CHAPTER XLVI.INSIDE THE GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE—THE STORY OF A “PUB. DOC.”—WOMEN WORKERS.
Another Government Hive—The Largest Printing Establishment in the World—Judge Douglass’s Villa—The Celebrated “Pub. Doc.”—“Making Many Books”—The Convenience of a “Frank”—The Omnipresent “Doc.”—A Weariness to the Flesh—An Average “Doc.”—A Personal Experience—What the Nation’s Printing Costs—“Not Worth the Paper”—A Melancholy Fact—Two Sides of the Question—Invaluable “Pub. Docs.”—Printing a Million Money-Orders—The Stereotype Foundry—A Few Figures—The Government Printing-Office—A Model Office—Aiding Human Labor—Working by Machinery—The Ink-Room—The Private Offices—Mr. Clapp’s Comfortable Office—The Proof-Reading Room—The Workers There—The Compositors’ Room—The Women-Workers—Setting Up Her Daily Task—A Quiet Spot for the Executive Printing—The Tricks and Stratagems of Correspondents—A Private Press in the White House—The Supreme Pride of a Congressional Printer—Rule-and-Figure Work—The Executive Binding-Room—Acres of Paper—Specimens of Binding—The “Most Beautiful Binding in the World”—Specimen Copies—Binding the Surgical History of the War—The Ladies Require a Little More Air—Delicate Gold-Leaf Work—The Folding-Room—An Army of Maidens—The Stitching-Room—The Needles of Women—A Busy Girl at Work—“Thirty Cents Apiece” Getting Used to it—The Girl Over Yonder—The Manual Labor System—The Story of a “Pub. Doc.”—Preparing “Copy”—“Setting Up”—Making-Up “Forms”—Reading “Proof”—The Press-Room—Going to Press—Folding, Stitching, and Binding—Sent Out to “the Wide, Wide World.”
Getting into the airy little Boundary car at Fifteenth street, it soon brings us far out on H street to another busy Government hive—the largest printing establishment in the world.
As late as 1859, the Government Printing-Office stood upon the suburbs. “Judge Douglass’s Villa” was then one of the mile-stones which marked the road thither, leading through grassy fields to the youngestfaubourgof the capital. Closely-built metropolitan blocks already stretch far beyond it, and the great Public Printing-Office no longer stands on the “edge” of the city.
There is nothing so plenty in Washington, not even Congressmen, as the “Pub. Doc.” We see it everywhere, and in every shape. Piles on piles of huge unbound pamphlets, cumber and crowd the narrow lodgings of the average Congressman, waiting the superscription, and formerly the “frank,” which was to convey each one to ten thousand dear constituents. They cram every available nook, “up stairs, down stairs, and in my lady’s chamber.” They are patent receptacles for the dust, which defies extermination. They overflow every public archive, and, falling down and running over, demand that greater shall be builded. Thousands on thousands have no covers, and tens of thousands more are clad in purple and fine linen. The average Public Doc. is a weariness to flesh and spirit. You get tired of the sight—so many, so many! And as for the knowledge which it contains, it may be of infinite value to mankind, but the pursuit of it through endless tables, reports, briefs and statements is a weariness to the soul. I have tried it and know. If I had not, you might never have known how many of these “Pub. Doc’s” are printed by the Government, what for, and at what cost.
Well, I will give you a few items in figures, as they appear on the books of the office. Of all executive and miscellaneous documents and reports of Committees,there were printed in the Government Printing-Office, last year, one thousand six hundred and twenty-five copies for the Senate, and one thousand six hundred and fifty for the House, also eight hundred and twenty-five copies of bills and resolutions for the Senate and House each.
Statement showing the cost of Public Printing done in the Government Printing-Office in the year 1872:
Tens of thousands of public documents are published here whose intrinsic value is not worth the paper they are printed on. After witnessing the manual labor expended on them, it is melancholy to reflect that, with it all, they are often less valuable than the unsullied paper would be.
While this is true of an immense number of “bills” and documents, and reports of contested election cases printed in this building, it is equally true that thousands of others are published here which are of extreme value not only to the Government but the world.
It is through the presses of the Government Printing-House that the public is informed what the Government is doing for science and for philanthropy. It prints all the reports of the Smithsonian Institution; Professor Hayden’s reports of yearly United States Geological Surveys, including his very interesting and valuable reports on Wyoming, Montana, Nebraska, and the famous Yellowstone Valley. The Medical Reports of the War; Surgeon-General Barnes’ Medical and Surgical History of the War; and Chief-Medical-Purveyor Baxter’s Report of the Medical Statistics of the Provost-Marshal-General’s Bureau; Reports on the Diseases of Cattle in the United States; on Mines and Mining; Postal Code and Coast-Survey Reports; Reports of Commission of Education; of the Commissioner of the United States to the International Penitentiary Congress at London; Reports of the Government Institution for Deaf and Dumb and the Insane, etc.
These make a very small proportion of the really interesting and valuable reports issued yearly by the Government.
When we remember that many of these works are accompanied by copious maps and illustrations, and that the processes of photolithographing, lithographing and engraving are all executed within these walls, you can form some estimate of the value of its services to the country.
The demands made upon it by each single department of the Government is immense. The Post-Office will send in a single order for the printing of one million money-orders; and the other departments cry out to have their wants supplied in the same proportion.
The Stereotype Foundry, under the same roof, long ago vindicated itself in the facts of convenience and economy. The following is a correct exhibit of the product of its labor for the year ending September 30, 1872:
The Government Printing-Office, from an external view, is a large, long, plain brick building of four stories, with a cupola in the centre, and flag-staffs at either end, from which the National banner floats on gala days. If we enter from H street, a large open door on the side reveals to us at once the power-press room, with its wheels and belts; its women-workers and its mighty engine. This engine of eighty-horse power, swings its giant lever to and fro, with the accuracy of a chronometer. The boiler which supplies its steam-power is placed in a separate building, so that in case of explosion the danger to human life would be lessened. This boiler also supplies steam for heating the entire main building, and for propelling a “donkey engine,” which performs the more menial labor of pumping water.
This is not only the largest, but is one of the model printing-houses of the world. Its typographical arrangements are perfect, and in each department it is supplied with every appliance of ingenious and exquisite mechanism to save human muscle and to aid human labor. In the press-room, stretching before and on either side of the majestic engine, we see scores of ponderous presses, their swiftly-flying rollers moving with the perfect time of awatch—at each revolution clinching the unsullied sheet of paper which, in an instant more, it tosses forth a printed page.
When Benjamin Franklin tugged away at the little printing-press now exhibited at the Patent-Office, an enormous amount of human muscle was needed to perform press-work; but now, without effort and without fatigue, the tireless engine supplies the material power, while women do the work. On the lower floor of the main building we find the wetting room, filled with troughs and all the liquids for dampening the immense supply of paper, beside the hydraulic presses for smoothing it. On this floor also is the “ink room,” with its vast supplies of “lamp-black and oil” always ready for the rollers.
Ascending to the second story we come to the business and private offices of the Government Printer—his clerks, telegraph-operators, copy-holders, and proof-readers. Mr. A. M. Clapp, a man of clear intellectual out-look, of benign expression and venerable years, occupies a pleasant parlor for an office, furnished with plain desk, chairs, a mirror, engravings and a Brussels’ carpet; it opens into asuiteof rooms occupied by the Chief-Clerk, the Paymaster and the Telegraph-Operator.
On the other side of the hall, we pass the open door of the proof-reading room. This is comfortably filled with men, young and old. The copy-holder and the proof-reader sit side by side, before a table or desk. The copy-holder has in his hands the original manuscript, from which he slowly reads, while the proof-reader listens, proof-sheets and pencil in hand, erasing each error in print as he detects it, from the lips of the copy-holder.The proof-reader is paid $26, the copy-holder $24 per week.
Ascending a few steps, we come into the composition room, occupying the central and larger portion of the second story. It contains sixty or more windows, is spacious and well-lighted, and yet, especially in the winter, when the windows are closed and the heat necessarily intense, the fumes from the chemicals render the work very unhealthy, especially to some constitutions. Long rows of double stands reach the entire length of the apartment.
At every one of these stands a patient worker—he must be patient if he is a faithful type-setter. Here are men past their prime, young men, boys and one woman. There have been three. One left her stand for a husband, another—Miss Mary Green—left hers to become the editor of a real-estate journal in Indianapolis, Indiana. The third, in neat calico dress and apron, stands beside a window, “setting up” her daily task. The pay of women in this room is the same as that of the men, viz., $24 per week.
A portion of this floor is shut in for the executive printing. This was made necessary by the fact that before it was done, the country found out what was in the president’s message before it was published. Such tricks and stratagems were used by “correspondents” to discover in advance what was in the president’s message, that one president had a press, types and workmen brought into the White House, that he might have his message confidentially printed, and “keep it to himself” till he was ready to give it to the world.
The supreme pride of these congressional printers is their “rule-and-figure work.” Confused tables of Commercialstatistics, astronomical calculations, and abstracts of Government estimates, are marshalled into columns with the precision of a well-trained brigade.
The executive binding-room is fitted up with powerful machines for trimming the edges of books, shears for cutting pasteboard, etc. Here stands a man who does nothing, from the beginning to the end of the year, but cut book-covers. In another room are “ruling machines,” exquisite pieces of mechanism, which trace, in a year, acres of paper with the delicate red, blue or black lines which rule with mathematical accuracy the blank-books of the Government.
The third floor is almost exclusively devoted to binding. Some of the most beautifully bound books in the world here issue from the hands of the Government bindery. There are always specimen-copies of scientific and other important reports, which are bound in Turkey morocco, finely marbled and exquisitely gilded. The first volume of the Surgeon-General’s Medical and Surgical History of the War, on the day of our visit, was receiving this artistic finish, of delicate gold leaf, stamped upon the rich, dark-green morocco.
The furnaces for heating the stamps, for gilding, are heated by gas, which is considered safer, cleaner and healthier than charcoal. Still the ladies employed in this gold-leaf work suffer for want of air. The hottest summer day the windows have to remain closed, as the lightest zephyr may ruffle fatally the mimosa edges of the tremulous foil.
In the folding-room, on this floor, we find an army of maidens, whose deft and flying fingers fold the sheets, and make them ready for the binder. In the new wingbeyond we come into the “stitching-room.” Here also the busy fingers and needles of women fly. Long rows of women, chiefly young girls, sit at tables beside wire frames, which hold down and mark the piled-up folios.
Standing beside a young slender girl, she seemed to have the St. Vitus’ dance. Every muscle and nerve in her body flew. The very nerves in her face twitched with the quick intensity of her movement; while her fingers stuck the needle and drew the thread with the persistency of a perpetual motion.
“You should be paid good wages to work like this,” I said.
“It is because I am paid so little that I have to work like this,” she answered, not relaxing an atom.
“How much?”
“Thirty cents a-piece.”
“How many can you stitch a day?”
“Well, if I work like this all day, nine.”
“But I should think it would kill you to work like this all the time.”
“I’ve been doing it for four years, and I’m not dead yet.”
I did not inform her that she looked as if she soon would be, but asked, “Doesn’t such constant, quick action give you pain?”
“Yes, in my shoulders, but I’ve got used to it.”
“Does any one else in this room stitch as fast as you do?”
“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 Governmentemployé, 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 theprinted 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.
Only one side of a sheet is printed at a time; thus each one goes through the press twice before it leaves the press-room. Each sheet has its own special care. It is carried into the drying-room with a pile. Each one takes its place on a large frame which is pulled out on hanging rollers. When one of these frames is covered with damp sheets it is pushed into the drying-machine, which is made of ranges of steam tubes, which keep a high temperature, while the vapor is carried off by a system of ventilation.
When the sheets are dried, the frames are pulled out, and the printed sheets are taken from them to be pressed. Each printed sheet is put between two sheets of hard, smooth pasteboard, and its high piles of alternate layers are subjected again to the intense power of the hydraulic-press. It comes forth from that embrace smooth, clear, complete.
From the pressing-room the sheets are taken to the folding-room in the third story, conveyed thither by an elevator lifted by steam. Here they are folded by the swift hands of girls. Hundreds are busy at it. Looking down the long room and seeing them work is a sight worth quite a journey to see. The folded pages then pass to the fingers of the eager stitchers. These pages are now a book in need of a binding. Thus it comes into the bindery for its black cotton cloak, or its coat of cloth of gold, according to its station and lot in life.
This, good friends, is the story of a Pub. Doc. from its birth to the hour when it starts on its first journey out into “the wide, wide world.”