Actually, right at the beginning he says:
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I like that extension of copyright life to the author's life and fifty years afterward. I think that would satisfy any reasonable author, because it would take care of his children. Let the grand-children take care of themselves.
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It seems that his real peeve is with publishers:
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He goes on publishing the book and as many of his confederates as choose to go into the conspiracy do so, and they rear families in affluence.
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You'll note, also, his repeated comments about how few books outlive the then-current copyright -- apparently he's referring to books that anyone wanted enough to reprint. The public wasn't losing much because they didn't want the books anyway, in Twain's view, except for those of a tiny handful of authors. But this was before corporations became "people", except people with marketing machines and eternal life. I think his opinion on copyright today would more closely mirror the "let the grand-children take care of themselves" part of his speech, because very little of the modern issue about copyrights is due to the concerns of individual authors (honestly, do you care about whether some kid who will be born in 2130 makes money off your book?). It's all about the Mouse.
The people "rear[ing] their families in affluence" based on perpetual copyrights wouldn't be the authors; they would, in fact,
still be the publishers. Look at it this way:
Let's say you wrote a book this year, you're 30 years old, and this is also the year the first of your two children is born (in fact, to make the math easier, let's declare them twins). You live to the biblical threescore and ten. All of your descendants have families and lifespans exactly like yours. Also, assume all figures are in inflation-adjusted pricing. Your book is published, earning the publisher $8000 a year in profit, and you $8000 a year in royalties. By 2120, you will have 24 living descendants, but assuming only the oldest ones are getting income from your estate, we're talking $1000 a year each (assuming, of course, that the book is still selling). So your great-grandson makes $1000 ... the publisher makes $8000. With each generation the benefit to your individual descendants decreases. In another 20 years, for instance, when your great-grandchildren Charles, Connie, Corey, Carol, Chester, Cecilia, Craig, and Cassandra die, your great-great-grandchildren (Dora, Dave, Denise, Duane... you get the picture) will be getting only $500 each, but the publisher will still be pulling down that full $8000.
And meanwhile, the publisher has sued and bankrupted a half-dozen other authors who wrote something that looked a bit too much like your book -- or at least, they could convince a jury that it did -- leaving nothing for
their great-great-grandchildren ... or the authors themselves, for that matter, so they're now doing data entry for an asteroid mining company.
Again: It's not about any of our great-great grandchildren. It's all about the Mouse.