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 JavaScript Mini−FAQ
By Danny Goodman

All materials Copyright © 1997−2002 Developer Shed, Inc. except where otherwise noted.
This Mini−FAQ is posted periodically to the comp.lang.javascript newsgroup. It covers the language through
JavaScript 1.2, the version deployed in Netscape Communicator 4.0x, plus some compatibility items with
Microsoft Internet Explorer 3.0x. The focus here is on client−side JavaScript.

Where is the online documentation for JavaScript?

Current JavaScript docs (for Netscape) are available at:
• http://home.netscape.com/eng/mozilla/3.0/handbook/javascript/index.html

A zipped set of Netscape's HTML documents is available at:

• http://developer.netscape.com/library/documentation/jshtm.zip

New JavaScript features in Netscape Communicator can be found at:

• http:developer.netscape.com/library/documentation/communicator/jsguide/js1_2.htm

Documentation for Microsoft's implementation of its core language (called JScript) is at:
• http://www.microsoft.com/JScript/us/techinfo/jsdocs.htm

Also be sure to download Microsoft's document object model description. You can find a link from:
• http://www.microsoft.com/JScript/

Documentation for JScript in Internet Explorer 4 is part of Microsoft's Internet Client SDK documentation:
• http://www.microsoft.com/msdn/sdk/inetsdk/asetup/

Where is the official bug list for JavaScript?

Netscape has collected and published a list of bugs for Navigator 3.0x and Communicator. While not
necessarily 100% complete, it is quite extensive:
• http://developer.netscape.com/

Can JavaScript do any of the following?

• read or write random text files on the local disk or on the server?
• invoke automatic printing of the current document?
• control browser e−mail, news reader, or bookmark windows and menus?
• access or modify browser preferences settings?
• capture a visitor's e−mail address or IP address?
• quietly send me an e−mail when a visitor loads my page?
• launch client processes (e.g.,Unix sendmail,Win apps,Mac scripts)?
• capture individual keystrokes?
• change a document's background .gif after the page has loaded?
• change the current browser window size, location, or options?
• get rid of that dumb "JavaScript Alert:" line in alert dialogs?

No, however many of these items are possible in Communicator 4.0. Those items perceived to be security
risks (e.g., access browser settings) require "signed JavaScript". MSIE JScript version 2 (see below) can
read/write local files via ActiveX−−but only from server−side scripting.

1
 JavaScript Mini−FAQ
Why won't my script work under MS Internet Explorer 3 for the Mac? JScript is available on the Macintosh
starting with 3.0.1 (which is different from the Windows 3.01). I am still evaluating the Mac implementation,
whose object model and other support for JavaScript does not necessarily jive with the Windows version (e.g.,
the Mac version supports the Image object for mouse rollovers). MSIE 3.0.1 runs on Mac 68K and PPC.

Why won't my Navigator 3.0x script run under MSIE 3 for Windows 95?
Most language features and objects that are new in Navigator 3.0 are not supported in MSIE 3.0, although
several Navigator 3.0 items have been added to JScript version 2 (see below). Here's the quick list of items not
available in MSIE 3.0:

UNSUPPORTED OBJECTS

• Image −− this means no onMouseOver swappable images in MSIE 3

• Area −− no onMouseOvers
• Applet
• FileUpload
• Array −− hard−wired (JS1.0) arrays OK; implemented in JScript v.2.
• MimeType
• Plugin

UNSUPPORTED PROPERTIES / METHODS / EVENT HANDLERS OF SUPPORTED OBJECTS

• Window
onerror closed blur() focus() scroll() onBlur= onFocus=
• Location
reload() replace()
• Document
applets[] domain embeds[] images[] URL
• Link
onMouseOut=
• Form
reset() onReset=
• (All Form Elements)
type
• Navigator
mimeTypes[] plugins[] javaEnabled()
• String
prototype split()

One more item: the <SCRIPT SRC="xxx.js"> facility for loading external JavaScript library files runs on the
copy of MSIE 3.02 for Windows that I use (with JScript.dll versions 1 and 2). However there are also reports
that this is not working for some users. Try specifying a complete URL for the SRC attribute.

How is compatibility with Microsoft Internet Explorer 4?

2
 JavaScript Mini−FAQ
IE4 adheres closely to a standard called ECMAScript, which is essentially the core JavaScript 1.1 language.
This does not cover the document object model (another standard being studied). Navigator 3 document
objects not supported in IE4 are:
FileUpload navigator.mimeTypes[] navigator.plugins[]
The JScript.dll shipping with IE4 is version 3.

Why doesn't the document.cookie work with MSIE?

It does, but not when you access the HTML file from your local hard disk, as you are probably doing during
testing. Be aware, however, that MSIE limits you to one cookie name=value pair per domain, whereas
Netscape allows up to 20 pairs per domain.

What's new in Microsoft JScript version 2?

More than can fit here. Some items are compatible with Navigator 3.0+ (such as the Array object). Others are
unique to MSIE, such as the Dictionary and TextStream objects (acccessible via ActiveX). Additions are to
the core language, not the document object model. New functions let you determine the JScript version
installed in IE, but JScript version 2 must be installed to get this data. If you use version 2 language items,
see:
• http://www.microsoft.com/JScript/
for info about including a link button on your page to encourage visitors to upgrade their IE 3.0x to JScript
version 2.

How do I know if I have JScript version 2 installed on my PC?

Installation of MSIE 3.02 does not guarantee JScript version 2. Search your disk for 'jscript.dll'. Get the file's
properties, and click on the Version tab. The File version should begin with '2'. If not, download the latest
version from Microsoft (installer is 442KB).

How can I e−mail forms?

The most reliable way is to use straight HTML via a Submit style button. Set the ACTION of the <FORM> to
a mailto: URL and the ENCTYPE attribute to "text/plain". For security reasons, the
form.submit() method does not submit a form whose ACTION is a mailto: URL. Microsoft Internet
Explorer 3.0x does not e−mail forms of any kind.

How do I script a visit counter?

At best, a client−side script can show the visitor how many times he or she has been to the site (storing the
count in a local cookie). A count of total hits to the server requires a server−side CGI program. I have an
article on cookies in Netscape's View Source developer newsletter archive (in the "JavaScript Apostle"
section).

Why is my script not working inside a table?

There is a long−standing bug with JavaScript and tables. Do not place <SCRIPT> tags inside <TD> tags.
Instead, start the <SCRIPT> tag before the <TD> tag, and document.write() the <TD> tag through the
</TD> tag. I go one step further, and document.write() the entire table, interlacing script statements
where needed.

3
 JavaScript Mini−FAQ

After window.open(), how do I access objects and scripts in the other window?
First, be sure to assign an 'opener' property to the new window if you are using a version of JS that doesn't
do it automatically (Nav 3.0x and MSIE 3.0x do it automatically). The following script should be a part of
_every_ new window creation:

var newWind = window.open("xxx","xxx","xxx")

// u fill in blanks
if (newWind.opener == null) { // for Nav 2.0x
newWind.opener = self // this creates and sets a new property
}<

To access items in the new window from the original window, the 'newWind' variable must not be damaged
(by unloading), because it contains the only reference to the other window you can use (the name you assign
as the second parameter of open() is not valid for scripted window references; only for TARGET
attributes). To access a form element property in the new window, use:

newWind.document.formName.elementName.property

From the new window, the 'opener' property is a reference to the original window (or frame, if the
window.open() call was made from a frame). To reference a form element in the original window:

opener.document.formName.elementName.property

Finally, if the new window was opened from one frame in the main browser window, and a script in the new
window needs access to another frame in the main browser window, use:

opener.parent.otherFrameName.document.formName. ...

How do I use JavaScript to password−protect my Web site?

There are any number of schemes (I've used some myself). Most of them fail to deflect the knowledgeable
JavaScript programmer, because no matter how you encode the correct password (e.g., bit shifting), both the
encoding algorithms and the result have to be in the script −− whose source code is easily accessible. If you're
only interested in keeping out casual visitors, this method may suffice.

A more secure way is to set the password to be the name or pathname of the HTML file on your site that is the
'true' starting page. Set the location to the value entered into the field (unfortunately, you cannot extract the
value property of a password object in Navigator 2.0x). Entry of a bogus password yields an 'invalid URL'
error.

If the protected pages need additional security (e.g., an infidel has managed to get the complete URL), you
might also consider setting a temporary cookie on the password page; then test for the existence of that cookie
upon entry to every protected page, and throw the infidel back to the password page.

What does the IE4 "Access Denied" error mean when accessing a new window?
The "Access Denied" error in any browser usually means that a script in one window or frame is trying to

4
 JavaScript Mini−FAQ
access another window or frame whose document's domain is different from the document containing the
script. What can seem odd about this is that you get this error in IE4 frequently when a script in one window
generates a new window (with window.open()), and content for that other window is dynamically created
from the same script doing the opening. The focus() method also triggers the error.

In my experience, this occurs only when the scripts are being run from the local hard disk. You get a clue
about the situation in the titlebar of the new window: It forces an about:blank URL to the new window, which
is a protocol:domain that differs from wherever your main window's script comes from. If, however, you put
the same main window document on a server, and access it via http:, the problem goes away.

There is a workaround for the local−only problem: In the first parameter of the window.open() method call,
load a real document (even if it is a content−free HTML document) into the sub−window before using
document.write() to generate content for the subwindow. The loading action 'legitimizes' the window as
coming from the same domain as your main window's document.

(This solution does not affect scripts that load a page from a secure server into a separate window or frame.
An http: protocol in one window and https: in the other−−even if from the same server.domain−−yield a
security mismatch and "Access Denied." Setting the document.domain properties of both pages may solve the
problem (but I am unable to test it for sure).)

...............................................................................................................................................................................15
Other documents randomly have
different content
an edition. The demand was such that the copies could only be
supplied by dividing the work amongst several printers. One of
Defoe's numerous assailants, in attempting to ridicule him, gives the
best evidence of his popularity: "There is not an old woman that can
go to the price of it but buys 'The Life and Adventures,' and leaves it
as a legacy with the 'Pilgrim's Progress.'" Richardson's 'Pamela,'
published in 1741, sold five editions in one year. There are fabulous
accounts of Millar, the publisher, clearing 18,000l. by 'Tom Jones.' In
those times the Dublin pirates were as assiduous in their plunder of
English copyrights as the American publishers have been in
plundering the English, and the English the American, in our days.
Richardson was driven wild by the publication of half 'Sir Charles
Grandison' in Ireland, in a cheap form, before a single volume was
issued in England. There was a regular system of bribery in the
English printing-offices, through which the Dublin booksellers
organised their robberies. They sold their books surreptitiously in
England and Scotland; and from their greater cheapness they had
the command of their own market. This system lasted till the Union.
The prices of books do not appear to have much increased at the
beginning of the reign of George III. In some cases their moderation
is remarkable. We have seen how small was the demand for the first
volume of Hume's 'History' in 1754. We have a number of 'The
Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser' at hand, May 9, 1764; and there
we learn, from an advertisement, what a change ten years had
produced. A new edition of the third and fourth volumes, in quarto,
is advertised at 1l. 5s.; but "the proprietor, at the desire of many
who wish to be possessed of this valuable and esteemed history, is
induced to a monthly publication, which will not exceed eight
volumes." These volumes were 5s. each. It is manifest that the
bookseller had found a new class to address when he issued the
monthly volumes. Hume says, "Notwithstanding the variety of winds
and seasons to which my writings had been exposed, they had still
been making such advances that the copy-money given me by the
booksellers much exceeded anything formerly known in England."
He had complained of the neglect of the "considerable for rank or
letters." His publisher saw that a history with such charms of style—
so freed from tedious quotations from state-papers and statutes—so
unlike the great folios of Carte and Rapin—was a book for a new
race of readers. Coleridge humorously enough says—"Poets and
philosophers, rendered diffident by their very number, addressed
themselves to 'learned readers;' then, aimed to conciliate the graces
of 'the candid reader;' till, the critic still rising as the author sank, the
amateurs of literature collectively were erected into a municipality of
judges, and addressed as 'the Town.' And now, finally, all men being
supposed to read, and all readers able to judge, the multitudinous
'Public,' shaped into personal unity by the magic of abstraction, sits
nominal despot on the throne of criticism."[28] There is a great truth
beneath the sarcasm. The enduring patronage of the public was
beginning when Andrew Millar was bold enough to publish Hume's
History in monthly five-shilling volumes. But there are still many
evidences that the commerce of books at that period, and
subsequently, did not contemplate the existence of a large class of
buyers, beyond those who were at ease in their fortunes. In that
farrago of sense and absurdity, 'The Life of James Lackington, the
present Bookseller, Finsbury-square, London, written by himself'
(1791), there is a remarkable disclosure of the mode in which books
were prevented being sold cheaply, after the original demand had
been satisfied:—"When first invited to these trade-sales, I was very
much surprised to learn that it was common for such as purchased
remainders to destroy one-half or three-fourths of such books, and
to charge the full publication price, or nearly that, for such as they
kept on hand. And there was a kind of standing order amongst the
trade that, in case any one was known to sell articles under the
publication price, such a person was to be excluded from trade-sales
—so blind were copyright holders to their own interest." In the same
manner, it is within the memory of many living persons that there
was an invariable high price for fish in London, because the
wholesale dealers at Billingsgate always destroyed a portion of what
came to market, if the supply were above the average. The dealers
in fish had not recognised the existence of a class who would buy for
their suppers what the rich had not taken for their dinners; and
knew not that the stalls of Tottenham Court Road had as many
customers ready for a low price as the shops of Charing Cross for a
high price. The fishmongers had not discovered that the price
charged to the evening customers had no effect of lowering that of
the morning. Nor had the booksellers discovered that there were
essentially two, if not more, classes of customers for books—those
who would have the dearest and the newest, and those who were
content to wait till the gloss of novelty had passed off, and good
works became accessible to them, either in cheaper reprints, or
"remainders" reduced in price. But books and fish have one material
difference. Good books are not impaired in value when they are
cheapened. Their character, which has been established by the first
demand, creates a second and a larger demand. Lackington
destroyed no books that were worth saving, but sold them as he
best could. We have no quarrel with his self-commendation when he
says, "I could almost be vain enough to assert that I have thereby
been highly instrumental in diffusing that general desire for reading
now so prevalent among the inferior orders of society."
What Lackington thought "a general desire for reading" was,
nevertheless, a very limited desire. "The inferior orders of society"
who had the desire did not comprehend many of the mechanics, and
none of the husbandry labourers. It may be doubted whether the
Magazine Literature that the eighteenth century called forth ever
went beyond the gentry and the superior traders. Kippis says of the
magazines, "they have been the means of diffusing a general habit
of reading through the nation." There appears to have been a sort of
tacit agreement amongst all who spoke of public enlightenment in
the days of George III. to put out of view the great body of "the
nation" who paid for their bread by their weekly wages. The
magazines were certainly never addressed to this class. But for the
general book-buyers of the time, Cave's project of 'The Gentleman's
Magazine' was a great step in popular literature. The booksellers
would not join him in what they held to be a risk. When he had
succeeded, and sold 10,000, then they set up the rival 'London
Magazine.' Cave threw all his energy into the magazine, and was
rewarded. "He scarcely ever looked out of the window, but with a
view to its improvement," said Johnson. 'The Gentleman's Magazine'
commenced in 1731. Then came, year after year, magazines "as
plenty as blackberries:"—'The London,' 'The Universal,' 'The Literary,'
'The Royal,' 'The Complete,' 'The Town and Country,' 'The Ladies','
'The Westminster,' 'The European,' 'The Monthly.' The first popular
review, 'The Monthly,' was published in 1749, and 'The Critical' in
1756. The public were now firmly established as the real patrons of
letters. There was an end of poor authors knocking at great men's
doors with a bundle of books. There was an end to paid Dedications
and gratulatory Odes. Johnson could afford to launch his Dictionary
without the help of the Earl of Chesterfield. Hume became "not only
independent but opulent" through the "copy-money" of the
booksellers.
The publication of Collections of the Poets was another proof of
the extension of the reading public. The man who first projected
such a Collection went for cheapness. In 1777 John Bell announced
an edition of 'The Poets of Great Britain; complete from Chaucer to
Churchill.' The London booksellers, to the number of forty, held a
meeting, to resist what they considered an invasion of their literary
property—some works within the time of the statute of Anne being
legally theirs—others their copyright by courtesy. They resolved to
combine their various interests; and they produced that edition of
the Poets, in 68 volumes, which is called Johnson's, though,
according to Malone, he never saw a line of the text. The 'Lives,'
which Johnson wrote for two hundred guineas, will endure as a
great classic work, however deformed by hasty or prejudiced
judgment. Many of the Poets given in the series have no pretension
to be looked upon again, except as a part of literary history, which
may show how the most feeble may attain reputation in an age of
mediocrity. The booksellers spoke contemptuously of Bell's edition,
which they called "trifling." They boasted their superior printing; but
they gave no place in their Collection to Chaucer, Spenser, or Donne,
as Bell had done. They did not care to direct the public taste;—they
printed what they thought would sell. The demand for such
Collections has always been one of the proofs of a healthy condition
of public intelligence; but the want has not often been supplied with
any judgment beyond that of the rude commercial estimate of the
prevailing fashion in poetry. It is extremely difficult to deal with such
matters. All literary students have a proper horror of abridgments
and analyses. They want all of an author, or none. You can neither
make Chaucer extremely popular by an entire reprint, nor command
a large sale by partial extract. But John Bell was right, in 1777, to
risk the printing of three great early poets, whilst the booksellers
began with Waller. Here were poets that can never be wholly
obsolete. But the rubbish called poetry that found its way, by trade
preferences, into Johnson's edition—the inanities of the drivellers
between Pope and Gray—let not these be reproduced in our time,
when such Collections are coming again into fashion, and showing,
as they showed before, an extension of readers.
The Circulating Library—what a revolution was that in popular
literature! How this new plant appeared above the earth, where it
first budded, where it bore its early fruit—how it grew into a great
tree, like that in the old title to Lilly's Grammar, where the apples of
knowledge are being gathered by little climbing-boys—would be
difficult to trace and to record. There it was—this great economiser
of individual outlay for books—in most market-towns at the
beginning of the century. The universal adoption of the name is the
best proof of the common recognition of the idea. It changed the
habits of the old country booksellers. It found them other occupation
than keeping a stall in the market-place, as did their worthy
forefathers. They dealt no longer in tracts and single sermons. It
sent the chap-books into the villages. It made the 'Seven Champions
of Christendom' and 'The Wise Masters of Greece' vulgar. It created
a new literature of fiction. It banished 'Robinson Crusoe' to the
kitchen, and 'The Arabian Nights' to the nursery. It built up great
printing-houses in Leadenhall-street; and held out high rewards for
rapid composition, at the rate of five pounds per volume, to decayed
governesses who had seen the world, and bank-clerks of an
imaginative turn of mind. These could produce a wilderness of
Italian bandits, with unlimited wealth and beauty, who had won the
hearts of credulous countesses, and only surrendered to the
hangman when whole armies came out to take them. These could
unveil all the mysterious luxuries of great mansions in Grosvenor-
square, or of sumptuous hotels in Bond-street. There was ever and
anon a "bright particular star" in the Milky Way of popular fiction.
But the circulating library went on its own course, whether the
empyrean of romance were dim or brilliant. "What have you got
new?" was the universal question put to the guardian of the
treasures of this recently-discovered world of letters. When the
bower-maid of the luxurious fair one, who lolled upon the sofa
through a long summer's day, as Gray did when he was deep in
Crébillon, came to "change" the book, great sometimes was the
perplexity. It was not a difficult task to "change," but the newness
was puzzling. The lady and the neat-handed Phillis pursued their
studies simultaneously. They did not like "poetry;" they did not like
"letters." 'Sir Charles Grandison' was as old and as tiresome as
'Pamela.' 'Tom Jones,' and 'Peregrine Pickle;' they wondered why
they were allowed to remain in the catalogue. They had read
'Cœlebs in search of a Wife'—the charming book—but they did not
want it again. Perhaps, suggested the bookseller's apprentice, 'The
Monk' might do once more. And so the circulating library went on,
slow and struggling, till, about 1814, the unlucky desire for
"something new" brought down to the little greasy collection, whose
delusive numbers of volumes ranged from 1 to 3250, a new novel,
with the somewhat unpromising title of 'Waverley, or 'tis Sixty Years
since.' At first, the lady upon the sofa, and the counsellor of her
studies, could not endure it, for it was full of horrid Scotch. It was
often "at home," as the phrase went, for six months of its probation;
when, somehow, it was discovered that a new book of wonderful
talent had come out of the North. Another and another came, and in
a few years the old circulating library was ruined. The Burneys, and
Edgeworths, and Radcliffes, and Godwins, and Holcrofts, who had
mixed with much lower company upon the librarian's shelves, still
held a place. But the Winters in London and Winters in Bath, the
Midnight Bells, the Nuns, and the Watch-Towers, retired from
business. There was then a new epoch in the circulating-library life.
The literature of travels and memoirs timidly claimed a place by the
side of the fashionable novel, which asserted its dignity by raising its
price to a guinea and a half. The old legitimate stupidity, which did
very well before the trade was disturbed, would no longer
"circulate." But the names of the producers of the higher fiction
were not "Legion." "Something new" must still be had. To meet the
market, every variety of west-end authorship was experimented
upon. The number to be printed could be calculated with tolerable
exactness, according to the reputation of the writer,—and this
calculation regulated the payment of copyright, from fifty pounds,
and five hundred printed, to the man without a name, up to fifteen
hundred pounds, and an impression of three thousand, to "the glass
of fashion." But in this department of the commerce of literature,—
as it will be in the end with every branch upon which the growth of
popular intelligence is operating,—the rubbish is perishable, has
perished; the good endureth.
The circulating library is now, in many instances, a real instrument
of popular enlightenment. Yet in some of the smaller towns, and in
watering-places where raffles have their charm, and a musical
performance is patronised in the 'Fancy Repository,' by "audience fit
though few"—there the circulating library may be studied in its
ancient brilliancy. There, are still preserved, with a paper number on
their brown leather backs, and a well-worn bill of the terms of
subscription on their sides, those volumes, now fading into oblivion,
whence the writers of many a penny journal of fiction are drawing
and will still draw their inspiration. Many of these relics of a past age
will live over again in shilling volumes with new titles. The heroes
and heroines will change their names; the furniture of the
apartments in which they utter their vows of love will be
modernised; every sentence which in the slightest degree
approaches the vulgar will be softened down or obliterated. There is
a great deal yet to be done in this way; and the metamorphosis will
go on and prosper. In the mean while the circulating libraries, both
in London and the provinces, are supporting a higher literature of
fiction than those of the past generation; and they find also that
there are other volumes almost as attractive as the last new novel.
They are doing the same work as the book-clubs. Both these modes
of co-operation have had the effect of making the demand for a
book that is at once solid and attractive more certain than the old
demand by individual purchasers. The certainty of the demand
necessarily produces a gradual reduction of price. An average
demand is created, resulting from an average of taste in those who
belong to book-societies and subscribe to circulating libraries. But
these channels for the sale of new books are not materially
influenced by lowness of price. Cheapness is greatly influential with
the private purchaser; but very many are content with the reading of
a new book, through the club or the library, who would never buy it
for their own household. This first demand is one of the means by
which good books may be cheapened for a subsequent large issue
for the permanent home library. In 'The Life of Lackington' there is
the following passage:—"I have been informed that, when circulating
libraries were first opened, the booksellers were much alarmed; and
their rapid increase added to their fears, and led them to think that
the sale of books would be much diminished by such libraries. But
experience has proved that the sale of books, so far from being
diminished by them, has been greatly promoted; as from these
repositories many thousand families have been cheaply supplied with
books, by which the taste of reading has become much more
general, and thousands of books are purchased every year by such
as have first borrowed them at those libraries, and, after reading,
approving of them, have become purchasers."
One of the first attempts, and it was a successful one, to establish
a cheap Book-Club was made by Robert Burns. He had founded a
Society at Tarbolton, called the Bachelors' Club, which met monthly
for the purposes of discussion and conversation. But this was a club
without books; for the fines levied upon the members were spent in
conviviality. Having changed his residence to Mauchline, a similar
club was established there, but with one important alteration:—the
fines were set apart for the purchase of books, and the first work
bought was 'The Mirror,' by Henry Mackenzie. Dr. Currie, the
biographer of Burns, in recording this fact, says, "With deference to
the Conversation Society of Mauchline, it may be doubted whether
the books which they purchased were of a kind best adapted to
promote the interest and happiness of persons in this situation of
life." The objection of Dr. Currie was founded upon his belief that
works which cultivated "delicacy of taste" were unfitted for those
who pursued manual occupations. He qualifies his objection,
however, by the remark, that "Every human being is a proper judge
of his own happiness, and within the path of innocence ought to be
permitted to pursue it. Since it is the taste of the Scottish peasantry
to give a preference to works of taste and of fancy, it may be
presumed they find a superior gratification in the perusal of such
works." This truth, timidly put by Dr. Currie, ought to be the
foundation of every attempt to provide books for all readers. We are
learning to correct the false opinions which, for a century or two,
have been degrading the national character by lowering the general
taste. Those who maintained that taste was the exclusive property
of the rich and the luxurious, could not take away from the humble
the beauty of the rose or the fragrance of the violet; they could not
make the nightingale sing a vulgar note to "the swink'd hedger at his
supper;" nor, speaking purely to a question of taste, did they venture
to lower the noble translation of the Bible, which they put into the
hands of the poor man, to something which, according to the
insolent formula of those days, was "adapted to the meanest
capacity." A great deal of this has passed away. It has been
discovered that music is a fitting thing to be cultivated by the
people; the doors of galleries are thrown open for the people to
gaze upon Raffaelles and Correggios; even cottages are built so as
to satisfy a feeling of proportion, and to make their inmates aspire to
something like decoration. All this is progress in the right direction.
In the year 1825 Lord Brougham (then Mr. Brougham), in his
'Practical Observations upon the Education of the People,' explained
a plan which has yet been only partially acted upon. "Book-Clubs or
Reading Societies may be established by very small numbers of
contributors, and require an inconsiderable fund. If the associates
live near one another, arrangements may be easily made for
circulating the books, so that they may be in use every moment that
any one can spare from his work. Here, too, the rich have an
opportunity presented to them of promoting instruction without
constant interference: the gift of a few books, as a beginning, will
generally prove a sufficient encouragement to carry on the plan by
weekly or monthly contributions: and, with the gift, a scheme may
be communicated to assist the contributors in arranging the plan of
their association." Simple in its working as such a plan would appear
to be, the instances of these voluntary associations are really few. In
Scotland, Lending Libraries and Itinerating Libraries have, in some
districts, been established successfully; but in England, Lending
Libraries are scarcely to be found, except in connexion with schools,
or under the immediate direction of the minister of a parish or of a
dissenting congregation. In these cases, we fear, comes too
frequently into action the desire, laudable no doubt, to promote "the
interest and happiness of persons in this situation of life." They are
not permitted to choose for themselves. The best books of
amusement are kept out of their sight; and they contrive to get hold
of the worst. The timidity which insists upon supplying these libraries
with pattern books renders the libraries disagreeable, and therefore
useless.[29]
[27] 'Autobiography of an Artisan.' By Christopher Thomson. 1847.
[28] 'Biographia Literaria,' vol. i. p. 60, ed. 1817.
[29] See page 309.

CHAPTER IV.
Continued dearness of Books—Useful Knowledge Society—Modern Epoch of
Cheapness—Demand and Supply—The Printing-machine—The Paper-machine—
Revival of Woodcutting.
From the time when Hume's 'History' was published at 5s. a volume,
there appears to have been a steady advance in the price of books
to the end of the century. In the eleven years from 1792 to 1802,
there was an average publication of 372 new books per year. The
number of new books had quadrupled upon the average of those
published from 1701 to 1756. But the duodecimo had been
increased in price from 2s. 6d. to 4s.; the octavo from 5s. or 6s. to
10s.; the quarto from 12s. to 1l. 1s. From 1800 to 1827 there were
published, according to the London Catalogue, 19,860 books,
including reprints; for which reprints deducting one-fifth, there were
15,888 new books, being an annual average of 588. Books were still
rising in price. The duodecimo mounted up to 6s., or became a small
octavo at 10s. 6d.; the octavo was raised from 10s. to 12s.. or 14s.;
the quarto was very frequently two guineas. Some of this rise of
price was unquestionably due to the general rise in the value of
labour, and to the higher price of paper. But more is to be ascribed
to the determination of the great publishers not sufficiently to open
their eyes to the extension of the number of readers, and the
absolute certainty, therefore, that a system of extravagantly high
prices was an unnatural, bigoted, and unprofitable system. They
paid most liberally for copyright, and they looked only to an
exclusive sale for their remuneration. They did not apply the same
system to periodical works. The two great Reviews, the 'Edinburgh'
and the 'Quarterly,' were as cheap, if not cheaper, having regard to
their literary merit, than the cheapest books of the previous century.
They were certain of their profit through that union of excellence
and cheapness which could not fail to create a large demand. The
publishers generally had not the same reliance upon the increase of
readers of other popular works of original excellence. It has only
been within the last twenty years that their unalloyed confidence in
a narrow market has been first shaken, and then overthrown.
In looking back upon the changes of a quarter of a century, it is
impossible, even for the writer, who was identified with this great
movement in Popular Literature, to forbear speaking of what was
accomplished by 'The Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.'
One who has written contemporary history in a broad and liberal
spirit says—"The institution of this Society was an important feature
of its times, and one of the honours belonging to the reign of
George IV. It did not succeed in all its professed objects: it did not
give to the operative classes of Great Britain a library of the
elements of all sciences—it omitted some of the most important of
the sciences, and, with regard to some others, presented anything
rather than the elements. It did not fully penetrate the masses that
most needed aid. But it established the principle and precedent of
cheap publication (cheapness including goodness), stimulated the
demand for sound information, and the power and inclination to
supply that demand; and marked a great æra in the history of
popular enlightenment."[30] The Society originated with Mr.
Brougham, in 1826. He gathered around him some of the leading
statesmen, lawyers, and philanthropists of his day. Men eminent in
letters and in science joined the association. And yet its success was
so doubtful in the eyes of those who had been accustomed to
consider high price as a necessary condition of excellence, that one
of the greatest publishing houses refused to bring out the treatises
without a guarantee. The Society wisely went upon the principle,
originally, of leaving all the trade arrangements to its publishers. It
placed its 'Library of Useful Knowledge,' its 'Farmer's Series,' its
'Maps,' in the hands of Messrs. Baldwin, paying the literary and
artistical expenses, and receiving a rent upon the copies sold. Mr.
Knight originated the 'British Almanac' and its 'Companion,' 'The
Library of Entertaining Knowledge,' 'The Penny Magazine,' and 'The
Penny Cyclopædia;' and he bore the entire expense and risk of these
works, as he did also for 'The Gallery of Portraits,' and 'The Journal
of Education,' paying upon all a rent when the sale reached a certain
number of copies.[31] It is sufficient to mention these facts to show
that the operations connected with this Society were not upon an
insignificant scale, or not fruitful of large results; and that they were
essentially commercial operations. The cry that was raised against
this Society, by those who were interested in the publication of dear
books, was that of "monopoly." That cuckoo cry was repeated on
every side. Fashionable publishers shouted it; the old conventional
school of authors echoed it. Those who wrote for the Society were
called, in derision, "compilers." Scribblers who never verified a
quotation ridiculed patient industry as dulness.
From the time when the Society commenced a real
"superintendence" of works for the people—when it assisted, by
diligent revision and friendly inquiry, the services of its editors—the
old vague generalities of popular knowledge were exploded; and the
scissars-and-paste school of authorship had to seek for other
occupations than Paternoster-row could once furnish. Accuracy was
forced upon elementary books as the rule and not the exception.
Books professedly "entertaining" were to be founded upon exact
information, and their authorities invariably indicated. No doubt this
superintendence in some degree interfered with the free course of
original composition, and imparted somewhat of the utilitarian
character to everything produced. But it was the only course by
which a new aspect could be given to cheap literature, by showing
that the great principles of excellence were common to all books,
whether for the learned or the uninformed. In seventeen years the
Society accomplished its main objects. There were considerable
gains connected with it, and there were great losses. These are
evanescent. The good which it did remains. It supplied the new
demand for knowledge in a way that had never before been
contemplated; it supplied it at the cheapest rate then possible; it
broke down the distinctions between knowledge for the few and
knowledge for the many; it created a popular taste for art; it sent its
light into the strongholds of ignorance and superstition, by
superseding, for a time, a large amount of weekly trash, and
destroying, for ever, the astrological and indecent almanacs. But,
beyond its own productions, it raised the standard of all popular
literature. It has had worthy co-labourers and successors. It ceased
its work when others were in the field, honestly and successfully
carrying forward what it had begun. He who writes this will ever
think it an honour that he long worked in fellowship with Henry
Brougham; and that he was a partaker, for some years, in the
councils of an association of men more or less eminent, whose
objects were never of a selfish, partial, or temporary nature. He has
sate at those councils with five cabinet ministers, who felt most
deeply that the education of the people, in its largest sense, was as
much their business as the imposition of taxes. Where is that spirit
now?
The modern epoch of cheap literature may be held to have
commenced, however partially, in 1827, when Constable issued his
'Miscellany,' and the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge
their 'Library of Useful Knowledge.' In a few years followed 'The
Library of Entertaining Knowledge,' Mr. Murray's 'Family Library,' and
Lardner's 'Cabinet Cyclopædia.' These books were properly published
under a tentative system. Not one of them rushed to that extreme
cheapness which is indicated by quantity alone. They each had to
feel their way to a demand proportioned to the expense of their
production. That production was necessarily expensive. The
cheapness consisted in the employment of the best writers to
produce books of original merit at a price that was essentially low,
by comparison with the ordinary rate at which books for the few
were sold. Though Constable, in his grand style, talked of millions of
buyers, he charged his little volumes 3s. 6d. each. He was right. The
millions were not ready to buy such books at a shilling, nor even at
sixpence. They are not ready now. 'The Library of Useful Knowledge'
was charged at the rate of 3d. a sheet. Taking mere quantity of
paper and printing into account, some of the penny journals of the
present day are six times as cheap. 'The Library of Entertaining
Knowledge' was 4s. 6d. a volume. The copyright of each volume
ordinarily cost 200l., and the woodcuts as much, and even more.
'The Family Library,' at 5s., was, no doubt, equally costly. The same
costliness applies to Lardner's 'Cyclopædia,' published at 6s. In these
new undertakings, conceived in a totally different spirit from
anything which had preceded them, there were large expenses
which have been surprisingly reduced by scientific discovery and
extended competition at the present day. There were about twenty
woodcutters in London in 1827, who were real artists, paid at artists'
prices. Woodcutting is now a manufacture. Paper, then, paid the high
rate of duty, and was 50 per cent. dearer. Steam-printing was not
universal, and was only applied to common works. Each of these
series was offered to the very numerous body of those who, having
become better educated than the same classes in a previous
generation, were desirous of real improvement. They had a certain
success, but a variable one. Every experiment of this sort has shown
that such collections of separate and independent works cannot rely
upon a sale as a series. They come to be bought, each work by
itself, according to its attractions for individual purchasers. Thence
all those irregularities of sale, and consequent accumulations of
stock, which press heavily upon the profits of those volumes which
are successful. The republication of the 'Waverley Novels' in 5s.
volumes was an exception to this rule. They constituted an integral
work. Their sale was vast, although the total cost was 12l. Scott and
his publisher saw the immense field that was before them, in giving
their books to the world at a price that would carry them into
thousands of households, instead of limiting them to the circulating
libraries. They originally appeared in seventy-four volumes, at an
aggregate cost of 34l. 10s. Had they remained in their original form,
and at their first price, those heroic efforts which lifted a mountain
of debt off the shoulders of that great man who, perhaps, more than
all men, might have claimed the motto which Burke said should be
his—"Nitor in adversum"—those labours which wore him out, would
not have been successful. Neither would the success have come so
soon had the later publication in twenty-five volumes for 5l. been
tried in the first instance. If the 'Waverley Novels' go through new
phases of cheapness, it will be because there is now a larger public
to buy; and because the first natural price for all works of
extraordinary merit, that of authorship, has been already paid largely
and liberally. The question of price is then mainly reduced to a
question of paper and print. But miserable would it be for a nation
whose "chiefest glory is its authors," at a time when the nature of
that glory is properly understood, if a passion for premature
cheapness, to be measured by mere quantity, were to possess the
minds of the people, and to be the expression of the "Vox populi."
There was a much larger public always ready to purchase these
enchanting fictions than have been, at any time during the last
quarter of a century, ready for the purchase of books of information,
however agreeably presented. We doubt whether the Family
Libraries, and the Libraries of Entertaining Knowledge, and the
Cabinet Cyclopædias, would have sold better at the time of their
publication, if they had been produced at half the original price. The
experiment was tried, when the number of readers was largely
increased, in 'Knight's Weekly Volume'—a series published at one-
third the price of Constable's 'Miscellany.' The majority of books in
that series were, for the most part, of intrinsic merit; many also
carrying the recommendation of popular names as their authors.
"Why Mr. Knight did not profit largely by the speculation is a problem
yet to be solved," says the writer of a recent paper on 'Literature for
the People.' The solution is, that the people did not sufficiently buy
them. So far from twenty thousand copies being sold of many
volumes, as asserted, there were not twenty volumes, out of the
hundred and forty, that reached a sale of ten thousand, and the
average sale was scarcely five thousand. They were not cheap
enough for the humble, who looked to mere quantity. They were too
cheap for the genteel, who were then taught to think that a cheap
book must necessarily be a bad book. It is impossible not to
remember that, even ten years ago, the majority of publishers, and
many of their supporters in the public journals, hated cheap books.
The 'Weekly Volumes' were welcomed very generally by those who
were anxious for the enlightenment of the people. Societies were set
on foot for their circulation. But all experience has shown that no
associations for recommending books, and forcing their sale, can be
successful. The people, of every grade, will choose for themselves. It
is useless to urge an adult, whether male or female, to buy a solid
book when an exciting one is longed for. It is worse than useless to
give books of improvement away to the poor. They always suspect
the motive. Very wisely did a witness before the "Select Committee
on Newspaper Stamps," 1851, say, "There are classes which you
cannot reach, unless you go to them with something which is the
nearest thing to what they want." If they want fiction, they will not
look at science or history. At the time of the issue of 'The Weekly
Volume,' the sale of books at railway stations was unknown; and if it
had been known, they scarcely presented sufficient attractions for
the travelling readers for amusement. They were published also in
too quick succession. It was a plausible theory of the editor, that, if
good books, extremely cheap, were issued rapidly enough to form a
little library, many such libraries would be formed. Those who have
to deal with 'Literature for the People' must bear in mind that time
as well as money has to be economised by those who of necessity
must labour hard either by hand or head. What may be called
furniture books may be bought by the luxurious, to put upon their
shelves, and looked at when wanted. The earnest workers buy few
books that they are not desirous to read, and to read at once. They
bought such a book in 1830, to the extent of 50,000 copies. 'The
Results of Machinery,' written by the author of this volume, was
addressed to great human interests. It was not professedly amusing;
but it was the first attempt to take Political Economy out of its hard
and logical track. It is now recorded, as a wonderful instance of the
application of cheapness to a dry subject, that Mr. M'Culloch's 'Essay
on the Rate of Wages,' is republished at a shilling. It is in no spirit of
self-laudation that we presume to think that the vaunted cheapness
of 1854 had some previous examples.
In this principle, that the great mass of the people will read as
they buy, lies the secret of the enormous success of the weekly
sheets of that great epoch of cheapness which began about twenty
years ago. It is the principle which is the foundation of the extensive
demand, growing year by year, for all periodical literature. It made
the essayists. It made the magazines. It made the newspapers. It
caused a sale of three hundred thousand weekly sheets in 1834. It is
causing a sale of fourteen hundred thousand weekly sheets in 1854.
Before we proceed in the examination of this remarkable epoch of
popular literature, let us glance at the influence of mechanical and
scientific improvement on the cheapening of books during the last
thirty or forty years.
 Those who have followed us in our notices of the early history of
printing will scarcely have failed to see how the ordinary laws of
demand and supply have regulated the progress of this art, whose
productions might, at first sight, appear to form an exception to
other productions required by the necessities of mankind. There can
be little doubt, we think, that when several ingenious men were, at
the same moment, applying their skill to the discovery or perfection
of a rapid mode of multiplying copies of books, there was a demand
for books which could not well be supplied by the existing process of
writing. That demand had doubtless been created by the anxiety to
think for themselves which had sprung up amongst the laity of
Catholic Europe. There was a very general desire amongst the
wealthier classes to obtain a knowledge of the principles of their
religion from the fountain-head,—the Bible. The desire could not be
gratified except at an enormous cost. Printing was at last discovered;
and Bibles were produced without limitation of number. The instant,
therefore, that the demand for Bibles could be supplied, the supply
acted upon the demand, by increasing it in every direction; and
when it was found that not only Bibles but many other books of real
value, such as copies of the ancient classics, could be produced with
a facility equal to the wants of every purchaser, books at once
became a large branch of commerce, and the presses of the first
printers never lacked employment. The purchasers of books,
however, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were almost wholly
confined to the class of nobles and those of the richer citizens and
scholars by profession. It was a very long time before the influence
of the press had produced any direct effect upon the habits of the
great mass of the people. It was not till the system of periodical
literature was fairly established, and that newspapers first, and
magazines and reviews subsequently, had taken hold of the popular
mind, that the productions of the press could be said to be in
demand amongst the people generally. Up to our own times that
demand has been limited to very narrow bounds; and the
circumstances by which it has been extended are as remarkable as
those which accompanied the progress of the original invention of
printing. The same principle of demand going before supply, and the
same reaction of supply upon demand, will be found to have marked
the operations of the printing-press in this country, during the last
twenty-five years, as distinctly as they marked them throughout
Europe in the latter part of the fifteenth century and the beginning
of the sixteenth. We will shortly recapitulate these circumstances.
A few years after the commencement of the present century, a
system of education, which is now known throughout Europe as that
of mutual instruction, was introduced into this country. In whatever
mode this system was called into action, its first experiments soon
demonstrated that, through it, education might be bestowed at a
much cheaper rate than had ever before been considered
practicable. This success encouraged the friends of education to
exertions quite unexampled; and the British and Foreign School
Society, and the National Society, had, in a very few years, taught
some thousands of children to read and write, who, without the new
arrangements which had been brought into practice, would in great
part have remained completely untaught. A demand for books of a
new class was thus preparing on every side. The demand would not
be very sudden or very urgent; but it would still exist, and would
become stronger and stronger till a supply was in some degree
provided for it It would act, too, indirectly but surely, upon that
portion of society whose demand for knowledge had already been in
part supplied. The principle of educating the humblest in the scale of
society would necessarily give an impulse to the education of the
class immediately above them. The impulse would indeed be least
felt by the large establishments for education at the other end of the
scale; and thus, whilst the children of the peasant and the
tradesman would learn many valuable lessons through the influence
of a desire for knowledge for its own sake, and of love for their
instructors, many of the boys of our great public schools would long
remain acquiring only a knowledge of words and not of things, and
influenced chiefly by a degrading fear of brutal punishment. The
demand for knowledge thus created, and daily gathering strength
amongst the bulk of the people, could not be adequately supplied
forty years ago by the mechanical inventions then employed in the
art of printing. Exactly in the same way as the demand for
knowledge which began to agitate men's minds about the middle of
the fifteenth century produced the invention of printing, so the great
extension of the demand in England, at the beginning of the
nineteenth century, produced those mechanical improvements which
have created a new æra in the typographical art. These
improvements consist in the process of stereotyping, and in the
printing-machine, as distinguished from the printing-press.
As several approaches had been made before the time of Faust to
the principle of printing books from moveable types, so the principle
of producing impressions from a cylinder, and of inking the types by
a roller, which are the great principles of the printing-machine, had
been discovered in this country as early as the year 1790. In that
year Mr. William Nicholson took out a patent for certain
improvements in printing, the specification of which clearly shows
that to him belongs the first suggestion of printing from cylinders.
But this inventor, like many other ingenious men, was led astray by a
part of his project, which was highly difficult, if not impracticable, to
the neglect of that portion of his plan which, since his time, has
been brought into the most perfect operation. Nicholson's patent
was never acted upon. The first maker of a printing-machine was Mr.
Koenig, a native of Saxony; and the first sheet of paper printed by
cylinders, and by steam, was the 'Times' newspaper of the 28th
November, 1814. The machine thus for the first time brought into
action was that of Mr. Koenig. It has been superseded by machines
of improved construction.
Let us imagine a state of things in which the demand for works of
large numbers should have gone on increasing, while the mechanical
means of supplying that demand had remained stationary—had
remained as they were at the beginning of the present century.
Before the invention of stereotyping it was necessary to print off
considerable impressions of the few books in general demand, such
as bibles and prayer-books, that the cost of composition might be so
far divided as to allow the book to be sold cheap: with several
school-books, also, it was not uncommon to go to press with an
edition of 10,000 copies. Two men, working eight hours a-day each,
would produce 1000 perfect impressions (impressions on each side)
of a sheet per day; and thus, if a book consisted of twenty sheets
(the size of an ordinary school-book), one press would produce the
twenty sheets in 200 days. If a printer, therefore, were engaged in
the production of such a school-book, who could only devote one
press to the operation, it would require very nearly three-quarters of
a year to complete 10,000 copies of that work. It is thus evident,
that if the work were to be published on a given day, it must begin
to be printed at least three-quarters of a year before it could be
published; and that there must be a considerable outlay of capital in
paper and in printing for a long time before any return could be
expected. This advance of capital would have a necessary influence
on the price of the book, in addition to the difference of the cost of
working by hand as compared with working by machinery; and there
probably the inconvenience of the tedious progress we have
described would stop. But take a case which would allow no time for
this long preparation. Take a daily newspaper, for instance, of which
great part of the news must be collected, and written, and printed
within twenty-four hours; calling into operation reporters at home,
correspondents abroad, expresses, electric telegraphs. Formerly, the
number printed of the most popular daily paper would be limited to
five thousand; and this number could not be produced in time
without the most perfect division of labour aiding the most intense
exertion, provided that paper were printed by hand. The 'Times'
newspaper now produces forty thousand copies in less than four
hours, from one set of types.
If the difficulties that existed in producing any considerable
number of newspapers before the invention of the printing-machine
were almost insurmountable, equally striking will the advantages of
that invention appear when we consider its application to the cheap
weekly sheets, of which the 'Penny Magazine' was the type. Let us
suppose that the education of the people had gone on
uninterruptedly in the schools of mutual instruction, and that the
mechanical means for supplying the demand for knowledge thus
created had sustained no improvement. If the demand for
knowledge had led to the establishment of the 'Penny Magazine'
before the improvement of printing, it is probable that the sale of
twenty thousand copies would have been considered the utmost that
could have been calculated upon. One thousand perfect copies could
only have been daily produced at one press by the labour of two
men. The machine produces sixteen thousand copies. If the demand
for a penny sheet, printed thus slowly by the press, had reached
twenty thousand, it would have required two presses to produce that
twenty thousand in the same time—namely, ten days—in which one
hundred and sixty thousand are produced by the machine; and it
would have required one press to be at work one hundred and sixty
days, or sixteen presses for ten days, to effect the same results as
the machine effects in ten days. But, in point of fact, such a sale
could never have been reached under the old system of press-work.
The hand-labour, as compared with the machine, would have added
at least forty per cent. to the cost of production, even if the sixteen
presses could have been set in motion. Without stereotyping for
duplicates, no attempt would have been made to set them in
motion; for the cost of re-engraving woodcuts, and of re-composing
the types, would have put a natural commercial limit to the
operation.
The invention of the paper-machine was concurrent with the
invention of the printing-machine. Without the paper-machine, the
material of books, and newspapers, and journals, could never have
been supplied with any reference to cheapness. Chemistry, too, has
converted the coarsest rags, and the dirtiest cotton-wool, into fine
pulp. The material of which this book is formed existed a few month
ago, perhaps, in the shape of a tattered frock, whose shreds,
exposed for years to the sun and wind, covered the sturdy loins of
the shepherd watching his sheep on the plains of Hungary;—or it
might have formed part of the coarse blue shirt of the Italian sailor,
on board some little trading-vessel of the Mediterranean;—or it
might have pertained to the once tidy camicia of the neat straw-
plaiter of Tuscany, who, on the eve of some festival, when her head
was intent upon gay things, condemned the garment to the stracci-
vendolo (rag-merchant) of Leghorn;—or it might have constituted
the coarse covering of the flock-bed of the farmer of Saxony, or once
looked bright in the damask table-cloth of the burgher of Hamburgh;
—or, lastly, it might have been swept, new and unworn, out of the
vast collection of the shreds and patches, the fustian and buckram,
of a London tailor; or might have accompanied every revolution of a
fashionable coat in the shape of lining—having travelled from St.
James's to St. Giles's, from Bond Street to Monmouth Street, from
Rag Fair to the Dublin Liberty, till man disowned the vesture, and the
kennel-sweeper claimed its miserable remains. In each or all of
these forms, and in hundreds more which it would be useless to
describe, this sheet of paper a short time since might have existed.
No matter, now, what the colour of the rag—how oily the cotton—
what filth it has gathered and harboured through all its
transmutation—the scientific paper-maker can produce out of these
filthy materials one of the most beautiful productions of
manufacture. But he has a difficulty in obtaining even these coarse
materials. The advance of a people in civilisation has not only a
tendency to make the supply of rags abundant, but, at the same
time, to increase the demand for rags. The use of machinery in
manufactures renders clothing cheap; the cheapness of clothing
causes its consumption to increase, not only in the proportion of an
increasing population, but by the scale of individual expenditure; the
stock of rags is therefore increasing in the same ratio that our looms
produce more linen and cotton cloth. But then the increase of
knowledge runs in a parallel line with this increase of comforts; and
the increase of knowledge requires an increase of books. The
principle of publishing books and tracts, to be read by thousands
instead of tens and hundreds, has already caused a large addition to
the demand for printing-paper. Science made paper cheap in spite of
taxation. The government has worked against science to keep books
dear.
We cannot pass over the mechanical and other scientific
improvements in typography, which preceded and accompanied the
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