All of this is clearly lack of training, because their taste is good in other matters--music, for example, and house furnishings.
--You would deduce, then, that the periodical and book-publishing industry has failed to train the taste of its public in such matters?
--It has done worse: it has depraved that taste. Because there was, not very long ago, a fine tradition in this country in the line of illustration.
--Why should the publishers find any advantage in depraving the taste of the public--as you say they have done?
--Because they turned their backs on the standards of the publishing business and became merchandisers solely. They had to sell the goods and they had to "sell" a big new public. The quickest way to this public--through flash-and-crash tactics--they adopted. And naturally ran themselves and the public down hill.
--May there not be other sides to it, too? May it not be that the art schools are not now producing draughtsmen of a calibre to support the fine tradition you mention?
--That may have something to do with it. But even that is mixed up with the other. I think that the chief difficulty is with the publishers.
--The public will follow if the publishers lead.
A. Are you not making the mistake of keeping too close to the publishers? It seems to me that you will not get at all the facts behind the situation until you get in touch with the people we sell the books to. _They_ are the factors that bring about the conditions you object to. The publisher is merely a machine for selling the public what it wants.
--Then the publisher has no selective function?
--How does the public bring about the condition we object to?
--I mean to say, how does the public prevail upon you to sell it trashy books instead of well made books?
--The public is entirely uneducated on the subject of books, in your sense. People know nothing at all about paper or printing or pictures or things of that sort. One book is as good as another to any educated man so long as he can read it. He doesn't know that there is any such thing as good printing or bad printing or good or bad taste in making books. Under these conditions we should be fools to spend money on features that do not have any bearing on sales. It's a simple business proposition.