--The employers' associations have one idea--a little different from the idea of the unions, perhaps, but not concerned with the improvement of printing. There are trade schools but they teach only the mechanics of the craft.
--Apparently, then, there is no place in this country where one can learn how to design printing?
--You can safely say that there is no such place.
Q: What is your own opinion on the subject of illustrations in books?
--I mean, do you think that illustrations help or hinder the quality of a book?
--The question is too general to be answered easily. May I ask you to be more specific?
--For example, here is a "best-seller" with several--five or six--half-tone illustrations. Do you consider that these pictures make the book a more complete thing as a specimen of book-making?
--Then would you say that illustrations in such books were a detraction?
--Illustrations such as these, yes. Though it would be hard to detract from this particular book.
--It is a standard book--a standard type of book.
--What kind of illustrations would you favour?
--For many books, none at all. In these books of current fiction the pictures are either futile or else detrimental to the development of the plot. They give the game away, so to speak, when the author may wish to hold the story in suspense. The effort to avoid this disaster accounts for the multitude of undramatic pictures you see in books.
--Your theory of no pictures should appeal to the publishers but I doubt if the illustrators will stand with you.
--Illustration is a trade as well as an art.
--True. But we are trying to limit the inquiry to the artistic side at present. When, then, according to your deductions, would illustrations be called for?
--When they can make a stage-setting for the story. When they ornament it or suggest it, perhaps, instead of reveal it. Impressions and "atmosphere" instead of literal diagrams with a cross marking the spot where, etc.
--But perhaps people like the cross marking the spot where.
--We are limiting the discussion to the artistic side, are we not?
--What about the half-tone process of engraving?
--The process is a way of doing a thing that cannot be done cheaply by any other means.
--Do you consider it a process that adds to the artistic possibilities of book printing?