ON REMAINDERS AND PULPING.
Should the student aspire to collect his journalistic work, or the less ephemeral part of it, into book form, he will do well to apply to some old and established firm of publishers, who will give him a reasonable estimate for its production, plus the cost of advertising, warehousing, wear and tear, office expenses, etc., etc., to which must be added the customary Fee.
The book so issued will be sent to the Press for notice and review, and will, some weeks later, be either Remaindered or Pulped. It is important to have a clear idea of these processes which accompany an author throughout his career.
A book is said to be Remaindered when it is sold to the secondhand bookseller in bulk; 10 per cent. of the sums so received, less the cost of cartage to and fro from shop to shop, and the wages of the Persuader who attempts to sell the volumes, is then credited to the author in his account, which is usually pressed upon the completion of the transaction.
The less fortunate must be content with Pulping. In the midst of their chagrin they will be consoled by the thought that their book enjoys a kind of resurrection, and will reappear beneath some other, and—who knows?—perhaps some nobler form. The very paper upon which these words are printed may once have formed part of a volume of verse, or of Imperialist pamphlets subsidised by the South African Women’s League.
A book is said to be Pulped when it is sold at so many pence the thousand copies to the Pulpers[25] for Pulping. The transformation is effected as follows:—First the covers are thoroughly and skilfully torn off the edition by girls known as “Scalpers” or “Skinners,” and the Poems (or whatnot), after going through this first process, are shot in batches of twenty-four into a trough, which communicates by an inclined plane with open receptacles known technically as “bins.” Hence the sheets are taken out by another batch of hands known as “feeders”—for it is their duty to “feed” the marvellous machine which is the centre of the whole works. The Poems (as we may imagine them to be) are next thrown by the “feeders,” with a certain rapid and practised gesture, into a funnel-shaped receiver, where they are caught by Six Large Rows of strong Steel Teeth[26] known as the “Jaws,” which are so arranged as just barely to miss each other; these work alternatively back and forth, and reduce the hardest matter to shreds in an incredibly short time.
The shreds so formed fall on to a wide endless band, which carries them on into the “bowl,” where they are converted under a continual stream of boiling water, into a kind of loose paste. Lest any trace of the original Poetic (or Prose) composition could remain to trouble the whiteness of the rapidly forming mixture, this water contains a 30% solution of Sardonic Oxide, two kilogrammes of which will bleach one thousand kilos of shredded Poems or Essays in from thirty-five to forty minutes. When the Poems or whatnot have been finally reduced to a white and formless mass, they are termed pulp and this pulp is laid out into frames, to be converted once more into paper, Art, glazed, and medium.
This principle of “the Conservation of Paper” or, as Lord Balton (Sir Charles Quarry) has himself called it, “the Circulation of Literature,” is naturally more developed among the Anglo-Saxon peoples than upon the Continent. The patriotic reader will be pleased to hear that whereas of existing German books barely 35% are pulped within the year, of French books not 27%, and of Italian but 15%; of our total production—which is far larger—no less than 73% are restored to their original character of useful blank paper within the year, ready to receive further impressions of Human Genius and to speed on its accelerated round the progress of Mankind.
Amen.