A small item, but one of very considerable importance appears among the Presidential Mandates issuing from Peking on the 4th instant, announcing: "The copyright law, paseed by the Tsan hereby promulgated." A copy of the new law will be awaited with great interest in Shanghai, where the question of the infringement of copyright has for long been a subject of discussion and dispute.
Of recent years an immense demand for educational books has sprung up in China, more especially for books of the class used in the elementary schools at home, and originally the supply came almost Naturally, Chinese printing houses sought a share of this new and rapidly developing book trade, but it is doubtful whether many cases could be quoted in which the native printer has not depended for his text books upon piracy, open and undisguised, but still piracy to an extent extremely damaging to the foreign publisher.
Compaints have been made to thi Chinese authorities from time to time, and proclamations have been issued, the latest of these, issued by the District Magistrate of Shanghai in March, 1913, condemning piracy, and threatening punishment to persons who might print a book in question—Big People and Little of Other Lands."" But these proclama ations have been without radical effect in preventing piracy. Native curiosity about the big and little UN
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Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.