In the prevention or punishment of unauthorized performances by irresponsible private companies, the chief obstacle in the United States was the difficulty of reaching the "fly by night" companies, as they were called, as they flitted from state to state, and from one court jurisdiction to another. To remedy this difficulty, an important protection of the performing right in dramatic works was assured by the act of January 6, 1897, obtained largely through the efforts of Bronson Howard, as president of the American Dramatists Club. This act provided penalty of $100 for the first and $50 for each subsequent unlawful performance, and imprisonment for not exceeding one year, when such unlawful performance was willful and for profit; and also that an injunction issued in any one circuit might be enforced by any other circuit in the United States. This was in consonance with successful efforts to obtain the passage of state laws to protect dramatic and musical works, aside from the federal copyright law, obtained by the Dramatists Club between 1895 and 1905 in the states of New Hampshire, New York, Louisiana, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Ohio, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Minnesota, California, Wisconsin, Connecticut, and Michigan. These varied in form in the several states, though of the same general purport. The New York statute, for instance, adds to the penal code a new section as follows: "Sec. 729. Any person who causes to be publicly performed or represented for profit any unpublished, undedicated or copyrighted dramatic composition, or musical composition known as an opera, without the consent of its owner or proprietor, or who, knowing that such dramatic or musical composition is unpublished, undedicated or copyrighted and without the consent of its owner, or proprietor, permits, aids or takes part in such a performance or representation shall be guilty of a misdemeanor." The texts in all the states are given in full in Copyright Office Bulletin No. 3, 1906, "Copyright enactments of the United States," pages 105-115. {Sidenote: Remedies under present law} The American code of 1909 enacts (sec. 28) that "any person who willfully and for profit shall infringe any copyright ... or who shall knowingly and willfully aid or abet such infringement, shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor," punishable by "imprisonment for not exceeding one year or by a fine of not less than one hundred dollars nor more than one thousand dollars, or both, in the discretion of the court"; and provides (sec. 25, fourth) damages "in the case of dramatic or dramatico-musical or a choral or orchestral composition, one hundred dollars for the first and fifty dollars for every subsequent infringing performance; in the case of other musical compositions, ten dollars for every infringing performance"; and also provides (sec. 36) for injunction operative throughout the United States. {Sidenote: Musical protection in England} {Sidenote: Acts of 1902-1906}