t no one but highbrows
would buy. What would you think of a base public that would go past my
shop day after day and let the high-minded occupant die of starvation?

MIFFLIN--Your ailment, Jerry, is that you conceive yourself as merely a
tradesman. What I'm telling you is that the bookseller is a public
servant. He ought to be pensioned by the state. The honour of his
profession should compel him to do all he can to spread the
distribution of good stuff.

QUINCY--I think you forget how much we who deal chiefly in new books
are at the mercy of the publishers. We have to stock the new stuff, a
large proportion of which is always punk. Why it is punk, goodness
knows, because most of the bum books don't sell.

MIFFLIN--Ah, that is a mystery indeed! But I can give you a fair
reason. First, because there isn't enough good stuff to go round.
Second, because of the ignorance of the publishers, many of whom
honestly don't know a good book when they see it. It is a matter of
sheer heedlessness in the selection of what they intend to publish. A
big drug factory or a manufacturer of a well-known jam spends vast sums
of money on chemically assaying and analyzing the ingredients that are
to go into his medicines or in gathering and selecting the fruit that
is to be stewed into jam. And yet they tell me that the most important
department of a publishing business, which is the gathering and
sampling of manuscripts, is the least considered and the least
remunerated. I knew a reader for one publishing house: he was a babe
recently out of college who didn't know a book from a frat pin. If a
jam factory employs a trained chemist, why isn't it worth a publisher's
while to employ an expert book analyzer? There are some of them. Look
at the fellow who runs the Pacific Monthly's book business for example!
He knows a thing or two.

CHAPMAN--I think perhaps you exaggerate the value of those trained
experts. They are likely to be fourflushers. We had one once at our
factory, and as far as I could make out he never thought we were doing
good business except when we were losing money.

MIFFLIN--As far as I have been able to observe, making money is the
easiest thing in the world. All you have to do is to turn out an
honest product, something that the public needs. Then you have to let
them know that you have it, and teach them that they need it. They
will batter down your front door in their eagerness to get it. But if
y