Printing house

“ A printing-house is always called a chapel by the workmen, the origin of which appears to have been that printing was first carried on in England in an ancient chapel converted into a printing-house, and the title has been preserved by tradition. The bien venu among the printers answers to the terms entrance and footing among mechanics; thus a journeyman, on entering a printing-house, was accustomed to pay one or more gallons of beer for the good of the chapel ”

“ And here should be introduced a word in general on the appearance of the printed matter that is sent out by a publishing house. It must be good printing. It must be attractive printing. It is the indication to the people whose eyes it meets of the work of the house it advertises. Few people want to buy badly made books; and, unconsciously, if a circular or catalogue is commonplace and badly printed, those qualities will be attached to the book advertised. ”

“ The great American printing houses of today are more and more the masters of their own craft, not the imitators of others. This condition is also true of the type founders and manufacturers of machines and materials used in the industry. The sentiment of independence is bound to become more marked, and the originality of American printing more pronounced, with the development of a generation of better printers. ”

“ Leather ink-balls were still used in old-fashioned printing houses; the pressman dabbed the ink by hand on the characters, and the movable table on which the form of type was placed in readiness for the sheet of paper, being made of marble, literally deserved its name of "impression-stone." Modern machinery has swept all this old-world mechanism into oblivion ”

“ To-day, amid the whirr of many presses, and the hurrying to and fro of the printing office, the printer finds little or no time for literary pursuits, despite the fact that printing is, in very truth, the handmaid of literature. ”

“ Here is the only great printing establishment of the past that time and the inroads of man have left intact. The beauty of the building, the harmony of the surroundings, the old portraits, the comfort yet the taste shown in the living-rooms,—all show that the artist-printer sought the same elements in his life that he expressed in his work. Entering from the Marché du Vendredi, I find myself face to face with a small tablet over the door on which is the device of Christophe Plantin, “first printer to the King, and the king of printers.” ”

“ Visitors to the Printing Office today may not see counterparts of the postriders who brought mail to Parks’s printing shop and post office, but nearly everything else is there. As in colonial days, the central figure is still the printer, bending over his press and producing in a day’s work what one modern, mechanized press can turn out in a few minutes. ”

“ It soon became the habit of the printers to open shops apart from their printing offices for the sale of their productions. These salesrooms developed into 53book-shops through carrying in stock the books of other printers. In the old-world cities trades had a habit of congregating in one place. If a man wanted to open a book-shop, instead of trying to find a good location where there were no other book-shops very near at hand, he tried to get a location as near as he could to all the other book-shops. ”

“ A printer liable to such visitations would prefer, if possible, to procure his type out of doors, rather than maintain the valuable plant requisite to make it himself; and it is probable that the outside demand thus created may have been among the causes which led to the establishment of one or two small foundries, unconnected with any one printing office in particular, whose business it would be to supply any purchaser with type from its matrices. ”

“ Even in the eighteenth century, an era of enlightenment, printing was suspect.
An equally difficult obstacle facing the colonial printer was the cost of his press, his type, his paper, and his equipment. Eighteenth-century industry was largely home operated, based on the capital and ingenuity of one family. Yet the cost of equipping even the modest one- or two-press shops of eighteenth-century America was a burden for most people of the working class. ”

“ The early printers were their own publishers and booksellers. Previous to the invention of typography the maker and seller of the book were not ordinarily the same person. It was only natural that in a short time the stationers, that is to say, the sellers of manuscript books and of writing materials, should sell printed books also. Both the printer and bookseller were interested in an attempt to cut out one profit. If the printer sold to the bookseller and the bookseller sold to the public, both must profit by the transaction. ”

“ In the adjoining Stock-room, some two days before being printed, the paper is “wet down,” or dampened with water, and then put under powerful screw pressure of many tons’ weight, that the sheets in the process of printing may take a clear impression from the inked type. The paper, damp from the printing-press, is then taken on trucks and by an elevator to the Drying-room, and dried, that it may not tear or the printing be defaced. In the ceiling are immense frames with cross-bars, and hanging on the latter are the printed sheets drying. ”

“ The Master and the Wardens of the Stationers’ Company might have three presses each and three apprentices. No other printer could have more than two presses. A master printer on the livery (a member of the Company) might have two apprentices, others only one. The master printers were to give work to journeymen when requested to do so. This enactment was not made out of any tenderness for unemployed journeymen but for the reason that the unemployed journeyman was always tempted to pick up an occasional shilling by printing unlicensed or objectionable books. ”

“ In these it was provided that every shop should have a minimum equipment of two presses well provided with type. This was probably intended to put a stop to the small shops which did poor work and were very difficult to regulate under the police regulations which will be later discussed. The number of shops in Paris was fixed by this edict at 36. Private printing—that is to say, the exercise of the industry by persons not members of the Community of Printers—was absolutely forbidden. ”

“ If the printer could sell directly to the public or the bookseller could print his own books, obviously the whole or the greater part of both of these profits might go to one man. In this competition, however, the bookseller had three advantages. One came from the fact that the carrying on of a printing plant was a business enterprise and the additional care of maintaining a selling organization for marketing books with the 52public was more than most printers were equal to. The second was that the bookseller could buy a whole edition or contract for its publication. ”

“ It was also, although this purpose was probably secondary, intended to protect England from foreign competition. The name of the printer, the author, and the publisher, and the place of publication and sale were to be placed 41in every book. No person was permitted to erect a printing press or to let any premises for the purpose of carrying on printing without first giving notice to the Company, and no carpenter was permitted to make a press without similar notice.
The number of master printers was limited to twenty. Every master printer had to give a bond of £300 for good behavior. ”

“ Once the printer or his apprentices had set the type, pulled a proof, “made up” the type into pages with the proper spacing and ornaments, and then locked it into forms by means of furniture and quoins, he placed his form on the press and adjusted it to get the most even impression. Then he was ready to begin the actual process of printing. Whereas printing is commonly done today by automatic presses, fed with paper either mechanically or by hand, it had to be done one sheet at a time in the eighteenth century. ”

“ Again, in some small books, two, three or four blank leaves are found at the end, showing a miscalculation of the printer at the commencement. Moreover, numerous itinerant printers of the 15th century established a press for a short time wherever they went, which proves that the furniture of the earliest printing-offices cannot have been of any great extent. ”

“ The printshop is one place where a great amount of floor space between the various parts of the equipment is not entirely essential. When the groups or individuals have been set to work, there is no necessity for a great amount of passing back and forth. This is mentioned for the benefit of those who feel that printing cannot be installed unless there is an enormous amount of floor space available. ”

“ Many of the smaller paper box-making concerns are also operating private printing plants, and when managed efficiently, the printing department is a profitable investment for any paper box factory, large or small.
The writer knows of several large printing concerns, of New York City and Philadelphia, who are specializing in the production of wrappers and other printed matter for paper box manufacturers. All of these printing establishments are continually busy, and from all indications, are earning substantial profits on their work. ”

“ It will be noticed that printing was introduced into many of the provincial towns of France merely to serve a temporary purpose, and not for the object of permanent work. In many cases the printer was brought to the town, probably at the request and expense of the ecclesiastical authorities, to print such service-books as were required for the use of the church. For this reason we find printers and types moving from place to place, so that it is not always easy to assign a book to a particular town, when the type in which it is printed was used in several places. ”

“ This last book shows that unknown or not Faques was a skilful printer, for it is one of the most beautiful books issued from the early English press. The type is sharp and brilliant, the printing in red well done, and each page is surrounded with a chain-like border. On the first leaf is the printer’s device, a very uncommon one, [Pg 170] consisting of two triangles. ”

“ Up to our own times that demand has been limited to very narrow bounds; and the circumstances by which it has been extended are as remarkable as those which accompanied the progress of the original invention of printing. The same principle of demand going before supply, and the same reaction of supply upon demand, will be found to have marked the operations of the printing-press in this country, during the last twenty-five years, as distinctly as they marked them throughout Europe in the latter part of the fifteenth century and the beginning of the sixteenth. ”

“ If the first printers could revisit the earth, with what interest would they make the tour of a modern printing-office! How would they call to mind their own narrow quarters, poor facilities, and creeping progress, contrasting them with the convenience, system, swiftness, finish, and grand results of to-day, in the now beautifully moulded and polished metal types, the success seemingly gained in setting type by machinery, and the comprehensive arrangements, of various perfected departments, all brought under the easy control of human skill! ”

“ Nearly eighty tons of paper and twenty-three hundredweight of printing-ink were used in the production of that number. Larger quantities have been printed of some issues, but the production was spread over a longer period of time. 930,000 sheets is the largest quantity ever printed in one week. It will thus be seen what an amount of business this represents to the paper-maker, the ink-maker, the wood-draughtsman, the engravers, the electrotypers, the compositors, printers, machine-men, roller-makers, warehousemen, and the numerous other workers in a newspaper printing-office. ”

“ The great centre of trade during this period was St Paul’s Churchyard, and the shops there were of two kinds. There were the substantial houses round the cathedral, where the printer or stationer could carry on his business and dwell, but clustered in every direction against the very walls of the church were booths and sheds and stalls. These were simply “lock up” shops of one story, many with flat roofs for people to stand on to view processions, and were used by booksellers and such printers as had printing-offices elsewhere. ”

“ Modern printers, even the best, pay very little heed to these two essentials of seemly composition, and the inferior ones run riot in licentious spacing, thereby producing, inter alia, those ugly rivers of lines running about the page which are such a blemish to decent printing. ”

“ About seventy-six of these companies still continue to exist. They survive mainly for charitable and philanthropic purposes, conserving and administering the large funds which were accumulated in early centuries.
The Stationers’ Company was organized in 1557 partly because the printers saw the necessity for organization and regulation of the industry, and partly because the crown desired a better means for controlling printing than had theretofore existed. ”

“ It took some time, however, to turn the printer into the manufacturer or tradesman pure and simple. Nothing is more striking than the high artistic character of the early printed books. The invention of printing, coming as it did when the illuminated MSS. had reached the period of its greatest glory and perfection, with the artistic traditions of fifteen centuries poured, as it were, into its lap, filling its founts with beautiful lettering, and guiding the pencil of its designers with a still unbroken sense of fitness and perfect adaptability ”