Let us, for a moment, consider the amount of paper which goes through the presses on this floor in a year. There are, devoted to papers, an eight-cylinder rotary for the Daily, a two-cylinder for the Weekly Witness, and a single-feeder for the Messenger. There are also several presses for job work, one of which, however, prints L'Aurore, and another the New Dominion Monthly, which need not now be referred to in detail.
A FELLOW LABORER.
Some fourteen thousand five hundred copies of the Daily Witness are printed daily, or 4,509,500 a year, excluding from the calculation Sundays and legal holidays. The circulation of the Weekly Witness averages twenty-six thousand copies, or 1,412,000 in a year. Some fifty thousand copies of the Northern Messenger are issued semi-monthly, or 1,200,000 sheets a year. Thus the total mounts up to more than seven million papers which are printed on these premises during a year. A few statistics with this number as a basis would prove interesting. Piled in reams these papers would form a column 3,560 feet high, or more than two-thirds of a mile. Stretched out and pasted together they would reach four thousand four hundred and twenty-one miles. But such figures as these simply daze one, and we will leave them and follow the papers a little farther.
The Press Room.
These take two courses. Some go upstairs to the mailing room, while others are counted out to the newsboys for street sale and to the dealers throughout the city. The newsboys are a most unruly lot, and to be kept under control are compelled to wait in a room, built on purpose for them, until the papers are ready. This time they occupy in quarrelling, cutting their names on the sides of the deal partitions, and calling out to "Miss Gray," the traditional name given to every young lady who has had charge of that department for the last ten years or more. Should a gentleman take her place for the nonce, he is called Mr. Gray. As soon as the papers are ready they are counted out to the newsboys, each of whom has his particular beat or stand in the city. Some, with more enterprise or capital than others, buy by wholesale, and sell to others with less capital. A few, standing on the street corners, have regular customers who pay or not, as the case may be, each night; and as the business men pass, one after another, the papers are handed to them almost as rapidly as tickets at a crowded concert-room. Often they are snatched from under the boy's arm; but no matter, without any system of book-keeping, or even a book of original entry, each customer will be told the exact amount he owes at any time, and without a moment's hesitation. These newsboys sell from one to twenty dozen copies daily. They pay for the Witness eight cents a dozen, and sell them at a cent each. Thus the newsboy's income will average from four cents to eighty cents per day—the latter no inconsiderable sum in these hard times.