B

Y March 1st next, the great Brentano store of New York will be moved to 3 West 47th Street, with a ground floor, mezzanine and basement in a large new building to be known as the Brentano Building, for which a twenty-one year lease has been signed. Two years later this will have connection with Fifth Avenue by the taking over of the area now occupied by the Lichenstein Millinery Company, whose lease will expire at that time.

The store is being carefully modeled to suit book requirements and is only 100 feet distant from Fifth Avenue, the corner being occupied by the Empire Trust Company.

It is some time since Madison Square was the retail center, but the great repute of the Brentano business and the size of the stock carried, which could be duplicated nowhere else, made it comparatively easy for the store to maintain its place successfully on the corner of 27th Street. The swing north has now been so greatly accelerated that it seemed the right time to move, and, after a long canvass, Arthur Brentano, the president of the company, has signed this lease with a large real estate operator who has been developing the 47th Street section.

One block to the north on the other side of Fifth Avenue is the Scribner building, and two blocks to the south in 45th Street is the Putnam building. The importance of 47th Street as a retail center is further emphasized by the presence of the W. and J. Sloane building on one corner of Fifth Avenue and that of the Gotham Manufacturing Company on another. One block to the east is the Ritz Hotel and the beginning of Madison Avenue's exclusive shops. Two blocks to the south is the 45th Street entrance of the Grand Central Station and the big buildings that are in that district. After 42nd Street had taken on its full importance as a crosstown street, 45th Street rapidly developed, being the first street to the north of 42nd Street that crossed the plot of the Grand Central Station. 46th Street has never taken on any special individuality, and it has remained for 47th Street to be the next important crossing.

With a high studded new building, Brentano's has had an interesting opportunity to lay out a model bookstore. There will be a 70 foot frontage on 47th Street with

two big windows and a very broad entrance with cases on either side. On entering there is seen a long, central aisle leading toward the rear and ending at a staircase with double flights down to the basement and up to the mezzanine. The basement is also reached by two staircases at the front immediately behind the display windows. This complete connection with the basement is important, because the leased space takes in 150 x 100 feet of basement, half of which will be sales room and half stack room and shipping.

A deep mezzanine will go around three sides of the high first floor, and in this will be the private office of Arthur Brentano, the mail-order department and several special dpartments of books for which the firm has special fame. In the rear of the staircase on the main floor will be a quieter corner for the rare book department, and about 20 feet from the rear at the right will be the point at which connection will eventually be made thru Fifth Avenue. When that is done, there will be a broad aisle straight thru from Fifth Avenue to the central staircases connecting with the main aisle of the 47th Street front.

This move will fall on about the second anniversary of the big expansion in Chicago, when Brentano's took the retail business of McClurg, and about seventy years after the beginnings of the business, when August Brentano first entered into the business of foreign periodicals and books. His first shop was in the basement of the old LeFarge House, from which he moved to a tiny shop at 708 Broadway, opposite the New York Hotel. When the firm moved in the early '70's to 33 Union Square, a real bookstore was founded with an ample and up-to-date stock. The fortunes of the firm, during its stay in Union Square were varied, and it moved about the Square a number of times before it settled down in 1907 at Fifth Avenue and 27th Street. In the meantime branches had been established in Paris, Washington and Chicago. The trend of business now seems to have been fixed for some time to come north, between 42nd Street and 60th Street, where, along Fifth Avenue and the adjacent cross streets, the city's most spectacular recent growth has taken place.

T the very outset of these remarks, I spoke of outside criticism of the booktrade. Just at the moment they are very pleased with a new slogan, "Too Many Books." They are shouting this everywhere, as tho by this shouting they had solved a problem or helped the world along. As a matter of fact, they have caught hold of a stick by the wrong end and are tripping over it.

Let us analyze this precious slogan: "Too Many Books." Too many for what? Too many for the available paper or cloth or strawboard? Too many for the people to find time to read? Too many for the literary editors to review? Too many for the dealers in review copies to sell them as new again? Too many for what?

What It Means

The cry does not mean anything, and yet we all know what it means. It means that there are too many books appearing for the bookseller to be able to find the time he wants to look thru them and judge between the good and the bad. Too many for the public to find their puzzled way to the book they really want. Too many for the good ones to find their market without being smothered by the bad.

The Art of Selection

The great difficulty of the bookseller is to make a good and wise selection from the books he has to choose from. This is the very kernel of his problem, and tho it is a difficult one I do not think it would be well to do away with it altogether. Is not the man who chooses best the best bookseller? Is not he the wisest who reads the signs aright? There are clues which will help: the author's name; the publisher's imprint; the general appearance of the book in relation to the price; the very look of the book itself. All these give a hint, and if the problem were altogether removed, the bookseller's chief opportunity for excelling would be taken from him.

I repeat that the problem has been approached from the wrong end. It is quite impossible to lessen the number of books actually produced so long as there are silly people willing to spend their money on turning unwanted manuscript into unwanted print. But it is quite possible to increase the number of book-buyers.

If you look at the figures of books published you will realize that the numbers of the book-buying public are totally inadequate. These can be increased, even if the output cannot be checked, and this is our job. We must increase the book-buying public. The public for books is ludicrously and inexcusably small. I am glad to think that it is growing, but it is still out of all proportion to what it might and must become. This is the task before all servants of books. It is in this work of educating the public that the editors of the literary journals might give valuable help; but instead of asking the public to help the trade. they generally kick the trade. For instance, I have here an article from the Nation. It is cautious and helpful, so far as it goes, but it also makes the mistake of sparing the blessed public and beating the miserable trade. The writer states, "I do not myself believe that the book-trade is today in a sound or healthy condition. To deal with the subject frankly is difficult, because one will almost certainly be treading on dangerous ground, namely, other people's toes. The conditions of the book-trade affect four different classes: authors, publishers, booksellers and the reading public. I do not know anything about the booksellers' point of view, but I am quite certain that an intelligent author, publisher, or reader would agree that there are very serious evils in the present system of making and selling books."

Then the article points out that prices are too high and prohibitive to the ordinary man. No necessity is ever prohibitive, save to those unhappy souls who are in real

destitution. But the Nation is not speaking about the frankly destitute, but about people who are perfectly able to buy coal at 50s. a tan, and theater seats at 15s. each; who "listen in" and play golf and tennis; any of which may seem "prohibitive" to one or the other of us if we do not really mind doing without them. The trouble with the ordinary man is that he does not want books enough, even if he has learned to want books at all.

The section of the community concerned with book writing and book producing is unmistakably ahead of the other and larger section to whom the books should go. The public for books today could easily be ten times what it is, but the output of books is already nearly at its maximum. There are few unrecognized geniuses going the round of the publishing houses today, but there is an enormous number of undiscovered book buyers trailing about the streets. Therefore, the task which lies before all servants of books is to enlarge the book-buying public. The public must be taught to appreciate the difference between good literature and trash. When this is done you will find the bad books go the way of all duds and gradually die out. In this branch every part of the trade can help. The bookseller has to enlarge the public needing books. He has to change the whole attitude to books of the "ordinary man." The public must be taught to take as much care in the buying of books as he does over his golf balls and tennis rackets.

Where the Publisher Can Help

The publisher can help by good advertising; by telling the truth about a book; not by leading a bookseller to think a bad book is a good one. He should pay attention to good format; the appearance of a book; even the "cover pictures"; and other illustrations and reprints. They are small points, but all help the bookseller in his work, and should help him to know whether this book or that would appeal to his public.

The publisher should let the bookseller know all he can about a book, and he should not make a mystery of his job. If the bookseller asks us to show him how the cost of a book is made up, we should not say, "Well, we can hardly show you the actual figures." And likewise the bookseller -he must not hide his share in a book's selling price. There is nothing to make a mystery about. If anyone wants to make a mystery about it there must be something wrong somewhere.

I do not pretend to know all that you booksellers have to endure from a public

which is at once arrogant and woodenheaded. In the retail trade you are manning the front trenches, and must experience the utmost ferocity of the enemy attack. We publishers are somewhat withdrawn behind the line, and are sheltered from the ceaseless onslaught of the public, but we are exposed to terrible bombing raids from authors and from author's agents!

However, I can, to some extent, imagine what you are called on to endure, because I have heard persons in my suburb talking of books. These are the people who are going to crowd your shops in six weeks' time. They are supposedly educated; they live in pleasant houses and seem successful in their businesses. Yet for sheer sloppiness and futility their average talk of reading and of books must be unequalled in the whole wide world. If the men among them did their stock-broking or their insurance, or their merchanting, of if the women kept their houses or bought their children's clothes with only half the ineptitude with which they speak of books, they would all, and deservedly, be reduced to destitution in a few weeks, and be out in the streets in rags. But they do not; in other aspects of their lives they are sensible, keen and efficient. Yet they can never get a single title of a book right. They never hear of a book until it has sold 25,000 copies. They rarely know the author of the book they want, still less often do they know by whom it is published. You can often persuade them to buy a book by the size and look of it!

The fact is they do not regard books as a necessity, and they must be made to do So. We must fit ourselves for the task. It will be slow work, but it can be done. And once the public is taught to be less muddle-headed on the subject of books, the production of trashy books will surely decrease. Trash thrives on muddle-headed

ness.

The Greatest Service

No

The essence of this job of ours, and it is the best job in the world, is loyal service to the book itself. The books demand from their servants not only enthusiasm, not only loyalty, but also practical good sense. country is the happier for being governed without economic reason, and we are governing one of the most important spiritual countries within the framework of the British Empire-the country of the mind. If we govern with obstinate wrong- headedness, with personal jealousies, or with foolish prodigality, we fail in our duty to the public, and also insult the majesty and lower the dignity of the sovereign book.

A Splendid Motto

I should like to read you a few lines written over eighty years ago by a young Cambridge bookseller (who was to found one of the great publishing houses of today) to his cousin in Scotland:

"Bless your heart, Maclehose, surely you never thought you were merely working for bread! .. We booksellers, if we are faithful to our task, are trying to destroy, and are helping

to destroy, all kinds of confusion, and are aiding our great Taskmaster to reduce the world to order and beauty and harmony. . . . At the same time it is our duty to manage our affairs wisely, keep our minds easy, and not trade beyond our means."

That was in 1840. The words might hang on the wall of every publishing office and bookshop of 1924, and read as urgently and as significantly as tho they had been written yesterday.

B

OOKSHOPS, like eminent persons, stand out by reason of the service they have rendered in their community. Every large city has one or more of such places where generations of citizens have come for help, for comfort, for the rare delight of handling books they love but may be too poor to possess and for the pleasure of talking with kindred souls. In Buffalo, and thruout western New York, the Otto Ulbrich Company is known as such a place.

Begun as a very small shop more than half a century ago, it has steadily increased its influence and enlarged the number of its friends until it has become one of the representative bookshops of the United States. To keep pace with the growth of the city, a branch store was opened in October, 1923, in the rapidly developing exclusive shopping section in Delaware Avenue.

This shop, with its specially designed fixtures and decorations, is unique among the bookshops of the country, and thousands of visitors from all parts of the world have found delight in its quiet atmosphere, its restful colors and its interesting display of books. Low book shelves, small tables. comfortable chairs, shaded lamps and a soft floor covering combine to attract book lovers.

It is the aim of the Delaware Shop to develop special lines, and, with this in mind, many English books, not to be found in the ordinary shop, may be seen here shortly after publication. A well-selected stock of current and miscellaneous books from the lists of the leading American publishers may be found on the shelves at all times.

In the rear of the shop a room has been most attractively fitted with special cases, and here, under the mellow light of a lamp. one may sit and examine beautifully bound volumes, limited editions, modern first editions and rare books. This room, with its treasures, has been a delight to lovers of fine books and considerable new business has been developed and some promising new collectors have been started on the road that brings one pleasures beyond price.

On the wall of the shop hangs a tapestry which never fails to attract attention. It is that of a bookworm browsing at his favorite bookstall and was designed from a woodcut by J. J. Lankes. A few choice porcelain bowls filled with flowers add a touch of color that is most pleasing. joy of the shop is a huge window in the west wall. This has been very artistically treated by the decorator with draw curtains and window boxes with trailing vines, and when the sunlight plays upon these flowers and vines the effect is very charming.

The

The fine stationery and engraving department occupies one side of the main floor, and display cases which show samples of paper, without exposing stock to the dust and light, are features of this department. Low tables with samples of engraved stationery and greeting cards under glass enable patrons to make their selections with ease and comfort. Here, also, quality is the keynote. The finest American and European writing papers are carried in stock.

The basement of the shop is large, airy and very well lighted and here a wellstocked and well-equipped Commercial Stationery Department has been installed.

The shop has two fine show windows on Delaware Avenue and three display windows in the lobby of the Jackson building in which the shop is located. These windows are finished in walnut, trimmed with black moulding to match the store fixtures. Surplus stock is carried at the Main Street

store where the Company occupies four buildings to house its immense stock.

The new shop, considered by many a radical departure from the conservatism of Buffalo and fully ten years in advance of its time, is already justifying the faith of its founders in its establishment.