er, Mr. Stevens holds to be, under the printer, the real man of
responsibility; but he too is often hampered by want of plan and due
knowledge of the proportions of the book that he is handling. He also
should go to the school of typography, and the readers of different
offices should learn to agree. The compositor is pronounced "a little
person of great consequence." His moral responsibility is not great, but
too much is often thrust upon him; in fact he is, in many cases, the
real maker of the book. "He ought to have a chance at the school of
typography, and be better instructed in his own business, and be taught
not to assume the business of any other sinner joined with him in the
manufacture of books." Between the compositor and the pressman is a long
road in which many a book is spoiled, but the responsibility is hard to
place. Few people have any idea what constitute the essentials of a
book's form and proportions. Yet our old standards, in manuscript and
print, demand "that the length of a printed page should have relation to
its width, and that the top should not exceed half the bottom margin,
and that the front should be double the back margin."

The papermaker comes in for a large share of blame, but the remedy lies
only in the hands of the consumer, who must insist on receiving good and
durable paper. "The ink-maker is a sinner of the first magnitude." The
first printing inks are still bright, clean, and beautiful after four
hundred years; but who will give any such warrant to even the best inks
of the present day? Mr. Stevens pronounces the sallow inks of our day as
offensive to sight as they are to smell. The bookbinder is adjudged
equal in mischief to any other of the ten sinners, and the rest are
called upon to combine to prevent their books from being spoiled in
these last hands.

The consumer, after all, is the person most to blame, for he has the
power to control all the rest. Or, in the critic's closing words: "Many
of our new books are unnecessarily spoiled, and it matters little
whether this or that fault be laid to this or that sinner. The
publisher, the printer, or the binder may sometimes, nay, often does, if
he can, shift the burden of his sins to the shoulders of his neighbor,
but all the faults finally will come back on the consumer if he
tolerates this adulteration longer."

The great constructive feature of Mr. Stevens's address, which is one
that brings it absolutely up to date, is his ca