Information About Copyrights

[Steph]

This is a good summary of things I've read before about when copyrights expire.

http://www.unc.edu/~unclng/public-d.htm

There is an article published in 1924 which I would like to post. The newspaper in which it is published has a pretty strict policy about copyrights and about obtaining permission to use its articles. I believe that copyright protects the PDF format of the article online. But would the actual text now be in the public domain? I need to sort that out, hmmm?

[Steph]

LOL ... I wrote to ask the LA Times Reprint people about whether the 1924 article would be under copyright. And if so, how to get permission to share it with people interested in the history of toy marbles.

And the response was the exact table from that page I linked to above.

I still don't know if the article can be used.

This is the beginning of the article I'd like to share. I tried to summarize it before, but I'd so much rather show the whole thing. Perhaps this much would be "safe" by fair use, no?

BUY HOME-MADE AGATES, KIDS

by A. L. Godwin, in the Los Angeles Times

December 7, 1924, page C13

German Monopoly of Stone Marble Trade Heavily Cut Into by Local Concern, Which is Manufacturing Them from Onyx Supplied by Near-by Quarries

Having done his bit on the battlefields of France in defeating Germany, G. D. Mitchell, a fighting Irishman, is now carrying on a little war of his own in the commercial field against that country. Los Angeles is the scene of his activities and all signs point to a complete victory over the Teutons.

Through the enterprise of Mr. Mitchell, the ancient trade of cutting and polishing stones for toy marbles has been established here. Three years ago he arrived in Los Angeles with his wife and two small children. Badly gassed in the war he came to California to recuperate. While looking for a job Mr Mitchell met T. D. Meagher, a travelling salesman and a shrewd business man. Meagher had an idea. Mitchell developed it. It was this:

To capture the old-established agate toy marble trade from Germany.

Mr. Meagher, while traveling for his company during the war, discovered that America depended on Germany for marbles and that the war had cut off the supply. The demand remained. Millions of boys all over the United Stated and Canada had to have their agate "alley taws."

"Our optimism in believing that we could provide serious competition to Germany for the stone toy marble trade of the world was fully justified," said Mr. Mitchell, for while Germany has to import agate from South America we can get onyx-marble in unlimited supply from Lower California."

. . .

To be continued?

Something which will definitely be continued soon is the story of the California Agate Co., which at some point came to be the California Onyx Co.

Here is a teaser:

(click to enlarge)

Photo courtesy of Doug Mitchell, grandson and namesake of G. D. Mitchell