Excerpt from Printing for Business: A Manuual of Printing Practice in Non-Technical Idiom

A word as to how this book came to be actually written may help to explain its possible usefulness. I had known so many people, particularly men of business, and later, secretaries of societies, municipal and government officials, who were constantly using, compelled indeed to use, printing ("All business goes through the printing press"), who knew nothing whatever about the processes involved. And, knowing nothing, cared very little. It was clear to me that they must lose a good deal of business by not knowing and a good deal of pleasure by not caring. Indeed, they must also lose business by not caring, but I have tried to show that in its proper place elsewhere.

I found on enquiry that there was no sort of book that didn't assume knowledge which the wide constituency I had in mind didn't possess. In America, indeed, I discovered that the Stanhope Book Press had thought it worth while to issue to their publisher customers some information about paper and engraving processes, and the Plimpton Press had taken the trouble to explain some technical terms. I found nothing covering the ground that it seemed to me desirable to cover.

My chief qualification for taking upon me this considerable task is that I really don't know too much about it. The trouble with the technical folk is that they do. Or they know a good deal about their specialized job, say printing, and nothing much about engraving or book-binding, or, very commonly, are technically proficient, but too busy to bother with the aesthetic side. I happen to have been interested in all and every side of it. I was pitchforked by fate into printing at a maturer age than falls to most, and I have learned to bless the fork that pitched me.

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