Page:The small library. A guide to the collection and care of books (IA smalllibraryguid00browiala).pdf/57



a previous part of this work, allusion has been made to the indifference generally shown towards technical and professional literature by those for whose benefit it is laboriously compiled. Nearly every author and publisher of technological works has the same tale to relate, touching the indifference of workmen and masters alike to book-aids to their trade. Lawyers and medical men are certainly more discerning and liberal patrons of their professional literature, while clergymen must either buy books or cease to preach, but the average man of business, whatever his particular line may be, must be written down, along with the publican and the coster, as among those to whom the printed records of learning, wisdom, and scientific dexterity make but little appeal. Those superior persons—the average business men—who are continually parading their great commercial acumen before the humbler folks who only rank as customers, seem to be singularly short-sighted in regard to the aid which literature can, and does, lend to business. They support but one form of