Little Folks (July 1884) / A Magazine for the Young

by Various

LITTLE TOILERS OF THE NIGHT.

I.—THE PRINTER'S READING-BOY.

It is a gusty Friday night just after Easter. A night full of wind which comes in sudden blasts and drives the sharp shining rain along the streets so that it seems to pierce through coats and umbrellas, and makes such a quick pattering sound upon the pavement that people who are indoors, and just going to bed, pull aside their window-curtains, look out at the flickering lights, and feel glad to be at home.

Looking up from between the tall flat walls of the houses in a narrow court in Fleet Street, London, any one who has eyes can see the gleam of the moon, and the two or three stars that hang in the long strip of blue overhead. They can hear the rumble of the late cab, and the tramp of the policeman outside so plainly that these sounds are quite startling. For all day long Fleet Street is a busy place, with thousands of people going up and down, and hundreds of carts, cabs, waggons, cars, and carriages, hustling in the roadway, and people who have only seen and heard it in the day-time are surprised to find how silent and deserted it is at midnight.

But in the narrow court, and in many other courts and passages close by, there are other sounds and other lights than the noise of the policeman's boots and the gleaming of the stars. Any one who is standing there may hear a curious buzzing, and now and then a dull thump, and looking about may see more than one big building with its windows all aglow, and the shadows of people moving across them. Now and then a door will open, and a lad, perhaps without a cap, and with his jacket tied round his neck by the sleeves, will rush out as though the place were on fire and he had been sent to fetch an engine.

If you are standing near the door you will have to get out of the way of that lad, or he will be likely to run you down, or jam you against the wall, for he is in a hurry. He is not going to fetch an engine, for if you watch him he scampers down the next court, or perhaps across Fleet Street, and in less time than you can get your breath properly, is back with a tray piled with steaming mugs, and plates of thick bread-and-butter; and while you are wondering how he can have got them so quickly, and whether he will ever carry them up that steep flight of stairs behind the door of the big building, he gives a shout that seems to make twenty echoes, and then you lose sight of him.

In those big buildings with the dark doors and the lighted windows the news of the week is being printed, that people may read it in the papers. There the printers are at work, and will be at work all night; the lad who has just gone in is a printer's lad, and because of some part of the work he has to do he is called a "reading-boy."

Nearly every day this week numbers of letters and telegrams and written accounts of various things that have taken place in different parts of the world have been coming in to this building. When they come in the editor looks at them and sends them up to the chief compositor. The "compositors," up in the top rooms where the lights are shining, stand before large wooden trays or "cases," each of which is divided into a number of small squares, like boxes without lids. These boxes hold what are called the types. The types are little slips of metal, and on the end of each slip is stamped a letter. One of the boxes in the tray holds the a's, another the b's, another the c's, and the capital letters and the stops also have their proper places. When the compositor has the writing before him on his case, he takes a small metal box open at one end, and of the proper width, in his left hand, and with his right hand picks up one by one the metal letters that spell the words which are on the page. These he places in the box with the letter end upwards, putting a slip of metal without any letter upon it to make a space between each word. When he has filled his box he lifts all the letters carefully out without jumbling any of them up together, stands them in a tray, and keeps them from falling down by placing a flat rule of brass against the side of them. When he has set up so many of these metal letters that they are enough, when properly arranged in columns, to make a whole page of printing, they are all brought close together and then tightly fastened in a kind of frame, so that they are quite firm. They are next sent downstairs and placed on the press, or printing-machine. Large smooth rollers spread a thin coating of ink upon this metal page, and then the sheet of white paper is brought very firmly against it by a strong machine, which presses so evenly that the ink is stamped from the metal page of the types on to the paper. When that paper is removed it is a printed page, with the same words upon it that the compositor read upon the letter or written page sent in a little while ago. All night long these types with the letters upon them are being set up, all night long patient men pick up the metal letters and form them into pages; all night long the steam engine is going, and the letters from the inky metal pages are being stamped upon the clean white paper, which, when it is printed all over, will contain the week's history of the world, and will be read by thousands of people.

There are many lads in this printing-office, and all night they are running up and down with letters and sheets of writing and printing, or are cleaning the inky surface of the metal pages, or helping to fix up the frames. But why are some of them called "reading-boys?"