If books were like other commodities, their sale, like the sale of other commodities, would fall under the economic law of diminishing returns. Thereunder, as their supply increased, the demand for books would tend to decrease, as is the case with cotton, say, or wooden spoons. And upon such an assumption there might be some reason for prohibiting the free importation of printed books, since the imported articles would compete in the home market for a relatively inelastic demand. But books, it is obvious, are not a commodity in this sense of the word. They do not _satisfy_ demand, but _stimulate_ it, and their sale, therefore, does not fall under the economic law of diminishing returns, but under the very contrary, that of increasing returns. Books, there is no doubt of it, are the cause of books. New books do not take the place of old books; nor do books really compete, as a general rule, with each other. On the contrary, the more books there are, the more are demanded and the more are produced. The free importation of books is not a means of contracting the home-production of books; it is the very opposite, the most effective means of stimulating home-production to its highest possible degree. If I were an American author, resident in America, and concerned for the prosperity of the American book-making profession, craft, and industry, I should not be in the least disposed to thank the American Copyright Law for the protection it professes to give me. The appetite for books, upon which appetite I and my craft live, grows, I should say, by what it feeds on. Addressing the Copyright Act as it now exists, I should say to it: “In discouraging the free importation of foreign books, and in alienating the good-will of foreign authors and publishers, you are robbing foreign authors (that is true), but, much worse, you are depriving my public of the stimulus necessary to its demand for my books. Since we authors in America have a vital interest in increasing literary demand, and the more books the more demand is created, our real protection lies in freely importing books, and not in placing any impediment in their way. Intending to help us, you—the Copyright Law—are really our enemy.” I cannot see what reply the Copyright Law could make to this attack upon it by its protégés, and I believe, moreover, that if they were to make it, the Law would soon be amended.