The ACTING CHAIRMAN. What was their object in getting a decision of the court which would force them to pay large sums to the musical publishers? Mr. BURKAN. They are the largest manufacturers of these rolls in the world. They have manufactured thousands and thousands of these rolls representing the best copyrighted compositions. Suppose a large number of publishers or a number of public-spirited men had gotten together a fund, and suppose a case to test the applicability of the present copyright laws to perforated rolls had been carried to the highest court and won--then the Æolian Company would have been obliged to account for all its profits on these perforated rolls to the publisher, and would have been obliged to pay Mr. Herbert, Mr. Sousa, Mr. Chadwick, Mr. Damrosch, and other composers thousands of dollars in back royalties; whereas under this agreement the Æolian Company protected itself, because the publisher who signed it consented to the use of his composition for the perforated rolls, and he would have been estopped under such agreement from suing for an accounting of profits. The ACTING CHAIRMAN. Yes; but the Æolian Company originated this litigation. Mr. BURKAN. Yes--very true, sir; very true. The Æolian Company (and I do not appear in this matter as its champion at all) had spent thousands of dollars to improve and protect its patents to these perforated rolls. It employs the most skillful and talented arrangers to arrange and edit these compositions embodied in the roll, so that when you purchase an Æolian record or roll and pay your $2.50, or whatever the price may be, you get a roll when used in connection with the playing instrument which gives an exact reproduction of the music as written by the composer, say, by Mr. Nevins, Mr. Chadwick, or Mr. Foote. There were a small number of companies that also sold perforated rolls, but instead of the rolls producing exact reproductions of the music they gave distorted and feeble imitations or versions of that music. They did not give to the public what the public was bargaining for, and instead of creating a taste and demand for this form of reproduction of music, the tendency was to destroy the taste and lessen the demand; and the result was not only to destroy this great industry, of which the Æolian Company was the pioneer and in which it was vitally interested, but also to injure the composer whose work was thus reproduced. There is an artistic side to this question, sir. If you made a speech in Congress, Mr. Chairman, and I should get someone else to repeat your speech into a machine, and your speech lasted fifteen minutes, but in order to crowd it into a cylinder that is adapted to reproduce a speech of two minutes' duration, I should cut, distort, and disfigure it, and then it was reproduced to the public all over the land and sold as Mr. Currier's speech, you naturally would be offended. That is the artistic side of this case.