In 1819 Mr. Binney retired with an ample competence. Mr. Ronaldson ran the business alone for a while, but in 1823 he was succeeded by his brother Richard, who conducted the business for ten years.
In 1833 the business was taken over by Lawrence Johnson and George E. Smith. Johnson was able, enterprising, and energetic, and introduced new vigor into the conduct of the concern. Contemporaneously with Jedediah Howe he introduced stereotyping into Philadelphia. Smith retired in 1845 and Johnson took in as partners Thomas MacKellar, John F. Smith, and Richard Smith, young men who had grown up in the business and were thoroughly interested in it and devoted to it. The firm continued to prosper greatly. Johnson died in 1860, but his partners took in Peter A. Jordan, changing the firm name to MacKellar, Smiths & Jordan. By this time the house had acquired a great reputation and a leading position among American type founders. Mr. Johnson died in 1884 and the next year the firm was still further increased by the addition of William B. MacKellar, G. Frederick Jordan and Carl F. Huch. The firm name was again changed to The MacKellar, Smiths & Jordan Company. During all this time, however, the house was known among printers as the Johnson Type Foundry. For many years it had acquired great distinction for its diligence in electrotyping foreign designs as well as in originating new faces for ornamental types and borders. The fashion of the time for typographical decoration was largely developed by the publication of a house organ called the “Typographic Advertiser,” a quarterly journal, edited by Thomas MacKellar, which contained a fund of matter of interest to printers and a vast quantity of fanciful borders and other material now out of fashion.
In 1892, when the American Type Founders Company was organized by the consolidation of some twenty foundries, the MacKellar, Smiths & Jordan Company entered the combination and became the Philadelphia branch.
Now that we have told the story of this great house in detail, we may go back to consider some more of the early firms. The success of Binney & Ronaldson was due to a combination of personal qualities and favorable conditions. The increase of printed matter was very great. Americans have always been a newspaper-loving people, and after the independence of the colonies the founding of new newspapers went on apace. It must not be forgotten that all printing in the early days of the last century was done with foundry type, hand set. The demand for type, therefore, was not only large, but was increasing. Up to the outbreak of the war of 1812 the few type foundries in America were regularly from three to four months behind their orders, so greatly did demand outrun production.
Under such circumstances Binney & Ronaldson could not have the field to themselves. In 1805 we find Samuel Sower & Company at work at Baltimore. Sower belonged to the family of Christopher Sauer, and used the material of the old firm with additions. He made some fonts of roman and italic and appears to have made a specialty of small type faces such as diamond (4½-point), brilliant (4-point), and excelsior (3-point).
In 1809 the second permanently successful foundry was started by Elihu White and a man by the name of Wing in Hartford, Connecticut. Here again we have a sample of characteristic Yankee courage, resource, and ingenuity, qualities which have enabled Americans at all times to accomplish the apparently impossible. Neither White nor Wing knew the business of type founding. They had certain ideas of their own and for the rest they apparently worked backward from the finished type. Their attempt was to cast several letters at once, to be afterwards separated, instead of casting the letters singly as was the general practice. Probably partly for that reason and partly because of ignorance, perhaps also because of their confidence in their ability to improve on accepted methods, they did not use the approved moulds. The attempt to cast letters by wholesale, as it were, was not successful and their entire progress was slow and unsatisfactory. After many failures, they sent a man to Philadelphia in order that he might learn the trade secrets. In those days type founding, like many other trades, was to a great extent a secret trade and one of the chief duties of the workman was to keep his employer’s secrets. Their attempt to steal the trade failed and they were thrown back upon their own resources again. Finally, however, their efforts were crowned with success and they began to turn out commercially successful type. In 1810 White separated from Wing and went to New York, where he and his brother Julius established a business under the firm name of E. & J. White. From this time on they were steadily and brilliantly successful.
In 1820 they opened branches in Buffalo and in Cincinnati to meet the requirements of an expanding trade. The business remained in the family until 1854, when it was bought out by three employees who continued it under the later well-known firm name of Farmer, Little & Co.
Another famous name in the annals of American type founding appears at about the same time as that of White. This was the name of Bruce. David Bruce was born in 1750, in Wick, Caithness, Scotland. When a mere boy Bruce was impressed into the British navy after the bad old custom of that day and served for a while in the Channel Fleet under the command of Lord Howe, afterwards well known, together with his brother General Howe, for their part in the Revolutionary War. After he left the navy Bruce was apprenticed to a printer. He came to New York in 1793 and obtained work on a newspaper. Shortly afterward he sent for his brother George and apprenticed him to a printer.
In 1806, after George had become a journeyman printer, the brothers were offered by publishers the printing of Lavoisier’s Chemistry. The fact that they had no plant, no equipment, and no money did not deter them from accepting the offer. Bruce managed somehow to secure a place and a press, and he borrowed a font of type. He introduced the standing press for dry pressing his sheets, and he turned out so good a piece of work that the publishers offered him all the printing that he could do. From this start he set up a successful business.
In 1811 Bruce, with his usual business acumen, recognized the importance of stereotyping and went to England to study it. As we have seen, however, it was not easy to learn other people’s trades in those days and Bruce met with great difficulty. He did, however, succeed in learning something from a Scotch workman, perhaps helped by a certain sense of kinship, which is common among the Scotch, and returned home to make experiments for himself. Times were not favorable for keeping business running, to say nothing of starting new business. The conditions preceding the war of 1812 were disastrous for business in the United States. American commerce was crushed between the upper and nether millstones of England and France, who had been at war for many years and were attempting to fight each other’s commerce and industries as well as each other’s soldiers. The condition was very similar to that which preceded the entrance of the United States into the great war of 1917, excepting that it continued much longer and, owing to the comparative weakness of the United States, was much more serious than the later difficulty. The war did not mend things industrially and its close in 1815 left the United States in a bad business condition for a good many years. Nevertheless, the courage and persistency of the Bruces enabled them to weather the storm, and they not only held their own but developed along new lines.