But there is really no need for more than one casting process. In the twentieth century machine the matrices will be replaced by permanent type from which, when ranged in the line, an impression will be made by hard pressure on a small bar of soft metal or plastic material. All the impressed bars having been set together in a casting box having the necessary curvature, the final stereo plate for printing from will be taken at once by pouring melted metal on the combined bars.
An appreciable saving, both in time and in money, will also be effected by applying the principle of the perforated strip of paper or cardboard to the purpose of operating the machine by which the necessary letters are caused to range themselves in the required order. Machines similar to typewriters will be employed for perforating the strips of paper and for printing, at the same time, in ordinary letters the matter just as if it were being typewritten.
The corrections can then be made by cutting off those pieces of the strips which are wrong and inserting corrected pieces in their places. No initial "justification" to the space required to make a line is needed in this system. The strips, however, are put through the setting machine, and, as they make the reading matter by the impression of bars as already described, they are divided into lines automatically.
Large numbers of newspapers will in future be sold from "penny-in-the-slot" machines. The system to be adopted for this particular purpose will doubtless differ in some important respects from that which has been successful in the vending of small articles such as sweetmeats and cigarettes. The newspapers may be hung on light bars within the machine, these being supported at the end by a carefully-adjusted cross piece, which, on the insertion of a penny in the slot, moves just sufficiently to permit the end of one bar with its newspaper to drop, and to precipitate the latter on to a table forming the front of the machine. When the full complement of newspapers has been exhausted the slot is automatically closed.
Some of the newspapers of the twentieth century will be given away gratis, and will be, for the most part, owned by the principal advertisers. This is the direction in which journalistic property is now tending, and at any juncture steps might be taken, in one or other of the great centres of newspaper enterprise, which would precipitate the ultimate movement. Hardly any one who buys a half-penny paper to-day imagines for a moment that there is any actual profit on the article.
It is understood on all hands that the advertisers keep the newspapers going and that the arrangement is mutually beneficial. Not that either party can dictate to the other in matters outside of its own province. The effect is simply to permit the great public to purchase its news practically for the price of the paper and ink on which it is conveyed; the condition being that the said public will permit its eyes to be greeted with certain announcements placed in juxtaposition to the news and comments.
Sooner or later, therefore, the idea will occur to some of the leading advertisers to form a syndicate and give to the people a small broadsheet containing briefly the daily narrative. The ponderous newspapers of the latter end of the nineteenth century—filled full of enough of linotype matter to occupy more than the whole day of the subscriber in their perusal—will be to a large extent dispensed with; and the new art of journalism will consist in saying things as briefly—not as lengthily—as possible.