ites. To attain his coveted end he has two
resources, experience and experiment, or a mixture of both. While the
book sizes that have been discussed in this chapter do not include all
the favorites, they certainly include some of the first favorites, and
are worthy of study by everyone who is seeking public favor in the
design of that complex art product known as a Book.

THE VALUE OF READING, TO THE PUBLIC AND TO THE INDIVIDUAL

Of what value is it to a community to contain--still more to be composed
of--well-read people? We can best answer this question by picturing its
opposite, a community without readers; this we are unfortunately able to
do without drawing upon our imaginations, for we have only to turn to
certain districts of countries like Spain or Russia. There we shall meet
whole communities, large enough to form cities elsewhere, which are
little more than aggregations of paupers. Shall we find in any of these
homes a daily or a weekly paper, or a monthly magazine, or even a stray
book? Not one, except perhaps in the house of a priest. These masses of
people live on the earth, to be sure, but they do not live in the world.
No currents of the great, splendid life of the twentieth century ever
reach them; and they live in equal isolation from the life of the past.
"The glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome" have for them
simply no existence. They are truly the disinherited of all the ages.
Though they may not be unhappy, they can be called nothing less than
wretched. Is the fault one of race, or government, or religion? Much
could be said on all these points, both for and against; but one fact
remains indisputable--these people do not read.

Let us turn now to a different type of community, that represented by
the ordinary New England village. How stands the cause of reading
there? If there is any person of sound mind in the community who has
never learned to read, he is pointed out as a curiosity. There is not a
home in the length and breadth of the town that is without its paper,
its magazine, or its books. In other words, literacy is taken for
granted. Is it any wonder that in progress, wealth, and influence the
one community starts where the other leaves off? In the illiterate towns
just described there is often no man who has the slightest capacity for
business or who can represent the interests of his community before even
the humblest government official. But from towns of the oth