the field of utility the book is not independent, cannot impose
conditions upon its users, but is an instrument strictly subordinate to
human needs. The establishment of its efficiency has only begun when we
have adapted it to the convenience of the hand and the bookshelf. The
real tests of its utility are subtle, not gross, and are, in fact,
beyond the range of ordinary haphazard experience. In this field popular
judgment may be right or wrong; it offers merely an opinion, which it
cannot prove. But here that higher power of common sense that we call
science comes in and gives verdicts that take account of all the
elements involved and can be verified. Rather this is what science has
not yet done for printing, or has done only in part, but which we
confidently expect it is about to do.

What then are some of the points that we may call in science to settle?
We know surely that fine type, bad presswork, pale ink on gray paper are
all bad for the eyes. But there are a host of other matters connected
with printing, we may even say most matters, in regard to which our
knowledge is either uncertain or indefinite. In respect to this whole
range of practical printing subjects we want to know just what practice
is the best and by what percentage of superiority. This quantitative
element in the solution is of great importance, for when rival
considerations, the esthetic, the economic, for instance, plead for one
choice as against another, we shall know just how much sacrifice of
utility is involved. The tests for which we look to science cover
everything that goes to make up the physical side of the book. The tests
themselves, however, are psychological, for the book makes its appeal to
the mind through one of the senses, that of sight, and therefore its
adaptedness to the manifold peculiarities of human vision must be the
final criterion of its utility.

Beginning with the material basis of the book--paper--most readers are
sure that both eggshell and glaze finish are a hindrance to easy reading
and even hurtful to the eyes; but which is worse and how much? Is there
any difference as regards legibility between antique and medium plate
finish, and which is better and by what percentage? In regard to the
color as well as the surface of paper we are largely at sea. We realize
that contrast between paper and ink is necessary, but is the greatest
contrast the best? Is the blackest black on the whitest white better,
for instance,