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A N
AMERICAN
AUTHORS
AUTHORITY
started, backed by careful, professional collection of evidence, and dependable, impressive witnesses.
We would have, then, a continuing, tireless battle for the writer’s rights, in the place where they originate, which is a legislative body, and the place where they are enforced, which is a court. Our purview would include every right that a writer can claim, from his right to be taxed as fairly as other citizens are, to his right to share the wealth produced by his own property, to his right to a competitive market, to his right to join such organizations as he chooses, to his right of free speech, to any other rights that are just. It would in no sense be agential, or ever concern itself with deals, or with prices. It would not be geared to do so, and if it attempted to do so it would probably be in trouble under the federal statutes. This is a field for agents, and its policy would be to cooperate with agents, in the belief they do a great service to the writer. But if, as often happens, a studio barred an agent, it would come piling in with the cut-out open, to enforce the writer’s right to a representative of his own choosing.
Nor would the Authority concern itself with wages, hours, working conditions, royalties, fees, or any of the matters best dealt with by the guilds. But on any question of rights, as for example the failure of a magazine, a publisher, a radio station, or a picture company to live up to its contract, it would take over, to enforce the agreement the guild had made. Eventually, on the question of the writer’s right to security, it would envisage the levy of a straight tax on all corporations with which the writer deals, based on their audited gross, in order to maintain a pool out of which member writers would receive, according to their rating, a sum every year, or perhaps an annuity. This, of course, is in the future, for the Authority must become very strong before it can attempt such a thing. The immediate problem is what we do now, and it does seem that if the four guilds will take the power that awaits them, a massively powerful organization is possible in a very short time, with a $1,000,000 kitty and a full-time tough mugg at the head of it.
That it will encounter opposition is obvious, and it would be hard to say which will drive at it hardest, the magazines, the publishers, the radio stations, or the picture companies. But the situation is favorable wherever one looks. Naturally radio stations are limited in number, but
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