Paper chase

“ And there is abundant evidence, that whatever benefit is possible from that compulsion to some individuals or to the government, is far more than outweighed by the losses of property, the derangement of business, the fluctuations of currency and values, and the increase of prices to the people and the government, and the long train of evils which flow from the use of irredeemable paper money. It is true that these evils are not to be attributed altogether to making it a legal tender. ”

“ Marjorie took Leila’s arm and escorted her to an open antique mahogany desk. She motioned Leila into the mahogany chair before it. “There you are.” She indicated several sizes of pale gray note paper bearing the monogram of the Arms. “Isn’t this beautiful paper, Leila?” she commented. “Miss Susanna put it here on purpose for us. She never uses it. She prefers white. This was Mr. Brooke Hamilton’s own stationary.”
“You are two lucky children in a fairy castle,” Leila declared. “Now say me the jingle, Jeremiah. Then we will talk about everything and anything.”
“Ahem.” Jerry coughed importantly. ”

“ In a printing office where small quantities of paper are dealt with, the inconvenience of carrying paper in and out a few reams at a time may not be apparent, but considerable time is wasted and some loss in spoiled sheets results from such a method. Quantities of paper should be dealt with as expeditiously, and with as little handling, as possible. Transporter trucks require, perhaps, more room than is taken by a man or boy lifting reams, but it deals with thirty reams, instead of two at a time, and in up-to-date offices time is counted as valuable as currency. ”

“ The printing is effected by steam-worked presses. The ink is blue, and its composition known only to a few of the authorities. An inspector goes his rounds during the continuance of the operations, watching every press, every workman, every process. A beautiful machine, distinct from the press, is employed to print the variable numbers on the note; fed with sheets of paper, it will number a thousand of them in succession, changing the digits each time, and scarcely requiring to be touched meanwhile; even the removal of one note and the placing of another are effected by automatic agency. ”

“ Practice and careful observation can alone make a good beater-man, and for the finer classes of paper none but careful, experienced men should be entrusted with the management of the beating-engine. Sometimes the operation is conducted in [103] two successive engines, the first being called the intermediate beater, but I have hitherto failed to see wherein the advantage of this system lies. The time usually occupied in beating esparto for printing-paper is about four hours, while for rags the time may vary from four to twelve hours, or even more. ”

“ Chart Papers.—Largely used by lithographers for map and chart printing. Machine-made, the best qualities are all-rag, tub-sized, with smooth surface. Must be strong, pliable, tough, resistant to wear, and at the same time a good printing surface is essential. The manufacture is arranged so as to avoid subsequent stretch.
Cheque Papers.—Good quality of paper, specially made for strength, usually all-rag. Special watermarks may be employed, or protection from fraud is obtained by special printing. ”

“ From eleven at night till four in the morning, during the five hours while printing is going on, under stress of perpetual excitement, in the heat of an oven, none of the slaves of this despotic metal monster is conscious of himself. Their eyes anxiously watch the course of the shiny white paper, which is lit up by electric lamps at points of danger, and their hands are upon the levers to stop the machine instantly, should the paper get torn, which may happen at any moment through too much moistening or through a tiny pleat. ”

“ Then I bought a copy of one of the evening papers, and hailing a hansom directed the driver to take me back to my offices in Stanton Street, where Don José had promised to telegraph to me.
For a time I sat well back in the soft, well-upholstered cab and let my thoughts run riot on the extraordinary series of adventures that had befallen since I had made that fierce fight in the auction room. Have you ever noticed that there is something mysterious in the mere fact that one has purchased a copy of the last edition of a paper that makes one a prey to retrospect? ”

“ Beating.—One of the most important operations in the manufacture of first-class paper is that of beating, by which the half-stuff becomes reduced to a fine state of division, and the fibres which, in the condition of half-stuff, are more or less loosely held together in a clotted state, become separated, and are thus put into a condition in which they will intertwine with each other, or felt, as it is termed, when submitted to the vibratory motion of the wire-cloth of the paper machine. ”

“ The new Walter Press does not in the least resemble any existing printing machine, unless it be the calendering machine which furnished its type. At the printing end it looks like a collection of small cylinders or rollers. The first thing to be observed is the continuous roll of paper four miles long, tightly mounted on a reel, which, when the machine is going, flies round with immense rapidity. The web of paper taken up by the first roller is led into a series of small hollow cylinders filled with water and steam, perforated with thousands of minute holes. ”

“ On another occasion a man was detected in the act of robbing a newsvendor's cart, by volunteering on its arrival at the General Post-office to assist the drivers in posting the newspapers: instead of doing so, he walked through the hall with those intrusted to him, and, upon his being stopped, three quires of a weekly paper were found in his possession. ”

“ Recently a mailing machine has been introduced that folds, wraps, and addresses each copy separately as fast as papers are fed into it.
In no other process of manufacture that is as complicated as newspaper making, it is safe to say, has equal speed of production been attained.
[Pg 12]
Handling a Big Story. The scene in a metropolitan newspaper office following the receipt of the first news of the “Titanic” disaster, as graphically portrayed by an editor of a New York morning paper, illustrates the conditions under which important news, received late, is hurried into print. ”

“ A French paper makes a calculation to show how marvelously human labor is outrivaled by the mechanical arrangements of the steam press. The280 paper, “La Patrie,” contains about 4,230 lines: 8,000 copies make 34,560,000 lines. A clerk could write about three lines in a minute; therefore it would require 11,520,000 minutes, or 192,000 hours, for a single clerk to supply 8,000 copies of “La Patrie;” in other words, it would require 192,000 men to supply, by copying, the same amount of paper which the cylinder printing-press supplies in one hour. ”

“ Receiving these, I submitted them to various wary and knowing printers, in order to find out at what office in the city the printing was probably done. A printer or newspaper man will ordinarily detect, by the size of column, or some other peculiarity, from what paper a given extract has been clipped, as readily as a tailor can tell from whose shop a certain coat or pair of pantaloons came, or as easily as a man can distinguish the handwriting of his friends. ”

“ Papers which are merely to have "machine-finish," that is, the surface imparted by the calenders of the paper machine, receive no further treatment before being cut into sheets. Those papers which are to be super-calendered (S.C.) pass through a large super-calendering machine, consisting of a number of chilled iron rolls and rolls of compressed cotton or paper alternately. ”

“ Double cylinder presses capable of printing twenty thousand papers an hour were soon perfected, folding machines came into general use, stereotyping was employed to save time, labor, and wear of type, white paper was made from wood pulp at greatly reduced cost, and the progress in all departments of the business was by leaps and bounds until every demand was more than supplied and new expectations created. ”

“ The "post horn," another favourite device, which has given the name to a particular size of paper—namely, "post"—was first used about the year 1670, when the General Post Office was established, and it became the fashion for the postman to blow a horn.
In modern times paper-marks have become so numerous that it would be next to impossible to classify them; nor would it be of much advantage to the book collector even if it could be done. With old marks it is different, for fac-simile reprints of scarce and ancient volumes are frequently detected by looking at the water-mark on the paper. ”

“ It is essential that all the water should be dried out of the paper, and the paper is sometimes reeled almost bone-dry, but if the paper is to be super-calendered it is damped before reeling, and left until the paper mellows before calendering. Many papers are cut and packed without much opportunity for maturing, that is, as regards paper, attaining a degree of stability which should be maintained during its manipulation by the printer, and, it is hoped, during the remainder of its career. ”

“ Pre-cancelled.—Two or three countries have adopted the system, to save time in the post-office, of supplying sheets of stamps cancelled prior to use. This may be a convenience, but the{46} practice undoubtedly opens the door to possible fraud.
Print is an impression taken from any die, plate, forme, or stone.
Printing, in its fullest sense, is reproducing from a die, plate, stereotype, &c. (all of which see) . There are, on this definition, four kinds of production: "Embossing," where the paper is impressed with a raised design, by pressure from a cut-out die (see Embossed) ”

“ Meanwhile, a sufficient quantity of paper has been taken from the public store-house to the wetting-room. There it has been dampened, quire by quire, turned and laid in piles under the crushing pressure of an hydraulic-pump, worked by steam-power. When taken out the paper is ready for the press.
The rollers are brought from the room in which they are cleaned and kept, and set in the press. The ink fountain is filled. Sheet on sheet of spotless paper is placed aloft. The young woman who is to “tend” mounts to her perch. The steam-power is applied, and the printing begins. ”

“ Although rolling, hot or cold, may be effectively used for giving finish to the printed work, the paper is subjected to such great pressure that it is liable to stretch. As pointed out earlier in the chapter, stretching of paper is not equal in both directions of the sheet, and it is advisable, in order to preserve the strength of the paper, to roll in the same direction as the paper was made and rolled in the papermaking machine. Discover the machine direction by the method described on page 86, and feed the paper to the rolling machine in the same way as it left the papermaking machine. ”

“ Now the chief marvel of a modern combined printing press is its power of being used to print separately a large number of small sized papers or by leading the paper through the press in a slightly different way to print a mammoth paper folded all together and receiving contributions from all six reels at once. In the particular machine in question, which is used to print a comparatively small sized paper, any six of the separate machines can be run separately, if a small paper and a small output only is wanted. ”

“ It embraces a multitude of most ingenious and delicate operations, and produces in a few minutes, and in one continuous process from the prepared pulp, sheets of paper ready for use. Machine-made paper has now gradually supplanted that made by hand for all except special purposes, such as bank-note, ledger, drawing and other high-class papers—in one word, in cases where great durability is the chief requisite. ”

“ They are the invisible, rock-ribbed resting-place for the dazzling superstructure and the slim and peaked spire. Whether we procure a new press or a new dress, a new contributor or a new printers' towel, we must bank on the old subscriber; for the new one is fickle, and when some other paper gives him a larger or a redder covered book, he may desert our standard. He yearns for the flesh-pots and the new scroll saws of other papers. He soon wearies of a uniformly good paper, with no chance to draw a town lot or a tin mine—in Montana. ”

“ The “wet” end of this machine is a Fourdrinier type.
The arrangement and number of smoothing and calender rolls is also dependent on the class of paper to be made. Most writing-paper machines have no calenders at all as the surface is obtained on special machinery such as platers and sheet calenders after the paper comes from the drying loft. One can easily appreciate that, while the general principles of all paper-making are identical, there is a call for a wide variety of arrangements, such as those cited, to meet the varying requirements of different classes of paper. ”

“ A big crowd filled the platform and as the train drew up I began to realize that they wanted my papers. Before we left I had sold a hundred or two at five cents apiece. At the next station the place was fairly black with people. I raised the 'ante' and sold three hundred papers at ten cents each. So it went on until Port Huron was reached. Then I transferred my remaining stock to the wagon which always waited for me there, hired a small boy to sit on the pile of papers in the back, so as to discount any pilfering, and sold out every paper I234 had at a quarter of a dollar or more per copy. ”