A Brief History of Printing. Part II: The Economic History of Printing

by Frederick W. Hamilton

The hours of labor in the printing industry were very long. Throughout France they averaged about fourteen hours a day, and similar conditions appear to have prevailed elsewhere. As already indicated, a certain amount of product, particularly on the press, was considered to be a fair day’s work. In 1572 the 3350 sheets per day required of a pressman at Lyons compelled him to work from two o’clock in the morning to eight or nine in the evening without leaving the shop. This appears from evidence submitted in litigation. Printers were boarded and generally lodged by their employers. Plantin’s establishment, still in existence in Amsterdam, shows living quarters for all of the workmen who were employed in the plant. They were given their meals in the shop and were permitted to send the apprentices out for wine or beer, which they drank in considerable quantities. The men themselves objected to going out for their food, although they often complained of the quality of that furnished. Their objection was based upon the fact that they so depended upon each other for their work that if men went out, especially if they overstayed their time, they would be likely to hold up each other’s work and make it impossible to complete the required task of the day even in the very liberal time allowance which was then regarded as reasonable.

It is not to be wondered at that the long hours, close confinement, and hard work encouraged the drinking habits which were proverbial among printers. The natural result of so much drinking was a good deal of disorder and violence, especially on holidays. There is no reason to suppose, however, that printers as a class were worse than other workmen of their day and generation. They were much superior in education and they were recognized as being of higher social condition. They were exempt from many of the legal requirements upon journeymen in other trades, and their industry was more than once recognized by royal edict as being an art or profession and not a mechanical trade. The printers were very proud of this social distinction and, as has been already stated, emphasized their claim to it by wearing swords, which in those days was the mark of the gentleman or professional man.

The hard work and long hours had two compensations; one partial, the other very real. The first, which printing shared with other industries, was the great number of holidays. The shops did not work on Sundays or feast days. Under modern conditions there are slightly more than 300 working days in the year, taking out Sundays and holidays and making no allowance for illness or voluntary absence. In the period with which we are dealing there were only from 230 to 240 working days in the year; that is to say, there were 60 or 70 more holidays than we now have. Probably shorter hours and more days of work would have been better for all concerned. The other compensation was the very high rate of wages. To state the printer’s wages of that time in terms of money would carry very little information, partly because of the difference in coinage and partly because of the difference in the purchasing power of money. The really enlightening fact is that the wages of a printer were from two to three times those of journeymen in the other skilled trades. Actual wages were fixed by the operation of the law of supply and demand and by the skill of the individual workman. There was what we should call today a “scale” fixed either by custom or by law. The scale, however, instead of being a minimum, as now, was a maximum, the variations being below instead of above it.

Unfortunately there was a great deal of unemployment, owing to the prevalence of a form of work which will be presently described. This unemployment was not only a serious evil in itself, but it led to competition among workmen, who were often willing to work for less than the going rate rather than to go idle. Another tendency toward the lowering of wages was the competition in the book trade caused by literary piracy and the work of printers from the smaller towns or even outside countries who could do work cheaper than it could be done in the larger cities. 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. It was for these reasons that the employers were so anxious to use laborers instead of journeymen, and apprentices instead of either. All these depressing tendencies had full sway under the curiously inverted scale system which made the scale a maximum instead of a minimum.

Journeymen were divided into two classes, day workers and piece workers. The day worker was engaged under an annual contract which covered his salary, his board, and usually his lodging. In the printing trade these contracts were written after 1618. In the other industries they were not written, although verbal contracts were common to all industries.

In some cases these bargains were collective; that is to say, they were made between the Community and the journeymen’s organization soon to be described. Wherever possible, however, the masters prevented the organization of the journeymen and compelled the men to resort to individual bargaining.

The piece workers were men who were engaged for some particular contract or job which the master had in hand. Whenever an important piece of work was undertaken a number of extra men, depending upon the equipment and the time in which it was desired to do the job, were employed. Day workers and men employed for another job were supposed not to be put on and no additional men were to be employed for it, unless some of the original group dropped out. The men were supposed to know how long the job would last and were supposed not to be discharged without eight days’ notice. These men were paid by the day and were fed and sometimes lodged like the day workmen.

The workmen constantly complained that in practice they were greatly abused under this system. They claimed that they were discharged without notice, that day men were put to work on their jobs, and that additional men were hired, shortening the period of their occupation. This manipulation of the job was a frequent device of the masters in order to finish a piece of work before a holiday, especially when a Sunday and a holiday and even two holidays came together, as was not infrequently the case with the great number of holidays then observed. By hurrying up the job and finishing it before the holiday the master could avoid feeding the men over the holiday. Under ordinary circumstances he was supposed to feed his men, whether day workers or piece workers, throughout the period of their employment, whether or not he paid them on holidays. The result of this system was that a very large proportion, probably a large majority, of the printers had no regular employment, working only at such job work as they could from time to time pick up.

The journeymen were graded as first- and second-class workmen and foremen. The first-class workman was a sort of assistant foreman. He was employed upon the more difficult work or aided the foreman in the discharge of his duties. The second-class was the ordinary workman, comparable today to a man who would be earning the union scale with very little prospect of ever getting any more.