Estimating is on my mind at the moment, due to a lively debate about the relative merits of having a cost calculator on one's website following an earlier blog, along with an insightful thread about the pros and cons of various estimating systems sparked by a reader's posting on the PrintWeek community forum.

With this topic on the brain I found myself turning to chapter XV of my copy of Modern Printing, published in 1900, and must share a few passages on the topic that resonated from its pages.

Although the making of estimates is a matter of individual right, it can be made in the pretext for much general wrong. The printer who estimates £20 for work usually done at £30 does not only injure his brother printer who has done the work at the last-mentioned price, but he strikes a blow at all the master printers of his city. He encourages his customers to distrust the fair dealings of other printers. This suspicion is often highly unjust. The undercutter encourages a system of reprisals as well as of competition, from which he is sure to suffer eventually.

Errors in estimating: the commonest error is that of overrating the performance of men and machines... Estimates for time work should be based, not on the performance of the expert, but on that of the average workman; not on the number of sheets done on one exceptional day, but on the average number done in the past year. What has been is that which will be.

Requests for estimates from unknown persons that call for tedious calculations, and that seem to be made to satisfy vague curiosity, should be regarded as professional work, to be duly paid for.

A print chum was complaining to me about that last point just the other day. Even at a distance of 110 years, not-so-Modern Printing still makes a lot of sense.