Let Us Give Up Stealing This Easter
By Editor
The "Sunday School Times" pleads with the Sunday-schools of the country, "Let Us Give Up Stealing This Easter!" "The Sunday-schools stealing!" It appears so, and it may involve others. What the above journal refers to is the multiplying and use of copyrighted songs, music, and dialogs without permission of publishers or authors. In the editor's own words: "The stealing referred to is the unauthorized reprinting for one's own use of the words or music of copyrighted hymns or special exercises. . . . Yet many and many a church and Sunday-school steals the property of these publishers, with a light-hearted indifference that sometimes seems inexplicable. It will order a few samples of Easter or Christmas exercises, select what it likes best, and then proceed to reprint, by type or mimeograph or otherwise, the copyrighted words, music, or both. This is stealing. Is it not time the practise was entirely given up?" And we should think it was.