Typography

COMMERCIAL printing, machine printing, industrial printing, would have its own proper goodness if it were studiously plain and starkly efficient. Our quarrel is not with such a thing but only with the thing that is neither one nor the other – neither really mechanically perfect and physically serviceable, nor really a work of art, i.e., a thing made by a man who, however laughable it may seem to men of business, loves God and does what he likes, who serves his fellow men because he is wrapped up in serving God – to whom the service of God is so commonplace that it is as much bad form to mention it as among men of business it is bad form to mention profits. ¶There are, then, two typographies, as there are two worlds; &, apart from God or profits, the test of one is mechanical perfection, and of the other sanctity – the commercial article at its best is simply physically serviceable and, per accidens, beautiful in its efficiency; the work of art at its best is beautiful in its very substance and, per accidens, as serviceable as an article of commerce. ¶ The typography of industrialism, when it is not deliberately diabolical & designed to deceive, will be plain; and in spite of the wealth of its resources – a thousand varieties of inks, papers, presses, and mechanical processes for the reproduction of the designs of tame designers – it will be entirely free from exuberance and fancy. Every sort of ornament will be omitted; for printers’ flowers will not spring in such a soil, and fancy lettering is nauseating when it is not the fancy of typefounders and printers but simply of those who desire to make something appear better than it is. Paradoxical tho’ it be, the greater the wealth of appliances, the less is the power of using it. All the while that the technical and mechanical good quality is increasing, the dehumanising of the workmen is also increasing. As we become more and more able to print finer and more elaborate & delicate types of letter it becomes more & more intellectually imperative to standardise all forms and obliterate all elaborations and fancifulness. It becomes easier and easier to print any kind of thing, but more and more imperative to print only one kind. ¶ On the other hand, those who use humane methods can never achieve mechanical perfection, because the slaveries and standardisations of industrialism are incompatible with the nature of men. Humane Typography will often be comparatively rough & even uncouth; but while a certain uncouthness does not seriously matter in humane works, uncouthness has no excuse whatsoever in the productions of the machine. So while in an industrialist society it is technically easy to print any kind of thing, in a humane society only one kind of thing is easy to print, but there is every scope for variety and experiment in the work itself. The more elaborate and fanciful the industrial article becomes, the more nauseating it becomes – elaboration and fancifulness in such things are inexcusable. But there is every excuse for elaboration and fancy in the works of human beings, provided that they work and live according to reason; and it is instructive to note that in early days of printing, when humane exuberance had full scope, printing was characterised by simplicity and decency; but that now, when such exuberance no longer exists in the workman (except when he is not at work), printing is characterised by every kind of vulgarity of display and complicated indecency. ¶ But, alas for humanity, there is the thing called compromise; and the man of business who is also the man of taste, and he of taste who is also man of business will, in their blameless efforts to earn a living (for using one’s wits is blameless, and earning a living is necessary) find many ways of giving a humane look to machine-made things or of using machinery & the factory to turn out, more quickly and cheaply, things whose proper nature is derived from human labour. Thus we have imitation ‘period’ furniture in Wardour Street, and we have imitation ‘arts & crafts’ in Tottenham Court Road. The-man-of-business-who-is-also-man-of-taste will tend to the ‘period’ work, the-man-of-taste-who-is-also-man-of-business will tend to the imitation handicrafts. And, in the printing world, there are business houses whose reputation is founded on their resuscitations of the eighteenth century, & private presses whose speed of output is increased by machine-setting & gas engines. These things are more deplorable than blameworthy. Their chief objectionableness lies in the fact that they confuse the issue for the ordinary uncritical person, and they turn out work which is neither very good nor very bad. ‘Period’ printing looks better than the usual vulgar products of unrestrained commercialism, and there is no visible difference, except to the expert, between machine-setting and hand-setting, or between sheets worked on a hand press and those turned out on a power-driven platen. ¶ Nevertheless, even if these things be difficult to decide in individual instances, there can be no sort of doubt but that as industrialism requires a different sort of workman so it also turns out a different kind of work – a workman sub-human in his irresponsibility, and work inhuman in its mechanical perfection. The imitation of the work of pre-industrial periods cannot make any important ultimate difference; the introduction of industrial methods and appliances into small workshops cannot make such workshops capable of competition with ‘big business’. But while false standards of good taste may be set up by ‘period’ work, this ‘good taste’ is entirely that of the man of business & his customers; it is not at all that of the hands – they are in no way responsible for it or affected by it; on the other hand, the introduction of mechanical methods into small workshops has an immediate effect on the workmen. Inevitably they tend to take more interest in the machine and less in the work, to become machine-minders and to regard wages as the only reward. And good taste ceases to be the result of the restraint put upon his conscience by the workman himself; it becomes a thing imposed upon him by his employer. You cannot see the difference between a machine-set page and one set by hand. No, but you can see the difference between Cornwall before and after it became ‘the English Riviera’; you can see the difference between riding in a hansom & in a motor-cab – between a ‘cabby’ & a ‘taxi-man’; you can see the difference between the ordinary issue of ‘The Times’ to-day and its ordinary issue a hundred years ago; you can see the difference between an ordinary modern book and an ordinary book of the sixteenth century. And it is not a question of better or worse; it is a question of difference simply. Our argument here is not that industrialism has made things worse, but that it has inevitably made them different; and that whereas before industrialism there was one world, now there are two. The nineteenth century attempt to combine industrialism with the Humane was necessarily doomed, and the failure is now evident. To get the best out of the situation we must admit the impossibility of compromise; we must, in as much as we are industrialists, glory in industrialism and its powers of mass-production, seeing that good taste in its products depends upon their absolute plainness and serviceableness; and in so much as we remain outside industrialism, as doctors, lawyers, priests and poets of all kinds must necessarily be, we may glory in the fact that we are responsible workmen & can produce only one thing at a time. ¶ That if you look after goodness and truth beauty will take care of itself, if true in both worlds. The beauty that industrialism properly produces is the beauty of bones; the beauty that radiates from the work of men is the beauty of holiness.