“It’s quite a speculation, my business is, for all depends upon the lads coming to me to buy, and there’s no certainty beyond. I every season expect that these lads who bought papers of me the last year will come back and deal with me again. First of all, these lads will come for a dozen, or a kipple of dozen, of papers; and so it goes on till perhaps they are able to sell half a gross a-day, and then from that they will, if the weather is fine, get up to ten dozen, or perhaps a gross, but seldom or never over that.
“In the very busiest and hottest time as is, I have, for about two or three weeks, made as many as thirty-six gross of papers in a week. We generally begins about the end of June or the beginning of July, and then for five or six weeks we goes on very busy; after that it dies out, and people gets tired of laying out their money.
“It’s almost impossible to get at any calculation of the quantity I make. You see, to-day I haven’t sold a gross, and yesterday I didn’t sell more than a gross; and the last three days I haven’t sold a single paper, it’s been so wet. But last week I sold more than five gross a-day,—it varies so. Oh yes, I sell more than a hundred gross during the season. You may say, that for a month I make about five gross a-day, and that—taking six days to the week, and thirty days to the month—makes a hundred and thirty gross: and then for another month I do about three gross a-day, and that, at the same calculation, makes seventy-eight gross, or altogether one hundred and ninety-eight gross, or 28,512 single papers, and that is as near as I can tell you.
“Sometimes our season lasts more than two months. You may reckon it from the latter end of June to the end of August, or if the weather is very hot, then we begins early in June, and runs it into September. The prime time is when the flies gets heavy and stings—that’s when the papers sells most.
“There’s others in the business besides myself; they lives up in St. Giles’s, and they sells ’em rather cheaper. At one time the shopkeepers used to make the papers. When they first commenced, they was sold at twopence and threepence and fourpence a-piece, but now they’re down to three a-penny in the streets, or a halfpenny for a single one. The boys when they’ve got back the money they paid me for their stock, will sell what papers they have left at anything they’ll fetch, because the papers gets dusty and spiles with the dust.
“I use the very best ‘Times’ paper for my ‘catch ’em alives.’ I gets them kept for me at stationers’ shops and liberaries, and such-like. I pays threepence a-pound, or twenty-eight shillings the hundred weight. That’s a long price, but you must have good paper if you want to make a good article. I could get paper at twopence a-pound, but then it’s only the cheap Sunday papers, and they’re too slight.
“The morning papers are the best, and will stand the pulling in opening the papers; for we always fold the destroyers with the sticky sides together when finished. The composition I use is very stiff; if the paper is bad, they tear when you force them open for use. Some in the trade cut up their newspapers into twelve for the full sheet, but I cut mine up into only eight.
“The process is this. First of all the paper is sized and coloured. We colour them by putting a little red lead into the size, because if the sticky side is not made apparent the people wont buy ’em, ’cause they might spile the furniture by putting the composition-side downwards. After sizing the papers, they are hung up to dry, and then the composition is laid on. This composition is a secret, and I’m obligated to keep it so, for of course all the boys who come here would be trying to make ’em, and not only would it injure me, but I’d warrant they’d injure theirselves as well, by setting the house on fire. You may say that my composition is made from a mixture of resinous substances. Everything in making it depends upon using the proper proportions. There’s some men who deal with me who know the substances to make the composition from, but because they haven’t got the exact proportions of the quantities, they can’t make it right.
“The great difficulty in making them is drying the papers after they are sized. Some days when it’s fine they’ll dry as fast as you can hang ’em up a’most, and other days they won’t dry at all—in damp weather ’specially. There is some makers who sizes and colours their papers in the winter, and then puts ’em to dry; and when the summer comes, then they has only to put on the composition.
“I’m a very quick hand in the trade (if you can call it one, for it only lasts three months at most, and is a very uncertain one, too; indeed, I don’t know what you can style our business—it ain’t a purfession and it ain’t a trade, I suppose it’s a calling): I’m a quick hand I say at spreading the composition, and I can, taking the day through, do about two gross an hour—that is, if the papers was sized ready for me; but as it is, having to size ’em first, I can’t do more than three gross a-day myself, but with my wife helping me we can do such a thing as five gross a-day.