Printing industry

“ 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. ”

“ Aside from the positions that require a knowledge of printing more or less complete, such as proofreading, publishing, librarians’ work, etc., there are jobs connected with the paper industry where this knowledge, which as a matter of fact is rarely found, would prove of great advantage.
It is evident, moreover, that some practical knowledge of printing may prove useful if not essential for practically all men who engage in commerce or manufacturing. They are all buyers of printing, and it is a difficult commodity to purchase intelligently. ”

“ The Community of Printers An unregulated trade, conducted under conditions of absolute freedom approximating those of the present day, was not only out of place in the Middle Ages but was practically impossible. We have seen how the attempt to carry on a trade under such conditions resulted in a state of intolerable confusion in the printing industry. ”

“ These privileges had a most unfortunate effect upon the industry both on the side of business and on that of craftsmanship. On the side of business they gave to certain printers a monopoly of practically all of the work which was certain to produce good financial returns, leaving to the unprivileged printers the doubtful enterprise of producing current literature. On the side of craftsmanship they took away the spur of competition. The greater part of the literature of this period was produced by unprivileged printers, most of it with very little profit to them. ”

“ But not only does the printing industry excel all other industries in human interest, it excels them in the relative progress it is making. The latest available figures, published in 1905 by the Government, show that the capital invested in the publishing business had doubled in the preceding half decade, despite the fact that publishing is almost unique among industries in the diffusion of its establishments, and in the tenacity with which it still clings to competition in an age of combination. ”

“ Today the elimination of the merchant would mean the elimination of the majority of Printers, for it is inconceivable that the printing industry, in which according to Government Statistics, 86% of the establishments do a yearly business of less than $20,000, and 52% less than $5000, could finance itself without the aid of well organized Jobbing Houses. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 temptation to obtain cheap labor, regardless of the welfare of either the apprentice or the industry, was too great, and many printers found it impossible to resist it, especially as during the latter part of this period the conditions in the industry became very bad and it was almost impossible to make any money at it. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The idea of the freedom of commerce and industry, so dear to the modern political economist, had not yet been conceived. All industry was subject to the most minute regulations partly imposed by the state and partly imposed by the guild. All the concerns of human life were subject to regulation, including even what people in different ranks of life should eat, drink, and wear. As there was no trade organization to regulate printing, of course it became immediately the subject of governmental interest. ”

“ Sometimes it happened that they changed their minds about becoming printers, more often, probably, they sought short cuts into the industry. It has always been the misfortune of printing that a very imperfect knowledge of it has a comparatively higher market value than an equally imperfect knowledge of other industries, while the period of apprenticeship required for full learning of the trade is long and wearisome. The apprentices were often tempted by offers of occupation as laborers or even as journeymen in some of the poorer shops which were willing to evade regulations. ”

“ Bookbinding came to be regarded as a separate industry at about the same time.
Ink making was done by the printer until comparatively recently. The ink balls which were used for distributing the ink on types were made by the printers themselves until the ink ball was superseded by the roller with the coming in of modern presses. Even then rollers were made in the shops for a long time, and indeed the practice is hardly now entirely discontinued. ”

“ Most persons are content with smaller profits, providing they can be released from risk. Under the system which now developed the publisher assumed the risk. In that way he became the patron of both author and printer.
The first of the modern type of publishers was Jacob Tonson, the elder, who began business in 1678. A consideration of the development of the publishing industry would take us too far afield and it will be touched upon only as it directly concerns the development of printing. ”

“ If its mechanical aspects are over emphasized it must fail to appeal to intellectual scholars, since it cannot sufficiently stir their imaginations to command interest.
The printing and publishing industry stands among the six largest from the point of view of annual value in dollars—in this country—and has, of course, boundless possibilities for good and evil. ”

“ Certainly the Printers are in the total, large and important from the merchants’ viewpoint, but there exists a strong inter-dependence, which both should realize and recognize, as a most natural basis for coöperation, in the expansion and increase of the demand for printing. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The name of the printer, the author, and the publisher was to be placed in every book, and, with a view to encouraging English printing, it was decreed further that no merchant or bookseller should import any English book printed abroad. No person was to erect a printing-press, or to let any [Pg 179] premises for the purpose of carrying on printing, without first giving notice to the Company, and no joiner or carpenter was to make a press without similar notice. ”

“ 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. ”

“ From the casting of the type to the mixing of the ink they did nearly everything for themselves. Gradually the different departments of the art were constituted separate and re cognized trades. The type-founder was probably the first to secede from the concern ; then printers delegated to others the making of presses ; afterwards the ink and the rollers found separate and distinct manufacturers ; and there arose a class of persons who, though belonging to other trades, made printing appliances a specialty, such as printers smiths, printers joiners, and printers engineers. ”

“ But, according to the record, color comic supplement printing requires exacting mechanical techniques performed by specially trained personnel, and independent printers specializing in supplement printing and handling a high volume of business can produce a high quality product more economically than most newspapers. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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! ”

“ For example, in the absence of copyright a printer might go to the expense of getting out an edition of an important work only to have a rival buy one of his copies and throw into the market an edition at a price based on the cost of manufacture only, while it is obvious that even if the competition were based on the cost of manufacture the printer from Lyons could undersell the printer from Paris because his presses turned out 700 more sheets a day, an advantage of 25 per cent.
All this competition had a tendency to reduce selling prices and to drive down the workman’s pay. ”

“ Type is type, speaking somewhat loosely, and, whatever the crotchet a consumer of printing may get into his head it is not likely to cost more than about so much a pound. It is otherwise with paper, and generally it is more the color, texture, and appearance the patron wishes than the intrinsic value, and the printer must make a choice that shall satisfy the artistic exigencies of the case, as well as consider its financial aspects. One paper may be unsuited for a particular piece of work, and another of the same tint, weight, and price may be exactly suitable ”

“ While there are many printers who will be inclined to scout the idea that the possession98 of a style of their own would be of financial advantage to them, it is a fundamental element in success. There needs must be some diggers of ditches, hewers of wood and drawers of water, and it is probably true that the great bulk of printing will continue to be done by workmen, a small proportion of it by artisans, and an almost infinitesimal portion by artists. ”