Excerpt from Half-Hours With the Best American Authors, Vol. 1

All this undoubtedly exercised and strengthened the American intellect, but it also narrowed the channel in which it flowed. Rapid progress was made in political science, and the effete political ideas which had been long current in Europe were probed to their hollow hearts by the fresh and radical doctrines of the thinkers of America. And the prevailing Spirit of practicalism found a voice in the writings of Benjamin Franklin, the truest advocate of hard common sense and every-day wisdom the world has ever known. Europe in the eighteenth century pro duced no writer superior in intellectual ability to Frank lin; yet the influences here detailed long acted to prevent American thought from attaining the width and diversity of expression displayed in European literature. There has been, and still exists, yet another discouraging influ ence, of which we may speak in passing. This is the total absence of legal protection of our authors against foreign competition. The law-makers of America early and clearly perceived the necessity of protecting the mechanical interests of the country, if any rapid develop ment of industry was desired. But they failed, and still fail, to perceive that the mental interests of the country were exposed to a yet more severe competition and stood still more in need of protection. Every untried American book has been forced to compete in open market with European books of established reputation, which were sure of a profitable sale, and which could be had for the taking, without need of compensation to the author.

No one will deny that the fullest and widest unfoldment of the intellect of a nation is the condition best adapted to the advancement of all the interests of that nation, physical, mental, and spiritual. But it must be affirmed that the inducements to this broad intellectual develop ment in the United States have been in considerable measure withheld, with the resultant tendency to yield a narrowed and one-sided intellectual activity. In this re spect our legislators have been derelict in their duty to their constituents, and, while tenderly fostering the phys ical interests of the country, have left its intellectual in terests to take care of themselves, blind to the fact that literature is a tender plant, which needs to be sedulously encouraged, and that a developed intellect is the highest product of any civilization.

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