On July 6, Culp inquires on behalf of the committee as to “whether or not the suggestions made by the committee appointed upon the revision of the commemoration ode have been considered by yourself and incorporated into the original manuscript.”37 Once again, she kept a copy of the letter for herself, because she deemed it possibly significant if a legal battle should erupt. She writes back to him on July 11, 1892, that she’s been making revisions to the poem. She writes:
I deeply regret to observe that the committee has been subjected to criticism in certain quarters because of its choice of myself for this important commission, although such criticism has come from persons avowedly unfamiliar with my work. I hope that the confidence in my ability as generously shown by the committee’s request that I should write the poem will be maintained until its choice is justified, as it will be, by the voice of criticism next October. I have submitted the Ode to some of the most distinguished critics in the country, who have invariably approved it. Such suggestions as they have made while they have differed widely from each other, will receive my earnest attention and in so far as I can agree with them, will be embodied in the poem.38
The draft letter shows that she crossed out the much stronger line: “If I can not agree with them it goes without saying that I can not follow them.”39 On September 17, the committee officially certified that the Ode is complete, and that the Ode should be published in the official history.40
The committee then debated about whether Monroe owned the Ode and Monroe launched another covert attack on the committee. Her stands against the committee should be seen as her standing up for art in a city that considered art and artists to be in service to its larger business interests. Her friends saw it as a stand for women in particular. Margaret F. Sullivan wrote a scathing letter to the committee on September 21, 1892, praising Monroe and admonishing the committee for not giving her her due.41 Bertha Palmer, now the only lady manager of the Fair, read the poem to the president of the Fair.42 Monroe pushed on Burnham, who in turn may have asked for another favor from McCormick. At this point, the committee would have to acquiesce, because while they were in charge of the preparations for the Fair, McCormick and Palmer were putting up the money. Monroe showed at this early point that she understood the business of publishing art and understood that power lay with the money, not the management and committees.
Her methods, once again, worked. Ferdinand W. Beck, vice-president of the committee wrote on September 22:
I have your communication. I entirely agree with the position you take and will do everything in my power to aid you in the matter. I felt from the beginning that your abilities and talent entitled you to great consideration at the hands of the committee, and therefore urged that you be asked to prepare the Ode, and also that it be accepted when presented. You are quite right in thinking that the matter is of far greater importance to you than the direct payment of the dollars involved. I consider that the Exposition is honorably bound to have your Ode produced at the ceremonies, and that consistency on the part of the Exposition—which has published its program broadcast—and justice to yourself demand that this be done.43
She receives a letter from Burnham the next day, relaying that at the committee meeting, “Your battle was easily won.”44 When Monroe signed on to write and submit the poem, the committee did not mention compensation. On September 23, she received the $1000 she asked for earlier, and the receipt clarified the copyright: “It is understood and agreed that said Exposition Company should have the right to furnish copies for publication to the newspaper press of the world and copies for free distribution if desired, and also may publish same in the official history of the dedicatory ceremonies, and subject to the concession herein made, the author expressively reserves her copyright therein.”45 The next day she receives a note from the committee that they “recognize the propriety of the suggestion in your note dated the 23rd and will respect your wish that your ‘Commemoration Ode’ be not published until it shall have been copyrighted.”46
At this point, the New York and Chicago papers were doing whatever they could to be the first to publish anything that was at all connected with the program. Multiple copies of the Ode had been given to the Committee on Ceremonies and pressure was being put on the members individually to release the poem ahead of time, surreptitiously to the papers. Monroe, the committee, and Culp were doing everything they could to prevent the Ode from being released, including copyrighting the poem.47 Culp sends her another letter that covers a longer letter from Francis F. Browne, editor of The Dial, who was consulted for the literary committee and who writes of himself as a “sponsor” of the Ode. Browne had just revived The Dial in Chicago twelve years before and considered his new version as the true heir of the original Dial, edited by Ralph Waldo Emerson and Margaret Fuller. In his letter to Monroe, he flatters her, while at the same time writing at length of the errors in the poem and bemoans the possibilities of even more if a newspaper were to publish a snippet of the poem.48 He presents the only solution to Monroe’s situation as publishing the poem in The Dial and offers to do so. He most likely saw that publishing the poem would help lift his journal to a more national prominence, a level he had not yet obtained. He mentions no remuneration for Monroe. The poem never appeared in The Dial.
Instead, Monroe began a letter-writing campaign to extract promises that none of the newspapers would publish her poem without permission.49 On that same day, September 24, Margaret Sullivan learned that a New York paper had obtained the Ode and she released the news of Monroe’s copyright over the newswire to prevent the Ode’s publication.50 Over the next few days, the responses to Monroe’s letter and Sullivan’s wire of the copyright began to pour in from Chicago and New York editors. The editors of The Chicago Mail, the Chicago Journal and the Chicago Tribune all honored her request. Bertha Palmer also writes to Monroe, conveying her concerns and letting her know that she will do anything she can to help and prevent the release of the Ode without Monroe’s permission.51 The fact that Monroe copyrighted the poem so early reveals her thinking as a businesswoman about the importance of her work and art and her attorney father advising her how to keep control of her art. She would have been raised understanding the logic of the law and the importance of mitigating risk before anything happens.
The New York World published the Ode on September 25, 1892. That morning, a reporter from the World knocked on her door, informed Monroe of the publication, handed her two telegrams sent between the editor and reporter at the World, and asked for an interview.52 Harriet Monroe sued the New York World for breach of contract and damages, which came to trial two years later on December 19, 1894. She wrote A Poet’s Life without access to her files, so the chapter on the trial itself is the shortest in the book, only six pages. In it, she credits her father solely for bringing the case and downplays her own involvement in the lawsuit. She writes:
Looking back on that amusing comedy, I marvel at my own audacity—a young woman demanding punitive damages from a great metropolitan newspaper for the unauthorized publication of a poem. Common sense, voiced especially by my sister Mrs. Root, was emphatic in advising my father to drop the suit, and even I, armed as I was with youthful courage, was skeptical about the result.53
However, her end-of-life dismissal of her role in bringing the court case forward is contradicted by the earlier series of letters that detail her fight for control over her poem against the committee as well as her push to get the copyright at such an early stage. Her actions show her as deeply committed to maintaining ownership over the poem and as someone who was being sure to do everything in her power to maintain it.
The court papers reveal additional information that Monroe leaves out of her autobiography, including her own continual role in protecting her copyright and the Ode. Mr. Chamberlain, editor of the New York World, told the court record how he got the Ode:
I first heard of that Ode, in connection with any proposed publication of it in the New York World, in a
telegram from Mr. Fay, our Chicago correspondent, that telegram was received at the World office here. He said it was offered him for sale, and he asked if we wanted it the Friday night before the publication. I replied that he was sure it was the correct Ode … He said it was offered to him by the man in charge of the World’s Fair department for the Chicago Herald.54
Margaret Sullivan was tipped off internally at the Herald and that was how she found out about the breach. It’s unknown whether she knew of the Herald’s involvement in tipping off the New York World. Chamberlain explains further: “The ode, I knew, belonged to the World’s Fair. I did not inquire of the World’s Fair Committee whether I had any right to buy it or not. Under some circumstances, I believe I have the right as an editor to publish the manuscript of a person without that person’s consent.”55
Monroe’s father, acting along with his friend Mr. McCarthy as her attorneys, frames what happened very differently in his brief.56 He argues that the theft of her work shows three different concerns. First, it’s a moral outrage and therefore indicative of corruption: “Absolute lack of all moral principle in the methods pursued by the managers of this great journal in the procurement and use of such property of others as, in their opinion, will add to the profile, prestige and reputation of their paper.” Second, the theft infringes on private ownership rights: “It puts journalistic exigencies above private rights of both property and reputation and boldly justifies the worst kind of literary brigandage and piracy by claiming the right, under some circumstances to publish ‘the manuscript of a person without that person’s consent.’” Third, “It champions a crime which ought to entail severe legal punishment, by glorying in the so-called enterprise of the World managers, and showing evident pride in their theft of the ode and in the way it was used to advance the interests of their paper.” His conclusion declares: “This court cannot but consider the position of this witness most astounding, and wonder that a man of his education and experience could become so blind, so callous, and so morally degraded.”57
Monroe saved what she must have considered the most interesting newspaper clippings of the trial. On October 17, 1894, the Tribune ran a small column on the trial. In it, they report: “Miss Monroe alleges that the copyright of the poem was violated; that the poem, as printed, was garbled and full of errors, and that the publication caused comments in other newspapers than ‘the World’ which injured her reputation as a poetess.” According to the clipping, “Miss Monroe went on the witness-stand and read the jury the poem as it was read at the World’s Fair dedication. After reading the poem the plaintiff read many extracts from the newspapers printed all over the county in which her personality and her home life were described. The descriptions were inspired by ‘The World’s’ publication she said, and they were not favorable to her.” A literary critic, Edmund Stedman, was called to the witness stand to “testify that the ode struck him by its rhythmical qualities.” “It is dignified and sonorous,” he said, “and in many passages, elevated.”58 The language of the actual Ode was shown as completely corrupted by the newspaper abstracts and the verdict stated that “Mr. McCarthy for the complainant, declared that The World; had deeply injured Miss Monroe’s reputation.” They quote him as asking rhetorically, “How was this paper’s boasted circulation built up?” He then answered: “I say its circulation has been built up largely in disregarding the rights of others as it has disregarded my client’s rights.” The article ends stating: “The jury was out for fifteen minutes and returned with a verdict of $5000 damages against ‘The World.’ Miss Monroe and her father and mother left the courtroom highly delighted.”59
The importance of Monroe’s copyrighting of her work and the successful case protecting the copyright against a predatory New York newspaper has been minimized in what little scholarship has been done about Harriet Monroe, the Chicago artistic scene, and Poetry magazine. Her own posthumously published autobiography minimizes the court case by giving it only one small chapter in an otherwise expansive account of her life. The records of the lawsuit, saved by Monroe, have not been copied or published and exist in the back of the very dense archived collection of her letters and papers. Without the context of Chicago, it would seem that a court case about a poem read at the Columbian Exhibition could not have much significance. However, the lawsuit showed the Chicago businessmen, who raised the money to have the exhibition, and who formed the committees that ran the exhibition, that art had value and was owned by its creator as a created commodity. The committee men who ran the exhibition would have respected this because art was important to them only insofar as it was useful to lifting up Chicago and its businesses. Because it had value, not for its own sake, but to make money, they would have understood Monroe’s rush to protect her work and her place as rightful creator. Suing the paper for stealing her work would have further demonstrated that Monroe was not “just” another artist who didn’t understand business.
The New York World kept appealing the case all the way to the Supreme Court. The case prevailed in the October term of 1896. The case was not, as those scholars who write about Monroe assume, a statutory copyright case, because Monroe at the time of the theft had copyrighted the title and potential of the poem. The poem had not yet been published. The Supreme Court wrote, “The right was not complete and on the 24th day of September, 1892, did not exist.”60 It was that day that the paper obtained the copy. The court found that “the exclusive owner or proprietor of an unpublished manuscript has the exclusive right to its possession and to direct and control its use—the same right which the owner of any article of personal property has to its ownership and use. The trespasser upon that right is liable for damages.”61 The Supreme Court declared that the lower court ruling should hold since the manuscript was unpublished when it was stolen and published, with errors, common law applied rather than the Copyright Act of 1790, which would apply only to a published work. They then agreed with Monroe that her rights had been violated.
Monroe’s case is still binding precedent in the United States and it establishes the right of the modern writer to assume full ownership over their original work. Her fight to control her own unpublished work can be seen throughout her battles with the committee: first for the selection of composers, then through the editing process, and finally, for compensation and copyright. Her belief in her right to her own work and expression is inherently Romantic and Lockean and this kind of language frames her father’s lawsuit in the circuit court on her behalf. The court case is not something that randomly happened to her, but rather was the result of her standing up for her inherent beliefs about art and her understanding of the business of making of art. The protection of ownership extended over the unpublished work grants the art an inherent worth unto itself. Monroe, then, understood the mechanizations of the legal and business world and managed to convince the Exhibition committee, her father, and the courts of the importance of language and of the art of using words well. Her chapter heading, “Poet in the Courts,” speaks to this dual meaning and the inherent usefulness of using words well.
Monroe struck a blow for artists, showing that they still had rights to their unpublished works and that these rights needed to be respected. The extreme steps she took to keep the manuscript secret indicate the climate of fear among artists for their unpublished works and the hanging question of whether they had any rights if those works were stolen and published. Harriet Monroe writes simply at the end of her life: “So my little lawsuit, being without precedent, established its own precedence and became a textbook case, defining the rights of authors to control their unpublished works.”62 Monroe would have meant more by the word “control” than simply ownership. Because she fought so hard to retain the right to revise her work and be recognized as its sole owner, she would have certainly seen the lawsuit as one that emphasized the rights of the worker.
Worker’s Rights and Arts and Crafts: The lawsuit and verdict in context
Chicago is considered the birthplace of th
e modern labor movement. By 1894, Chicago had a well-deserved international reputation for brutal clashes between labor and industrialists. At a meeting held in October 1884, the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Union set May 1, 1886, as the official date the eight-hour workday would become standard. For two years, unions prepared their members for the strike and on that day, tens of thousands of workers all over the United States went on strike for the eight-hour workday without a cut in pay. On May 3, striking workers in Chicago met near Haymarket Square, right next to the McCormick Harvesting Machine Company plant. The company had locked out union workers since February, and hired Pinkerton guards to accost workers who were protesting. Tensions had been escalating between the McCormick Company and its workers and by the time of the 1886 general strike, there had been so much written about the “union thuggery” in the Joseph Medill owned Tribune that strikebreakers entering the McCormick plant were under protection by Chicago police. The workers were protesting against the lockout and the ways in which the McCormick plant treated labor, and were demanding an eight-hour workday. On May 4, 1886, a rally continuing the protest and in reaction to the killings of several workers the day before turned violent. A bomb was thrown at police and at least eight people died in the riots that day. The legal proceedings were published internationally and eight radical labor activists, named as “anarchists” by the newspapers, were convicted of conspiracy. In court, the defense presented evidence that one of the defendants may have built the bomb, but no one present in the court room had thrown it. All but one were sentenced to death. The Illinois Governor Richard J. Oglesby commuted the death sentences of two of the prisoners to life in prison. The four “anarchists” were hanged on November 11, 1887.63
Chicago and the Making of American Modernism Page 6