whole is so delicate that the slightest imperfection or break, the loosening of a roller or the breaking of a pin, is noted as quickly as it occurs.

Every evolution and development, almost without exception, of the past years in electricity is made use of in the production of the great daily and-times have indeed changed —no invention, no matter be it ever so costly, or apparently useless, is discarded without a fair trial if it embodies the possibility of making the production of the newspaper more complete.

The enterprise and originality of the American newspaper has made it second to none. At the present the newspaper struggles with one problem and only one, under which come all the lesser questions. That is, how to obtain all the news of all the world and present it to the readers promptly, accurately, and fully?

The increased cost of production has inevitably increased the importance of the commercial side of the newspaper. What was once almost wholly a profession is now largely a business. The telegraph tolls of large newspapers run from $5,000 to $10,000 a month, and the bill for white paper from $400,000 to $800,000 a year. The item of postage alone on a great newspaper to-day would equal the entire expense of a journal before the Mexican war.

The raw material-paper and ink-in penny papers frequently cost more than the wholesale price per copy, while the publisher expects to meet a loss on every copy of the Sunday paper sold.

The percentage of earnings in the volume of business done has diminished steadily for the last fifteen years. The public gets more for a smaller price while the publisher depends upon the increased volume of business to maintain his profit. Six of the newspapers in the country do a business approximating $3,000,000 a year, while several times that many do a business of $1,000,000 or more.

The cable is brought into use daily between the continents for the transmission of news in a condensed form. Leased wires stretch across the country from newspapers in one group to others receiving the service or from one newspaper

to another. The special correspondent is in the van in the march of progress. He is at the front in battles, with the men who fight and with the men who plan the war. He is with the exploring party pushing forward into new and unexplored lands and with him go the telegraph and the telephone to hurry to his paper-and to the public-the news of events as they occur.

Trained staffs report the events of great importance-as national conventions. Telegraph wires to the speakers' platform in the convention send the news of the gathering to the papers as fast as it develops. The speeches are flashed through by a code that has been evolved by the demand for speed and almost before the orator has finished his speech extras throughout the country are in the hands of readers whose comments are heard before the next speaker at the gathering has finished his peroration. The news of an election is known all over the country before the close of the day on which the ballots are cast. The assassination or coronation of a king or dignitary is known before the night or day that witnesses it has fallen upon this country.

The men who make this possible are engaged in what is to them the greatest of all professions. There are geniuses among them. They are usually men of great force. Only those who work win. The loiterer is lost. It is a profession that demands everything. Honor, honesty, ability, an infinite capacity for hard work-Carlyle's definition of geniusare the qualifications necessary for it. It endures no shams. For them it has nothing but failure; for the others, influence

-success.

PROGRESS IN THE PRINTING AND PUBLISHING

INDUSTRY.

BY WILLIAM S. ROSSITER.

[William S. Rossiter, statistician and publishing expert; born Westfield, Mass., September 9, 1861; graduated from Amherst college, 1884; entered journalism and was on the staff of the New York Tribune and New York Press; was in the printing and publishing business from 1890-9 and in 1900 was placed in charge of the publications of the twelfth census of the United States; appointed expert special agent of the census office for printing and publishing 1901, and chief clerk of the bureau, 1904; Author of several books of short stories and many contributions to magazines and of statistical papers.]

When judged by modern ideas of progress, the art of printing was nearly stationary for four hundred years. Printing has been the most generous contributor to human progress, the handmaiden of all the arts and industries, and, perhaps, the most powerful factor in making the nineteenth century the leader of all centuries in genius and invention; but it has been reserved for the last two decades to record the most substantial advances in the many and exacting details connected with the satisfactory production of a printed page. The invention of the 10 cylinder press, by Robert Hoe, in 1853, was declared by the lords of the privy council of England to be one of the greatest steps ever made in printing. But in the far more difficult field of machine composition, inventors made no appreciable progress during the greater portion of the nineteenth century; as late as 1880 the extended report of the tenth census of the United States upon this industry, after presenting evidence of the activity and progress of the period, declared:

"While all these improvements have been following each other in the printing and delivery of newspapers, the ingenuity of man has not yet invented a substitute for the setting of type by hand, the method of composition remaining precisely the same as it was when printing was first invented."

The first step toward the solution of this problem was taken in 1886, by Ottmar Merganthaler, who invented the linotype machine, which shortly afterwards came into gen

erous use, and has been followed by several ingenious and successful inventions similar in purpose. Although only beginning to be felt, the effect of these inventions is already significant, and in them doubtless may be found the cause of many of the abrupt changes which are shown on contrasting the figures given for 1890 and 1900 in the tables for newspapers and periodicals. These remarkable inventions can not fail to affect more and more the future progress of the industry.

Types have no existence in the product of the linotype machine; the unit is the line, which is known as a slug. By pressing the keys the operator assembles brass matrices, and upon the completion of a line these are pressed forward against a bar of molten type metal, casting the line, or slug, in condition for printing. By continuation of this process the matrices return automatically to their receptacles.

Other inventors also attacked the problem of mechanical composition, and there have been placed upon the market the Lanston monotype, a combination of a keyboard by which a strip of paper is punched, and a machine casting individual types from matrices indicated by the passage of compressed air through the holes in the punched paper strip; the Goodson graphotype, also a combination of two machines, operated by electricity, and casting individual types; and the Scudder monoline, a Canadian machine somewhat like the linotype, except that the matrices are located upon a disk. The monoline has not been placed upon the American market.

Mechanical composition and distribution of foundry type are accomplished successfully by the Dow, Simplex, Empire, and other machines.

It

The question of wages has been somewhat affected by the introduction of these radical departures in composition. In 1850 a compositor in New York city received $1.50 per day, or $9 per week. Ordinary job compositors now receive $21, and operators upon machines receive considerably more. is the opinion of many large employers of labor in this industry, that the invention of labor saving machines has merely served to increase the demand for labor in new channels, so that the number of wage earners employed has actually increased rather than diminished. The introduction of machine

composition has been of decided benefit to the employee, offering a new field of employment at high wages. This fact is illustrated by the experience of the Typographical union of New York city, in 1900, when called upon hastily to supply 150 men for a special piece of work in connection with the city printing. Every effort was made to secure them, but in that great center of population and labor it was impossible to obtain, at short notice more than 100 men fitted for the work.

During the decade type founding made marked progress in several of its branches. The Benton punch cutter and the Barth type casting machine enabled the founder to dispense with much of the laborious and expensive detail connected with his calling, and to reduce materially the cost of type to the printer. To some extent the use of these machines offset the inroads which the use of machine composition made into the business of the type founder, and permitted him to increase greatly the output of special faces and artistic display type.

In the measurement of type bodies a revolution was effected. A uniform series, known as the point system, was introduced about 1890, supplanting everywhere the earlier method, by which every foundry used a different size of body. This radical change permitted the use of type of one foundry with that of any other, and meant as much to the printer as the change from local to national currency meant to the nation.

In stereotyping, a device known as the autoplate was invented in 1900, by means of which the time required for casting plates was considerably reduced, and in electrotyping the value and efficiency of the foundry were enormously increased by the use of a strong current of electricity to hasten the deposit of copper, so that the time required by the process may now be controlled by the electrotyper to suit his customer.

The greatest advances in press building since 1880 have been made in perfecting presses. These machines are now constructed of such enormous size and with such great capacity that it is possible to obtain, at short notice, a newspaper press which will produce 100,000 impressions per hour,

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