attention of their communities the length of their service and the value that has accumulated to them from that long experience.

Books and Travel

HE season of European travel is

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hardly over before the time for planning world tours or Carlifornia journeys is in sight, and this makes especially interesting the announcement of an an International Travel Exposition at the Hotel Sherman, Chicago, during the week of November 21st-26th. The travel agencies, railroads, steamship companies have all learned much about popularizing the interest in travel, and they have learned how much books can do to create the travel enthusiasm out of which grows the actual sale of tickets.

Libraries and bookstores have greatly increased their supply of books in this field during the last few years, and bookstores have found many opportunities to connect travel interest with their displays. It is to be hoped that some book display will be arranged for in this exposition, and the success of the recent display of the Marmor Bookshop at the printing exhibit in New York would give reason for believing that a similar display in Chicago would be well worth while.

Lower Postage Rates Needed

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ONGRESSMAN KELLY, well known to the book-trade because of his persistent sponsorship of fair trade bills and for eight years a member of the Committee on Post Offices, is sponsor for a new bill that will be introduced in the next congress, calling for a revision of postage rates. His arguments will be based on a new analysis of mailing costs, on clearer bookkeeping which shall eliminate from the costs charged against the general mails the large amounts which the government intentionally pays out to carry some classes of mail free. Congressional mail shows a loss of revenue of sixteen million dollars; free-in-county for newspapers, ten and a half million dollars; the special rate to religious, scientific and fraternal periodicals shows a loss of fourteen million dollars; rural free delivery expense

above cost, seventy-five million dollars. Congressman Kelly says:

"No one desires to see any of these services abolished or even curtailed. However, I do maintain that their cost should not be charged against postal revenues but against the national treasury. They are welfare projects exactly on a line with the service rendered by the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Commerce and other departments. With these segregated, the Post Office Department would show a large surplus in operation and we could thus deal with postage rate reductions and with improved working conditions for postal employees on a proper basis. If we adopt a straight service policy, reductions can be made on other classes of mail matter."

The bill to be introduced will recommend that postage rates shall be determined by the cost of the service and that the above-mentioned deficits shall not be charged against the total operating cost.

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The Record Price for a

Shakespeare Folio

FEW years ago when a British Guiana stamp brought a price that exceeded any figure that had been then quoted for the greatest of books in the English language, a First Folio Shakespeare, we had some keen regrets and hoped it might not be long before the balance of things was corrected. This has now come to pass in the transfer of the Earl of Carysfort's copy of the First Folio to A. Edward Newton at the price of $62,000. It is one of the most superb trophies in existence, it must be a joy to its possessor, and may easily be estimated that even at this figure it is an assured investment. The record price previously was $43,000, which H. C. Folger of Brooklyn paid for the Daniel copy. The First Folio cannot be expected to compete with the Gutenberg Bible, but $62,000 somewhat more nearly represents its value from the point of view of sentiment and collecting interest than the earlier piece.

Next week, October 15, Children's Book Number

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Held Up at the Customs

NOVEL of high school and college life entitled "What Happens," written by John Hermann, of New Preston, Conn., has been published in English in Dijon, France, and a shipment of 300 copies was held up at the New York Customs House, on the ground that the volume was obscene and ordered destroyed. The author took the case before the Federal Court, Judge Knox, who has upheld the decision of the Customs House. A stay has been granted on the statement of Mr. Hermann's lawyer, Morris L. Ernst, that an appeal would be made to the U. S. Supreme Court.

The author was formerly a student of the University of Michigan and of George Washington University, and he testified that his book was a truthful description of what he has seen, and that he has not overstated.

Judge Knox would not permit the introduction of testimony by those who were present and had read the book including H. L. Mencken, Heywood Broun, Harry Hansen, Babette Deutsch, Genevieve Taggard, and Nathan Asch. "The jury represents the state of mind of the community," said the judge, "and we are going to submit to them the question of whether or not the book is obscene. On that point there is no necessity for the calling of literary experts."

A request of the attorney for the defense to make a comparable reading from Shakespeare was also refused, the judge stating that, "You are here to show that this book is not obscene, not that Shakespeare is."

The attorney argued that the statute would, thus interpreted, make the customs officials censors of morals and that the liberty of the press was involved. He called attention to the changing interpretation of the word "obscene" since the law was passed and stated that "What is obscene today is not what the customs and law books of the '90's define as such."

In describing the character of the "What Happens," Harry Hansen writes in the New York World:

"I should not advise any one to attempt to procure a copy of 'What Happens' by any of the usual underground routes unless he wants to read a very sombre and tragic story of what happens to a young traveling

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salesman who goes out for 'booty.' consequences of going out after young girls and picking the offal of the streets are too dire not to affect the reader as a great object lesson. If the book serves any usefulness at all, it is as a Y. M. C. A. tract and not as literature.

"But it so happens that it is presented as a work of the imagination, and as such we approach it from an entirely different viewpoint. There is nothing in this book that one would not find in the writings of so serious a man as Judge Ben Lindsey, for instance, yet the object of Herrmann is to take a phase of life and portray it, Herrmann being a writer and not a police officer.

"And he gets into trouble, no doubt, because certain passages in his book simply cannot be misunderstood. As writing, his book is not exceptional-it has really nothing to commend it but its frankness. But that frankness is typical of the honesty with which our younger generation faces life. It often lacks good taste, but it also lacks smugness and hypocrisy, for which we may well give thanks."

Competition That Raises Prices

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USINESS is trying so hard to get business that it is saddling itself with all sorts of expenses in trying to make people buy more goods, with the result that gross business is increased but net profit decreased," says Fayette R. Plumb in his volume on "Competition That Raises Prices."

Mr. Plumb continues, "There are several main reasons for the increased cost of dis-' tribution. These are hand-to-mouth buying, excessive competition, extra service such as rush delivery, fancy packaging, etc., effort of merchant to compete with chain stores, the change in the worker himself in the direction of desire for less work and more pay, rising local taxation, and business waste as exemplified by the undiscriminating distribution of 'dealer-helps.' What the retailer, wholesaler and manufacturer should do is to serve the largest proportion of their customers best, and let the rest slide. Too many merchants are trying to give their customers more than they can afford to give, either in low prices. or in too costly services."

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O those of us of Anglo-Saxon blood, who pride ourselves upon our present contribution to the Book, it is salutary to go back and contemplate how slowly the art developed in England. It was not until the middle of the eighteenth century that John Baskerville issued his splendid "Virgil"—and this was the first time England could claim to have produced the best-made book of the period! There were comparatively few private libraries in England even as late as the sixteenth century, and during the reign of Henry VIII so many Italian books were imported that English printers and binders, alarmed for their very existence, finally secured the passage of the Act of 1533 to protect their interest. Gold tooling had been practiced in Venice for over fifty years before it was introduced into England—in the shop of Thomas Berthelet, Pynson's successor as Printer and Stationer to the King. These early English bindings were nothing but imitations of the Italian, the tools being of the same patterns as those used on the early Aldine bindings, worked on brown leather made of calfskin or deerskin.

The volumes which followed the Berthelet bindings are of poorer quality because the early ones were at least based upon fine models. During the Elizabethan period the binding appears to have been left in the hands of the Queen's Printers, and these examples are of greater historic than artistic interest. The binders tried to imitate the Lyonnese school, using stamps and azured corner pieces, and introducing original designs quite out of harmony with the general scheme. Queen Elizabeth had

many books bound in velvet and embroidered with gold or silver clasps, sometimes having precious stones or pearls set in the covers. Some of these volumes are exquisite examples of the jeweler's art, but reflect no special credit upon the binder.

The first master binder in England who did not combine with his own vocation that of printer was John Gibson. He was appointed Royal Binder in 1581, and served James I, son of Mary, Queen of Scots. The books produced during this period differ little from those preceding them. During the reign of Charles I a considerably larger number of tools came. into use, better engraved and of smaller size. The whole tendency was still French, but this time it was the Parisian gilders who were copied rather than the Lyonnese. A comparison between the copies and the originals is distinctly in favor of the French workmanship. style of binding which was characteristically English covered the entire surface of the boards with a diaper of small circles or lozenges enriched by figure tools, and heavily gilded.

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The Civil Wars further postponed the real development of bookbinding as an art in England. After the Restoration of Charles II, in 1660, Samuel Mearne was granted the office of Bookbinder to the King for life. The pecuniary value of this position would not seem to be particularly attractive, as it yielded a retaining fee of only £6; but the eagerness with which printers and binders sought Royal appointments, and the pride with which they held them, is evidence enough that the office included other perquisites. For the next twenty years one finds in the ac

counts of the Great Wardrobe references to Prayer Books and Bibles bound by Mearne to be used in the Royal chapels, and other volumes which were probably bound for the Royal library at St. James' Palace. In the Calendars of State are entries dating from 1660 to 1667 of thirty-six almanacs bound in turkey leather "for the use of the King and Council." Methods may have changed since then, but manners were essentially the same, for Mearne's bill for this work was disputed by the King, who contended that the bindings were needlessly extravagant and the price too high!

In Samuel Mearne, England had for the first time a binder who, in the beauty of his designs and in the skill of his workmanship, could compare with the French artists of the same period. In his elaborate filigree gilding Mearne showed the French. influence, but in the form and arrangement of his ornaments he introduced a style which was distinctively English. Many of his small stamps, which he combined with curves and lines, were floral in their nature. Another favorite stamp took the shape of a bird's head and beak. Mearne was exceedingly successful in getting a mass effect with these small

stamps.

Most of the volumes bound by Mearne for Charles II were in red morocco bearing Royal cipher, which consisted of two crowned C's facing each other, partially enclosed in a spray of palm. He developed two distinct styles, in the simpler of which he employed only rectangular lines with small ornaments at the corners, while the title was usually stamped in letters of generous size. The panels are filled either with the crowned cipher or with smaller stamps of his own design and cutting. It was this style that Roger Payne later copied and improved. In his more elaborate style, Mearne replaced the rectangular lines with decorated fillets, frequently colored black. Sometimes he employed the "cottage" design, so called because it resembles the gable of a cottage roof.

The work of Samuel Mearne, and, later that of his son Charles, produced a lasting effect upon English bookbinding, even tho for some years after their death binding in England fell into decadence.

I like Roger Payne's work better than that of any other English binder down to Cobden-Sanderson. He was the Edgar

Allen Poe of the craft, producing his best work while yielding freely to his intemperate habits. His genius reclaimed binding as an art and gave England a national style. Payne is entitled to particular credit because, finding the craft so far debased, he not only produced work of such high artistic merit, but reformed the entire process. About 1770 he was established as a bookbinder by his namesake, Thomas Payne, the famous London bookseller, in a little shop near Leicester Square. Dibdin, in his "Decameron," gives a portrait of him-a shabby little old man, standing in a small room surrounded by books on the floor, a pot of glue on the fire. "In this place," says Arnett, "were executed the most splendid specimens of binding; and here, upon the same shelf, were mixed together old shoes and valuable leases, bread and cheese, with most costly manuscripts, or early printed books." At first his work seems to have been mostly repairing old books, but it was not long before his proficiency brought business enough to warrant him in striking out for himself.

Payne was an eccentric genius. He did everything with his own hands, even to the coloring of his end papers and the making of his own tools. There is no doubt that he made himself entirely familiar with the work of Samuel Mearne, for several of his his stamps are strikingly reminiscent. On the other hand, Payne cut original stamps of exceeding delicacy and beauty, which enabled him to produce bindings that stand among the best of the English examples of the art. No binder showed more scrupulous attention to minor details, and some of his innovations are in common use even at the present time.

In appropriating the more simple of the two styles Mearne had developed, Payne so handled it as to make it individual and distinctive. He added ornamentation to the rectangular lines in the form of beautiful and delicately stamped corners, with ornamentation filling the space between the inner panel and the outer edge of the book. He was fond of leaving the center of the upper cover blank, but on occasion filled it with a coat of arms. He was the