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Typo: A Monthly Newspaper and Literary Review, Volume 2
[Reply to Mr Schraubstadter's article on Electro-matrices]
Audi alteram partem. On this principle we give in this issue Mr J. M. Conner's reply to Mr Schraubstadter's article on Electro-matrices. We think that the article in the Messenger leaves the subject in the same position as before. Mr Conner makes the most of the weak points of the electro process. But he « doth protest too much, methinks. » If the matrices are so bad and untrustworthy, why does he use them? And as we have already remarked, in his former article on the subject, there is an unmistakeable admission that he does, though not for body-founts. Benton, Waldo, & Co. use them for their body-founts, and there is no better cut type manufactured, though the originals are machine-engraved on type-metal. Moreover, their founts are « self-spacing, » so that the slightest inaccuracy, if it existed, would be fatal to their scheme and to the sale of their type. So far as we can ascertain, the type produced by the new process is not necessarily inferior in any respect to that manufactured by the older and more costly method.
The other point raised has really nothing to do with quality, though Mr Conner and all other writers on his side confuse the two. The fact that the process is misused is no reason why the typefounder and printer should not profit by its legitimate application. The man who appropriates another's design is guilty of an immoral and dishonest act. The particular method employed cannot affect the general principle. Yet strangely enough, Caslon, writing some years ago on the subject, could see no dishonesty in the copying of a design, provided that the copyist went to the trouble and expense of cutting his own punches! It is, we believe, a peculiarity of punch-cutting that the mechanical labor is more costly than the artistic skill which supplies the original. Between electrotyping another man's design and cutting it by hand, according to Caslon, « there is all the difference between honorable emulation and dishonorable appropriation. » We cannot see it. The man who stole his brooms ready-made could undersell his rival who only stole the material; but the two rogues occupied precisely the same moral plane.