After the performance no one in the audience, musician though he be, can simultaneously resound any two instruments, and the majority of the audience would be hissed if they attempted to resound any one of the instruments. Not so with the mechanical listener, for it is capable of resounding simultaneous and accurately all of the 100 instruments, and upon the expenditure of 50 cents for a copy of the machine-made record the poor man and his family in every part of the world can, by a slight movement of his hand, start up his $7 graphophone and thus be amused and enraptured, all owing to the inventor having caught, preserved, and provided means for mechanically reproducing the air waves which would have otherwise have escaped beyond Sousa's power to recall. Nevertheless, the bill provides that the lost chords must be all returned to Sousa by the inventor in the form of a royalty. There is no novelty in music, nor vibrating the air as a means of transmitting musical tones, for-- Long 'ere earth was matter or had form, Music out of wind and lightning was borne; It was thus God solaced nature, And her troubles were shorn. Now, defining an ethical or equity right which the inventor might claim with equal justice against Sousa and other composers, the common people all over the world, who listen to the mechanically reproduced lost chords of Sousa's band, do frequently order and pay for the sheet music score for the piano, banjo, violin, and other instruments which the purchaser plays or thinks he can play, and upon all these orders induced by the inventor's machine he is entitled to a commission, which in actual fact and adjustment would offset the alleged right of the royalty claimed in this bill. There are many other corelated equity rights which us inventors might set up but which it would be impracticable to secure to us. The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Davis, if I may interrupt you, do you claim that you have the right to take one of Mr. Sousa's compositions and use it in connection with your mechanical device without compensation to him? Mr. DAVIS. Under the Constitution and all the laws of the land, I say yes, decidedly; but I want to explain my contention and the position of inventors in a little different line of argument.