Will Mr. Tucker kindly answer the following questions:

(1) If the making of a cigar is work, and its results—the cigar—is justly the private property of the worker, why is not the writing of a novel work, and its result—the novel—the private property of its author?

(2) Where is a greater variety and more pronounced individualness to be found? in a circulating library containing a hundred thousand volumes, or in a tobacco factory containing a hundred thousand cigars? In other words, are the possibilities of reproduction in the case of cigars greater or less than they are in the case of—say, What’s to be Done? or What is Property? or The Origin of Species? Now, if the cigar made by A is his private property in spite of the dear public’s claim of all the vast possibilities it has to produce a cigar just like it, why should not A’s System of Economical Contradictions or a novel written by him be his private property as well? the more so as there is good reason believe that such works as What is Property? or What’s to be Done? do not as easily meet the demand for them as do cigars.

(3) If you, Mr. Tucker, think it just that there should be no property in the results of work that is or may be done once for all, why do you consider the cigars in your pocket your private property? or do you believe that these cigars are not the result of work that was done once for all? or do you think they need being done over again before they can become your private property? or do you believe there is some such power in the whole universe, which can supply us with the slightest shadow of a possibility to make these same identical cigars which are at this moment in your pocket anew?

(4) Has a man a right to copy my letters? If not, has he a right to copy my manuscript?

(5) Has a man a right to copy letters sent to me by my friend? If not, has he a right to copy his manuscript sent to me in the form of a letter or letters?

(6) If not, may I not—having the permission of my friend—make with any willing individual an agreement to the effect that for a consideration of so much and so much, payable to me in cash, he shall have the right to read that manuscript whenever he pleases, provided that he shall at no time copy it behind my back? Would such a transaction, if consummated, be unjustifiable from the point of view of the law of equal freedom?

(7) If not, may not the same transaction be repeated with a hundred thousand individuals?

(8) If it may be so repeated, may I not prepare beforehand a hundred thousand copies of that manuscript, and send them right along to those individuals as they write to me of their willingness to accept my proposition, instead of making them waste shoe leather in coming over to my rooms there to read the manuscript? If not, why not?

(9) If yes, may we not, once for all, to economize effort, make an agreement all around, and call it a free social compact, to the effect that those wishing to read a manuscript or a copy of it, or possess themselves of such manuscript or copy of it, or take unto themselves such manuscript or copy of it as their anarchistically lawful private property may do so only by special permission of the maker of the manuscript or his authorized agent? If not, why not?

(10) If yes, why not extend the same copy right to scientific discoveries and mechanical inventions?

M. Zamétkin.

19 Willard Street, Boston, Mass.

(1) Because the principle of property being the exclusive control by each individual of the results of his exploitation of nature so far as he may have it without impairing the equal right and opportunity of every other individual to similarly exploit nature, the ownership of cigars harmonizes with this principle, since it does not exclude others from making and owning similar cigars, whereas the ownership of novels (meaning not the material book, but the collocation of words) conflicts with this principle, since it excludes others from making and owning novels like them.

(2) After due consideration, I give this question up; am unable to understand its meaning or its bearing.

(3) Mr. Zamétkin has failed to grasp the idea intended to be conveyed by the words work done once for all, although it has been clearly explained. If he will turn back to my quotation from Mr. George in Liberty, No. 174, he will find these words: The [6] work of discovery may be done once for all as in the case of the discovery in prehistoric time of the principle or idea of the wheelbarrow. But the work of production is required afresh in the case of each particular thing. No matter how many thousand millions of wheelbarrows have been produced, it requires fresh labor of production to make another one. Mr. Zamétkin will find further that I, in commenting on this, wrote as follows: Can anything be plainer than that he who does the work of combining words for the expression of an idea saves just that amount of labor to all who thereafter choose to use the same words in the same order to express the same idea, and that this work, not being required afresh in each particular case, is not work of production, and that, not being work of production, it gives no right of property. In quoting Mr. George above I did not have to expend any labor on how to say what he had already said. He had saved me that trouble. I simply had to write and print the words on fresh sheets of paper. These sheets of paper belong to me, just as the sheets on which he wrote and printed belong to him. But the particular combination of words belongs to neither of us. By applying this argument to cigars, Mr. Zamétkin will see that the discovery of the idea involved in the making of a cigar was work that was done once for all, and does not have to be done afresh every time a new cigar is made, while the actual rolling of the tobacco has to be repeated with each new cigar. I am afraid Mr. Zamétkin has not followed the present discussion from the beginning. In that case he was not justified in stepping into it and making me waste space in repetition. If he had read the whole discussion, I do not think he could have asked a question so ludicrously foolish.

(4) No man has a right to copy Mr. Zamétkin’s letters or manuscript without his permission, unless he makes them public.

(5) Same answer as to previous question.

(6) Perfectly justifiable.

(7) Yes, Mr. Zamétkin may make a hundred thousand contracts of this sort, if he chooses to take the risk. But we, the people, if we are sensible and understand politics and economy, will no more undertake to protect Mr. Zamétkin’s privacy while he is doing his level best to make his privacy indistinguishable from publicity than an insurance company will undertake to insure his house if he insists on filling every nook and corner of it with gunpowder, dynamite, nitroglycerine, kerosene, benzine, naphtha, and matches, in close proximity.

(8) Yes, again; but again I add that the people would no more protect Mr. Zamétkin’s privacy under such circumstances than they would protect his property if he should convert the whole of it into gold dollars and scatter them broadcast through the streets. In the latter case his conduct would be rightly regarded as a voluntary abandonment of his property; in the former case it would be rightly regarded as a voluntary abandonment of his privacy. Or else, in both cases he himself would be regarded as a lunatic and a fit subject for guardianship.

(9) and (10) The answer to the eighth question makes answers to the ninth and tenth superfluous.

T.