain extent. 7305. Where do they get their ideas from ? They take their ideas from all places. 7306. Is it not a common custom, in the forma- tion of patterns, for certain patterns to be given, with an order to the pattern-drawer to draw that style of pattern, but to vary the objects ? It is ; and I would engage to give the same instructions to 10,000 drawers, and each of them would bring a different pattern, one that should be able to be identified ; it might very much resemble the others. The coun- tenance of a sheep resembles its fellow, but I will engage, a shepherd who has been accustomed to EXTENSION OF THE COPYRIGHT. 117 tend them would be able to select his own out of his neighbour's flock if it got into it. 7307. If all these 10,000 take their ideas from one source, do you consider that each of them would have a claim to originality? Decidedly so; my view of originality is this ; that it is a combination of the materials. If you were to give two straight lines to the drawer, which is a very simple figure, it is pos- sible to produce a very large number more than you would suspect of patterns which, I should say, have originality. It is the arrangement, it is not the ma- terials ; the straight line is common to all. If you take three flowers out of a garden, and give them to a drawer, and say, " This is the style I want ; intro- duce me those three flowers," I will venture to say, that there is no limit to the number of arrangements that may be made with those three flowers, and that each pattern should be separate. I think I quoted an instance on Tuesday of having put the thing to the test; I mentioned it to Mr. Ross. I gave the same hint and the same bit of cloth to two different par- ties ; they have each of them brought me patterns to engrave, and I am quite certain that each of those patterns (and both gentlemen are on the same side, against copyright) would be claimed by them as original. 7308. Although they took their ideas from pat- terns you gave them ? It is the combination of arrangement that constitutes the novelty. It is a remarkable feature in the opposition to this 118 REASONS ALLEGED AGAINST THE measure, that its opponents, almost without excep- tion, seem to have had not the most imperfect per- ception of the merit which attaches to this unseen and mental process of "arrangement and combi- nation;" and the least pleasing feature of the in- vestigation before the committee was to find each successive witness avowing his inability to perceive the beauty and importance of that delicate species of talent, which by a graceful disposition can produce the most ingenious and elegant forms out of the most simple and ordinary materials. The only elements which seemed to enter into their calculations, in estimating the value of a design, were the leaves and flowers which nature has supplied in gratuitous profusion, and the crude cost of paper, paint, and wages for reducing them, as they seem to think me- chanically, to a pattern. It is painful to find gen- tlemen of wealth and eminence under such a mis- conception, denying to genius even that modicum of praise which is, perhaps, sweeter than its humble earnings, fixing the value of its efforts at the frac- tional parts of a -penny, and sinking the mass of its productions below the level of things that are worthy of protection."* " The perfection of art," says the aphorism, " is its concealment ;" and to such a point has it arrived in the present instance, that even its very existence has come to be ques- tioned. Nay Mr. Brooks goes so far as to deny even originality itself ! and protests that in thirty * Mr. Kershaw, 3623, &c. Mr. Lee, 4405, &c. Mr. Ross, 5492, HOYLE'S WAVE. EXTENSION OF THE COPYRIGHT. 119 years which he has been in the trade he never knew but two original designs amongst the millions that have been produced :* one called the Diorama, pub- lished by Messrs. Simpson and Co., of Foxhillbank ; and the other known as Hoyle'sWave, produced by Mr. Perkins, the inventor of the steam-gun, in his eccentric lathe. Mr. Brooks's conceptions of what constitutes originality, must, however, be somewhat peculiar, when it .is stated that the latter of these is in reality a variation of one previously known in the trade as Lane's Net ; and the other, the Diorama, the result of an accident in the process of printing, in conse- quence of a crease in the cloth, by which the de- sign, originally a parallel stripe, was repeated at an angle, and produced a new and unexpected effect. In order to show how imperfect are the conceptions upon this subject entertained by the opponents of the measure, I have procured drawings of these two patterns, and trust to the reader's own experience to decide upon these exclusive claims to originality. The frontispiece No. III., to the present volume, represents the original Diorama pattern, produced by the accident I have described, and having in reality no more of design or invention in its sudden produc- tion, than the fantastic forms assumed by molten lead when poured into water. The Plate, No. I, represents the other pattern alluded to by Mr. Brooks as an original, Hoyle's wave but a glance at the Plate No. II, will satisfy * See Evidence, 684, 814. 120 REASONS ALLEGED AGAINST THE the reader that it is a variation by means of Per- kins' eccentric lathe, of a previous successful idea, known in the trade by the name of Lane's net ; and it is even possible may have been as accidentally fallen upon as the chance which threw out the Diorama ! A careful scrutiny of these four plates will suffice to satisfy the reader of the imperfect qualifications, and even the inadequate acquaintance with the eco- nomy of his own manufacture, with which Mr. Brooks came prepared to discuss the question of identity and originality. OBJECTION 3. That the copyist will be injured by the suppression of copying. The abolition of piracy has been objected to on the ground of the pecuniary injury which it will inflict upon the copyist and the man of limited capital, who now subsists, wholly or in part, upon the designs of others. But whilst it is admitted upon all hands that the original producer is the individual best en- titled to protection, inasmuch as on him, not only the copyist, but the very existence of the trade itself is dependent, it is difficult to discover in the evidence of the opponents of extension the grounds of any hard- ship with which he is likely to be visited ; the facility he now enjoys being confined, as they contend, to the use of a minute portion of his neighbour's capital alone, whilst the injury he occasions to the latter affects the entire economy of his business, and saps the very foundations of his trade. Designing, they EXTENSION OP THE COPYKIGHT. 121 assert, is a matter of infinite facility and ease ; and materials and ideas for its exercise are to be found in boundless variety in the objects of nature and the infinite combinations of art. Mr. Brooks compares the fecundity and facility of invention in the artists in his own employment "to a spring in a hill, which if emptied at night is found overflowing in the morning."* Nor can expense be an object, as Mr. Kershawf calculates his own designs to cost him on an average only 86'. per pattern, or about \d. or^d. per piece on. his entire production. Mr. Lee^ estimates his at even less, calculating their value to be only ^ to T 7 ^- of a penny per piece, or about -^ part of the value of the cloth, and -3-^- part the value of the printed article when fit for sale ; and Mr. Ross conceives of a penny to be the full value of his. At the same time the copyist's profit will be in- creased by the change. Mr. Brooks admits that his motive for abandoning copying was because he found more money was to be made by the production of originality.| And Mr. Stirling states that Mr. Henry's house, of Dublin, found it their interest, even before the introduction of a copyright into Ireland, and when English patterns were allowed to be freely used in that country, to betake himself altogether to * Mr. Brooks, 684-5, 1445-6, 1528. t Mr. Kershaw, 3623, 3637, 3646, 4648, 3657. J Mr. Lee, 4405, 5015, 4947. $ Mr. Ross, 5492, 5528. || Ibid. 969, 835. G 122 REASONS ALLEGED AGAINST THE the production of original designs, as he found that he could raise the character of his house by so doing, and he has since continued from time to time to in- crease his staff of artists.* An additional inducement will also be in the pro- tection which the copyists will themselves enjoy, in having their designs defended from the piracy of others, and in the increased demand which the pas- sion for novelty in the public mind will excite for a new pattern, in preference to a copy of one to which the eye is already familiarized ; and the trade once convinced by experience, not only of the facility, but the advantages of being original, will of itself be brought to see the prudence and propriety of ab- staining from the infringement of the law, which would speedily become as effective for the protection of the artist in these countries as it has been found to be in France. But, besides, the man of small capital, to whom even the trifling cost of original designs would be an obstacle, if emulation will not spur him to aim at originality for himself, will still have an ample field for his industry in those branches of copying which the law will justify and permit; namely, the entire range of French and European designs, which will be still open to him to adapt and appropriate ; as well as those designs of English printers of which the copyright has expired, but the sale and demand for which may survive it for years.f * Mr. Ross, 3250, 3494. t See Evidence, 1667, 1696 to 1705, 1667, 1696, 1968,2836. EXTENSION OF THE COPYRIGHT. 123 OBJECTION 4. Fear of injury to the retail trade. Another apprehension is on behalf of the drapers,* who, it is feared, would be rendered timid in making their purchases, from the fear of being involved in law proceedings for the selling of articles of which the copyright was contested. But as the draper will then have the power of ascertaining that each piece he purchases is duly registered and stamped by the printer from whom he buys it, he will, in all cases, be enabled to protect himself; whilst the risk apprehended will certainly be less under a system where copying will be discouraged and put an end to, than under one in which it pre- vails to a great extent, and utterly unchecked by the intervention of the law. Besides, a draper will always be enabled to exercise a due caution as to the character of the printer with whom he deals, and to look closely to the stamp of the register on the goods which he receives from him. OBJECTION 5. No newly arisen necessity for extension. Again, it is alleged, that for fifty years the system has worked well, and that there is no reason now for seeking an alteration, beyond that which existed at former periods.f * Ibid. 4441, 3675, 4648, 7859. Mr. Lucas, 6016. t Mr. Kershaw, 3886. G 2 124 REASONS ALLEGED AGAINST THE But the trade, in the meantime, has increased with surprising strides, and in the same proportion the evil complained of has increased along with it.* And whilst designing, which is altogether a mental process, has not been facilitated to the original producer by any mechanical inventions, the discoveries and im- provements in machinery and chemistry which have taken place within the same period, have materially accelerated the rapidity with which a copyist can imitate and reproduce his designs.^ Mr. Ross, whose testimony before the Committee was strongly opposed to the proposal of extension, has since, however, supplied in the following passage from a pamphlet which he has recently published on the subject,^ one of the most pungent illustrations of its necessity. " I fearlessly assert," he says, " that in no branch of British manufacture has there been so great a degree of skill, invention, and enterprise evinced. The cost of production has been diminished to an extraordinary extent, and the commerce of the country immensely increased. The calico printer can now produce at one operation by machinery orna- mented fabrics in four and five fast colours, of a character which a few years ago would have been deemed altogether impracticable. Styles which re- cently required the hand labour of the block, are now * Lee, 4607. f See Evidence, 334 y 346, 391, 486, 2462. Ross, 5600. J THE EVILS OF AN EXTENSION OF THE EXISTING COPYRIGHT, a Letter to the Vice-President of the Board of Trade. BY WILLIAM Ross. Manchester, 1840. p. 9. 5 EXTENSION OF THE COPYRIGHT. 125 easily accomplished by engraved copper rollers. The block printing itself has lately undergone great changes, three, and sometimes four colours, being imparted to the calico by one deposit of the block, instead of the colours having to be introduced at separate times and by separate deposits. The block cutting, moreover, is now become an item of cost considerably less in amount than formerly, a system of casting the designs in type metal of a peculiar kind having been introduced, and the elementary portion of the design, called "a sketch," having only to be cut as a mould. In the art of engraving, both by what is technically termed the " mill," and by etching with an acid, the progress during the last twenty-five years has been wonderful. Patterns, each of which at one time could not have been engraved under 40Z. can now easily be accomplished for one-fourth of that sum, or less; and designs can at present be produced on copper rollers, which a few years back it would have been thought visionary to attempt. At the present time, while I am engaged in addressing you, an en- graver in this town is employed in producing designs upon copper rollers for calico printing by electro- magnetic agency a most interesting and entirely novel application of science, and one that promises to be of signal value." The recent and marvellous improvements and in- ventions alluded to by Mr. Ross are amongst the leading incidents which have rendered the exten- sion of the copyright indispensable. Fifty years ago, when every process was slow, and workmen in- 126 REASONS ALLEGED AGAINST THE expert, when the use of steam was little known, and Perrotines undreamed of, when engraving was achieved by the laborious instrumentality of the hand and the graving tool, and when mills and electro-magnetism were as yet in the womb of science, it may have been amply sufficient protection to the designer of genius and originality to give him a start of three months in the race of competition with the pirate, who, with his lumbering machinery and toil- some processes, would vainly strive to overtake him ; but now, when, on Mr. Ross's own showing, the ordi- nary march of centuries has been achieved within a few short years, and when Spencer, Jacobi and Palmer have literally taught the copyist to engrave his roller by a flash of lightning, it has become imperative to re-ad- just the scale to suit the altered circumstances of the times, as the only means to preserve to the original inventor that protection which the law has promised him. OBJECTION 6. That the amended law will be inoperative. Of all the arguments adduced against the amend- ment of the copyright, this is the most remarkable, as coming from its opponents, who, after alleging appre- hensions of the most formidable consequences to follow from it in every conceivable shape, accompany their warnings with an intimation that the amendment is a mere work of supererogation, and will never be productive of any results whatsoever ! They urge that, EXTENSION OF THE COPYRIGHT. 127 even if the term be extended, the law will still be in- operative, inasmuch as the temptation which now exists to an infringement of copyright within three months, will be increased by the enlargement of the term to twelve months, whilst the means of prevention will still remain the same. But the present ineffi- ciency of the law for the prevention of copying, arises from the indifference of parties to incur the cost and labour of resorting to it for redress for so inade- quate an advantage as the residue of a term of three months, whereas an extension to twelve months would render the object so much more important, that the law would be more regularly appealed to and more vigorously exerted.1 Mr. Lucas, however, a great proportion of whose export trade consists of copies, conceives the new law would be effectual, and that he could no longer find a printer in Manchester who would venture to engrave one of his orders for such goods. And Mr. Schuster is of opinion, that the operation of the law will be such as to " discourage copying in every shape,"* to eradicate the habit, and at the same time to " destroy the inducement" to it, by compelling every man, instead of the present indolent custom " of resting in idleness and copying the patterns of others, to arouse himself and create designs for his own use ; that necessity would compel him to do so, and necessity is the mother of invention." But here again, I point to the example of France * Schuster, 1327. 128 REASONS ALLEGED AGAINST THE and the effectual operation of the copyright code in that country. Here the result has been perfectly satisfactory, and an attempt at an infringement of the law is certain to be followed by detection, conviction, and disgrace. " I learn," says Mr. Thomson, " that there has not been in France a case of piracy since the year 1832, when a prosecution was instituted by the house of Gros, Odier and Co, of Paris, against the mnyor and deputy of Rouen, and his partners, for copying. The high rank of the parties on both sides, gave an interest to the case, extrinsic to its own merits. The defen- dants were convicted, and damages awarded against each, of 2000 francs, besides the expenses of the suit. The goods seized in the warehouses of Paris, were confiscated, and placed at the disposal of the plaintiffs. One hundred copies of the judgment of the court were printed, and posted in the manufacturing towns of the kingdom; and its insertion in two of the public journals, at the choice of the plaintiffs, was ordered ! By such means, this property is now rendered as secure and inviolable as any other property in France."* The law, it is perfectly true, will not, any more than a law upon any other subject, effect all that might be required for the full advantage of the original inventor; it will not, for instance, give him an exclusive property in the style of his patterns as well as in the in- dividual pattern, a protection to which Mr. Ross thinks * Letter to Sir R. Peel, p. 52. EXTENSION OF THE COPYRIGHT. 129 him equally entitled in the one case as in the other;* but, which it is manifest, whilst it would augment the gains of one individual, would circumscribe the limits within which it is desirable that public taste should be encouraged to develope and expand itself. In one department, it is true, copying may still ex- ist notwithstanding the restraint imposed by the letter of the law, and every vigilance exerted by the printer, namely, in the clandestine infringement of copyright in goods designed exclusively for exportation, and which it may still be practicable in spite of law, to print with secrecy, and to ship for foreign countries by means of a conspiracy for that purpose between the exporter and the calico printer, who lends himself as a party to the fraud. But independently of the fact, that in practice, a successful attempt of this kind is barely within the range of possibility, detection must in some cases occur, and damages follow, either by discovery of one or other of the parties, the pirate or the merchant, or by tracing the goods through the records of the Custom-house, from the retailer abroad to the shipper at home, and then claiming the vindi- cation and redress of the law.f But even were this in every case impracticable, and the injury capable of being perpetrated with impunity, it is surely no argu- ment against the institution of a salutary enactment that in some cases it may be impossible to enjoy the full benefit of its provisions ; nor is there any law, however rigorous and wise, which may not be and is * Letter to the Vice President of the Board of Trade, p. 6. t Stirling, 3593, 3596. a 5 130 REASONS, ETC. not in some cases disregarded and violated without the power of detection, and beyond the reach of punishment. And if in every other branch of his trade, the law will afford security and redress, the fact that in one case alone it will fail to benefit the printer, should not operate to deprive him of its ser- vices in all. 132 CHAPTER XI. GROUNDLESS APPREHENSION OF INJURY FROM FO- REIGN COMPETITION IN THE EVENT OF EXTENSION OF THE COPYRIGHT. THE arguments used by the opponents of extension were, as I have said, distinguishable into two classes ; one with reference to the economy of the manufacture in general, and the home trade in particular; the other with exclusive regard to foreign competi- tion. The former class of arguments, which will be found in the preceding pages, were early in the pro- ceedings of the committee abandoned by the authors as untenable, and the latter stages were exclusively devoted to statements regarding the nature and the cost of production, and the extent of sales in those countries which share with us in the process of print- ing calicoes. On these they were latterly content to rest the entire merits of their case. Mr. Lee, in fact, states that, " for the home trade he had no apprehen- sion whatsoever" in the event of the extension of the copyright, and that his objections to it were confined to its effects upon foreign trade alone.* And Mr. * Lee, 4527 132 GROUNDLESS APPREHENSION OF Ross, who followed him, declares his principal fear for the effect of extension to be on the ground of foreign competition.* On this point the argument most forcibly urged against the policy of extending the term is this, that the tendency of the step will be to create a " monopoly" in the hands of the original producer ; he will thereby be enabled to exact exorbitant prices, such as a foreign merchant cannot afford to pay ; and that the exporter in such a case being unable to obtain copies of his goods from the pirates on lower terms, as he can do at present, will turn his attention to foreign countries which print in competition with us, and to whom it will still be open to re-produce our designs, who will thus have the power of supply- ing neutral markets, or even our own, with simi- lar goods, to the prejudice of the general trade of England, which will to that extent be undersold and supplanted. This theory rests upon three distinct propositions, each of which is a distinct fallacy first, that a copy- right creates " a monopoly ;" an error which I have sufficiently exposed in a foregoing chapter, f Se- condly, That the monopoly will lead to the imposition of ruinous " prices;" a link of the argument which, as it is attached to the former, naturally falls along with it, even if correct, but which is equally demon- strated in the same section to be a delusion. And, thirdly, That foreign countries can produce printed * Rosa, 5740, 5789. f Chapter X. p. 97. INJUHY FROM FOREIGN COMPETITION, &C. 133 calicoes on so much more favourable terms as effectu- ally to oust English producers from neutral markets, which is the only point, the utter fallacy and impos- sibility of which I shall now proceed to demonstrate. But here, again, I would entreat attention to the fact that this latter assertion, even if true in all its parts, even if it were demonstrated past the shadow of a doubt, that a preference were given in foreign markets to the produce of our rivals before our own, so far from being a reason against the policy of an effectual copyright, it would be the most pungent of all arguments in its favour. Copyright, generously and judiciously applied, has secured a sale for the pro- ductions of France almost independent and regard- less of price. They, the dearest in the world, find, notwithstanding, an eager demand in England, in preference to her own, which are the cheapest ; and in the markets of Belgium and Germany, where economy is even of greater moment with the consumer than in Great Britain, the muslins of France can be readily disposed of for double and triple the prices of their own native productions. The source and the secret of this lies in the fact that as they are the most elegant and the best, the refined and the wealthy must have them in preference to all others ; and these are easily reconciled to the necessity of paying a higher price for them in the market, by the internal evidence which they bear of the superior ability, labour, and capital which they require to produce them. The mere element of cheapness alone is not therefore the sole arbiter of success. If, then, in addition 134 GROUNDLESS APPREHENSION OF to her own unequalled advantages in the cost of pro- duction, arising from her national position, England could combine that superiority of design, which is only derivable through cultivation and copyright, even France herself must in turn yield to her double superiority. And if in the mean time, with her un- doubted means of selling at lower prices other na- tions, her inferiors in every detail of production, are threatening her with their rivalry, the necessity be- comes the more pressing and imperative, to adopt with promptitude and vigour, those expedients which experience has proved to be the best promoters of that superiority which she dreads in her competitors, namely, their ample protection, and their comprehen- sive copyright. Sect. 1. Circumstances that have created the Alarm for Foreign Competition. That through almost all those countries of the Con- tinent that aspire to be manufacturing, there has been for the last twenty years a growing and visible improvement in every process, every individual who has visited them is quite prepared to admit; and states which were formerly dependent upon others for their articles of daily consumption, have now begun to produce for themselves. But there is in this fact nothing incomprehensible or extraordinary ; it is no evidence either that England is retrograding, or that other nations, in imitating her, are at the same time surpassing her : it is in fact nothing more or less 5 INJURY FROM FOREIGN COMPETITION, &C. 135 than the ordinary onward march of human improve- ment. Those countries were for twenty years before so devastated by war and revolution that the peaceful pursuits of trade were placed in utter abeyance : from 1794 to 1815, these very nations were overwhelmed with every calamity that slaughter and the sword can inflict ; and amidst such horrors and commotions trade and its processes were in a great degree sus- pended. England in the meantime, safe on her insular position, and her artisans protected by her fleets from interruption, exhibited in her internal pursuits nothing but an. increased activity, and her colonial and home consumers being unaffected by the war, and driven by it to a closer reliance upon her productions, her manufactures proceeded as calmly in the midst of hostilities as if all were halcyon peace without. But with the actual restoration of peace, commenced a new era, the commerce and manufactures of rival states again returned to their wonted channels ; agriculture, arts, and industry revived ; " the sword was converted into the ploughshare, and the spear to the pruning- hook ;" and the energies of the national mind and the resources of their several countries have since undergone nothing more than their accustomed development. People seem to be amazed at this, and despond- ingly affect to discover in it proofs that England is rapidly to be distanced in the race of competition, they appear to consider it an invasion of some pre- scriptive right, by which the " nation of shopkeepers" was to be the only manufacturing country in Europe. 136 GROUNDLESS APPREHENSION OF Other nations, however, have discovered that nature has gifted them with abilities and resources, if not identical, at least analogous to those of Great Britain, they have artisans of genius and dexterity, and if their coal and iron are neither so abundant nor so cheap, they yet possess the raw materials of numerous manufactures, which England is utterly without. Are we to be either astonished that they avail them- selves of these ; or " frighted from our propriety," because they exhibit the usual progress of intellect and skill? But is England in the meantime, asleep ? Has she been making no advances, so as, notwithstanding the simultaneous march of other countries, especially to preserve the relative distance between herself and them ? Even in the single department of calico printing alone, inventions have been made and are now in hourly action, that, twenty years ago, would have been smiled at as the dream of enthusiasts ; and Mr. Ross, in his evidence before the committee of the House of Commons, declares, that not only are the improvements surprising in those processes which were practised before, but that they now produce with facility, and at a trifling cost, whole styles, which the imperfect nature of their knowledge precluded them from even attempting, twenty years since.* Other nations have begun to imitate and accompany her, it is true, but at a respectful distance ; and either Belgium or Prussia, which are the foremost in their * Mr. Ross's Evidence, 5600. INJURY FROM FOREIGN COMPETITION, &C. 137 advances, would readily confess that " sequitur patrem non passibus equis." But independent of this consideration of the simul- taneous advancement of mechanical skill in this and other countries, it is evident that any improvement made in the construction of MACHINERY on the Conti- nent must be, as is admitted, " totally independent of the question of the copyright of DESIGNS," and utterly apart from its consideration ; and even had foreigners greater inducements to copy our patterns than, from their manifest inferiority to the French, they now have, (whilst their power to do so is unre- stricted,) that licence could in no degree make amends for their other deficiencies, or place them on an equal- ity with England in fuel, cloth, highly-perfected workmanship, and almost unlimited command of markets, which enable her at present to undersell every other country of Europe. Sect. 2. The Export of Engraved Copper Hollers to other Countries, another source of needless Alarm to the English printers. The alarm for foreign competition, when seriously felt, is likewise attributable to the anxiety which foreigners lately evinced to obtain engraved copper cylinders from this country, and the extent to which these are stated to have been exported to Germany and North America, and English designs, it is represented, are thus sent abroad for use, in compe- 138 GROUNDLESS APPREHENSION OF tition with our own printers, almost simultaneously with their publication in this country. The fallacy here, is in the delusion, that other countries purchase these articles, from an admiration of English designs in general, and a desire to thus get possession of them indirectly, whilst the real object is to avail themselves of our superior execution; (for which purpose the Prussians and Germans actually send their own designs to be engraved in England,) and likewise to obtain a particular style of design known by the name of " excentrics" in the production of which England surpasses every other nation in the world. The very fact of their sending from such a distance for these articles, is but a proof of the confessed and ad- mitted superiority of England in their production and in evidence of this, they pay a price for them higher than they can be had by an English printer. These statements, with regard to the higher cost of these articles to foreigners, I have made it my busi- ness to inquire into from themselves ; and in every instance, the information which I received, both in Belgium and in the Prussian league, confirms the evidence given before the committee. The printers themselves declaring that the extra expenses for pack- ing and carriage, for duty and risque, amounted to, at least, 50 per cent., before they could produce a single impression from them in their works. One gentleman in Saxony, informed me that from this cause he had discontinued their use altogether. In Prussia, where they were imported some time ago in considerable quantities, I learned the real state INJURY PROM FOREIGN COMPETITION, &C. 139 of the case as regards them. The " excentric" de- signs with which they are engraved, are a species of engine turning, such as is sometimes used for the ground work of country bank notes, produced by the mechanical instrumentality of the excentric chuck whence they derive their names. The entire surface of the roller is covered with these ground works, and upon this is again engraved by the hand or the mill any special design which is desired. Sometimes the rollers are exported simply with the excentric ground work, and sometimes the foreigner, in ordering them, chooses the ground and sends also the design which suits the taste of his own market and country to be engraved upon it. The ground-work, therefore, is the only object he is in quest of, and this is common to the designs of both countries. But the taste for these " excentrics" is like every thing else in the trade, transient and temporary ; it has already had its run in Germany, and the passion for it is over ; and when I was in Berlin in October last, I was told that there were then two agents from England in the city for the sale of copper rollers, but that they v;ere unable to make sales or to take orders for them, as the style was exhausted, and the public required something new. Sect. 3. English Designs not available to Foreign Printers. The alarm for foreign competition, in the event of the English copyist beingarrested in his proceedings, whilst 140 GROUNDLESS APPREHENSION OT the continental one would still be able to reproduce fac similes of English designs, is easily demonstrated to be a groundless panic. The copies of them by a foreign rival must be made for one of two purposes either to send them into the same markets which we supply, in direct competition with our own or other- wise to make use of them for their own home con- sumption in the countries of Europe. But in order to attempt the first with success, it is not sufficient for the continental printer to have merely the same design with ourselves ; he must also be able to pro- duce it upon lower terms, in order to oust us from the market, the impossibility of which I shall presently exhibit. Again, to effect a sale for these in their own markets at home, they must of course rely upon their beauty of design. But as in this respect they are inferior to those of France, which are equally accessible to the printer, he will of course be disposed to avail himself of that which the universal appreciation of Europe has stamped with its preference. Mr. J. Lockett, who has personal knowledge of the taste of almost every country in Europe, from engraving rollers for their use, states, that the demand for French designs is universal, the few English which he has ever furnished forming merely the exception to the rule. Out of 300 patterns engraved within a year for France, Germany, the Netherlands, Prussia, Russia, Saxony, Silesia, Italy, and Spain, not more than six could " by any stretch of imagination be supposed to be English," and the remainder either French, or those ground works peculiar to himself, and known INJURY FROM FOREIGN COMPETITION, &C. 141 by the name of " excentrics." Mr. J. Lockett also states, that having exhibited his specimens of English designs with a view to taking orders for engraving in the course of his visits to the Continent, " they have admired them for their execution, but quite ridiculed the idea of his getting an order for them."* Under these circumstances, even were foreign calico printers so far to gain upon us as to supersede our superiority in machinery, still they would have no temptation to appropriate our designs, and no advan- tage in doing so, a conclusion which is clearly put in the following evidence of Mr. Ross. " 5591. Chairman. They are at present superior to us in design ? They are. " 5592. Are we superior to them in machinery ? We are, decidedly. " 6593. Supposing they brought their machinery to an equality with ours, where would they then gain in copying our inferior designs ? / do not see it" In support of these views, it is distinctly asserted, that however our copies of French designs may inter- fere with theirs in neutral markets, our trade is not interfered with by any foreign copies of our own patterns, nor is there any ground for apprehending that it can.-f* Mr. Schuster, a gentleman examined by the Com- mittee, who exports to every market in the world to * Mr. Lockett's Evidence, 6801, 6806, 6814, 6865, 6868, 6887, 6893-4, &c. 6927, 6811. t See Evidence, 4157, 439, 440, 1409, 1009, 1891, 1256, 1265, et seq. 142 GROUNDLESS APPREHENSION OP which printed goods are sent, says distinctly,* that whilst the French alone compete with us successfully in design, owing to the efficiency of their copyright, and the encouragement which it holds out to the advancement of art, they and every other nation are far our inferiors in the facility and the cost of produc- tion, and he avers that " within his experience there never appeared any pattern produced in a foreign country, in imitation of an English one, in competition with his own, nor did he ever hear of such a case ; nor is there any ground for apprehending that any such evil would arise if the copyright were extended." Mr. Lucas, an exporting merchant, in answer to a question as to whether England has a firm hold of the export trade at present, declares she has " T y^ parts of it," and that he " has never found in exports anything of which he had to complain, in the way of foreign 'competition/'^ But whilst the opponents of copyright admit the correctness of these facts as regards the higher classes of production, in which English designs are not copied in any country but our own, our taste is re- presented to be so much more suited to the homely and medium styles which are the grand staple of foreign export, as to be copied by the printers of * 8389, 8479, 8534, 1370, 2456-7, 6837, 1725, 1412-13, 1669, 1670-1-2-3-4. Kershaw, 3923-4-5-6, 1490, 1718, 3050, 1256, 1265, 1388, 1392, 1269, 1425. t 6065, 6116, 18. INJURY FROM FOREIGN COMPETITION, &C. 143 Germany,* Prussia, Belgium, and the United States, who are as inferior to us in those lower styles, as the French are confessedly our superior in the higher. But the correctness of this statement is contested, and the existence of such copying at all has been questioned by parties equally entitled to credit and consideration ; in two instances only has any evi- dence of the fact been tendered to the committee, by the production of one German copy from an English pattern, by Mr. Kershaw, who had taken much pains to investigate the subject, and another by Mr. Ross ;*f- and the documents which I shall presently submit, furnished by various gentlemen engaged in the print trade on the Continent, abundantly confirm the fact that English designs, as a general rule, are re- jected on the Continent as utterly valueless to them, and unsuited to their purpose of reproduction. Sect. 3. The Demand for Novelty will prevent Foreign Copying. The same taste, also, for novelty which prevails in the home trade,;}; influences in a remarkable degree the foreign trade likewise ; so much so, that all the great houses engaged in it declare their inability to effect continued sales of the same pattern, but are driven to a perpetual succession of varieties. Mr. * Mr. Kershaw, 3763-4, 3773-8, 3779, 3770, 3796, 3797-9. t Mr. Ross, 5466, 5497, 5108. * Ante, p. 25. 144 GROUNDLESS APPREHENSION OF Kershaw, Mr. Brooks, Mr. Ross,* and Mr. Lee, export nothing but original designs, nor is there a demand to any extent for any other. This, there- fore, being the case, and copies not in request, it is difficult to see how the trade of this country is to suffer by a change which will prohibit the produc- tion of an article which is not practically in demand. And even if the foreigner were enabled to compete succesfully, in point of price, with the English pro- ducer, he would find it infinitely more advantageous to enter upon this competition wiihnew. designs of his own invention, than with mere copies of those of his British rival ; the former being always certain to be preferred to a copy of any old pattern, no matter how decidedly a favourite, Sect. 4. The Inability of Foreigners to compete with England in Cheapness of Production. Were the trade of calico printing one of manual labour alone, and in all its branches perfectly in- dependent of mechanical facility, the smallest pro- ducer in one of the obscure German states might no doubt be enabled to sell his modicum of manu- facture, at as low a cost as the largest house in Lancashire; but in a contest with machinery, even supposing the full cost to be the same to both com- petitors, the individual who can sell most must in- evitably be the one who can afford to sell cheapest ; * Mr. Ross, 6236-7-8, 6334, 6259, 1415-16-17, 1440, 7070. INJURY FROM FOREIGN COMPETITION. 146 therefore, in addition to her other advantages, Eng- land must have this superadded, that extent of production being the grand regulator of cost, she who produces for almost every market in the world must necessarily be enabled to sell at a lower price than they who produce only for their own, and even for the partial supply of it, take a proportion of her produce from herself. It is by this consideration that the danger of foreign competition is to be weighed, inasmuch as those goods which are suited for export, and which are always of a medium class as regards design, are produced chiefly by machinery, in the economical use of which we excel all other nations. The persons interested in the cotton trade in Bel- gium have laid down this principle with sufficient precision in a petition presented to their government this year, in which they detail the ruinous con- dition of their trade from foreign competition. The first signature to this document is that of M. de Smet de Naeyer, an eminent calico printer of Ghent. After alluding to the difficulties of their trade they say, that they find it decidedly impossible longer to sustain a contest "The struggle must be mortal to us in the long run (' la lutte nous devien- dra mortelle a la longue'). And how can it be otherwise ? We open our home market to our neighbours, whilst they carefully close their own against us. Here is one constant source of our in- feriority ; our rivals thus realising advantages at home, that enable them to come and undersell us in 146 GROUNDLESS APPREHENSION OF Belgium. THE TRUE ECONOMY OF ANY MANUFAC- TURE IS TO PRODUCE THE GREATEST POSSIBLE QUANTITY IN THE LEAST GIVEN TIME J and Our COQ- sumption is the least conceivable, reduced as it is by the importation of foreign goods among us. In calico printing the cost of engraving a roller is the same in England, France, and Belgium ; but with the same roller the English print five thousand pieces, the French five hundred, and the Belgian only fifty. Impressions upon cotton are upon the same footing with impressions upon paper ; the book which sells a vast number of copies can be sold for almost the price of the paper, and in like manner the printed goods which arrive in our market from England and France can be sold for the cost of the calico in Belgium."* This principle, as attested by snd experience in Belgium, must be equally applicable to every other country which shares in the production, in proportion to the relative numbers of its population. And s strongly is the superiority of England felt in this particular, and so sensible are they of the danger of competing with her in price, that British printed calicoes are actually prohibited in France, Austria, and Russia, and admitted into Germany and Belgium only under a duty of fifty dollars the hundred weight, which, on a medium piece of goods, the price * Memorial to the Belgian Government from the members of La Commission Directrice de V Association, en faveur de I'industrie Cotonniere. Ghent, December 15, 1839. INJURY FROM FOREIGN COMPETITION. 147 of which is above fourteen shillings, the entrance duty alone would amount to six ! Yet, notwithstand- ing this, our exports to Germany of cottons printed, dyed, and woven, appear to be no less than 26,000,000 yards per annum, a quantity which they must either consume at home, or dispose of to other countries on terms more advantageous than their own, else it is impossible to account for their importing nearly a similar amount on an average during the last ten years. It has been latterly in- creasing ; and I was informed at Leipzie, that at the autumn fair in the present year the quantity of Eng- lish calicoes sold was considerably higher than in any recent preceding one. Besides this, Mr. Barbour, who has the most ex- tensive experience of the foreign market, has stated in his evidence, that whilst French prints are pre- ferred in foreign markets for their superior excellence of design, their goods are frequently sent from these countries to England to be copied and reproduced for export, which we are enabled to do at a cheaper rate than the original printers ; a circumstance which is confirmed by the concurrent testimony of Mr. Potter and Mr. Schuster.* Mr. Thomas Lockett, however, another witness ex- amined by the Committee, in speaking with regard to the comparative cost of the production of calicoes on the Continent and in Great Britain, is of a contrary opinion, and says, that so far from the balance being * See Evidence, quuestions 8398, 8516, 1565, 1567, 1725, 1100. *9 148 GROUNDLESS APPREHENSION OF as had been stated to the Committee,* 25 per cent, in favour of England, it is more probable that our continental neighbours can now produce 25 per cent, lower than ourselves ; a conjecture which it is diffi- cult to reconcile with the fact that notwithstanding their high protecting duties, we have for the last ten years exported to these very countries of which he speaks, namely, France, Holland, Belgium, and Prussia, no less than 12,890,415 yards of printed and coloured calicoes on an average per annum. The goods so imported, it it is clear, must have been taken for one of two purposes, for home consumption or for transit and re-export to other countries. If the former, it is at once a sufficient answer to the alleged superiority in the cheapness of production on the side of our continental neighbours ; and if the latter, it must show an advantage on the side of British produce, when, notwithstanding protecting tariffs and the cost of importation, it is selected by them for the purposes of trade in preference to an equal quantity of goods of their own production. During the very period also to which Mr. Lockett refers, the returns to the four countries he has named (for whatever purpose our goods may have been taken, whether for transit or actual consumption), so far from a diminution, exhibit a very material in- crease in our exports of coloured and printed cotton goods, they having doubled their amount in the five years from 1830 to 1835, arising from 7,000,000, in * See Evidence, No. 8847. INJURY FROM FOREIGN COMPETITION. 149 round numbers, to 14,000,000 ; and in January 1840, showing a further addition to this of 2,000,000 more, as will be seen by a reference to the following ex- tract from the official returns. The amount of our exports of dyed and printed cottons to Prussia, Holland, Belgium, and France were, for the year ending 5th January 1831 7,052,116 yards. 1832 7,546,094 do. 1833 10,129,475 do. 1834 12,936,500 do. 1835 14,831,832 do. 1836 14,904,448 do. 1837 14,374,471 do. 1838 14,837,108 do. 1839 16,046,169 do. 1840 16,245,941 do. But totally apart from our exports to those coun- tries of the Continent which share with us in the manufacture of printed cotton, the fact of our supe- riority in economy of production must be clearly established by our successful and increasing trade with those other non-producing countries, whose markets are open to our rivals equally with our- selves, and which it would be competent to them to supply rather than us, were it the fact that they can undersell us, as has been alleged. So far from a diminution, our exports to these markets also (exclu- sive of our own colonies, to which our foreign rivals 150 GROUNDLESS APPREHENSION OF have not an equally free commercial access), on an average of the last five years, exhibit an increase, as compared with the average of the five preceding, of considerably more than 20,000,000 of yards, having been to the 5th January 1831 155,520,197 yards. 1832 134,399,645 do. 1833 138,444,572 do. 1834 175,170,099 do. 1835 205,928,130 do. 1836 200,848,927 do. 1837 209,382,728 do. 1838 160,395,430 do. 1839 228,844,344 do. 1840 226,219,826 do. The fact of English superiority in cheapness of production will be abundantly exhibited in detail in the documents which I shall presently present from the printers themselves of Belgium and Germany. Sect. 5. Groundless Apprehension of a Diminution in the general Foreign Exports of the Country, if the Property in a Pattern be confined to its origi- nal Inventor for Twelve Months. The apprehension of restriction, in the general ex- port of this country, goes upon two assumptions : 1st, that the registered proprietor of a design might be unable to supply it in such quantities as to meet INJURY FROM FOREIGN COMPETITION, &C. 151 the demand, (an idea which might be entertained if the process was by hand-labour, to which there is a limit and not by machinery, the production of which is almost unlimited, and by the use of which a single proprietor would have the power to meet any order, however extensive); or, 2dly, that the goods might be required for a foreign market upon an infe- rior cloth and at a lower price, and that the original producer might be unwilling to supply them in such a form, whilst the copyist would be prohibited from doing so, and the order would therefore remain un- executed. As to the second objection the present state of the law is fraught with serious injury to the trade in the very particular which would be unquestionably avoided by the amendment of the copyright system. It is quite true that a reluctance does exist on the part of a printer to put the same designs upon an inferior cloth which were originally made for a supe- rior one, but that he is driven to do so rather than let it fall into the hands of the copyist; although it would be much more for his advantage to produce two sets of designs, each suited to a particular cloth. In fact the system of republishing the same designs upon inferior cloth operates injuriously to the general interests of the trade, not only reducing the value of the original at home, but likewise impairing the high character of British first-class goods in foreign markets.* * See Evidence, 1655, 1098. 152 GROUNDLESS APPREHENSION OF The practical printers who have been examined state, that in point of fact, the higher class of art which enters into designs for the finer productions of the printer, are not suited to show to advantage upon coarser cloth or in inferior colours, and vice versa ; and that distinct classes of design are essen- tially necessary to distinct classes of production. This is the opinion of Mr. Leo Schuster,* a gentle- man largely engaged in the export both of fine and medium goods to foreign markets, and who declares in his evidence that " he has often found in his expe- rience that a copyist seeing a pattern very much admired, and which is well calculated for the finer fabrics, applies it to a low fabric of cloth, but it is not calculated for it, and he fails to produce the effect which is wanted ;" whereas " were he forced to invent his own designs he would suit them to the colours he is in the habit of printing and the cloth he is pi'inting upon." The result of which would be, not only that a greater number of designs would be produced, but likewise that they would be better suited to their purpose. Under this state of facts as to the capabilities of the trade, even did the manufacture not adapt itse'f, as is anticipated, to the new order of things, by pre paring separate classes of design for distinct classes of work, the probabilities are, 1st, that the original producer would have ample means to supply to the * See Evidence, 1655, 1094, 8395, 1440, 8421, 8394, 1246, 1093, 1093, 45. INJURY FROM FOREIGN COMPETITION, &C. 163 full extent, and at equally low prices, if not lower, any orders which might reach him from abroad ; 2dly, that even if he were unable to do so, it being still left open to all his competitors in the trade, instead of reproducing his identical design, as at pre- sent, to produce imitations of his styles equally suited to the prevailing taste of the market, and combining the additional charm of novelty, and that these would be taken instead, if not in preference, to the original ; thus the general trade of the country would remain uninjured, or would rather be increased than diminished in consequence.* Sect. 6. Goods of the same Style sufficient in executing a Foreign Order. In confirmation of this, it is stated by Mr. Joseph Lockett,t that in these medium styles, which form the great bulk of British exports in printed cottons, "identity of pattern is not an object;" and Mr. Barbour, an eminent exporter of British printed goods, states distinctly, as the result of his experience, that although repetitions of orders for the identical design are of constant occurrence, " he has had no difficulty whatever in meeting the case; similar styles and patterns can always be obtained upon a lower cloth, as well as upon that of a higher description. He does not conceive it at all essential that the pre- cisely identical pattern should be sent out upon a * Kerahaw, 4221. Lee, 5199. Ross, 5747, 5189, 5194, 5224. t 707S, 8531, 8398-9, 8040, et seq. 8491. J. Lockett, 6984. H5 154 GROUNDLESS APPREHENSION OF better cloth and on an inferior ;" and that " in cases where he has had the identical pattern ordered, he has always found it quite sufficient to send the same style of goods, but different in design, the nearest he could come on the cloth required." Thus, if a merchant received an order from his cor- respondent abroad for a lot of prints in style of PJate II. which were not at the moment in sufficient stock in the market, nor could be procured in sufficient time for shipment, experience shows that it would equally suffice to send the same quantity of Plate I. or Plate VJ., which, though differing in pattern, are of precisely the same " style" in design. Mr. Lucas, who is likewise engaged in the same trade, differs in some degree from Mr. Barbour on this point, and conceives that his house, if asked for the same pattern, must supply the identical one ordered, if it is to be got ; though this is not the in- variable rule of his establishment, and perhaps not " one quarter" of the orders sent for identical patterns are so executed; the remainder being supplied by goods of similar style and equal quality.* Mr. Lee,f who has put forward this point very prominently in his evidence, nevertheless declares, that the English printer has the power, if he has the inclination, to produce every description of cloth in demand, and admits that it is very unlikely that he would refuse, were a profit to be made by the manu- facture of either; and even should he do so, that goods * See Evidence, 6128, 6131, 6137, 6160. t Lee, 5179, 5185, 5401. INJURY FROM FOREIGN COMPETITION, &C. 155 " the nearest possible," though not identical or fac- similes, will answer the demand, as it is very rarely indeed, not in one instance in a hundred that the precisely same pattern is insisted on in sending an order from abroad, style and not pattern being the object sought. To the general export trade of the country, there- fore, it would appear that no injury is to be appre- hended, the grand result being the same, whether under the amended law the original producer should export the entire amount, a proportion of which he is now prevented from furnishing by the intervention of the copyist ; or whether in case the original producer failed to supply the identical pattern, the copyist should supply goods of the same style and quality, but of a different design, instead of re-printing, as he does now, the original invention of the first proprietor. 156 CHAPTER XII. THE ACTUAL CONDITION OF THE TRADE OF CALICO PRINTING IN BELGIUM. Sect. 1. Errors in the Statements made to the Com- mittee of the House of Commons respecting the state of Calico Printing in Belgium. HAVING thus disposed of the general arguments with reference to the comparative cost of production in England, and in those countries who compete with her, I shall now exhibit the errors and misrepresen- tations communicated to the Committee of last ses- sion on the copyright of designs. The two princi- pal witnesses upon these points against the measure, were Mr. Ross, himself a calico printer, and Mr. Lockett, an agent for the sale of machinery, both of whom expressly visited the Continent, with a view of reporting the result of their enquiries to the commit- tee. The delusions under which they returned I do not undertake to account for, but having myself visited the various works alluded to by them, and ob- tained from their proprietors documents corroborative of my own observations, I hasten to publish them, in the confidence that they must effectually disabuse the CALICO PRINTING IN BELGIUM. 157 public mind of every impression which the evidence of Mr. Ross and Mr. Lockett was calculated to convey. In Belgium, both Mr. Ross and Mr. Lockett* repre- sent the improvements in machinery, and the advance- ment and prosperity of calico printing generally to be most rapid and remarkable. The latter gentleman says in his evidence, that in Belgium there are jive print works, all using English engraved rollers, and regularly supplied them as well as with "mills," for the purpose of engraving them for themselves. That not only printing machines on the English principle, (but manufactured abroad) are in use in the principal es- tablishments, but likewise others not used in this country, such as the Perrotine, to facilitate block- printing; and the Guillioche for producing an imitation of " excentrics." These establishments Mr. Lockett represents to be of great extent and in full operation ; some of them producing work equal if not superior to any done in England, and exporting in considerable quantities in successful competition with her. He found, however, but one designer in Belgium, of very inferior abilities ; all their patterns being mere copies from French and- English designs, in the pro- portion of more than one-half of the former. On the whole, Mr. T. Lockett speaks, he says, within bounds, that in the power of production of every class of prints, the Belgians have an advantage over England of 10 per cent, in the article of printing, but that they * See Mr. Lockett's Evidence, 8244, 8300, 8552, 8560, 8613, 8622, 8203, 8325, 8343, 8679, 8686, 8688, 8296, 8309, 8347, 8168, 8171, &o. 158 CONDITION OF THE TRADE OF labour under a disadvantage to the same extent in the article of cloth, which is 10 per cent, dearer with them than with us. Mr. Lockett thinks that the extension of the copy- right would give foreigners, generally, an advantage in being enabled to send goods to foreign markets, which no party in England but one would be allowed to produce.* Mr. Ross's evidence likewise, profess- ing to be collected by himself upon the spot, coincides with, if it does not outdo that of Mr. Lockett. The notes of his journey he submitted as follows to the committee : " Works of A. Voortman, at Ghent : printing busi- ness now confined chiefly to the home trade; cut patterns, and at times do not print more than twenty- five pieces of a pattern ; cannot produce a sufficiently extensive assortment ; considerable quantities of prints smuggled in from England and France, on account of variety of patterns being required : M. Voortman states, that if parties will guarantee him a sale of 150 pieces to a pattern, he will engrave and print as many patterns as may be required, and undertake to supply any assortment of styles at 1 s. 2d. per piece less than the prices of English goods. The price would ave- rage ] 2s. 6d. or 14s. of the goods that I saw." "Coals of poor quality and dear, but great economy in the expenditure of them ; Wolfe's patent engine, made by Hall of Dartford, employed, which works high and low pressure by the same steam ; the steam econo- mized in every possible way, in the heating of the rooms, stoves, &c. j coals required in England to work * Mr. Lockett's Evidence, No. 8813. CALICO PRINTING IN BELGIUM. 159 a 25-horse engine in the ordinary way, will here work, with their superior economy, a 50-horse engine ; prime hoppers for feeding the furnace with coals ; new ar- rangement for fire bars (Walmesley's patent); one set only sent from England ; the Belgians are now con- structing them themselves." " Perrotine employed for printing two colours, to avoid the expense of roller- cutting ; their roller-work will average 100 pieces to a pattern ; it is their custom to copy English and French patterns ; saw two copies of English furnitures being cut on rollers from cloth patterns, both John Lowe and Co.'s I believe (of which firm Mr. Brooks is a partner, and has given evidence before this Com- mittee) ; many single coloured furnitures ; printed copies of English ; have a good engraving machine ; block-printing done chiefly by women ; can print five pieces per day of some styles ; the earnings of block- printers not more than Is. a day, or 6s. a week ; work long hours ; have adopted the most improved systems of English printers, and the latest inventions of the French." " The following is a memorandum I made of a visit to other works : Visited the works of M. de Hemp- tinne; not on so extensive a scale as Voortmari's, but prints a better class of work ; saw in his book copies of some of my own patterns ; informs me that orders for printed goods have been received at Bel- gium on English account, shipped to London in bond, and transhipped to Havanna. De Hemp- tinne is very wealthy, intelligent, and enterprising ; gave an order for rollers for handkerchiefs to an 160 CONDITION OF THE TRADE OF English agent in my presence ; does exceedingly good purples (union), equal to Hoyle's best in all respects, if not better ; patterns very similar to Hoyle's : this class of goods goes to Holland. Bel- gium now on the same footing with Holland, as re- gards duty, as England. Saw some single-coloured 9-8ths, admirably printed, equal to any French ; nearly all the styles that are printed are 9-8ths. Showed me the Bagdad style (shawl stripes), copied from the English ; copy anything that is good and will pay ; sometimes work for fifty pieces to a pat- tern, and think well of it: sometimes for less, but of good single colours may run off, on an average, perhaps one hundred and fifty pieces to a pattern ; works very compact, and no expense spared fair stock of rollers." The price of coals at Ghent, Mr. Ross states to be 40. to 50s. a ton for a similar quality to that which he obtained at home for 5s. 6d., and for which the average price in Lancashire would be from 5s. 9d. to 6s. ; and workmen of the same ability as those who receive in England 16s. a week, are paid but 6s. in Belgium for working a shorter time. Mr. Ross does not object to the principle of pro- tection, but to the amount now sought for ; and he considers it a hardship that foreigners should have the opportunity (as he imagines), offered to them to copy our patterns, which, if there were no protec- tion, the pirate at home would copy and supply upon cheaper cloth.* * Mr. Ross's Evidence, Nos. 5493, 5504, 5512. PRUSSIA, AND GERMANY. 161 The general inaccuracy of the gentleman's infor- mation may be inferred from the fact of his being under the delusion that grey calico is purchased in the Manchester market to be exported, in order to undergo the operation of printing in the United States* a matter of sheer impossibility, so far as profit is an object, or rather the avoiding of utter loss, from the almost prohibitory amount of the tariff upon this article. His only other tangible rea- sons for alarm are the extent of the export of copper rollers, which I have shown to have been of one style only, and to be already on the decline ; and the idea of English patterns being copied by foreigners, which their own letters exhibit to be a fallacy. The errors and inaccuracies as to facts in these statements of Mr. Lockett and Mr. Wood, and the absurdity of the inferences they have drawn from them, and the conclusion at which they profess to have arrived, are abundantly exhibited in the follow- ing letters of M. de Smet de Naeyer, and the other printers of Belgium, most of whom are the very in- dividuals named by Mr. Ross and Mr. Lockett, but with very different accounts of their actual works. TO M. DE SMET DE NAEYER. Ghent, Hotel de la Paste, Sept. 10th, 1840. MY DEAR SIR, One of the objects of my present visit to Belgium has reference to the cost of produc- * Mr. Ross, 5552. 162 CONDITION OF THE TRADE OF tion and condition generally, of calico printing in this country ; with regard to which some very startling opinions have been recently promulgated in England, for purposes of which it is unnecessary for me to trouble you with any details. Your great experience and personal knowledge, not only of the manufactures and commerce of Bel- gium generally, but particularly of calico printing, in which you have been so long engaged, induce me to apply to you for the information which I now require. I shall feel greatly obliged if you will take the trouble to let me know the facts explanatory of the following queries, which I think embrace all the points on which I am desirous to be informed. The names of your friends, M. Voortman and M. De Hemptinne, have been given as authorities for some of the statements alluded to, and a reference to them, should you desire it, will, of course, place you in possession of how far the assertions made in England are in conformity with their views, and opinions of the trade. I have preferred dividing the points on which I desire your information into distinct queries, in the hope that you will take the trouble, as far as possible, to let me have a distinct reply to each. I. It has been stated that the printers of Belgium possess such advantages over those of England, as enable them at the present moment to produce the general style of goods 10 per cent, lower than can be done in the latter country, and that this saving is made in the department of printing alone, independ- ent of the relative cost of the cloth. And, CALICO PRINTING IN BELGIUM. 163 II. That, taking into consideration the cost of the cloth, together with the printing, the Belgians can produce medium goods, worth nine or ten shillings a piece, at as low a price as any house in Manchester. III. It has been stated as a fact, from which it is designed that a general inference should be drawn, that a printer in Ghent asserted, that if a sale of 150 of a pattern were engaged to him, he would produce any of the ordinary styles in England, such as Swiss plates, and three, four, or five coloured muslins, at a price per piece Is. 2d. lower than they could be pro- duced in England. Is it your opinion that this could be done by the printers of Belgium generally ; or is there any one house there which possesses peculiar advantages, such as to enable it to do so exclusively? IV. It has been stated that English grey calicoes have been sent from London, on account of an Eng- lish house, to be printed in Ghent, and thence re- turned to London in bond for exportation to the Havanna ; and that this was done on cheaper terms than the goods could have been originally printed for in England. This statement has been made on the authority of M. De Hemptinne. Can you inform me whether it was a solitary experiment, or a general practice in the trade ? whether it was found to be a profitable speculation? It has also been stated, that one printer in Ghent, whose name has not been given, is in treaty with the Belgian government, to permit the regular importation, in bond, of English calicoes, in order to print, and so export them in bond. Can you inform me whether he has been per- 164 CONDITION OF THE TRADE OP mitted to do so, and whether his trade has succeeded in that branch ? V. It has been stated that the black and red style, though it is one ordinarily produced in England, can be had cheaper in France, and has in consequence been extensively imported into Belgium. VI. It has been stated that the Belgians are likely to undersell the English in exporting printed calicoes to Holland and to America. VII. It has been stated that such are the local advantages of Belgium, that it holds out a strong inducement to calico printers from England, to trans- fer their capital to this country, and to carry on their trade here in preference to England. Have you ever known any Englishman settle in Belgium as a calico printer, and was the speculation successful ? VIII. It has been stated that Belgium now exports printed calicoes to Mexico, United States, Havanna, The Hanse Towns, Hamburgh, Bremen, Stettin, and to Holland. Is this so, and are the exports of Belgium extensive and remunerating? IX. It has been stated that the import of English calicoes into Belgium is rapidly diminishing j that in the shops ten pieces of French or Belgium calicoes are to be seen for one English. X. It is stated that English designs are univer- sally preferred to French in Belgium. XL It has been stated that the printers of Ghent copy extensively from English designs, and that these copies are well liked, and sell in large quantities. XII. It has been stated that the price of coal in CALICO PKINTING IN BELGIUM. 165 Ghent is forty francs per ton, and that the carriage from Mons costs more than the price of the coal at the pit's mouth. Are these statements correct ? and what is the ordinary price of coals in Belgium ? XIII. It has been stated that the wages of a block printer in Ghent are Is. per day, or 6s. per week, for thirteen hours a day. Is this so? XIV. It has been stated that some of the calico printers of Ghent have not a single designer, but copy all their patterns from English or French designs. XV. Are engraved copper rollers extensively im- ported into Belgium for the use of calico printers ; and are the designs engraved upon them English, or are they excentrics ? XVI. Are machines for calico printing manufac- tured in Belgium, and are they of good construction or equal to English ? XVII. Are there but five print works in Belgium, viz. three at Ghent, and two in Brussels ? XVIII. It has been stated that in Belgium there is no law to confer a copyright on property in any design. Is this so ? XIX. Are English printed calicoes extensively smuggled into Belgium ? and at what cost can they be so introduced ? XX. What is the duty on the regular entry of English printed calicoes into Belgium ? XXI. What is the duty on French calicoes? I have the honour to be, Sir, Your obedient Servant, J. THOMSON. 366 CONDITION OF THE TRADE OF M. DE SMET TO MR. THOMSON. MY DEAR SIR, I have received the letter which you did me the honour to write to me on the 10th instant, in which you request me to reply to various questions it contains relating to assertions made in England, to which attempts are made to attach credit, and which tend to prove that the calico printers of Belgium possess obvious advantages over those of Great Britain. In order to destroy allegations which I consider as perfidious and false, I shall reply to them article by article. 1st, It is not true that the calico printer in Belgium is able to produce prints 10 per cent, lower than the English printer ; I reckon, on the contrary, that they are produced here, according to kind, from 20 to 25 per cent, higher than in England ; and that, without considering the price of the unbleached cloth, which is also obtainable at a lower price in England than in Belgium.' 2nd, No one having any idea of Belgian manufac- tures would attempt to prove that a Belgium printer is capable of producing a printed piece of middle quality wide and 24 yards long for 10s.; for with the exception of single colour buffs or orange, I know of none which costs less than 14s. to 16s. the piece; others sell for 20s. to 24s. 3rd, I cannot believe that a Belgian manufacturer is in a condition to produce either printed calicoes or muslins with four or five colours, even though he should have a certain sale for 150 piece of each pat- CALICO PRINTING IN BELGIUM. 167 tern, at \4d. lower than the English manufacturer; for such a person would have an exclusive preference in Belgium, and no one could compete with him ; his manufactory would be in constant employment, but we see, on the contrary, that for want of protection which the government persists in refusing, all the establishments of Belgium, without exception, occa- sionally stand still, more or less. 4th, I do not believe that any manufacturer of this country has received English unbleached calicoes, to re-export after printing to an English mart. It is true that several among us have made various attempts at exportation, which have been ineffectual from the loss incurred, on account of the impossi- bility of competing, in any market whatsoever, with English manufactures. In 1832, a company was formed for the exportation of white, dyed, and printed goods; it exported, by way of trial, to Portugal, the Levant, Singapore, Havanna, Mexico, Brazil, Lima, Valparaiso, and I believe even to the United States. Although I never joined in the venture, I have been assured by the Secretaries that the loss incurred in these various attempts amounted to more than 400,000 francs ! Shortly after the formation of this company, the King of the Low Countries increased the importation duty to 50 per cent, in his East Indian possessions on all Belgian cotton manufactures, because he thought he had discovered that the company was protected by the Belgian government. As to what relates to the demand made by a Bel- 166 CONDITION OF THE TRADE OF gian manufacturer of the government, to be allowed to import free of duty grey English calicoes, and afterwards to re-export them when printed, I can give no credit to it, on one account, because such a permission has never been given by the Government without having previously consulted the Chamber of Commerce and Manufactures of the kingdom, of which I have the honour to be a member ; and that, on the other hand, the Government would have been anxious to make known such a demand to all manu- facturers, in order to acquaint them, with the means of exportation, and thus exonerate themselves from the continual complaints with which they have been assailed. 5th, I remember to have seen red and black grounds, and black, red, and greens imported from France. The first pieces, which were of elegant pat- terns, were sold at high prices, as a new style ; but as the fashion changed in France more quickly than in any other country, I saw them soon afterwards among Swiss patterns, and as such sold at a low price. 6th, So far are Belgian prints from supplanting English prints in Holland, that we daily witness the contrary; the former abound in it, and are regularly sold at so low a price, that the transactions of my firm (De Smet freres) with Holland have almost en- tirely ceased. As to what relates to the competition of Belgian prints in the markets of the United States, it is entirely a fiction, and has never existed. CALICO PRINTING IN BELGIUM. U9 7th, Any English calico printer who would form an establishment in Belgium, would not gain any advantage over the manufacturer of the country ; he would be cruelly deceived, if he supposed that he could carry on his concern on the same scale as in England. A short time before the revolution, an establishment belonging to Mr. Cockerill, entirely English in its fitting up, superintended by an English- man, was built at Andenne,near Namur. The manu- factures were varied and considerable ; the patterns had even an English character. Their intention was so to diminish the general expenses by operations on a large scale, as to manufacture at a cheaper rate ; but as since the revolution of 1830 the con- sumption is confined to Belgium, which, since that period has been open to the fraudulent importations of all countries, this establishment has suffered the most disastrous reverses. A member of the Chamber of Representatives who inspected the accounts of this firm before liquidation of the advances which it received from the Belgian government, fully con- firmed the statement. To obtain repayment, the government urged the public sale of the establish- ment, which was bought in by Mr. Cockerill, and this manufactory has not since been employed. 9th, The importation of English manufactures into Belgium is so far from diminishing, that it is on the increase. During the first six months of the year 1840, there have been imported 17,OUO more pieces than in 1th, 1840. Gagthof zum, Goldenen A dler, im Deutschen Haute, Donofs Platz. MY DEAR SIR, I send you along with this the evi- dence given before the Committee of the House of Commons of England appointed to inquire into the propriety of extending the copyright of designs for calico printing in that country, and I would beg to direct your attention particularly to that portion of it which refers to the state of the trade in Berlin. You will find in it many assertions relative to the low condition of the art of design for that branch of manufacture in Prussia ; and as you, from your position, as connected with an institution especially founded for the promotion of art as applied to manu- factures, must have the best opportunity of knowing IN PRUSSIA, SAXONY, BAVARIA, ETC. 229 its real progress and advancement, lam particularly desirous to have your opinion as to the accuracy of the statements contained in the volume which I send. You will observe that in answer to question 8747, one of the witnesses states that he had from personal enquiry " ascertained that there was but one designer in Berlin, and he a Frenchman." And in answer to another enquiry (No. 8808-9), he says that there are from 12 to 15 calico printers in Berlin, who have not " a single designer among the whole lot, but are chiefly employed in making copies of French de- signs." May I ask whether this statement is in your opinion quite correct? And if it be the case that in their productions the calico printers of Prussia confine themselves solely to copy from the designs of France, and a few from those of England, may I ask you, to what circum- stance in the position of the three countries you ascribe so curious a fact ? From your extensive personal knowledge of the industrial arts, both in Prussia and in England and elsewhere, I would like also to be favoured with your opinion on one or two other points. And, 1. Whether you think, taking into consideration the relative circumstances of the two countries, the Prussian printers are able to produce printed calicoes cheaper than those of England ; or are likely to com- pete successfully with them in exporting to neutral markets ? 2. Does Prussia import printed calicoes at present for her own consumption, and from what countries, and of what description, fine or medium goods? 230 CONDITION OF CALICO PRINTING 3. Does Prussia export calicoes to neutral mar- kets, and what is the class and description of goods she can profitably send to them in competition with France and England ? Your answers to these enquiries, and your opinion on any other points that strike you in reading the evidence, will much oblige me. Yours, most truly, J. EMERSON TENNENT. To Professor Wedding, the Institute of Useful Arts, &c. P. S. As I am anxious to leave for Dresden to- morrow, your reply before evening would much oblige me. Berlin, 19th October, 1840. MY DEAR SIR. Soon after receiving your lines, posted from Treuenbrietzen, I wrote to M. Stephan, in order to send me the patterns, marked with prices, as he has promised. But as the time is very short, and the confusion in consequence of all the festivals very great, I am sorry not to be enabled to cor- respond with your wishes with regard to them. With respect to the questions, No. 8747 and 8808, 9. Mr. Lockett is quite wrong to suppose, that our printers have no designers, as well as that they merely copy French or English patterns. All the printers you have visited have from five to six designers, some German, others French (from Alsace), and they are, according to their skill and ingenuity, paid very high, from 800 to 1,500 dollars Prussian. A pattern IN PRUSSIA, SAXONY, BAVARIA, ETC. 231 designer must be assisted by different patterns, to be informed of the foreign taste as well as to get new ideas. In our institution we keep a Sunday-school, merely for instructing young printers and weavers in the art of pattern designing; and for the purpose, the Prussian government has published a work: Vorbilder fur fabricanten und Handwerkar, which you have seen : besides we have a very rich collection of French books, for instance, " les plus belles fleurs et fruits par tredoute," and then we get nearly every month patterns (printed and woven) from Paris, by the assistance of Mr. Hartman, who is very well known in Manchester, which are sent and communicated to our manufacturers, and afterwards used in the Sunday school. The taste is, amongst our ladies, very changeable, one year they prefer English, the next French. A most eminent pattern designer, as well of prints as of weaved goods, is Mr. Bb'tticher, professor of pattern designing at the institution ; he is also very well known as pattern designer of Berlin needle- work and carpets. Our printing machines are not all from England; they are only few of them English ; the same is the case with the engraving machines. Some are made, and very good, (decidedly with improvements, which I have not seen in England,) by Mr. Humel here; others are made at Mulhausen, at Prague (by Mr. Leitenberger); and our manufacturers rather now prefer to get their machines here from the Continent, (also from Ghent), than from England. The export from France, 232 CONDITION OF CALICO PRINTING Bohemia, and Belgium is not prohibited , and they are therefore not obliged to pay the high premium of 30 to 70 per cent., which is the custom in England to charge. It would be, as it had been, rather the con- trary, if the export of machinery from England had been free. But, by your prohibition, you have obliged our mechanics to erect machine for themselves with good taste, and by and by they are growing more ex to n.ive. and are managed with great skill and cleverness. At present a manufactory, (as a print work, spinning mill) is here nearly 70 per cent, dearer to erect, than in England. At first, it was want of money and con- fidence, but since few years, and I might say, since the beginning of building rail-roads, the money is easily got for manufacturing establishments. You find now cotton mills, sugar refineries, flour mills, &c., built by shares, which some years ago was quite impossible to undertake. OUR PRINTERS CANNOT PRODUCE THEIR GOODS AS CHEAP AS THE ENGLISH. Iii the fast place they must pay nearly from 5 to 6 per cent, interest for their capital; the cloth, the machinery, the coals are dearer. At present there is a duty of '2 dollars per cwt. on cotton yarn; and 50 dollars per cwt. on printed goods; WITH- OUT THE LATTER PROTECTION OUR PRINT WORKS WOULD BE OBLIGED TO SHUT UP. Since the opening of the frontiers, between the different states of the League, our print-works have been increasing, but the market is not supplied enough with home-made prints. During the last fairs of Frankfort, and of Leipzig, a great quantity of IN PRUSSIA, SAXONY, BAVARIA, ETC. 233 printed goods were imported from England, and as much as I know, the imports have been greater in the course of this year, than some years ago. The goods, which are chiefly exported to Prussia, you can judge ; for instance, in the warehouses of Mr. Bernhard Liebert, and some others in Manchester, Mr. Findeisen, (firm of S. A. Liebert.) We have exported, some years ago, some shawls and common handkerchiefs, to England and to Ame- rica, but at present we export none. Our chief places for producing printed goods, are in Silesia, Brieslau, and Reichenbach; here, Berlin, Potsdam, Charlottenburg, and Kopenick ; Eylenburg near Leipzig, Elberfeldt, Bonn, Neuwied, Gladback, and Crefeld. Believe me, that I remain, with the highest respect, My dear Sir, Your most obedient servant, WEDDING. ELBERFELDT. Mr. Lockett, in the course of his mission, visited Elberfeldt, in the ancient duchy of Berg, a town upon the Wepper, which, with Barmen, which is only separated from it by the river, but united by a bridge, contains upwards of 50,000 inhabitants, all busily engaged in manufacture of almost every des- cription in silk, woollen, linen, and cotton. It is, in fact, the most important manufacturing town in Prussia, second only, in this respect, zy second, to Berlin 234 CONDITION OF CALICO PRINTING itself. At this place, Mr. Lockett says,that he visited the works of Messrs. Bockraiihl and Co. and obtained all his information from them. I shall therefore take the liberty of inserting his evidence, sentence by sentence, and a letter of M. Bockmiihl addressed to Mr. Thomson, and which distinctly and cate- gorically refutes every assertion of Mr. Lockett alleged to have been made upon the authority of the writer himself! Committee Room, 26th May, 1840. 8705. Mr. W. Williams. Have you visited Elber- feldt 1 Mr. Lockett. Yes. 8706. Are there any print-works there ? I visited the works of Messrs. Bockmiihl and Co. 8707. Are they extensive? Yes, they are extensive. 8708. Long established IThey have been established many years. 8709. What do you consider to be their ability to pro- duce) in point of price, as compared with the calico printers of Lancashire? He told me distinctly that certain styles he could produce at less cost than we can in England. LETTER OF M. BOCKMUHL TO MR. THOMSON. SIR, You have communicated, to us, an extract from an enquiry into the subject of Copy- right of Designs, in which mention is made of our establishment. IN PRUSSIA, SAXONY, BAVARIA, ETC. 235 We remember that Mr. Lockett came to see us, in company with an English Professor (!)* and that these gentlemen asked us many questions, but it appears we were not well understood, for the manner in which our answers are repre- sented, is very incorrect. We particularly notice the following. House of Commons Report, page 502, number 8709. We did not say that we could manu- facture some articles at a lower price tftan England. Labour does not cost us so much, but coal is dearer, and general expenses greater these, and the duties upon every thing which we employ in manufacturing, increase the cost of our work. 8710. Is there a railway now in course of construc- tion from Dusseldorf to Elberfeldt ? Yes, principally for the conveyance of the coals to Elberfeldt, which is now the seat of considerable manufactures of cotton and other substances. 8711. Will that have the effect of reducing the price of coals at Eberfeldt ? It is distinctly the reason for which the railway is made. The railroad from Dusseldorf to Elberfeldt will never be used for conveying coal, the mines of which are in an entirely opposite direction. It would be more likely that coal should be con- veyed from Elberfeldt to Dusseldorf by the rail- way. * Mr. J. Riddle Wood of Mancheter. 236 CONDITION OF CALICO PRINTING 8712. Is machinery for printing purposes imported into Elberfeldt?Yes. 8713. From what countries principally, France or England ? The machinery employed at this establish- ment came all from France. 8714. Is there any duty paid in that country on the importation of machinery ? / believe, when the ma- chinery is such as cannot be made in the country, that the government gives an order that it be admitted free of*duty. 8715. Then do they get their machinery from France in preference to England, because they can purchase it cheaper in France ? It is because they consider they can get it cheaper ; but that is quite a mistake, as has now been shown to them, because print- ing machinery is allowed to be exported from this country, and an opinion has gone abroad on the Con- tinent for many years that all sorts of machinery were prohibited, when, in fact, printing machinery has been allowed to be exported since, I believe, 1825, under Mr. Hushisson. Government sometimes allows the free impor- tation of machines, if they are on an improved plan ; but subject to many restrictions. 8715. English machines are cheaper in that country than French ones in France ; the ex- penses of carnage are about equal; but the ex- penses of exportation from England, and pack- ing, are so enormous, that we are obliged to purchase them in France, with the exception of rollers, which we obtain from Manchester. IN PRUSSIA, SAXONY, BAVARIA, ETC. 237 8716. Are natives of the country employed in the engraving department at Elberfeldt? Yes; I was through the establishment, and examined it very atten- tively. There was not a single person there that could speak a word either of English or French; they were all Germans. 8717. Have English Engravers been formerly em- ployed there ? I do not believe they ever employed any English engravers : but the system of engraving which they practise is what the French got from us 14 years ago. 87168717. Granted. 8718. What is the class of prints produced there ? They do a good class of prints. When I say good, I mean such as the better class of people would use. 8719. Do they produce their own patterns, or do they copy from English or French? I do not believe they have a desire to do so ; for in going through the establishment I saw, I should consider, 30 or 40 pat- terns in preparation, and they were all of them copies of either English or French, or a mixture of both. 8720. Which do you consider was most extensively copied, English or French patterns ? / should con- sider the French were more copied than we were by this party, because the French naturally bring out a superior quality of print to what we do. 8721. But still they copy English patterns to a great extent ? Decidedly so. 8718, 8719, 8720. We sometimes copy the best productions of other countries, or adapt them to the taste of our own; but if we copy, they are 238 CONDITION OF CALICO PJUNTIXU always French designs, scarcely ever English ones, for the simple reason, that the latter do not suit the consumers of the country in which we carry on the greater part of our business. 8722. Are Turkey-reds a style of print produced at Eiberfeldt ? Yes, to a large extent. 8723. Do they produce beyond the wants oj the country, for exportation? They export to all parts of the world Turkey-red prints, and they speak in the most positive terms that they could do, and were selling them cheaper than we could produce them. 8724. Are you aware to what countries they export them ? They told me that they sent great quantities to the East Indies and to China. 8722, 8723, 8724. Few Turkey red prints are manufactured in our establishment, because it is difficult to compete with Switzerland. We have never exported a single piece. 8725. Do they produce other classes of prints as cheap at Eiberfeldt as they do in this country ? The single-colour styles they produce cheaper atid better than ice can, as regards the expense of printing. 8725. We admit that several articles of our manufacture, namely, the single colours, are pre- ferred by purchasers to those of England ; but we are very far from competing in price, especially whenever we are not protected by our import duty. We send English cotton yarn, by Ham- burgh and Berlin, into Silesia, to be woven. This enormous length of carriage increases the price of the cloth. Add to this the duty on the yarn IN PRUSSIA, SAXONY, BAVARIA, ETC. 239 and madder, and especially every thing employed in the establishing of machinery and the price of coal, which is from 11s. to 12s. per ton, and you will grant that we absolutely give up all idea of competition with the manufactures of England, on equal terms. We hope that the information which we have given you in all sincerity, will be sufficient for you, and we salute you, Sir, With esteem and consideration, BOCKMUHL FRERES, SCHLIEPER AND HECKER. Elberfeldt, 25th, Sept., 1840. If anything can be more complete than this exposure of error and misrepresentation, I confess I am at a loss to imagine it. In fact, a word of comment upon the entire of these intelligent and candid letters would be utterly superfluous ; they banish at one glance every idea of alarm for any possibility of successful competition with England on the part of the Prussians, and demonstrate the impracticability of the Prussian calico printer, producing a piece of goods at so cheap a rate as the English one,* till as Mr. Stephan quaintly * The works of Messrs. Bockmuhl produce annually from 40,000 to 50,000 pieces per annum. Their cloth is woven in Silesia, from English yarn. The wages of ordinary daily labour are from 8s. to 9*. a- week ; a block printer can earn 20*., receiving eightpence for some work, for which ten-pence is paid in England. Block cutters earn as much ; mill-makers, trained and educated on the spot, 30s. and upwards ; women a dollar and a half to two dollars, or l.v. 6d. to 6s. per week. 240 CONDITION OF CALICO PRINTING expresses it, the fuel which they import from Eng- land, can be laid down as cheaply at Berlin as at the pit's mouth, where it is raised in Lancashire or New- castle, till Prussia can attain, as if by intuition, that mechanical skill, which is the result of centuries of improvement and instruction in Great Britain ; and till the circumscribed population of the German League can exhibit as great a demand and con- sumption as the millions that people the colonies and dependencies of England. Nothing can more strongly demonstrate their wholesome terror of English competition than their formidable prohibi- tory duty of 71. 10s. per cwt. upon printed goods when printed, a protection without which Mr. Wedding de- clares, that " the print works of Prussia would be obliged to shut up;" and yet in spite of it all, English goods are poured in quantities year after year into their markets, and the amount sold at the fairs of Frank- fort-on-Oder, and Leipzic, was, according to M. Dan- nenberger, both greater in extent, and cheaper in price during the present year than in any preceding one. Export trade she has none, the experiment was made in the most ordinary articles, those which she could produce the cheapest, and proved an utter failure; in fact, so far from being able to produce for foreigners, M. Dannenberger demonstrates that she cannot produce sufficiently to supply her own demand at home, and whilst her fairs are supplied with medium goods from England, the wealthier classes, despite the higher price, and the prohibitory duty, take a con- stant supply from France. IN PRUSSIA, SAXOXY, BAVARIA, ETC. 241 This latter fact, too, is an honourable illustration of the legitimate empire and ascendancy of purity of taste and genuine beauty, as compared with the mere vulgar and sordid consideration of cost and price. With the uneducated and the impoverished mass, the latter is all in all ; and even with the wealthier, but less enlightened and intellectual classes, whose perceptions of elegance are dull and uncultivated, economy and cheapness will recommend a navy blue, or the com- monest Manchester piracy in preference to the more costly but delicate productions of Switzerland or Alsace. But there is still in every country a numerous rank whom refinement has taught to admire and to appreciate excellence, and to whom the difference of price between it and mediocrity presents no restraining consideration. Thus, whilst England, by her moderation in prices alone, is enabled to pour her homely produc- tions, her " dessins lourds," as M. Briavoinne describes them, into the fairs of Saxony and Prussia; France, bold in the consciousness of her superior taste and beauty alone, fearlessly enters the same market beside her, and obtains with facility, for an article of the same quality, but of infinitely finer design, a price which it is absurd and ruinous for her to presume to ask. Ex- tent of demand, it is true, is the grand secret of low- ness of price; it is the millions that consume, that enable the English printer to undersell all the world, not the miserable cheese-parings of differences in wages or facilities of fuel ; and yet France, with only thirty-six millions of consumers, enters the market successfully in competition with England, who has M 242 CONDITION OP CALICO PRINTING two hundred, and commands a triumphant preference by her beauty, where her rival is only tolerated for her humility of price. What then is to prevent England, by adopting the same means for cultivation and improvement as France, from attaining the same pre-eminence ? unless, as suggested by Mr. Brooks, the Frenchman has some " natural" organization for calico printing, which the Creator has withheld from us in England, some glands in the brain for the secretion of designs, which are only to be found in the natives of Paris and Mulhausen. England, with an equal copyright, a measure of protection and encouragement, such as exists in France, would speedily attain the same pitch of excellence and taste, and thus doubly armed with her own economy and her rival's beauty, would in a few years become the undisputed favourite in every market in the world. When at Berlin I took occasion to visit the prin- cipal works there of Messrs. Nauen Lowe, Messrs. Goldschmidt, and M. Stephan ; and my observations and enquiries, answered by the proprietors them- selves, served in every instance, to disprove the repre- sentations of Mr. Lockett, and to confirm the accuracy of M. Dannenberger and Professor Wedding. Mr. Stephan's establishment is but small as yet; it con- tains but forty tables ; and at the period when Mr. Lockett states that he visited Berlin for the purpose of investigating the extent of the works, Mr. Stephan says he had but four or five tables erected, though Mr. Lockett gave him credit for one hundred and fifty ! Ex uno disce omnes. IN PRUSSIA, SAXONY, BAVARIA, ETC. 243 1 The works of Messrs. Goldsch mid t are extensive, but ill arranged and irregular j the number of hands they employ, for want of system, creating a confusion and disorder in every department, very unlike an English manufactory. Like the generality of the German printers, they have no division of labour, but import their yarn from England, at a duty of two dollars per cwt., and get it woven in Silesia, to avoid the still higher duty of fifty dollars, if they imported the cloth ready made : thus loading the grey calico with all the increased costs of sea and land-carriage charges and insurance, before it comes to be printed at all. Their machinery is chiefly English, bought at an expense of from 40 to 70 per cent, above the ordinary price in England ; and their wages for engraving, which is all done on the works, are from 8 to 10 and 12 dollars a-week, according to the skill of their artists. Mr. Goldschmidt, who accompanied me over the works, told me that they had ceased to take engraved rollers from England ; that they had only been ordered at any time for sake of the excen- tric groundworks, and by no means from any desire to have English designs, as they can only make use of French ; but that the taste for excentrics had now exhausted itself in Germany, and he had refused to give any new orders to two agents of two houses who were at that moment in Berlin to try to make sales. The fuel which they were using was turf, of which there were piles of enormous extent on the premises. They employ five designers, who receive from 14 to 16 dollars per week; but their produc- 244 CONDITION OF CALICO PRINTING tions were of a very inferior class, and their execution in every respect slovenly and inelegant. Instead of singeing the grey calico before printing, as is done in England, they use the tondeuse, a species of shears, which not only cuts off any flaw from the cloth, but, as it takes off at the same time any knots or inequalities of the thread, is liable to cut it into small holes wherever these occur. Messrs. Nauen Lowe rejected the use of this machine in their works altogether for this reason ; and yet its adoption is one of the instances of improvement in mechanical pro- cesses cited by Mr. Ross, as one of his incentives to alarm for the progress of calico printing in Bel- gium. Messrs. Goldschmidt showed me specimens of some orange and black shawls which they once exported to North America, and which constitutes " the export trade of Prussia," alluded to by Mr. Lockett ; they were such articles as would be utterly unsaleable in a booth at an English fair, so wretched is their taste and texture ; Mr. Goldschmidt told me they sold for about four dollars a dozen, a shilling a piece, but that they have latterly discontinued exporting them the entire of their trade being now for home consump- tion within the Prussian League. The works of Messrs. Nauen, Lowe, and Co., for- merly in the possession of M. Dannenberger, are in every respect, except their extent, the very antipodes of the Messrs. Goldschmidt's. Their arrangements are most systematic, and their productions the very finest in Prussia. In the range of buildings we can see IN PRUSSIA, SAXONY, BAVARIA, ETC. 245 the grey cloth enter at one end, and we can trace it from room to room through all the processes of singe- ing, washing, bleaching, dying, and printing, till it issues a finished article at the other. In block print- ing, which is chiefly manual labour, they told me it was their opinion they could produce as cheap as the English, from the lower rate of wages to that peculiar branch ; but in every thing produced by machinery, or connected with it, it was in vain to attempt compe- tition with us their machines were dearer, their engraving higher, their workmen more expensive, their fuel double the price, and their cloth woven in Silesia, from English yarn, much more costly, whilst their market is but a fraction as compared with the consumption of Great Britain. The consequence is, that they with difficulty hold their ground at home, but they have utterly abandoned all idea of exporta- tion. Thus in the two establishments which represent the extremes of production in Berlin, Messrs. Gold- schmidt's, whose goods are the cheapest, and Messrs. Nauen Lowe the most expensive, the proprietors of both frankly and unreservedly admitted the utter hopelessness of any successful rivalry with the calico printers of England, in exporting to other countries, or even by prohibitive duties of keeping them out from a lucrative competition in the markets of GERMANY herself. Sect. 2. Saxony. During the last summer I visited Saxony, and spent some time at Chemnitz, which is the chief seat of its manufactures of machinery, hosiery, cotton, 246 CONDITION OF CALICO PRINTING and calico printing. The latter art it derived from Augsburg in the early part of the seventeenth century, when it was first established in the Erzegeberge and Voigtland, and its first essays were in printed muslins for turbans, which were sent to the East. But the trade was utterly ruined by the Seven Years' War, one printer in Chemnitz being compelled by Frederick the Great to contribute no less than 10,000 dollars to- wards its expenses in a single year. On the restora- tion of peace, numerous establishments sprung up at Plauen, Pirna, Frankenburg, Zittau, Chemnitz, and Grosenhein, where a print work was erected by the Electress Marie Antonine, in 1763, which afterwards became the property of the crown, and was sold to a private speculator in Leipzic. It is still in existence on a small scale. The interference of government, however, accompanied as it always must be by special favors and privileges, tends to the ruin of that healthy competition on which all manufacturers must depend for their advancement, and it was speedily withdrawn in Saxony. Chemintz however continued to be its chief seat, and had in 1792 eight establishments, but on a small scale, with not more than 140 tables in all. The wars of the French revolution were alter- nately productive of prosperity and ruin to Saxony, at one time giving her a large share of the supply of Ger- many, and at another sweeping'away her artizans and establishments in the vortex of commotion. From 1807 to 1814 she had a considerable trade in exporting head- dresses for the Clergy to^ Russia, and during the continental system her presses were seldom idle ; the IN PRUSSIA, SAXONY, BAVARIA, ETC. 247 prohibition of English goods enticing them into an extension, that on the deposition of Napoleon served to precipitate their ruin by the pressure of their own weight. In 1812, there were at Chemnitz 616 tables ; at Frankenburg, 95 ; Zwickan, 9 ; Penig, 27 ; Pirna, 72; and in a number of minor places about 40 more. In 1814 there may have been from 900 to 1000 tables in all Saxony, which were speedily reduced when the markets became deluged with the hitherto pent-up productions of England, the low prices of which swept all before them. In Chemnitz many establish- ments closed, and the average for a number of years did not exceed 400 tables, which however gradually increased as the great fairs of Leipzic recovered their ancient vigour; and when, in 1834, Saxony joined the Prussian League, Chemnitz had between 500 and 600 tables. This step, whilst it cut her off from the markets of Bohemia and Austria, admitted her to whatever share she could secure in those of Prussia and Southern Germany; and in 1837, the number of establishments throughout the kingdom rose to 30, and the number of tables to about 7,800. One circumstance however places it at present out of the power of Saxony to meet the competition of Berlin, much less that of England, her works are still carried on almost exclusively by hand and block- work, and the use of machinery has been but imper- fectly introduced, the cylinder work, where the latter is employed at all, being almost confined to one colour, and the others, if required, filled in with the pencil and the hand. At Chemnitz I visited the works 248 CONDITION OP CALICO PRINTING of Messrs. Pflugbeiland Co. the largest establishment in Saxony, employing about 609 hands for printing alone, independently of those engaged in preparing the cloth which is woven upon the premises. They have but one machine made at Chemnitz, to print in three colours, but they have never used it with more than one; a perrotine made at Berlin, which although it cost 200Z. they prefer to the use of the cylinder. Their engraving is done upon the premises ; the wages given to the engravers vary from 3Z. to 41. a-week, and yet they find this more economical than to import engraved rollers from England, which they have dis- continued. A block- printer earned on the works 4 dollars a-week, whilst a machine-printer could not be had under 6 or 7. They have four designers, chiefly employed in making imitations of the French ; and French goods, they informed me, such is the appre- ciation of their style, were largely imported, notwith- standing the duty of 50 dollars the cwt. English goods also were in extensive demand, although being of medium quality, the prohibitive duty col- lected by weight fell heavier on them by far, than on the light and elegant fabrics of France. Prom Chemnitz they export none. Some years ago they made an attempt to send some handkerchiefs to the United States, but the venture was unsuccessful, and the speculation abandoned. Almost their entire production is in block work, and chiefly in large patterns for mousselines de laine, shawls, and transparencies. In the latter article par- ticularly, they have had a successful trade for some IN PRUSSIA, SAXONY, BAVARIA, ETC. 249 years, putting in as many as 10 and 15 colors by the hand, and selling them at 6*. for a yard and a half. Their block cutters earn from 6 to 7 dollars a week. The proprietors complained to me most sensi- tively of the additional cost which the incessant demand for novelty imposed upon them, and the impossibilty, selling as they do to a very limited circle, to make one design pay itself before it be- comes necessary to produce another. The sale of 300 pieces of any one design, they considered most extensive and successful. Their coals from Zwichau, cost 14 greschen the scheflfell, above Is. 9d. for 1771bs. ; and their steam- engine made at Chemnitz, consumes 11 to 12 Ibs. per hour per horse power. Their wages, generally, notwithstanding their inferor work, were as high as those of Zurich and Alsace; and their cloth cost for medium prints, 6 dollars for a piece of 40 yards long, and from 32 to 34 inches wide, an inferior and lower article, 20 to 22 inches wide, and 30 yards long, could be had so low as If dollars, or above 5*. In Chemnitz, there are five other considerable esta- blishments, and some small, but their united produc- tion does not exceed 100,000 pieces per annum, an amount so trifling as to excite a smile when I men- tioned the idea of their arriving at a successful competition with England in calico printing. At Chemnitz, I had the pleasure to make the acquaintance of M. Wieck, a gentleman of extensive commercial and statistical attainments, and author of a work upon the manufactures of Saxony, which is M 5 250 CONDITION OF CALICO PRINTING held in high repute throughout Germany, entitled " Sachsen manufacturund Fabrickwesen."* On leav- ing Saxony, I addressed to him some queries with regard to its industry generally, and amongst other branches, that of calico printing ; and from his answers addressed to me at Hamburg, I shall beg leave to make here an extract in reference to that branch of trade. Chemnitz, 2lst October, 1840. MOST HONOURED SIR, According to my promise, I hand you the answer to your queries respecting Saxon industry, and hope they may be satisfactory. (Here follows the observation on Silver mines, Iron wotks, Cotton spinning, linen weaving, hosiery, fyc. fyc.) You ask how many printing establishments there are in Saxony ? there are 15 print works in Chemnitz, with about 600 tables, and about as many others in the other Saxon villages, with perhaps 400 tables more. Does Saxony import any printed calicoes from France 1 Very little. Does she import from England? A considerable quantity. From what you know of the relative cost of production in the two countries, do you consider that the printers of Saxony can produce their goods CHEAPER than those of England, and that they would compete with them successfully in exporting to neutral markets? The goods printed by hand, (block printing,) is cheaper in Saxony than in England, for such articles as handkerchiefs, and goods with five or six colours, (mille fleurs) ; but with regard to roller printing, Saxony cannot compete with England in neu- Chemnitz, 1840. IN PRUSSIA, SAXONY, BAVARIA, ETC. 251 tral markets, because England, having so many chan- nels for selling goods, can produce a vastly greater number of impressions of one and the same pattern. Scarcely is the Prussian League able to stand against the English printed goods even in its own markets. I have the honor to be Your most humble Servant, FREDERICK GEORGE WIECK. To J. Emerson Tennent, Esq. Hamburg. Sect. 3. Bavaria, Wurtembura, and Hamburg. Mr. Lockett, in concluding his evidence before the Committee, on the condition of calico printing gene- rally in other countries, summed up the result of his " experience" and observation, not only in Prussia and Belgium, but in the other states of Germany, by a startling assertion of his full conviction that " from the experience he had had, he should say that printed calicoes can now be produced in foreign countries ge- nerally 25 per cent, cheaper than in Great Britain."* In passing through Bavaria and Wurtemburg, I have borne this bold assertion in mind, and have not failed to make due enquiry from those engaged in the Question by Mr. W. Williams. It has been stated to the Com- mittee that prints are produced 25 per cent, cheaper in this country than they can be produced in foreign countries. Does your experience enable you to say whether this statement is accurate 1 Mr. LOCKETT From the experience I have had, I should say that it is more likely that they can produce them 25 per cent, cheaper than us, than we J5 per cent, cheaper than they. Evidence, Question 8847. 252 CONDITION OF CALICO PRINTING trade in these countries also as to its accuracy ; and although Mr. Lockett declares that his assertions are the consequence of his " experience" the result of the enquiries which I have made of the printers them- selves, proves his representations to be utterly at variance with the real facts. Bavaria was the earliest seat of calico printing in Europe, and Augsburg may in fact be said to have been its cradle, whence it was imported to England and France; Alsace and Switzerland, even so late as the seventeenth century, deriving a portion of their supply from the printers of the Imperial city. With the improvement of other states, however, Bavaria of course lost her superiority, and at the present moment Augsburg retains but a remnant of its ancient staple industry. There are still three extensive printing- houses, that of Messrs. Schoppler, Hartmanu and Co., which produces annually about 45,000 pieces, and those of Messrs. Dingier and Messrs. Froehlich, whose joint production would amount to about the same. The entire quantity printed at Augsburg would not exceed 100,000 pieces per annum, and those only of a medium quality, designed for home consumption alone. Export trade they have none, unless a trifling quantity taken in Saxony, where the Bavarian prints are in somewhat better esteem than their own, owing to their superiority in colours and in cloth. The original style, which still bears the name of Augsburg, consists of flowers, thrown upon a dark ground, and is still a favourite, from its home- IN PRUSSIA, SAXONY, BAVARIA, ETC. 253 liness and economy ; but for the designs, even for these, the Bavarian printers are indebted to the French, whose patterns are extensively copied and adapted to their purposes. They have no law of copyright, the facility with which they ap- propriate the superior inventions of the French, doing away with any temptation to prey upon the production of one another. Their engraving they have partly executed at Augsburg by artists educated in France, and partly received from England. Their machinery is of the simplest kind ; they employ no steam, using only water power applied by means of the Turbine. The perrotine has not yet been intro- duced, and the entire of the work at the most exten- sive house in the trade, that of Messrs. Schoppler, is done by 1 one-colour machine, and 3 of two, three, and four colour, made in France. The wages paid at this establishment are for block-printers 24 kruizers, or about eightpence per piece of 30 yards ; and for machine printers from 8 florins, (about 13s. 4d.) to 5 florins a week. In the kingdom of Wurtemburg a trifling trade is carried on in printed calicoes, but so inconsiderable as hardly to deserve mention. There are two small establishments, one of Messrs. Mebold & Co. at Heydenheim, and another of Messrs. Schellhorn & Co. at Memmingen j but their productions are of the most ordinary kind, and suited only for the homer consumption of their own wretched peasantry. Hamburg is another quarter to which the observa- tion of Mr. Lockett is designed to apply, that Conti- 254 CONDITION OF CALICO PRINTING nental printers can undersell those of England by 25 per cent.* I took occasion in November last, when in Hamburg, to make some inquiry as to the condi- tion of the trade, and found it as might be expected in so circumscribed a field, trifling and unimportant, the circumstance of foreign calicoes being admissible into the city at almost nominal rates, bringing it into * Chairman. 8571. Are English prints imported into Belgium and the Hanse Towns pretty extensively at present ? Mr. Lockett. There are not many English prints imported into Belgium at present. 8572. You separate Belgium from the generality of the Hanse Towns? Mr. Lockett. Certainly; Belgium is an exporting country to the Hanse Towns. 8573. What towns do you include as the Hanse Towns ? Mr. Lockett. Hamburg, Bremen, and Stettin up the Elbe. (Mr. Lock- ett must be under some mistake, as Stettin is in Pomerania, at the mouth of the Oder!) 8574. Are those producing countries? Are there calico printers in those towns ? Mr. Lockett. There is one calico printing establish- ment at Hamburg, rather more than four miles from Hamburg, and he is printing good styles of work, fine Mousseline de Laines, and Challis, and such articles as sell amongst the higher class of that country. 8575. The duty, I believe, on printed calicoes into all the Hanse Towns, is alike ? Mr. Lockett. There is a very small duty into Hamburg, notwithstanding which, the establishment for calico print- ing there is doing a very good business. This passage is full of inaccuracies instead of but ONE printing establishment at Hamburg, there are four. That specially alluded to by Mr. Lockett, from its being at a distance from the city is that of M. Von Lenerche, but as the territory of Hamburg extends but a short way beyond the walls, the works if " rather more than four miles distant," would be far into the dominions of the king of Den- mark ! M. Von Lenerche's works are a short distance beyond the Jungfernstierj, and his productions, so far from being of the class described by Mr. Lockett, are confined to medium styles, of superior execution. IN PRUSSIA, SAXONY, BAVARIA, ETC. 255 too direct competition with France and England to admit of a vigorous and healthy manufacture within itself. Of four small establishments, (three of them unimportant,) the principal is that of M. Von Lenerche, which keeps only 3 machines and 93 tables em- ployed. M. Von L. informed me that his produc- tions are only of medium goods, and as the English excel in this peculiar department, that his aim is to imitate and catch their style ; that for the purpose he employs his own designers, and by keeping up a suc- cession of novelties, is able to hold his ground in goods which are produced by block work and hand labour, which is cheap at Hamburg ; but that in any thing which has been already published in England, or produced there by machinery, he is utterly unable to sustain a competition against the printers of that country. The cost of machinery, the high value of fuel which is imported from England, and the im- mense wages of skilled labour, place it out of his power, with a circumscribed demand, to meet British goods in the market. These statements with regard to the state of calico printing in Germany, made, not on surmise, or even by venturing an opinion after personal inspection, but on the authority and statements of the printers themselves, exhibit how very little England, if she be but just to herself, has to apprehend from foreign competition in that quarter. For half a century, and in spite of more powerful expedients that Germany can now resort to, England has succeeded in render- ing her produce indispensable in her markets. Forty 256 CONDITION OF CALICO PRINTING years ago Germany was traversed from the Elbe to the Alps by travellers from Manchester, who attended at the great fairs, visited the chief cities, and traded even with the principal shopkeepers of the leading towns. The printers of Lancashire partook largely of this trade, which continued in this form till superseded by resident German agents in Manches- ter ; and these again by the establishment of German houses for the purchase of that vast variety of fabrics of which Manchester had become the grand em- porium. Even the establishment of the Continental system of Napoleon could not shake off this hold which Eng- land had acquired upon the Continental markets. The effects of that system on Continental industry has been questioned, on the slight ground that its operation was twofold and contradictory that whilst it enhanced the price of those articles which England was accustomed to supply, it also raised the price, and cut off the source of the chief and indispensable materials for their production at home. It is diffi- cult, for instance, to conceive that calico printing could make much progress in a country where cotton was four shillings a pound, and indigo two guineas, as was the case for a short period in France. Yet this could not and did not long endure, and calico printing increased and flourished in Alsace. It was after the issuing of the Berlin and Milan decrees, that the cautious and sagacious Oberkamp established his spinning mills at Essonne. In the countries, east of the Rhine, however, and IN PRUSSIA, SAXOXY, BAVARIA, ETC. 257 further removed from the focus of Napoleon's des- potism, these extremes were less experienced, and it cannot be doubted, that the effects of that magnificent plan for ruining England by a deadly blow at her industry, the force of which is not yet spent, was an universal acceleration of the industrial power of the Continent, which in Germany was principally mani- fested in Saxony. The events of 1814, and the distribution of the empire of Napoleon into its original elements, whilst it left unimpaired and undiminished the impetus which his policy had communicated to the industry of each individual state, had the effect, at the same time, of converting their previous co-operation into competi- tion, and erecting every manufacturing country of Germany into so many mutual rivals, each struggling by its own tariffs and bye-laws to exclude and em- barrass its neighbouring opponents, and all thus in- directly conspiring to perpetuate the supremacy of the manufacturers of England and of France. As a corrective to this dangerous evil, and with a view to give an impulse to the industry of each German state by a fusion of the commercial interests of all, a mag- nificent experiment has been attempted in the estab- lishment of the Prussian Commercial League, the obvious design of which is to open freely to the enter- prise of the most limited principality, the entire markets of the confederation from the shores of the Baltic to the Alps, and at the same time to exclude their more dangerous rivals in Great Britain and elsewhere, by the barrier of almost impassable duties. 258 CONDITION OP CALICO PRINTING, ETC. But whilst every communication from Prussia, from Saxony, and elsewhere, concurs in the same assurance of the difficulty with which, at the present moment, their calico printers are sustained against the compe- tition of Englishmen at their very doors, '^even in arti- cles loaded with a duty such as against any other than British enterprise, would be a literal prohibition, the future production, and consequently the cost of Ger- man goods must still, under any aspect of internal improvement, be limited and restricted to that standard, which is invariably adjusted by consump- tion, and the Prussian League with her aggregate population of 26,042,333 must rely upon some sources of superiority yet undiscovered, before she can hope to out-rival England, with her almost ani- mated machinery, her prodigal profusion of fuel, her matchless dexterity of labour, her unexcelled attain- ments in science, and her undisputed power of sup- plying with her productions, dominions and colonies, upon which the sun himself never sets, but leaves her fertile territories in the west, only to shine upon two hundred millions of her subjects and dependants in the eastern hemisphere. 259 CHAPTER XIV. REGISTRATION. THE extent to which the trade generally have availed themselves of the registration system has as yet been very limited, as will be seen by a reference to the Returns, and the Registrar's Report. The objections taken to the present plan, as constituted under Lord Sydenham's Act, are chiefly on the grounds of its publicity its expensive fees its complexity and trouble in attaching the name of every proprietor in a firm, together with dates and other particulars, to the end of each piece printed but, above all, the worthless modicum of protection which the law holds out, in return for compliance with these rigid preliminaries. It is somewhat curious too, to observe in these returns, that the number of designs registered, is almost proportionate to the quantum of copyright awarded. Metallic de- signs which have three years, are the most freely enrolled to secure that term. Stained papers, which have twelve months, seem equally anxious to accept it; and calicoes, by far the most numerous hi amount of production, is the least numerous in the quantity re- 260 REGISTRATION. gistered, owing to their valueless copyright of but three months. For each and all of these, remedies have been suggested to the Committee, and have been already, or are now in process of being adopted in the man- agement of the office, and such alterations being once effected, no objection exists on the part of the Calico- printers to adopt the system. Section 1. As to Publicity. It was stated that the secrecy observed in the French system where the patterns are deposited in sealed packets inaccessible to the public, unless in case of a dispute as to originality, affords a security to the inventor against copying, which he could not have if his designs were to be exposed to general inspection, on the payment of a trifling fee, as was then the practice of the registrar, but has been since abandoned, and his deposits in the office closed to the public. On the other hand, perfect publicity is contended for by the opponents of copyright, in order to enable a printer, before he publishes a design, to be assured that it has not already been claimed or registered as the property of another; a circumstance liable to happen when patterns are purchased from indepen- dent designers, and are not produced by those in the exclusive employment of the printer himself, although Mr. Kershaw* declares that "secrecy" in his own business is essential to security, and has * Kershaw, 3672. REGISTRATION. 261 tended to protect his patterns from the approaches of the pirate; and Mr. Ross* declares that the trade generally are resorting to the same expedient for their protection. An open registration, where every person's patterns and styles might be seen and inspected for a shilling, would expose the provision and resources of that portion of the trade which invents, to the depredations of that which pirates. It would, in fact, defeat the intention of the bill altogether; for as nobody in such case would register, and consequently nobody would be protected this would amount to a virtual repeal of the three months' protection they already have.'f- Section 2. The Fee. The amount of the fee, which is now a guinea, has been also seriously condemned, as imposing too heavy a tax on parties who produce from 500 to 1,000 designs in the course of a year, and who might, but for this heavy charge, be disposed to secure a property in them by compliance with the terms of the Registration Act. These fees, it is the opinion of Mr. Long, the regis- trar, may be reduced, compatible with the main- tenance of the office from the proceeds, to a very moderate sum, payable on the deposit of each design. It has also been suggested that some evidence of originality should accompany the original deposit. Ross, 5568. 5571. t Mr. 1 homson's Letter to Sir Robert Peel, p. 23. 262 REGISTRATION. But this seems impracticable, without constituting the registrar the judge in such a case. Sect. 3. The Stamp. The stamp on the end of each piece is conceived by the printers to be a matter of importance to them as a protection, but they object to its present com- plexity, as at once an unnecessary trouble imposed upon them, and such a defacement of their goods as renders it totally inapplicable to several descriptions of articles produced in the course of their trade. In lieu of it, they suggest the substitution of a cypher composed of different letters, understood mu- tually by themselves and the registrar, and cor- responding to a similar mark in his books to desig- nate the name of the proprietor, and the date of regis- tration. The substitution of such a cypher would also ob- viate the objection which exporting merchants feel to allow the names of those from whom they purchase to go abroad uporj their goods, and thus in some degree lay open to the public the sources and system of their trade, and which now induces them to cut off the names in fenting them, previous to packing, as the introduction of the cypher in lieu of the present stamp would give no intelligible information to the public to the prejudice of the merchant.* Another objection is the deposit of three copies of each pattern or article registered, the expense of * See the Evidence of Mr. Lucas, 6086. REGISTRATION. 263 which, in some cases, as that of shawls and other costly articles, is conceived excessive. But as speci- mens of the cloth itself, in most cases and drawings or tracing may be substituted in others, compatible with the objects of the register, this objection is likewise surmountable. Another objection is, the trouble requisite to stamp every piece of goods protected, and the liability and consequences of error ; but it is conceived, that the security offered, and the advantages derivable to the printer, are an equivalent for some inconvenience or additional labour in this respect. 264 CHAPTER XV. OPINION OF THE TRADE AS TO THE EXPEDIENCY OF EXTENDING THE COPYRIGHT FROM THREE MONTHS TO TWELVE. IT now remains but to add a few words as to the nature of the opposition which the introduction of this measure has encountered from those who are themselves embarked in the trade. It may be na- turally inferred that those who are desirous of sub- stantial protection for their designs, are those who know by experience .the labour, the study, and the cost of producing them ; and it may with equal pro- bability be suspected that those who are opposed to the protection of this species of property have them- selves some latent intention of infringing and appro- priating it. But as I have before said, there is a third class, who have been misled by false representations, to conceive an alarm for some distant danger to be apprehended from it, and who have mistakenly joined the copyist and the pirate in their unjustifiable resistance to an equitable and honest proposition. In no one instance, however, are those of this latter class the producers of the finer range of designs, or such as are exposed to any serious danger from the assaults THE OPINION OF THE TRADE, ETC. 265 of piracy ; and in this is, perhaps, to be found one source of that indifference which designing misrepre- sentations have alarmed into hostility. It is likewise a remarkable and most suspicious fact, that the existence of piracy is confined to Man- chester alone, and not from Manchester alone have come the petitions against the improvement of the copyright law. From Scotland every single petition is for extension, 64 out of 67 printers being in favour of the measure, and the others merely neutral. In Ireland every printer is favourable. From London and every part of England where the manufacture exists, peti- tions have been presented praying for extension, and even from Manchester itself the most pressing repre- sentations have been made by the great body of persons engaged in the trade, whilst the opposition is confined to those houses, either directly implicated in piracy, or those who, though untainted with it them- selves, and denouncing it as immoral in principle and disreputable in practice, have been deluded into an apprehension of some undefined danger in its vigorous and effectual suppression. Those printers who think humility of price is the sole and only introduction to public favour, are op- posed to the alteration of a law that in general gives an unjust advantage to the pilferer over the honest producer. Those who see taste and superior elegance opening the door to French manufactures in every quarter of the globe, perceive their own inferiority, and whilst they are conscious of their powers and 266 THE OPINION OF THE TRADE ON THE capabilities, pray only for protection and encourage- ment to develope them. The petitioners for copyright are those who, though they produce in the aggregate the smallest number of pieces because their works are the most elabor- ately beautiful, are nevertheless those who, in pro- portion to their production, give the greatest amount of employment. On the other hand, the opponents of extension are those who produce the coarsest and most ordinary articles those mountains of cloth, whose superficies is counted by "miles" instead of yards,* but which are produced by little labour, affording but scanty employment, and the whole value of the article, cloth, printing, and profit inclu- sive, falls short of the mere wages of labour of print- ing alone, of most styles of the former class. f The following table, founded upon actual returns of the respective parties, made to the Select Committee on the Copyright of Designs, exhibits a comparative statement of this labour and production : * Question by Mr. M. Phillips. What number of yards would you conceive the 700,000 pieces which you produce annually to amount to 1 Answer by Mr. Lee I cannot give you the goods I can give you the number of mile* ; 11,137 miles, I make it. Evidence, No. 4404. t Letter to Sir Robert Peel, p. 32. EXTENSION OF THE COPYRIGHT. 267 TAI Account of the Number Hands employed on < England. P NAMES. i Ainsworth & Co JLE I. " of Pieces printed, and certain Print Grounds of ieces printed Hands Pieces per Q year 1839. Employed. Head. 430,000 400 1,075 310,000 700 443 269,229 693 388 224,971 750 300 306,629 1,040 295 83,000 380 218 168,181 930 181 52,000 300 173 40,000 260 154 Schwabe & Co Thos. Hoyle & Sons Fort, Brothers & Co. . . Hargreaves &Dugdale . . Edmund Potter & Co. . . Thomson Brothers & Co. Svvaisland & Co. , TABLE II. Shewing the relative Number of Hands required to produce the same Numerical Amount of Pieces of different styles on various Print Grounds of England. Pieces annually. Names. Hands. 100,000 at Ainsworth & Co.* employ 100 Schwabe & Co. 226 T. Hoyle & Sons, 258 Fort, Brothers & Co. 333 Hargreaves & Co. 339 E. Potter & Co. 457 Thomson Brothers & Co. 553 John Lowe & Co. 577 Swaisland & Co. 650 100,000 100,000 100,000 100,000 100,000 100,000 100,000 100,000 268 THE OPINION OF THE TRADE ON THE Table I. shows the actual production, and the number of hands employed, at the several print grounds enumerated, as furnished by the parties themselves. Table II. exhibits the respective quan- tities of labour, that is, of hands employed by each house in the production of the same numerical amount of pieces, reduced to one common unit.* The latter names in the list are all those of persons in favour of the extension of the copyright ; the num- ber of whose hands employed to produce 100,000 pieces range from 650 down to 226. Below these commence the opponents of the bill, as the class of production descends into navy blues, and other non descript articles, and taking 100 hands, as the lowest conceivable power for the production of 100,000 pieces of these, the average of those above it is taken by Mr. Thomson to be above 160. "These tables," as he himself explains, "are not intended to exhibit statements of the amount and kind of production of individual houses with a view to invidious com- parison, but to shew the relation between labour and production in this important branch of our national industry, and avowedly for the purpose of correcting any impression which may have gone forth, that that portion of the trade whose production, as stated by themselves, is numerically the greatest, must necessarily be the most important. A glance at the first and last lines of the second table will correct this illusion, if such ever existed. "f As between the actual petitioners for effectual * Letter to Sir Robert Peel, p. 33. t Ibid, p. 38. EXTENSION OF THE COPYRIGHT. ^W copyright and its enemies, the talent and the ambition to excel is exclusively on the side of protection, and the mere common place mechanical production on that of the opponents. The latter undoubtedly exhibit the greater amount in tons' weight, and acres of calico ; but the former plume themselves with justice upon the superior beauty of their designs, and the infinitely higher excellence of the execution. In the number of individuals, the promoters of the measure are, as two to one, compared with those who resist it ; but even were it otherwise was the proportion inverted, the petitioners the imploring minority, and their oppo- nents as powerful in numbers as they are ponderous in weight; still it is the former whose representations and whose wants should be consulted by the Legis- lature, as those on whose talents and whose taste the productions of the country must ever be dependent for their advancement, their elegance, and their estimation with the world. It is not to the masses but to the few, or even to the individual, that manu- factures must look for their improvements and their discoveries. Arkwright and Watt were but units amidst the multitude of their competitors, but their genius, by one effort, raised not only their contem- poraries, but their posterity to the summit of pros- perity. They are the Watts and the Arkwrights of calico printing, who are now humbly suing at the bar of the House of Commons, not for favor but for justice ; not for encouragement, but for protection ; not for participation in another's pro- perty, but for security for their own; and if their 270 THE OPINION OF THE TRADE, ETC. honest and equitable demands be repulsed and re- jected, not only their present opponents, but the future industry of England must be the ultimate and inevitable sufferers. APPENDIX. CORRESPONDENCE. BELGIUM AND ELBERFELD. 1. Mr. De Smet to Mr. Thomson. 2. Mr. Voortman to Mr. Thomson. 3. Mr. De Hemptinne to Mr. Thomson, 4. Mr. De Hemptinne in continuation. 5. Mr. De Meure's reply to queries. 6. Mr. Rey Ainu's ditto. 7. Mr. Bockmiihl's ditto. N VI. HOYLE'S WAVE, var. 1. DIORAMA, var. 2. IV DIORAMA, var. 1. APPENDIX. M. DE SMET DE NAEYER TO M. THOMSON. MON CHER MONSIEUR. J'ai recu la lettre que vous m'avez fait 1'honneur de m'ecrire le 10 de ce mois, par laquelle vous m'invitez a r6pondre aux diverses questions qu'elle renferme relativement a des assertions que Ton cherche a accrediter en Angleterre, et qui tendent a etablir que les fabriques d'Indienne de la Belgique out des avantages marquu sur celles de la Grande Bretagne. Ann de mieux detruire des allegations que je regarde comme perfides et mensongtret, j'y r6pondrai article par article. 1. II ne saurait etre vrai que le fabricant d'Indiennes en Belgique, puisse produire des impressions a 10 p. ct. meilleur march6 que le fabricant Anglais: j'estime au contraire, qu'on ne peut les produire ici que de 10 a.25 p. ct., selon les genres, plus cher qu'en Angleterre ; et cela abstraction faite du prix de la toi!6 ecrue qu'on se procure aussi a meilleur march6 en Angleterre qu'en Belgique. 2. Ce n'est avoir aucune notion sur 1'industrie Belgique d'etablir qu'un fabricant en Belgique soit en etat de produire a 10 sbellings, la piece de 24 yards 9-8, les impressions moyennes : car a 1'excep- tions des impressions en rouille une couleur, je ne connais pas d'im- 274 APPENDIX. pressions qui coutent moins de 14 a 16 shellings la piece ; d'autres se vendent de 20 a 24 shellings. 3. Je ne puis croire qu'un fabricant en Belgique soit en etat de pro- duire des impressions, soit sur calicot soit sur mousseline, en 4 ou 5 couleurs, meme en ayant une vente assuree de 150 pieces par dessin, a un shelling deux pense meilleur marche que le fabricant Anglais ; parce- qu'alors ce fabricant aurait exclusivement la preference, et aucun autre en Belgique ne pourrait concourir avec lui ; sa fabrique travaillerait continuellement, et nous voyons au contraire, par le defaut de protection que le gouvernement s'obstine a refuser, tous les ateliers indistinctement chomer plus ou moins. 4. Je ue crois pas qu'uu fabricant d'ici ait recu des calicots ecru Anglais, pour les r6exporter ensmte apres 1'impression sur un des entrepots de 1'Angleterre. II est vrai que plusieurs d'entre nous ont essay6 diverses exportations qui n'ont jamais eu de suite, a cause des perte qu'elles ont presentees par I'impossibilit6 ou nous sommes de pou- voir soutenir, sur quelque marche que ce soit, la concurrence des fabriques Anglaises. En 1832, une soci6te s'est 6tablie pour 1'exportation des tissus blancs, teiuts et imprimes ; elle a fait des expeditions d'essai en Portugal, au Levant, a Singapore, a la Havane, au Mexique, au Bresil, a Lima, a Valparaiso, et je crois meme aux Etats Unis. Quoique par son entremise je n'ai jamais rien expedi6, il m'a 6t6 assure par des Soci6- taires que la perte sur ces diverses expeditions s'est elevee a plus -1 ^ ~ !5 X ^? 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