The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1911-07-06
Says The Ideal
 Dictionary Is ! Not Made Yet

!. NOI MduG IGl
 "The dream of my life," said the old dictionary man, which is the preparation of the perfect dictionary, will, like most of it's kind, never be realized. These many years have earned by bread writing and revls- ing definitions and reading, for type writers I have been connected in va rious capacities with the biggest and best books of reference produced In America in the last 25 years, and in the course of that experience l nave become pretty thoroughly acqua1nt- ed with the general principles of sci entific construction of word books and with the various systems followed by different producers thereof. Naturally I have seen many defects that l be- lieve could be easily remedled, says the New York Sun.
 For many years, and of late With eagerness. that increases as the pros borders of probability, I have longed for the opportunity to put into execu- ton the idea and ideals formed and formulated in the course of my long Iabors in this useful field. But the money consideration shuts me in, a blind wall cannot hope to scale or penetrate. 1 haven't it and cannot interest those who have it or can command it. A new patented device new railroad or convincing plan for "a money making business. would get the spark to the fuse, but the most useful, logical and plausible presenta- tion of my scheme for new diction- ary will never cause an explosion big enough to blow the door off a child's toy bank
 .eThe making of a dictionary a com prehensive, scholarly work, Is a tre- mendous undertaking. It has always been surprising to me that it has failed to appeal more potently to the popular imagination. It's planning and construction are on scale com mensurate with those of a great en- gineering undertaking, but the work is all done in the dark so far as the general public is concerned. The ma chinery is hidden and the people ac- cept the publfcat ton of the work with complete lack of emotion Skillful advertising may, create some antici- patton for the promised book, but the appeal is after all limited pretty closely to members of the professions that use the pen most constantly. Yet there is much meat in the story of it's making; the planning, the writing, the printing. The casual user of the dictionary thinks little and cares less about the wealth of scholarship com pressed into it's relatively tiny mould.
 Every new dictionary or cyclope Gia is, of course, in a way a mere earlier works. Pioneer days are long past The new books are built nec- essarily on old foundations, and yet there is no limit to the styles of lexi- cographic architecture that may Oe imposed on that substructure. The Hot xa Icf T,Jo h broadly and minutely. Skillful man. agement is called for. Little of the old may be retained intact; much of it must be dropped and the rest re- cast. The wedding of this and the new material is a delicate operation. work in it's general scope, the deter imitation of editorial policy. comes the organiza tion of the producing force. Always there is home or office staff, with contributing editors at home and abroad sending in bricks scholarship to be used in the con- struction of the edifice as planned. The work of 100 or more minds must be harmonized, so that the book shall approximate as nearly as pos sible the appearance of the product of a single mind.
 Now, I was connected throughout the entire period of it's making with a great work, that cost an enormous sum to produce; and right gladly would I have contracted, with the strictest guarantees. to give the pub fishers the very product they evolved at such tremendous expense for half what they paid There would have been a small fortune in it for me ar that. There were unnecessary leak ages. For instance, the mere item of sending proofs to each of the many editors, which seems insignifica nt enough at first thought must have amounted to several thousand dol lars year, what with the printer S charges and the mailing cost. Run mig off 100 or 200 sets of proofs a day for two or three years is not cheap.
 These, then, are arguments against wolves heavy expense for communi- cation, and, secondly, the work of the numerous outsiders must be revised and unified by a small home force which if properly selected at the start could con, pine into a single pro- cess the two functions of production and coordination. The work so done tellingly.
 Suppose you take 100000 cards, each bearing single word for defin- ition. Send them out to teachers, preachers, doctors. scientists, special ists and experts in every field of knowledge (except dictionary mak- ing) to have definitions written at so much apiece. You cannot possibly send that mass of stuff merely mark ed with type directions to the print CT. They must be read and revised in the office. The average reviser is so anxious to earn his pay that he cannot let well enough alone and three times the necessary work is done-with the ever present risk of patchwork effect.
 'As an example of the kind of work that results from such methods, I re- call a definition once submitted in e!l seriousness that was exactly as ri- diculous as the perfectly analogous imaginary case of mixing house dog and dog house.
 'The long deferred point of my re- marks is simnlY this: That [ helieue