The fact that Foster handled his IP and finances badly is not my (or governments) problem. Some folks still do that today, when patents and copyright are "well understood" (but, given the discussion here, that seems not to be the case).
"It is a form of philistinism to place a permanent value on a building.and deny that same value to a book or composition."
LOL. You have a VERY active imagination. There is no such thing as a "permanent value" for a building. See today's real estate prices as to why. There is no monopoly on real estate, which is what you are proposing. After copyright expires, nobody is stopping the author from continuing to sell his book/article/song/play.....it just means that he is not the ONLY person who can legally do so.
Which, BTW, was why the monopoly was instituted in the first place....because for literally millenia, technological advances have been discovered and then lost because the inventors kept the processes secret to avoid competition or theft of their ideas, and failing to transmit the information to successors before they died. The deal was that the government would grant a TEMPORARY monopoly on right to sell in exchange for completely revealing the idea so protected.
I never said or implied that there was permanent value of land or a building. I said that there could be perpetual ownership of property passed down through generations, and that a book, song etc should be treated the same way.
Also, people like you are what make it so difficult to join the conservative movement, with statements like, “It’s not my problem if Stephen Foster didn’t handle his finances...” What a cold vicious statement. He was the embodiment of America’s very heart, and he died in anguish and poverty because there weren’t laws to protect his authorship.