The question of what world one chooses to recognize—that of courts and salons or of slums—arises in connection with the great printer of the nineteenth century, William Morris.[31] He saw what was happening as a result of machinery and large industry, and he did not like it. He must have seen it very plainly in order to revolt against it so strongly. His printing period was the last in his life, following the chintzes, stained glass windows, tapestries, rugs and furniture. He felt that people would be better people if they made and owned beautiful things, and he also saw, like his contemporary, Karl Marx, that the economic structure would have to be changed before the best qualities in people could operate, though he was not willing to follow Marx in his methods. When we think of the William Morris who printed the Kelmscott Chaucer, we do not always remember the William Morris who stood in Hyde Park near the Marble Arch talking to the street crowds about socialism, wondering if the police were coming; who for years travelled about speaking in a thousand stuffy halls in England, Ireland and Scotland. When he was old, tears would come to his eyes when the misery of the poor was mentioned. It is easy to say that his socialism was vague and his desire to return to the methods of the thirteenth century unrealistic, but considering the sincerity of his motives and the breadth of his interests, I think that we must say that he was not so much a man of this world as a man of a better world.
Perhaps we must return to America to find the printer who has made the greatest contribution to political history. We can hardly detail here the cosmopolitan accomplishments of Benjamin Franklin. We might rather examine what right we have to call him a printer, in view of the magnitude of his other accomplishments. He liked to think of himself as a printer, and started his will with the words, "I, Benjamin Franklin, printer." Once when he visited the establishment of the Didots in France he stopped at a hand press and pulled a few proofs. When the workman exclaimed at his dexterity he said, "Do not be surprised. Printing is my real trade." Wherever he went in England or France he corresponded with printers and visited their establishments. We know about his private press at Passy and about his wholesome influence on American printing. Carl Van Doren, in his biography of Franklin, says that when he died the printers of Philadelphia walked in his funeral procession and that the printers of Paris gathered to honor him, listened to a eulogy by one of them while others set it in type as fast as it was delivered and distributed printed copies as souvenirs. If then we can claim him as a printer, we can feel sure that the man who helped draft the Declaration of Independence, who was sent to negotiate the peace and was a delegate to the Constitutional Convention was, more than any other printer, a man of the world.
It could hardly be maintained that being connected with printing makes one a man of the world. It might even be argued and proved by examples past and present that preoccupation with the problems of the craft is a narrowing influence. Since most of the circumstances of our lives are arranged for us when we are born, it is possible to travel through life as on a conveyor belt, having things done to us along the way, and this can be as true of a fine printer as of a bank president. Each can go through life utterly ignorant of the economic and mental processes that bring food to his table and send his son to the wars. It was always a question, now more than ever critical, what part of a man's life must be given to being a citizen against the claims of livelihood, philosophy, family and amusement. The events of the past few years have dramatized the dilemma. Printing has helped bring us to this place in history. And so, although we cannot condemn a good craftsman because he is interested in nothing except shop talk, we might say that printers who are also men of the world realize that they are working in a bigger shop.
WOOD ENGRAVING BY REYNOLDS STONE, 1937.
COMPOSED IN GRANJON TYPES