'hy^ & V^, VQ (^ /a / VI c^l <^^%^ %^^ 4^' o 7 IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) 1.0 I.I SIM IM " IIIIM |||||Z2 12.0 IM S40 1.8 Photographic Sciences Corporation /. o :^. <° C^x t-^/ :a 1.25 1.4 1.6 -• 6" — ► 23 WESTMAINSfREST WEBSTER, N.Y. 14580 (716) 872-4503 vV CIHM/ICMH Microfiche Series. CIHM/ICMH Collection de microfiches. Canadian Institute for Historical Microreproductions Instltut Canadian de microreproductions historiques 1980 Technical and Bibliographic Notes/Notee techniques et bibliographiques The to tl The Institute has attempted to obtain the best original copy available for filming. 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Les diagrammes suivants illustrent la m6thode. 1 2 3 32X 1 2 3 4 5 6 ■ jiqii iii*R«jp'M« q. PRINTING AND THE PUBLIC PEESS By the Hon. W. C. HOWEL LS American Consul at Quebec i i^ PRINTING AND THE PUBLIC PRESS. Read before the Institut Canadien de Quebec. December 23, 1876, By the Hon. W. C. HOWELLS. Ameriean Cansvl at Quebec Of Printing, it is my privilege to »P«ak from oxporienco. From my earliest recollection of the use o^ ettere, it was my ambition to enter the mysteries of ?his art ; and as 1 passed from chilahood to youth, it was my highest aspiration to bo a part of the system called the Fourth Estate of modern civilization. In this love of the art. I sought the first opportunity to learn it practically, as a work of my hands, and to apply it m what I should perform as the labor of intellect lam proud to call myself a Printer ; and m the employment ff my life I have sought to honor the joint profession of panting and journalism, with what 1 ttle ^^1^7^^ bee^n committed to me. What I say of it is what 1 have learned in the relation I have borne to it, as I have read, heard and seen. _ i; * u„^™. The PEB88, as it existed at the time of my first know- ledge of it, a^ a power in the dual world of mind and 3or was a tot'ally different thing from what it now is over the entire world ; but though in the part ot the world I then knew, the condition of the t'ourth Estate was in strong contrast with what it now is, The changes have been so gradual that it is on^ when viewing them together that we properly conceive of " «l» ■^^■1 — 4 — the change. Yot, its growth in that period, like the growth ol" the prominent improvements of the age, has been in the ratio of Hquaros and cubes, rather than ordinary progress. Indeed the development of improvo- mont in all the arts has been by such rapid angmenta- tion, that the wonder it excites is not ovorpoworing, only because all things have kept pace with it ; for the last six decades have been the nascent period of more that is truly wonderful than any century of the world's history. The history of the discovery and developement oftho art of Printing is supposed to be familiar to every intelligent man and woman. At least the conventional story of the discovery or invention of the art of printing by Guttenburg, or Faust, or some old German, about the year 1430, is common property ; and if we turn to chronological tables, we tind thi^t year given as tho exact time ; as if it was like the birth of a hero, or land- ing upon a new continent. But the truth is, that the •very art whose mission it is to tell of events, cannot in- form us, whence, when or how itself came into existence. 'Our most remote researches into the past, open to us traces of printing. Tho bricks of which the walls of Babylon were composed, are stamped ^' ith the trade mark of the maker, imprinted upon the soft clay; and the ruins of Assyria and Egypt are printed in various way ; while all the Coinage of the world, ancient and TtiOUy-n, \8 pj-inted. But arts do not go stalking about the world unbidden. It is only when they are want ed&nd tailed, that they come forth. Inventions are conceived of their mother Necessity, and born of the occasion. They seem to beget one another also, and the birth of ono depends upon the advent of another. Thus, though the mechunicjil principles of printing were known andhad been in use for ages, the art did not come forth even into its embryo condition, till the art of paper making had ■prepared the means of supplying an article whereon to print. And yet the mother necessity had not grown to demand the extended use of such arts. The world was engaged otherwise than in writing and reading, ^or was every man ambitious to own the book he read. The portion of men who could read was smook- Wrights. The recognized value of w country of the United States, — beginning with Franklin, but not ending with such men as Horace Grroeley, Simon Cameron, Thurlow Weed, Bayard Taylor, Charles Brown (Artemas Ward,) Samuel Clement, (Mark Twain,) and many other well known names, * 1 M. H , aurait pn mentionner sonfila, W. D. HowelU, auteur de plu- eiears volumes bien oonnns et r^daotcHrde la prinoipale revue litt^raira de rAmdrique, oomme ^tautrun des gradu^s du bureau des impressions. 4^ — 16 — that might be cited. It did not follow that all those graduates of the printing office became greatly distin- guished men, any more than those who have taken homo their university parchments ; though the com- parative proportion shows well for the printers. Many of them never aspired to be any thing el&e than printers, as thousands devote their lives to the art from a love of it. The system of newspaper exchanges brought to every office more or less of the beat ijublications of the times, and all the current material for reading. This ^applied them with a vast amount of solid information and an endless fund of stories, anecdotes, puns, bon mots, rapartee and wit in all its phases. These they learned to handle skilfully ; so that in conversation they were ready and piquant. I have never heard more brilliant talks than I have heard in a printing office. They learned to write well ; and the peculiar style necessary for successful newspaper writing belonged to them of right. This was but natural. It is a heritage of the Fourth Estate that lawfully descended to them ; and it is a talent that printers have seldom buried or hid in a napkin. The mass of the good writers on the city newspapers of America of the present time have been graduated from the small printing offices of the country, where boys who could but read, have developed into scholars, with an unrivaled readiness in the production of the matter best suited for the daily reader. They comprehend at once the detail and the compilation of the newspaper ; they can therefore produce the mater- ials to enter the make-up of a paper, and frame them together as literateurs cannot do ; and in short, they supply a want that no others can. With such a class to conduct it, the growth of The Press to its present pro]X)rtion8 has been most natural. Considering as I do now, the condition of the Press in America chiefly,' the time of the introduction of the art into the New World is a pertinent question, though somewhat difficult to answer. It seems however to be pretty well established that the first printing press in North America was set up in the city of Mexico ; where it was used as the property of a monastry. This was some time before New EngUnd was settled by the 7 — 16 — *' Pilgrim Fathers," among whom one of the first uses of the press was the production of the Eliot Bible for the Mlftssachusetts Indi'vns. With the growth of the settlements we hear of presses in diftbront pai'ls of the country. Newspapers grew up irt the last century, and took their place as an institution of tlie country in due time. Weeklj' papers supplied the smaller places, and a few dailies wore issued in the rising cities, where ihoy grow with the population, or requirements of trade. As long as printers were confined to the use of the hand-press, it was impossible to extend morning or evening issues to any thing like the present volume. One hand-press, with two men at a time, working to the extent of their ability, could not produce more than six thousand impressions in each twenty-four- hours. The present issues of many American city dailies — the New York papers for instance — often exceeds twenty-fivo thousand copies, all printed within three or four hours ; while the sheets are six to ten times as large as those formerly worked by hand. The daily press of the hand-press days was only an increased issue of the small weeklies that sufficed for our grand fathers of the rural districts. But all the daily papers in Ame- ' rica, say up to ISIO, were a mere handful, compared with the present list. The great mass of news readers were content with weeklies ; and of those who read dailies there were very probably ten readers to a paper. ]^ondon furnishes a good example of this condition of dailies; where a dense population, in the exciting times of the wars that kept Europe in a ferment at the close ot the last and beginning of this century, was clamorous for news ; which had to be supplied from the multiplied issues of the hand-press. There it was not unusual to resort to the expedient of setting up the forms of type in duplicate and employing four presses with relays of pressmen, to meet the demand. In addition to this the readers economised the papers as tve should not think of doing. The daily papers were " taken in, " as the English say, by the reading rooms, and public houses, whore they were read aloud to listening groups many times over ; and after they became stale at one house, they were sold at second hand to a cheaper place, where '"1 T / \ .^ >^ \ — 17 — a poorer class absorbed the contents. With such expe- dients as these, the wants of the public were in a manner supplied by the slow means then at hand ; and the reading public was content and happy, rejoicing in their wonderful facilities foi* looking over " the map of busy life." Then the enterprising newspaper boastfully told that its proprietors had secured the landing of a swift boat at a near point, with the news of the last great battle, and how fleet horsos cjirried the dispatches over- land in a few hours, and how they masked a force of printers at midnight and at day light laid the important news before the public in less than a week from the event,— and never dreamed that they might live to read at breakfast the last might's dispatches from around the whole earth. Hut the world was growing, man was enlarging his sphere, and all his wants were expanding. The ever present Necessity called forth her child Invention to the work. The Power Press, the Stereotype plate, the Paper Machine were produced ; and the means of siipply became mH that the demand could ever require. Then the power of human expression was indeed unfettered. lUlen could make known their thoughts as they willed, and intelligence waited only to be received. All the books could be made and all the periodicals issued that the entire world was prepared to read. Still this, which seemed to be the neplvs ultra of the art was not perfec- tion, or the kind of perfection that we enjoy. But there waited to join the train, in the triumphant march of the Fourth Estate to its grandest domain, — the Railway, the Telegraph and the Photograph. These unite as if by elective affinity to produce the results we contem- plate in Thk Press of our time, — an institution that once would have been thought magic; that within my own recollection, would have been called impossible^ and which to-day creates no astonishment ; because it has so entered every household with its marvelous eflFects. We sometimes imagine the spirits of the great of other days coming back to earth to note the contrast of the times. I have contemplated in fancy, one of the fathers of this art, — Aldus or Caxton, — watching the r If f. , — 18 — S reparation and issue of one of our great morning ailiea. I can iniagino the spirit of Father Caxton rising from the shawdowy past, to look upon the world ngs of the art he loved, and wee what four hundred years had wrought of progress in a process that he was sup- posed to have completed, with his cast metal types. I see him, (inspired by a wish to know how far th^ art had blest mankind,) coming down to a land unknown in his time, where forty millions of men speaking his tongue, spread over a continent risen to fill the place of the lost Atlantis. He has alighted in the miast of a great city. It i& night-fall ; and he betakes himself to his beloved Printing Office, one of the thousand in the place, but one whose proportions are multiplied an hundred fold to any ho had ever seen. He sees the same types, in the same cases, and distributed in the same order as when he used them ; and the workmen aie taking their places, each with the old composing stick and rule, as the printers of old were wont to use. They are for a night's work ; and each compositor, before he begins, touches a little point with a lighted taper, and there flashes before him a new illuminating power, and reveals to the astonished ghost a modern composing room. The editors are at work in another apartment preparing the morning edition ; a meissenger brings the copy to the printers, where it is divided among th^m ; in a few minutes ii is all in type and they wa.t for a new supply, which is disposed of, till column after column ig composed, proof-read and corrected ; and there is before him a mass of reading, made up of news, editorials, cor- respondence, commercial and shipping intelligence, mis- cellaneous selections, poetry, advertisements, etc., equal to a year's work of his day. He inspects the matter, is attracted by the head " Despatches," each item begin- ning with a date that is the present time ; and he reaJs before the same date, — London, Paris, St. Petersburg, Home, Alexandria, Calcutta, Canton, Yeddo, and other places from as wide a world beside, to him unknown. It is now " the very witching time of night," and the clock points towards one. The last regular telegraph dispatches have been setup and the " latest " are waited for, while the forms are prepared. He cm*iously watchds 9 ;/» % — 19- the foreman as he builds up these columns into eight great pagen ; and when they are locked up, ho turns to find the press on which thoy are to be printed. But in- stead, he sees thorn phicod in a sliding elevator, and a workman taking his place with thom on the platform to descend through four or five stories, to the und(3rground floor; and he goes along to witness the process. Thoro he sees .hese pages covered with layers of soft damp paper, which is pressed into the uneven surface of the types, till a perfect mould of every word and letter is made upon it, and it is lifted off, a complete matrix. Ho recurs to his ottbrt to cast the tirst metal types, and the travail in which he devised the means to cast a single letter; and hi> wonder increases as he sees this paper mould, within a few minutes, dried and made ready to receive the moulton metal, which in a moment more will bo a solid plate of the size of the whole page, bearing every letter and every point of tho form. Ho beholds with admira- tion these eiirht pages cast, one after another, the last delayed a few minutes for the latest dispatches, and notes that it is now past one o'clock. Ho sees these plates taken up and carried forward to a grand apart- ment, formed under the street of the city, where they are bent to a perfect curve, around u large cylinder and made fast to its surface. Wonderingly he follows the workmen, as with cranes they lift this cylinder into its place in a vast machine, made up of rollers wheels and springs, ^o combined as almost to have tho movements of life, and it dawns upon him that this is the press. At one end of it he observes a continuous sheet of paper a yard in width and hundreds loni(, rolled upon acylinder; and his eye follows tho process, as the end of this sheet is led along between guiding rollers till it passes over and around the cylinder covered with the plates of type, which are inked by thowe mysteriously flexible rollers, so important to tho power press, and thence directed through revolving shears, that cut oft' the sheets, fully printed on both sides, and whence thoy are passed into machines that fold them for the mails. Thoentranc- ed spirit of this old Father of the Art looks on, and sees thousand after thousand of these immense journals thrown off, folded, wrapped, directed and mailed ; and * ■^^ w^ 20 lon^ before the day-brenk cock crows, he has seen trains that baffle bin very conception of mechanicH, by their locomotion and their speed, (-tart off with iI.oho mails, beaririLf these improved " maps of bu^y life," to greet with the rising sun, their expectant readers miles and leaguesHway. And well may he delay his flight till the cock crows, and coniemplaie it all. \le has seen these mamouth sheets fall like ihe flakes of snow, has wondered over every step of the processor their manufacture, their superior execution, their variety and number. lie has seen those shcefH made up since the night set in ; and like the fabled worksof magi(^, it is the labor of ii night; though it goes on iind is repealed day after day, night after night, as if lor all time, reciting the story of each day of the world's life to the world itself. lie has seen the news of the day, in one hour, gathereii from the ends of the earth, multiplied a myriad times and told again to a nation in a night. In short, he has seen, in the slow world of matter, so near areal'zalion of his spirit home, that he might well doubt if Ik- had left it, did not the messages he has seen called up an