' THINK YE NOT SHAME,' one might say to the antiquarian
book- sellers as Dunbar said to the merchants of Edinburgh. 'that sic dishonour hurt your name?' So far as 1 can judge from the reactions of their trade association to the extensive accusa- tions levelled against second-hand booksellers in the House of Commons and in the now defunct journal Desiderata, they are shameless. It was Mr. David Roth, the editor of Desiderata, who first exposed in great detail the operations of the 'ring' in the book trade. That was in 1948, and he kept up the attack strenuously until the spring of this year, when the booksellers took their revenge by refusing to renew their subscriptions. By killing the journal they removed one scourge from their backs. But meanwhile Sir Basil Blackwell had turned up with another —an invitation to sign a statutory declaration that they had not contravened and would not, the Auctions (Bidding Agree- ments) Act. The extent of their pain and embarrassment (if indeed they are capable of the latter) may be gauged by the fact that of the fifteen hundred antiquarian booksellers in the country—including the three hundred-odd members of the Association—only sixty-seven have signed the declaration. Everybody knows how widespread the 'ring' is and how avidly it operates—especially at country sales; everybody knows of such cases as that of a valuable book that was knocked down at half a guinea and later appeared in a catalogue at nearly forty times that sum. Of course it is difficult to prosecute because of the difficulty of getting witnesses, but booksellers would be unwise to go on relying on this. The extraordinary general meeting of the Association should think twice before taking its lead from the cocksure statement put out on Tuesday by the president.
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