estimated to have cut down our sales on those particular productions from 75 to 80 per cent.

The Chairman. Who makes that estimate?

Mr. Serven. Primarily I make that estimate from the best information I can get from gentlemen in the publishing business, and secondly, it is made from those who make the sales, whose sales are reduced.

The Chairman. It ought to be very easy for the musical people to furnish their books and give us a verification of that statement. If before Mr. Tams and the gentlemen engaged in that business entered the field they were making, for instance, $10,000 a year, and that business has shrunk, according to your statement yesterday, 85 per cent, it ought to be very easy for them to give the committee that information.

Mr. Serven. It so happens, Mr. Chairman, that our music publishers have other things to depend on. If they had only this I venture to say that the probability is that there would not be a single extended music work published in the United States to-day unless it was done solely through philanthropy. As to this question of notice, while I consider that aside from the point, because the law does not say that there shall be notice, but it says that we have complied with certain other things in the law, and we have to subscribe to that before we can get our copyright from the Librarian of Congress, yet this is a copy of the circular which last January, I understand, was sent to every musical society that the publishers knew of in the United States, specifically calling attention to the fact that there was such a law. So, in addition to whatever the law might have required in the question of notice, it would not be our fault that they did not have such notice, and in addition to that we have unanimously recommended that in case of every right of that sort where the right was reserved it should carry notice of it somewhere in a conspicuous place on the front of the work itself, so that there can not be in the future any question as to whether the fellow that uses it knows he is violating the law.

But to come to what I think is the real meat of this question. This is purely a business question and nothing else, a question of contract——

The Chairman. I beg your pardon, you are not relying on your contract at all; you are relying on your statutory rights.

Mr. Serven. Which have to be read into our contract, of course. The only way we could make a contract which would give public-performance rights would be by furnishing the purchaser a contract or with an agreement from us that they should have the performing right, and it seems to us that the sole matter that is at stake in this controversy between these gentlemen and ourselves is simply this: Not whether or not we have sold them performing rights in the past, but whether or not we shall sell them performing rights in the future, and should you pass this act I think if the publishers should decline under that to sell performing rights, I think I see very clearly that they would have the right to go into the courts and compel it.

Mr. Chaney. You would not make any sales.

Mr. Serven. We would sell to the people who came to us, if they wanted us to. We might sell them the right to perform it anywhere in the United States, or we might say that we would sell them the right to perform it once or ten times or whatever way we might want to limit it, in a certain place, or at certain places, for instance.

Mr. Bonynge. Would not that be a good deal better than the way it is?

Mr. Serven. Possibly it would; I am not sure. But from the point of view of the fellow who proceeds in an enterprise without investigating the law, that would certainly take care of him, and while it would mean a little more trouble and expense on our part, it would tell him, "If you steal our performing rights you will be subject to punishment, and therefore if you do not buy it, we will send you up for a term;" and if we do it for other things, I do not know why we should not do it for music.

The Chairman. I must tell you that you only have two or three minutes left.

Mr. Serven. I will just take one minute more. We have not made exorbitant profits, as may perhaps be suggested by a copy of the letter which the chairman showed yesterday—a good many of them. That seems to be a stock letter, prepared by somebody who is directly interested in the enactment of this legislation——

The Chairman. We will not be able to hear any other gentlemen on your side this morning.

(Informal discussion followed about the method of procedure.)

Mr. Webb. Would you be satisfied if we were to restrict the performance of your music to charitable performances or where no charge was made?

Mr. Serven. If you will hand in hand with that restrict the persons who perform our music to doing so without compensation, I think I may say, can I not [addressing some of the music publishers present], that we would be willing to do that. But we do not understand—we do not believe that you ought to say to us that we must furnish our property without compensation, while all the rest get compensation.

Mr. Furness. Providing those people would write to the author—the composer. Let us be the controller of the property belonging to us.

Mr. Tindale. They pay for everything else; they pay for the carpet on the floor and the lights and carriages that come to the church entertainments.

Mr. Furness. I am sure in the case of the firm I am connected with—Oliver Ditson Company, of New York, Philadelphia, and Boston—that we would not object to helping charitable performances at any time; that where the people were not able to buy books we would be glad to lend them.

The Chairman. Would you object, then, to an amendment that they might be loaned for charitable purposes, the only prerequisites being that they should notify the publisher that they would desire the loan of the books, or do you desire to pass on each application?

Mr. Furness. Yes; we would prefer to pass on each application. I think we would hesitate to agree to anything else.

Mr. Froemne. As a matter of fact, don't you buy most of your publications? Aren't they your own property?

Mr. Tindale. Absolutely not. Nine-tenths of them are published on a royalty.

Mr. Froemne. Then you don't buy them outright?

Mr. Tindale. Very seldom.

Mr. Froemne. How many publications have you in your establishment that are bought outright?

Mr. Tindale. One out of ten.

Mr. Froemne. How many?

Mr. Tindale. That would take a calculation.

Mr. Froemne. I would like to know for the information of the committee how many they have. As a matter of fact, most of them are bought outright. They give them a trifling sum of $50 or $25—even $10.

Mr. Furness. That is not true, Mr. Chairman, and I want to be put down on the record as saying it is not true. We have publications to-day, and we are paying large royalties on the full retail price of the article, which never retails for that price, and in most cases at one-half that price.

The Chairman. Just a minute. The members of the Publishers' Association may have until next Wednesday to file any statement they please, which will be made a part of the record.

Mr. Serven. I