A SILENT BRITAIN ?
By GERARD HOPKINS
PUBLISHERS and their colleagues of the retail trade have had a weakness for referring to books as " necessities." use of the word became, between the year 1935 and 1940, an occupational disease. It was always eloquent rather than accurate, but its value as a guiding principle was never seriously questioned by the leaders of the nation. Today, when it is more nearly true than ever before, our Government seems determined to assert its validity in words while denying it in action. We are told that a high standard of education is the basis of our greatness and well- being, that a rising tide of exports is essential for British recovery, but every possible obstacle is put in the_way of allowing the pro- duction and distribution of the printed word to play its part in the schools of our own country and in the markets of the world. always Their almost
Without an adequate supply of books education, understood in terms of schooling, becomes impossible ; without an adequate export- able margin of them a considerable quantity of foreign money is denied us, and we are frustrated in an attempt to exert abroad an influence out of all proportion to the expenditure involved. As a backing for foreign policy even coal is not more important than literature, and books can be produced more cheaply and more easily than fuel-stocks. Never before has the English language been more widely diffused outside the English-speaking countries ; never before has the increased knowledge and prestige of our native tongue been of less advantage to our writers. For they have no monopoly in English. American authors are in aggressive competition with our own. Not only are we, at present, incapable of coping with the demand for English books abroad ; we see potential readers diverted to the products of trans-Atlantic neighbours, and know, only too well, that a taste once formed for the plentiful and attractive achieve- ments of a related culture will be hardly, if at all, won back when, at some seemingly distant date, our own presses shall be no longer starved of the material they need.
The crisis of books is but one of the many crises among which we pick our bewildered way, but, unlike its more ominous com- petitors, it has an immediately possible and not very difficult solution. The capital sum needed to make good the shortages is not enormous, and what is required could be obtained without involving other traders in hardship. Paper, as we are constantly being reminded by the events of every day, is always available when bureaucracy needs it, but paper is not our only, perhaps not even our most serious, lack. Cloth and glue for binding, the replacement of worn-out machinery and the provision of new, are urgent necessities, and labour is hard to come by. But the cost of the material is not great, and the numbers of men and women needed in the industry are relatively small. An adequate supply of books can alone keep their cost to the public low, and not the least of the publishers' many problems is the imposed necessity of having to deal in " short runs." An extended and foreseeable programme of production will make the trade prosperous, and prosperity will attract recruits. If the trade, in other words, can be given the tools, it is at least probable that the men and women will be forthcoming to use them. Increased sales alone can make available the extra money needed for an all-over rise in wages.
The one thing immediately needed is a firm determination on the part of Government to encourage and assist the production of books on a large scale, and it is the absence of that determination which we now deplore. All we have seen so far are the manifestations of a hamstrung policy of patching. At the beginning of the war the requirements of publishers were estimated in relation to their peace-time production. Since then, destruction, wastage, the demands of a vastly increased reading public both at home and abroad, have put an intolerable strain upon the manufacture of books. If every publisher in the country had now the same amount of material as he had in 1938 he would still be unable to meet his current require- ments. But he is still far short of even that relatively delectable situation. From time to time he is given a few drops of comfort from " pools " and " export allowances," but no serious attempt has so far been made to solve the problems with which he is faced. It is useless for Ministers to protest that he getting 6o or 8o per cent. of what he had before. He can never be satisfied, nor can he hope to satisfy either his customers or the Board of Trade, unless he can get a great deal more. Compared with the astronomical quantities—in terms of money and material—needed to put other trades on their feet, his figures are laughably small. He could be made happy at small expense to other manufacturers, and he could produce results of the highest value in every department of the national effort. It is even arguable that Government itself might feel a stimulating glow of satisfaction in the knowledge that at least one, if not the greatest, of its problems had for once been seized firmly and solved with imagination and generosity.
Book-producers have deserved well of the public. Their goods show a very small increase in price compared with those in other departments of industry. They are urgently needed, and the influence of Britain in the councils of the world would be vastly strengthened by the backing of a widely distributed supply of British thought. What is now wanted is an efficient enquiry into the needs of the trade conducted by men who are determined to resolve its difficulties. The facts are not complicated and they have, quite recently, been made easily accessible. Only a few weeks ago several men engaged in the writing, producing and selling of books collaborated to pro- duce a small pamphlet entitled The Battle of the Books (Allan Wingate, 2S. 6d.). Authors, publishers, booksellers, printers, literary agents, paper-makers, binders, librarians and journalists form a team which has lucidly and objectively recorded the nature of their many problems. Their contributions to the subject can be quickly read, and with complete understanding, by all who feel the need of books.
It is to be hoped that the number of such readers will be large, and that the difficulties of an important and deserving industry will be widely appreciated. Much ado has been made about the curtailment of " newsprint," but the shortage of books will, in the long run, be responsible for far more serious results. Britain, during the last seven years, has had many remarkable achievements—not all of them military—to put to her credit. Without a free circulation of books many of them will be forgotten, or never fully known, at a time when informed opinion about our way of life can help greatly to the establishment of world-wide happiness and security.
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