PART II

Birthplace of Charles GoodyearBirthplace of Charles Goodyear

Birthplace of Charles Goodyear

"Oh, I wish you would, Grandfather."

Breakfast was over then; and as Grandmother went to the kitchen to give her orders for the day, Grandfather said:

"You and I, Lucy, will sit in front of the fire a little while and talk about Mr. Goodyear. Butfirst you'd better go with Grandmother and let her give you my galoshes and my rubber cap, and her rubber shoes and your own."

A little girl of to-day, on hearing that request, might not know exactly what she had been sent for. Rubber goods were too expensive then to be common, and "rubber shoes" had not been shortened to our "rubbers." The awkwardgalosheswas just a name for high rubber shoes, or overshoes.

Lucy came back soon, her arms full. The cap she placed on a table, and the three pairs of rubber shoes she put carefully down to warm in front of the fire.

"It wouldn't have been safe to put my galoshes that I had twenty years ago so near the fire," commented Grandfather, as Lucy drew up her chair beside his. "Can you guess what would have happened to them?"

"Would the fire have burned them, Grandfather?"

"Not exactly, but it would have melted them,—at least have made them as soft as suet. What Goodyear has done is to invent a way of preparing rubber or gum elastic so that it can be used in various thicknesses without being stiff as iron in cold weather or softening like wax with the heat." Then Grandfather interrupted his statements with a question:

"Do you know where we get gum elastic, Lucy?"

"Let's pretend I don't know anything about rubber," answered Lucy judiciously, after a pause. "You begin at the beginning, Grandfather."

Grandfather smiled at the little girl's strategy and began at the beginning.

"Gum elastic is really the dried sap of the South American rubber tree. To get it, the trees are tapped, just as maple trees are tapped here. But the rubber sap is yellowish white and thick as cream. The natives of Brazil long ago discovered that this sap, when hardened, would keep out water. So they made bottles from it and sent the bottles to Europe and the United States. Finally the Portuguese settlers in South America made the hardened sap into shoes; and in 1820 I saw in Boston the first pair of rubber shoes ever brought into the United States. They were as clumsy looking as Chinese shoes. They were gilded, too, not so much to make them beautiful as to keep the rubber from melting."

Tapping a Rubber TreeTapping a Rubber Tree

Tapping a Rubber Tree

"Oh, but they must have been handsome," commented Lucy. "They must have looked just likegold slippers. How much did they cost, Grandfather?"

"I don't know, Lucy. I'm not sure that they were intended to be sold. Two years afterward, though, when there were five hundred pairs for sale in Boston, the price was pretty high. I paid five dollars for mine, I remember. These were not gilded, but they were just as thick and unshapely as the first ones were. They were better than nothing, though, when the weather was not too hot nor too cold.

"During the next few years I suppose there were at least a million pairs of rubber shoes brought into this country and sold for four or five dollars a pair. Then, of course, enterprising New Englanders began to think that if people wanted rubber shoes so much, there would be a good deal of profit in manufacturing them. Then rubber companies prospered for a while; but customers soon found that the rubber shoes they bought were spoiled by heat or cold, and every rubber company went rapidly out of existence.

"It was just about this time that Mr. Goodyear sent for me to come to Philadelphia. He was in the jail there, I'm sorry to say, but for no fault of his, and he needed a lawyer's advice. The hardware firm he belonged to had failed, owing thirty thousand dollars; and though he could in no way beblamed for the disaster, on account of our poor debtors' laws he had been sent to prison. In spite of his misfortune, he was not downcast. 'It's unfair, Hobart,' he said; 'but there's a way out. Look into this kettle. That's gum elastic I've been melting. The secret of rubber will pay that thirty thousand dollars and give the world the most important commercial product of the century.'

"I was glad he was so cheerful, for I couldn't give him much encouragement about keeping out of prison. Our laws were unfair, just as he said, and I knew that his creditors were likely to send the poor fellow to prison again and again. And so they did for ten long years. But his faith in rubber never wavered. Just after he had been released the first time, I called on him again. 'Here's the means of good fortune, Hobart,' he cried cheerfully; and he showed me a mass of rubber he was pressing into shape with his wife's rolling-pin."

"I'm afraid there was always more rubber than bread under that rolling pin!" commented Grandmother, just then passing through the room on an errand.

"I'm afraid so," agreed Grandfather. "But, Lucy, your grandmother never had much patience with Mr. Goodyear's experiments. I remonstrated a good many times, myself. 'Goodyear,' said I,when I found him once in a little attic room in New York, boiling his gum with all sorts of chemicals, 'why not give it up? You can't do it without money, and nobody believes in rubber now.'

"'Don't try to discourage me,' he answered. 'I know I shall succeed. What is hidden and unknown and cannot be discovered by scientific research will most likely be discovered by accident; and it will be discovered by the one who applies himself most perseveringly to his task.'

Natives Drying RubberNatives Drying Rubber

Natives Drying Rubber

"No one could dissuade him. He borrowed money and made several hundred pairs of handsome rubber shoes that, when summer came, melted and smelled so bad they had to be buried; he won a prize for his beautiful rubber tablecloths and piano covers,but a drop of acid stained and spoiled them. The story of these years was disappointment and poverty. Once, to pay the house-rent, Mrs. Goodyear had to sell the household linen that she herself had spun; and many times, if kind friends had not sent food and money, the little Goodyear children would have had nothing to eat.

"Still, even in those dark days, there were moments of rejoicing. Three times Goodyear thought he had succeeded: once, when he mixed magnesia with the rubber; once, when he boiled the rubber in quicklime and water; and once, when he cured the surface of his rubber with what chemists call nitric acid. Moreover, another experimenter gave him a valuable clue. Some one in Massachusetts, a man named Hayward, I believe, claimed that in a dream, he had been told to use sulphur in rubber-curing. He obeyed the dream, patented the process, and sold the patent to Goodyear. After that, Goodyear could make thin rubber fabric that could withstand both heat and cold. But he wanted to cure rubber in masses, not in films."

"Couldn't he sell the things he made of the thin rubber, Grandfather?"

"Yes, he sold a number of aprons and tablecloths and such articles, but they didn't bring him much money. They attracted attention to him, though, and pretty soon the national post officedepartment gave him an order for one hundred and fifty mail bags. Here was his opportunity. He was almost sure of success this time, for it was summer, and the heat did not seem to affect the rubber at all. Still, when the bags were finished, he hung them up for hotter weather to test, and took a vacation. When he returned, the mail bags were dropping from their hooks in shapeless, ill-smelling lumps. The world said, 'We told you so.' But Goodyear said to me after that failure, 'It wasn't the curing, Hobart, that ruined those bags. It was the coloring matter. That made them decompose.'

"This failure only made Goodyear redouble his efforts. He moved his family to Woburn, in Massachusetts, where he had been experimenting, and began to work night and day. People who had heard of his persistence would come to see him, and he would tell them of his discoveries and his certain hopes. Finally, one night, when he was talking to such a group, quite by accident he dropped upon a hot stove a piece of rubber that had been mixed with sulphur. To his surprise and delight, the rubber did not melt, but charred like leather. He had found the secret. And what a simple secret it was! Rubber could be cured by mixing it with sulphur and heating it very hot.

"This happened in 1839, when Goodyear wasthirty-nine years old. He had practically solved his problem; but for nearly two years more no one would help him or even believe him.

"There, Lucy, I've told you the story from the beginning. I haven't finished it yet; but I want you to have a chance to say a word. Do you know what this process of curing rubber is called? We tan leather, you know. What do we do to rubber?"

"I don't believe I know, Grandfather."

"I saw you reading about the Latin gods and goddesses yesterday. Who was the god that hammered and made tools?"

"Vulcan, wasn't it?"

"Yes; and we use that word to help name the process of curing rubber. Just add the suffix-izeand what do you have?"

"Vul-can-ize," spoke Lucy, slowly.

"That's it. And now can you tell when rubber has been vulcanized?"

"When it has been treated with sulphur and heated very hot."

"And what were the unsuccessful ways of vulcanizing that Goodyear tried?"

"He used magnesia, quicklime and water, and nitric acid."

"Good. That shows you listened and understood. Now I'll tell you the rest. It's a sad story.But Goodyear is prosperous now, you know; and I think Mr. Webster will bring justice back."

"When Goodyear dropped that piece of rubber on the hot stove, he lost no time in putting the new process to the test. He nailed the rubber outside the kitchen door in the intense cold. In the morning he brought it in, holding it up exultantly. It was as flexible as when he had put it out the night before. Then he cut a square yard of thick rubber, treated this new piece with sulphur, and with the help of his wife and children cured it in front of his bedroom fire.

"The experiment was a thorough success; and from this piece of rubber he made a cap for himself that has never been injured by any heat or cold or rain or acid. But the process was far from perfect; and Goodyear saw that the changeful heat of an open fire must be replaced by something hotter and steadier and something that he could control. But how hot must the fire be and how long must the heat be applied? Hopefully he set about answering these questions.

"He would toast a lump of rubber over the kitchen fire sometimes an hour, sometimes a whole day; he would hold rubber against the steaming nose of the tea-kettle; he would put a batch of itinto the oven of the cook stove and bake it, sometimes two hours, sometimes six. Indeed he would often sit up till long past midnight to watch his baking pans.

Goodyear's kitchenKitchen in which Goodyear made his Experiments

Kitchen in which Goodyear made his Experiments

"Often he begged his friends in a Woburn factory to lend their oven for his rubber; and they, considering his experiments useless but harmless, would grant his request. Day after day, however, the truth eluded him; and day after day food for his family grew scarcer and scarcer. He pawned everything he could spare, even his children's school books.

"At last one morning after a heavy snow storm, with the secret almost within his grasp, he awoketo find that there was not one particle of food in his house nor one penny in his purse. Besides, he was sicker than most people are when they decide to stay in bed till they feel better. But he had a wife and four children that must be fed. He got up and stumbled through the drifts for nearly five miles, so tired and hungry that many times he almost fainted.

"Luckily, the friend he went to see proved a real friend, and lent him money enough to support his family and keep on with his experiments during those winter days. But though with this assistance he found out just the details he needed to know for vulcanizing the rubber, ill-health and poverty, instead of growing less, increased with the certainty of his discovery. He was constantly troubled with dyspepsia. He was so deeply in debt that people had no faith in him. They remembered the rubber shoes and the mail bags; but they forgot the splendid courage that had never accepted defeat. As so often happens, Goodyear was a genius without the power of persuasion. He had to wait for his discoveries to be his mouth-piece.

"But his waiting time was his testing time and proved his honesty and his single-heartedness. A French concern offered to pay for the privilegeof using his first important discovery—that rubber could be cured by nitric acid—his acid-gas treatment, he called it. What a temptation that offer was, Lucy, it is impossible to realize; but Goodyear was too honest to sell a half truth for a truth, and he wrote to France that he was almost in the possession of a greater secret which he would gladly sell when he had learned it all.

"Just a little money now stood between Goodyear and assured success; and the quest for a paltry fifty dollars, which would pay his fare to New York and provide for his family during his absence, took him through the darkest days of his life.

"He thought of a friend in Boston who might be willing to lend the money. So, having prevailed upon a Woburn shop keeper to give his family credit for a while, he set out to walk the ten miles to Boston on his pitiful errand. But the friend (perhaps I ought to call him by another name) refused the loan; and, worse luck, while Goodyear was still in Boston, he was sent once more to prison for those debts so long ago forced upon him. His father somehow brought influence to bear for a release; and then Goodyear spent a week tramping about Boston streets, inviting this man and that to lend him a little money, sleeping and eating the while at a small hotel. But every one turned him only a deaf ear; and when the hotel bill came, he had to leave in disgrace.

"That night he walked to Cambridge, where, to his great relief, he found shelter with a friend; and the next morning, more discouraged than ever before, he walked wearily back to Woburn. But a greater trouble awaited him at his threshold. His little boy, two years old, who had been perfectly well when he went away, was dying. His wife was sick in bed; the faithless store keeper had refused further credit, and the family were literally starving. Was there ever a more pitiable case? There was just one friend left, and to him Goodyear turned. That friend sent seven dollars and a reprimand. Moreover, a sympathetic man, happening to hear the story in the friend's office, sent the Goodyears a barrel of flour.

"The money and the flour helped, of course, but they could not save the little son's life. Still, those precious dollars must be spent on the living, not the dead; so they carried the little body on a wagon to the grave, and the sorrowing father walked behind.

"I'm glad to say that this is the darkest part of the story. Somebody finally lent Goodyear the fifty dollars he wanted; and the inventor went to New York, interested the right people, proved to a rich brother-in-law that success was in sight, and perfected his rubber.

"When people found that Goodyear had reallysucceeded with his problem, rubber became even more popular than it had been fifteen years before. Rubber goods began to be manufactured in large quantities; and Goodyear, having patented his process, made the profits he deserved. Do I need to tell you, Lucy, what the honest man did first with his money?"

"I don't believe so, Grandfather. Of course he paid his debts."

"Indeed he did. And besides, he's been able to maintain his family comfortably ever since. But Goodyear will never be an enormously rich man. He's been wickedly cheated and his patents have been infringed again and again. Of course he's been fighting for his rights, but the case has been dragging on these seven years. His opponent is a man named Day, who is trying to prove that, although he once promised Goodyear not to manufacture any such articles of rubber as must be completed by the use of artificial heat and sulphur, that agreement is invalid because Goodyear is not the inventor of the process."

"He couldn't say so, Grandfather, if he knew all you have just told me, could he?"

"It seems perfectly plain to you, Lucy, as it seems to me, that only Goodyear is entitled to credit for the invention. But I think I have shown you that Goodyear hasn't been much of abusiness man. He's always been so unfortunate in protecting his own rights that perhaps there will be found some legal flaw in his patents. I sincerely hope not, but the distinguished Rufus Choate has been taking charge of Day's claims; and if those claims have any force, Choate will find it. We shall hear this morning only Webster. Mr. Choate and his partner Mr. Cutting, have already presented their arguments for Day."

Charles GoodyearCharles Goodyear

Charles Goodyear

It was only a short drive to the court house, and Lucy, with her grandparents, was in her seat promptly at ten o'clock. It was the little girl's first visit to a court room; and the sight of the judges in their gowns and the other solemn-looking officials was strange to her. But she had eyes mostly for two people—Mr. Goodyear and the great Webster. She expected to know Webster, for she had seen many pictures of him; but on the drive over she had asked her grandfather how she should recognize Mr. Goodyear.

"I'll tell you," he replied, "what one of Goodyear's acquaintances once said in answer to a similar question: 'If you meet a man who has on an India rubber cap, stock, coat, vest, and shoes, and carries an India rubber purse without a cent in it, that is he.'"

Though Lucy had been amused at the description without expecting to profit by it, she now pressed her grandfather's arm and asked excitedly:

"Is that Mr. Goodyear—that man with the rubber cap and the rubber vest?" indicating a tall, rather thin, kindly, but keen-eyed man who was talking earnestly at the front of the room.

"Yes, it is. And see, there come Mr. Webster and the judges!"

Silence now settled over the court, and Lucy watched and listened eagerly. The formalities of opening were quickly over. It was announced that the counsel for Mr. Day having spoken previously, the court would listen to that for Mr. Goodyear.

Then slowly and with dignity the great Webster stood up to make what proved to be his last speech in any court room. To Lucy and to many another who looked for the first time upon the most eloquent orator of the century, he was a handsome, scholarly man, with conviction behind every word. Others, however, like Lawyer Hobart, who hadknown Webster in the earlier days, before he had experienced the humiliation of wide-spread public distrust and the bitterness of repudiated friendships, felt that the once sturdy frame had weakened and that in the depths of those dark eyes the fire of righteous resentment burned less fiercely. But, though crushed in spirit, the great man was still keen and invincible in intellect; and the calm vigor of his mind that morning immortalized in human annals the rugged honesty, the sublime patience of the inventor who, despite discouragement, despite temptation, never stepped aside from his high purpose of bestowing a great good upon mankind.

Mr. Webster made a long speech, during the technical parts of which, even though Lucy knew that she was listening to the greatest orator in the country, her attention wandered in spite of herself. But, young as she was, she appreciated the straightforward and convincing argument and could follow easily its main points.

"Whatever may be Mr. Goodyear's claims," declared Mr. Webster early in his speech, "to the great invention now spread out to the ends of the earth and known to all the world, this record shows, other records show, everybody knows that he is a man of inquisitive, ingenious, laborious mind."

Then Webster summarized the history of Goodyear's long struggle, referring first to the days when India rubber was useless in weather that was either very hot or very cold.

"I well remember," he asserted, "that I had some experience in this matter myself. A friend in New York sent me a very fine cloak of India rubber and a hat of the same material. I did not succeed very well with them. I took the cloak one day and set it out in the cold. It stood very well by itself. I surmounted it with the hat, and many persons passing by thought that they saw on the porch the farmer of Marshfield."

Next the speaker reminded his hearers of the present improvements in such articles, all due to the perseverance of his client, and made a prophecy which our day is rapidly fulfilling:

"I look to the time when ships that traverse the ocean will have India rubber sails, when the sheathing of ships will be composed of this metallic vegetable production. I see, or think I see, thousands of other uses to which this extraordinary product is to be applied."

Then with delicate irony the great lawyer attacked the argument of Mr. Choate. "Those observations are all very eloquent and very pathetic, but they have one drawback. Nothing is beautiful that is not true. The invention exists. Everybody knows and understands it, and everybodyconnected in former times with the manufacture of India rubber has been astonished and surprised at it.

Daniel WebsterDaniel Webster

Daniel Webster

"If Charles Goodyear did not make this discovery, who did make it? They do not meet Goodyear's claim by setting up a distinct claim of anybody else. They attempt to prove that he was not the inventor by little shreds and patches of testimony. We want to know the name and the habitation and the location of this man upon the face of the globe who invented vulcanized rubber, if it be not he who now sits before us."

"Well," queried Grandmother on the drive home, "will Goodyear win, I wonder?"

"It's a peculiar case," returned her husband. "Day's in the wrong, I know. But I wish Goodyear had had the vision of the sulphur himself instead of paying Hayward for it."

"But he paid for Hayward's patent," objected Grandmother.

"Yes, luckily. And Webster never pleaded better. It will come out right, I think."

"Of course Goodyear will win," decided Lucy to herself without knowing she was prejudiced. But aloud she asked, "When will the judge decide, Grandfather?"

"Oh, no one can say," was the reply. "Probably not for some weeks, anyway."

It proved to be six whole months, however, before the decision was rendered. Lucy's visit was almost at an end when one day in September Grandfather came in with the newspaper. "Well, here's good news for Goodyear," he exclaimed. "Hear this." And he read aloud the article which concluded with these words:

"It is due to Mr. Goodyear to say that I am entirely satisfied that he is the original inventor of the process of vulcanizing rubber as stated in his bill; and that he is entitled not only to the relief which he asks, but to all the merits and benefits of that discovery."

"I wonder how much money Goodyear had to pay for his victory," commented Grandmother.

"Oh, Webster will make money. Of course Goodyear won't have to pay it all, for several rubber firms united with him against Day to protect their own interests. The talk among the lawyers when I came away was that Webster would getsomewhere in the vicinity of twenty-five thousand dollars. I don't believe Goodyear even in these last years has made so much as that above his expenses. But he's generosity itself when he has anything to give. What do you suppose he's sent to Mr. Webster for a present?"

"Oh, I don't know. He's so unpractical that he'd give his house away if some one wanted it," answered Grandmother, whose own good judgment could not be denied.

"I think you're a little severe," answered her husband. "But you won't be surprised to know that he's sent to Marshfield that handsome thoroughbred that he drove Webster to the court house with, because Webster admired the animal so much."

"Just exactly like him!" was the response. "He'll probably wish some day he had the money that colt would bring."

Lucy did not go to Trenton again for eight years. On her next visit, strangely enough, Grandfather's household was again talking of the beloved, unpractical dreamer, who by this time had sacrificed his life in the interests of humanity. For Mr. Goodyear had come to the end of his useful, honored, but difficult career. In spite of his triumphant success, his health had been permanently broken by hard work and worry, and his last yearshad not been entirely free from the occasional threatenings of poverty.

Indeed, by an unlucky circumstance, again his misfortune but not his fault, he was thrown once more for a short time into a debtors' prison when he was visiting France on a business trip. But the friends who knew him pitied him, trusted him, and honored him to the end; and though Lucy Hobart is now almost seventy-eight years old and has seen most of the prominent Americans of the later nineteenth century, she remembers no one who worked harder or suffered more for the good of humanity than the undaunted Goodyear who insisted, "If it is to be done, it must be done and it will be done. Somebody will yet thank me for it."

On the very first day of a Christmas vacation about forty years ago Jimmie Granger broke his leg coasting. That meant six weeks in bed and no more of the wonderful coasting of that winter. Jimmie was only twelve years old, and he found it hard to lie still and be cheerful while the other fellows were having so much fun. Every day seemed a week long until he was allowed to sit up; even then each seemed three times as long as usual.

Jimmie's Uncle Francis was so sorry for his unlucky little nephew that he always brought something "to kill time" when he came to spend Sunday at Jimmie's home just outside the big city. Two weeks after the accident Jimmie received from his Uncle Francis the present he liked best of all. It was a small printing press, something entirely new to Jimmie, who had never seen one before, and never had thought very much about how books and newspapers are actually made.

"If you'll print me every week until you can walkagain theHome Record, a newspaper page four columns wide and ten inches long, giving the news of the house, and of the neighborhood, too, if you like, I'll give you another double runner, a better sled than the old broken one."

"Oh, not another double runner! You don't want him to break the other leg!" cried Jimmie's mother.

"Of course not; but you don't want him to stop coasting, do you?" Uncle Francis asked his sister.

"N-o-o," replied Jimmie's mother.

"And we both think he has learned never to take the risk he took before, don't we?"

"Yes," answered Jimmie's mother.

Jimmie wanted a new double runner more than anything else, and so he went right to work on his little newspaper. The printing press was not large enough to print the paper all at once, and so it was printed in parts and these were pasted on a large sheet of paper of the size ordered.

Uncle Francis was specially interested in newspapers, because he was editor of a big city daily called theRecord. Jimmie felt that of course his uncle would be very critical and that the littleHome Recordmust be just right. The morning after he started the paper he had a bright idea: he would ask his mother to be head proof reader—Jimmie felt pretty shaky about spelling and punctuation; and he would ask Tom Frazer, when hecame over to see him, if he would not be head reporter and tell him what was happening outside—Tom always knew what the fellows were doing. He could give Tom the rear sled of his old double runner, which was not broken in the accident. Tom had said he should have to have a new sled, and that was really a very good one.

A monk copying a bookA Monk Copying Manuscript Books

A Monk Copying Manuscript Books

Both assistants seemed glad to serve and the work began merrily. When Jimmie's father camehome that night he said he would be the "printer's devil."

"What's that?" asked Jimmie.

"Don't believe they have them now," said his mother.

The First PrintingThe First Printing Looked Like This

The First Printing Looked Like This

"They don't need so many of them in these days of steam perfecting presses as they used to, but surely the printer has to have assistants even to-day," said his father. "Perhaps now that machinery does so much of the work the men do not get black and inky enough to be called 'devils.' While Jimmie has to lie with that leg fixed as it is now, he will want some one to run that press when he gets everything ready for the printing. Don't you think so, son?"

Jimmie agreed with his father, as he looked at the leg so straight and stiff.

"I shall be glad to have your help as a—what is it they call it—a pressman? I think that I shall have something ready to print to-morrow night," said Jimmie—and he did.

As Jimmie was the whole newspaper force except the head proof reader, the head reporter, and the head pressman, he had both to set the type and to write the newspaper himself. Writing compositions Jimmie detested, but writing a newspaper he found was not half bad.

Type BA Type Enlarged

A Type Enlarged

"Don't see what you can write about," his father said jokingly. "There's nothing doing in this house whenyouhave to keep still."

Jimmie did not, however, suffer from any lack of news. In fact, his friends brought him so much that the second day he started a baseball column and the third day a society column.

The type setting was interesting to Jimmie because it was all new to him. His type was just like the type in a printing office. Each piece was a thin bar of metal with a raised letter on the end, unless it had a punctuation mark instead of the letter, or was blank in order to make proper spaces between the words. Each letter of a word had to be picked up by itself out of the case of type and put in place before the next letter of the word could be placed where it belonged.

It was slow work and it was a little hard at first to be spelling a line of words with every letter upside down, but Jimmie found out the very firstthing that it had to be so if the words were to be right side up on the printed page. It madeWidowlook like this:Widow (inverted)but it did not take long to learn to read the words that way to make sure they were right.

When the type for the first column of the paper was in order and securely locked into the form which held it, there were two things more to be done—inking the type and pressing the paper on it. Jimmie did the inking and his father put on the paper and took off the impression. The first printing showed that Jimmie had been too lavish with his ink, but the second was so good they put it away for his Uncle Francis.

"Our history says that Benjamin Franklin learned the printer's trade. Did he set the type and print this way?" Jimmie asked his uncle the first time he came out after Jimmie became a printer.

"Yes, just that way," answered his uncle. "In Benjamin Franklin's time and most of the time ever since, each letter has had to be picked up by hand and put in place. There is a little type-setting machine now which is quite a help, but we need something better."

"I don't see how you ever get a daily paper ready," exclaimed Jimmie. "It must take millions of letters."

"Not so many, I think," replied his uncle, "butenough so that it does take a good many girls to set the type. There is going to be a great change soon, however, because in a short time there is going to be an entirely new type-setting machine. Mr. Ottman Mergenthaler of Baltimore has been working on one for ten years and it is almost ready for us. When that is perfected it will be as wonderful as the big presses though it is not a large machine. He will call it the linotype (line-of-type). It will work somewhat like a typewriter. When the operator strikes a letter on the keyboard that same letter in the type will be freed from its place in the type case and come sliding down a path, or channel, to take its place in the word and line that is being set. When this machine is perfected one person will be able to do as much as four now can."

Franklin's Printing PressFranklin's Printing Press

Franklin's Printing Press

"If Benjamin Franklin could visit our newspaper office at the present time," continued his uncle, "what would astonish him most are the big steam cylinder presses. He never saw anything but a hand press of the simplest kind."

"Mine is a hand press, isn't it?" asked Jimmie. "Yes, a very small hand press. Many of theold hand presses were taller than a man. One that Benjamin Franklin actually used is in the patent office in Washington. You'll see it some day probably. I think I can describe it so that you can get a picture of it. Did you ever see your Grandmother Manter's cheese press? No? Do you remember the linen press that your Great-aunt Caroline has for decoration now in her dining room? I don't suppose you do. Well, the old hand presses were made on the same principle as the cheese and the linen presses and the cider press. They stood high like the cheese press, and were made of two upright beams with two cross beams between them, like a capital H, only there were two cross pieces instead of one. The lower cross beam served as a support, or table, on which to place the type in the page 'form' when ready for printing.

"Over the type, after it was inked, was laid the paper, slightly dampened; over this was laid a blanket. Then a heavy weight had to be put on top the blanket and pressed down hard on the inked type in order to make a good print. This weight was a large wooden block fastened to the lower end of a great wooden screw which extended up through the upper cross piece. To turn this screw so that the block was pressed hard enough on the blanket and the paper to get a good clear print, and then to loosen the screw so that the printed sheet could betaken out and dried was no easy matter. The printer must use a long iron bar to turn the screw. This he would fit into a hole, or socket, in the screw and then, using this handle, turn the screw as far as he could."

"I know," said Jimmie. "There's a picture of that in my history. The poor fellow is just breaking his back to get more of a turn on that screw."

"Yes, that's it. There were several sockets around the head of the screw. The printer would turn the screw as far as he could with the bar in one socket, and then fit the bar into the next to get more of a turn. How I should like to see Franklin or Gutenberg or any other famous old-time printer examining the new press that will be ready for use in theRecordoffice in a month or so. I think he would be speechless."

The day before his uncle's next visit Jimmie set his type to say, "Much interest is felt in the new Hoe press which will be installed in theRecordoffice early next month. It is the first of the kind to be used by any newspaper in the city and will mark a revolution in newspaper printing. This new 'perfecting press' will make it possible to print 24,000 eight-page papers an hour—a thing not dreamed of a few years ago. People are anxious to see thisfast press printing, cutting, folding, and delivering the papers all ready for the newsboys."

"You really know of somebody who is anxious to see the press, do you?" asked his uncle with a twinkle in his eye when he read the item in Jimmie's paper.

"Guess I do," said Jimmie. "Honestly, I won't be any bother; I won't beanybother; I won't ask any questions except about the press—cross my heart and hope to die."

Uncle Francis laughed. He knew Jimmie too well to think he would not be any bother, but he said, "All right; as soon as you have two good legs again I'll invite you to see the new machinery."

Jimmie's leg mended as fast as the leg of any boy should, and he was able in March to take the trip to the city. Jimmie's mother went with him.

"I want to see the big press, too," she explained to her brother.

"I'm glad you came," said Uncle Francis as he greeted her. "I should think every man and woman in the United States would be interested in this new kind of printing press. Do you know, it will bring down the price of a paper from a nickel to three cents! They have just begun to print the afternoon edition. Shall we go now to see the new Hoe rotary perfecting press? It is the most wonderful thing in printing that has ever been inventedsince Gutenberg invented movable type more than four hundred years ago. It seems as though it must mark the limit in fast printing, but who knows? Surely Gutenberg and Faust would have thought our old press with the pages of type on a stationary flat bed over which rollers and paper passed, thelimit of wonders. Come and see this new press eat up the paper!"

The Earliest PrintersThe Earliest Printers at Work

The Earliest Printers at Work

They soon stood before a great throbbing monster, a mystery of wheels within wheels and of gleaming steel. At one end was a huge roll of white paper; at the other was an unceasing stream of newspapers. Jimmie watched in wide-eyed wonder. He heard his uncle say that the huge roll, or web, of white paper was being fed into one end of the press, was being printed on both sides, the newspaper sheets were being cut apart, folded, and finally delivered, counted, at the other end of the press. How could it be done!

"Well, what do you think of it all?" asked Uncle Francis, turning to Jimmie.

Jimmie hardly took his fascinated gaze from the great whirring monster.

"It's great! It's a hundred times more wonderful than I thought it would be! Now that I've seen what this press can do I think I shall run one of these instead of being an editor."

His uncle laughed. "All right," he said; "you see how this runs, do you?"

"Notallof it," admitted Jimmie.

"Probably the type part bothers you," said his uncle, "because you are accustomed to seeing the type in a flat steel frame, or chase, as we call it. Here it is on the outside of one of those hugerollers, or cylinders, as we call them. Do you see it?"

"Yes," said Jimmie, "but there isn't any type on the cylinder just under it."

"No," answered his uncle, "the other is the impression cylinder. Those two big cylinders work together like the rollers of a clothes wringer. That broad ribbon of paper, just as wide as our newspaper, goes between the two cylinders as clothes pass between the rollers of the wringer. The impression cylinder rolls the paper hard against the inked type cylinder and prints one side of the paper. If one of the rollers of a clothes wringer had ink marks on it they would be printed on the clothes as they went between the rollers, wouldn't they? That is the way this press works. Can you see the paper as it goes on?"

"Yes, and there are two more cylinders like the other pair!" cried Jimmie.

"That's right," answered his uncle. "I think you can see that when the paper passes between the second pair the other side of the paper is printed. Just get your eye on the paper as it is unwound from that enormous spool, or web, and watch as far as you can. The white paper in that web is a strip four miles long and as wide as two pages of theRecord. The type cylinders turn so fast you can't see what is on them, but there is enough typeto print four pages of the newspaper on each cylinder."

"Why do they need such a quantity of small black rollers?" asked Jimmie's mother.

"Those small rollers you are watching are inking cylinders," answered her brother. "They are very important in the printing. See them keep inking the type cylinder, rolling against the part which has just done some printing as it turns around to print again. I don't believe you can see the ink fountain which covers them with ink so that they in turn can cover the type, but it is there, working all the time."

"It is easy enough to see why it is called a rotary press," said Mrs. Granger. "Cylinders and cylinders and cylinders rolling round and round and round."

"Do you see why it is called a perfecting press, Jimmie?" asked Uncle Francis.

"No, I don't believe I do. Do you, mother?" he asked.

"Why, yes, I think so. Look at the other end of the press and see those newspapers fairly pouring out all cut from the web, folded, and even counted. If they are completed in every respect so that there is nothing for anybody to do but sell them, I should think the press might be called a perfecting press."

"Of course," assented Jimmie, "that's the reason. Why didn't I see it?"

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