“Only one,” said a smiling girl who rested with her needle in her mouth to admire her dextrous companion. “There is only one other who can work as fast as she; it is that girl, over yonder.”
There are no drones in this busy hive. The whole routine is based upon the manual labor system. The Government employé, man or woman, in the Government Printing-Office, instead of from 9 A. M to 3 P. M., as in all other departments, works from 8 A. M. to 5 P. M., and for smaller pay, proportionally, than is received in any other public Bureau.
Having told you the story of a Dollar, I will now tell that of a “Pub. Doc.”—hoping that the next time you feel inclined to kick it for the dust it gathers, and the room it takes up, you will forgive it these misfortunes, for the sake of the many busy and patient human hands which fashioned it.
First, it appears in the room of the Government Printer in the shape of a huge pile of manuscript. Perhaps it is in copper-plate hand, “plain as print;” perhaps, as is more likely, it is a bundle of unsightly hieroglyphics written on “rags and tags” of paper of all sorts and sizes. However it looks, in due time it appears in the composing-room, accompanied with the directions of the Government Printer. It is received by the foreman, who divides it into portions, or “takes,” and it is now “copy.”
This copy is put in the hands of compositors, who place it, every word and figure, into what is called a “composing stick.” When these are filled with the set-up type, they are emptied on wooden boards called “galleys.” Here the type is divided into pages, each one of which is tied round with twine so that it can be carried away by a practiced hand. These pages are now arranged on the imposing-stones, either by fours or by eights, or by twelves, as the work is to be printed in quarto, in octavo, or in duodecimo form. The pages are so regulated that when the printed sheet is folded, they will read consecutively, and they are then wedged tightly in a “chase,” or frame of iron. These pages of type thus placed are called “forms.”
A rough impression of a form having been printed, it is given to the proof-reader, who, with the copy-holder, notes all errors with printers’ marks. The compositor next receives these corrected pages; re-sets all wrong letters with the right ones. When he has finished, he takes a second proof impression, called a revise, which the proof-reader compares with the first one, to see if all the errors have been accurately corrected. This process of revising is repeated four times, when the form is at last ready for the press.
It is then lowered by steam-power into the press-room. The form is laid upon a smooth iron table, called “the bed of the press,” where it is treated to a good beating. It is levelled by a block of wood called a planer, and pounded with a mallet, that no aspiring type may stick its nose above its fellows, and mar the perfect level of the printed page.
Meanwhile, a sufficient quantity of paper has been taken from the public store-house to the wetting-room. There it has been dampened, quire by quire, turned and laid in piles under the crushing pressure of an hydraulic-pump, worked by steam-power. When taken out the paper is ready for the press.
The rollers are brought from the room in which they are cleaned and kept, and set in the press. The ink fountain is filled. Sheet on sheet of spotless paper is placed aloft. The young woman who is to “tend” mounts to her perch. The steam-power is applied, and the printing begins.
The maiden takes in her hand a single snowy sheet, and spreads it on the inclined plane before her. It is caught by steel fingers and clutched into the abyss beneath. There it passes swiftly over the pages of type just moistened with ink from the rollers, which were previously coated by revolving cylinders. When the sheet is directly above the type, its flight is for an instant stayed, and by a potent mechanical movement the impression is given, and the sheet is printed. Onward it moves transfigured, till, by the puff of a pair of bellows, it is thrown upon a frame-work which throws it, smooth and fresh, upon a table on the opposite side of the table, and by this time another is on its way. Swiftly almost as thought it is tossed above it. In a briefer time than the process is traced, the unsullied sheets above have been transmuted into printed pages piled upon the table below.