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By Root 2122 0

resist Day's raid. He had got away with it. Word of his success soon spread. An anonymous "Anti-Pirate" spelled out to the trade press its message: that the publishers should systematically recruit "commandoes" modeled on Day's raiding party, each group comprising twenty or so men ready to target marketplaces in London and beyond. It was a grimly appropriate word, coming as it did from the Boer War, because many of the songs being pirated were jingoistic ditties associated with the South African campaign. Before long the leading firms were embarking on such a policy. To further it Day inaugurated a new, single-purpose alliance that he called the Musical Copyright Association. He plucked a junior clerk from Francis, Day and Hunter, John Abbott, to be secretary of the group. Abbott found himself charged with spearheading a new offensive against the pirates-an offensive that would skirt the fringes of illegality, that would pursue tactics soon disowned even by the MCA's own lawyers, and that would depend for its success on the reluctance of the pirates to have recourse to the courts.12

Abbott proved a good choice. He went about his task with alacrity, recruiting and drilling a small army of what he called "ex police officers and others with some knowledge of the pugilistic art." The intention was to "clear the streets."13 As his campaign against the pirates began in earnest, hawkers were confronted on the streets, distributors challenged in their premises and pubs, and printers raided in their cellars and garrets. The numbers of copies seized mounted into the hundreds of thousands. The MCA even mooted prosecuting an unsuspecting member of the public who had bought a piece of pirated music, "with a view to making an example." That idea was quickly discarded, but in general the MCA was so successful that a year later the MPA was considering disbanding itself in its favor.

But not all pirates were as quiescent in the face of the MCA as those encountered by Day at the beginning. Faced by self-appointed troops, some ofwhom insinuated that theybore firearms, a few of the pirates did challenge their legal authority to act. Hawkers brought assault charges against the commandoes, and sometimes won. In August 1902 a homeowner was confronted in his doorway by half a dozen MCA men, who bullied their way into the house and threatened to "drop" him if he resisted. Even though they found three thousand pirated sheets, the case that came before the local magistrate was of assault, not piracy, and the MCA men found themselves rebuked. The MCAs policywas one of"orga- nized hooliganism," declared the magistrate. The remark rapidly gained notoriety, being picked up by opponents of the campaign and widely circulated in succeeding months. As such cases mounted, it began to appear that the offensive might backfire. After all, to the general public it might well seem that assault was a more serious matter than piracy. And this perspective was shared by some in authority too. One Leeds judge lamented that as the publishers pursued their vigilante war, assuming guilt before innocence and trespassing on thresholds across the land, "the liberty of the subject is becoming of no regard at all."14

Moreover, substantial skepticism existed among retailers and their public that the publishers were acting in anyone's interest but their own. Perhaps British music lovers might even be better off with the pirates. Piracywas a blessing, remarked one music retailer with a plague-on-boththeir-houses tone of resignation: perhaps, "now that the publisher is in his death grapple with the pirates," the London firms would finally be forced to listen to the retail network.15 Another, writing anonymously from Liverpool, blamed the trade for maximizing profits by flooding the market with commercial "rubbish." Only if a "system of `weeding out' the poor and shoddy songs" were organized, he thought, could piracy be "dealt with." The Yorkshire Post reported that the major reason for piracy was that the publishers circulated only expensive editions, demanding a stiff i 8d