Read Ebook: A Brief History of Printing. Part II: The Economic History of Printing by Hamilton Frederick W Frederick William

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In Germany, on the contrary, the censorship was probably the least severe of any on the Continent. As already noted, there was substantially no printing of original work in Germany until 1500 and consequently no special need of censorship. Shortly afterward Germany was rent in twain by religious dissensions. It must be remembered that the Reformation, being very largely a political movement, the difference between Catholics and Protestants followed geographical lines for the most part. There were comparatively few Protestants in Catholic countries or Catholics in Protestant countries. The Protestants seized upon the printing press as a method of propaganda. They consequently advocated its freedom and encouraged its use. The Catholics at first attempted to defend themselves from this attack by the suppression of printing and the destruction of imported books. After a little time, however, with greater wisdom, they themselves made use of the printing press for a counter propaganda. Those who were disturbed by the censorship in a country in either camp could and did move to one in the other. In this way unless a man had religious opinions which were unacceptable anywhere or wished to publish books which were seditious or immoral it would be entirely easy for him to find a place where he could be undisturbed and probably encouraged.

This censorship was exercised by a considerable number of persons. This was always a defect in the French press laws and was the cause of a great deal of difficulty and hardship. At first censorship was exercised by the bishops, by the Faculty of Theology of the University of Paris, by the Parliament of Paris, by the Royal Chancellor, by the Director-General of the Book Trade, and by the Lieutenant of Police. Tendencies to consolidation, however, soon manifested themselves. The first important step was the centering of church censorship in the hands of the Faculty of Theology of the University of Paris to the exclusion of the bishops generally.

The tendency to centralize was naturally accompanied by a tendency to tighten the censorship of the civil authorities, a tendency quite opposite to that which we observed in Venice. In 1624 a Censor-Royal was appointed to whom everybody, even the bishops themselves, was obliged to submit his writing. The numerous civil authorities having charge of censorship caused confusion for a time, but gradually their powers were concentrated in the hands of the Director-General of the Book Trade.

The laws were administered by inspectors of bookselling and enforced by the police and the civil courts. The laws were very severe. They applied primarily to the printer and bookseller, probably because he was an easier person to get at than the author and much more likely to be financially responsible. The printer was obliged to make public the name of the author and printer, the place of manufacture, and the place of sale of every book which he printed. A printer might be prosecuted if an authorized book turned out to be objectionable. This was a particularly unjust law because the printer was obliged to take the chance that, after the book had been duly censored and approved by authority, some censor, perhaps not the one who had originally approved it, might find something in it which he considered objectionable.

The penalties for infraction of the press laws were very severe. They consisted of the burning of books, confiscation of books, fines, flogging, imprisonment, banishment, and even burning alive. From 1660 to 1756, 869 authors, printers, and booksellers were sent to the Bastille. At least one-third of these were printers.

The press laws in France were more severe than almost anywhere else in Europe. In practical operation they favored foreign printers at the expense of the French. Naturally the result of all of this regulation was that Frenchmen did not print, and the market was supplied from abroad. If the laws had been strictly enforced printing would apparently have been driven out of France. There were, however, certain mitigations. In the first place certain things were exempt from the operations of the press laws, such as legal documents, police papers, documents bearing the signatures of advocates, and small publications of two leaves or less for the spread of news or for other purposes. This particular exemption was always the cause of a good deal of question and a good deal of abuse. Again, these laws were largely held in reserve, that is to say, they made possible the punishment of offending printers, but in many cases the offender was not proceeded against unless someone complained. Again, the judges used large discretion in dealing with cases of infraction of the press laws. In many cases licenses were issued in a very informal way, so that official responsibility was not involved; and sometimes a clandestine permission was given, the printer being assured that although his book could not be approved no action would be taken against him if he published it. False statements as to place of printing were used as a means of avoiding responsibility, sometimes apparently with the connivance of the authorities. The personal influence of the Chancellor was very great in these cases, and it was entirely possible for him to protect authors or writers if he chose to do so.

As we have already seen, the early printers concerned themselves almost exclusively with the reprinting of church books and the classics. These last required for successful performance expert editorial work and proof reading. The printers engaged competent and sometimes very distinguished scholars to do this work for them and paid them for their labor. Out of this practice grew the idea that the author might properly share in the profits of the original work done by him. If he were paid for preparing a good text of Virgil, for instance, why could he not be paid for writing a critical article to be prefixed to the volume, and why not if he wrote a whole book about Virgil which the publisher desired to present to the world of scholars? At first there was some objection on the part of the writers themselves. It was held by many that it was undignified and improper for a writer to sell his ideas. Such opinions soon ceased to be common. The race of professional authors living by their pens came into existence.

The same questions which arose with regard to the printer's right to his work extended to the question of the author's right. Even before the author's pecuniary right in his work was clearly recognized the claim was asserted that he ought to have control of it. Luther, for example, strongly asserted this right of control and strenuously objected to piracy on the ground of his desire to safeguard the correctness of texts purporting to be written by him. He does not appear to have cared for the money, as he himself corrected the texts of pirated editions of his works. He feared, however, that harm might come through typographical errors or even the deliberate falsification of his writing. This has always been a real danger, and one of the greatest complaints made by European authors against American printers previous to the days of international copyright was on the ground of the incorrectness of the pirated editions.

Throughout Europe during the period we have under consideration we find two ideas gradually clearing themselves from the confused thinking of the time and coming into recognition. The first is the idea that the writer of a book has for a time at least property rights in it, and the other that old books belong to the public. That is the basis of our modern thinking on the subject. We recognize that any writer may copyright his work and is entitled to the control of it during the copyright period, which varies in different countries. When his copyright has expired any publisher who cares to undertake the venture as a business proposition may bring out an edition and sell it at whatever price he chooses. That is the reason why old books are generally cheaper than new books. An edition of Scott or Dickens is purely a manufacturing proposition. An edition of Maurice Hewlett is a very different matter because Mr. Hewlett, or his publisher, holds copyright on his works and must be paid for the privilege of publishing.

Another important development in thought was the growth of the idea of right as distinguished from privilege. A privilege, as the word implies, is an act of grace. It is a grant of permission to do a thing which one has no inherent right to do. In England, as we shall later see, when the idea of copyright came to be seriously considered it was based on the common law, that is to say, it was recognized that the printer and author had some rights in the matter.

As soon as it was seen that the printer and the author had produced something more than a mere piece of merchandise and that the property right of the producer inhered in that added element quite as much as in the piece of merchandise the basis was laid for the common law treatment of the whole matter. The extension of the conception of property to cover thoughts as well as things was the basis of the whole matter.

It was a long time before these ideas emerged on the Continent. It was well to the end of the 18th century before these matters were clearly understood and recognized by law. It was not until 1777 that French law distinctly recognized the difference between old and new books, and the rights of the author. This was only twelve years before the French Revolution. At that time all the old laws were swept away and the extreme regulation of printing in France gave place to no regulation at all, which for a time made things worse than ever. It was not until into the nineteenth century that the question of copyright has been reasonably settled. There is still something to be desired before ideal conditions are reached. Copyright laws of the various nations differ greatly, but on the whole they fairly accomplish the desired results within the national boundaries.

International copyright rests on the Treaty of Bern in 1887. The United States was for many years a great offender in the matter of the recognition of the rights of foreign authors. At the time of the Treaty of Bern the United States recognized the principle of international copyright, but we did not have reasonably satisfactory legislation on the subject until so recently as 1909. In this, as in other matters which we have been discussing and shall discuss in this volume, very little reference has been made to England for the reason that a separate volume will be given to the history of printing in that country.

The outstanding factor in the industrial, social, and economic life of the Middle Ages is the trade guild. The real life of any people is not the story of its wars or the record of the doings of its kings and nobles. It is the life of the people themselves. The moment we try to study this aspect of these old times we find that in the towns especially the life of the people centers around their trade guilds. The guild was an organization of all the workmen in any given trade. It included the master workman, the journeyman, and the apprentice. It controlled the whole life of the industry from the buying of materials to the selling of the finished product, from the indenturing of the apprentice to the certification of the master workman. Its peculiar strength lay in the fact that it did not exercise this control in the interest of either the employer or the employed. It exercised it in the interest of the industry as a whole. It did not forget the interests of the public. It did not permit the industry to be practised by the unauthorized or outsiders. It limited competition. It distributed labor. It prevented over-production. It assumed great responsibility for its members and it held them to a very strict accountability.

Of course, such an organization was possible only under conditions of production far different from those which now prevail. All work was hand-work and each hand-worker was supposed to make the whole of the thing produced. There were no machines of any importance and there was practically no division of labor. The armorer, for example, made his helmet, carrying it through every process from the first shaping of the steel to the attaching of the last plume. The shoemaker selected his leather and carried it through every process until the shoe was finished. Men learned trades in those days. They did not learn to tend a machine. A trade was worth something because the trade organization of that day made lack of employment impossible for a decent man in ordinary times. Learning a trade took a long time. As soon as the boy was old enough to begin to learn he was apprenticed to a master workman, usually for a term of seven years. Usually he paid something for his apprenticeship, in some cases a considerable amount. He lived in the master's family and was supported by him until he was out of his time. He then usually worked as a journeyman until he could accumulate the small capital necessary to set up as an independent master.

Having been apprenticed under guild regulations to a guild member he became a member of the guild himself as soon as he qualified as a journeyman. Meantime he had not only been thoroughly instructed in the practice of the industry but he had absorbed the craftsman's spirit and become imbued with the great principles of guild life. These principles were five:

The members of the guilds, all fighting men usually serving under their own guild banners and their own leaders, were an important part of the military force of the medieval cities. Although they might and did fight on one side or the other of some civic quarrel they always stood for order in the community just as they did for honesty in production and trade. This, however, is closely connected with the further fact that the guilds had a distinct religious side. The medieval man was not perhaps very much more religious than his modern descendant, but he was religious in a different way and paid much more attention to the forms of religion. Religious ceremonies formed a part of the regular routine of guild life and in many cases special churches were closely identified with certain guilds. Closely connected with the guilds were organizations known as confraternities. These confraternities were religious, charitable, and social organizations. Although usually drawn from members of some particular industry, they did not attempt to exercise the trade control which was in the hands of the guilds. They adopted the name of some saint who was chosen as their patron. They had a solemn feast following attendance at church on his day in the calendar, and they maintained a fund out of which the needy could be assisted and the dead buried with due provision of masses for the repose of his soul in case the family funds were not sufficient.

You see we are dealing with a time when the lives of men were very simple, very neighborly, and at least so far as observance goes, very religious. It is very important that we should have some fairly clear idea of these times if we are to understand at all how the early printers lived, what they did, and why they did it.

The thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries were the golden age of the guilds. They were at the height of their power and influence at the period of the invention of printing. The sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries were a period of decline. At first the decline was slow. After the sixteenth century, however, the decline was rapid, and long before the end of the eighteenth century the guilds had lost practically all of their old-time power and influence. In some portions of Europe the old guild organization still exists, but its influence is very slight and its purposes are far different from those of the old organizations of the Middle Ages.

This decline was the result of the changing economic conditions. One of the most important of these was the development of the modern type of production in factories using costly equipment and employing large numbers of men. The old type of production required little or no capital. There was practically no costly machinery. The work was done in the master workman's house by himself, his sons, and apprentices. No expensive outlay for materials or plant was required. The journeyman required practically no capital for starting in business beyond his personal strength and skill.

Printing was the first industry which could not be carried on under the old conditions. From the beginning the printer must have capital to supply type, presses, and other equipment, to purchase material, which was costly, and to maintain himself and those who were working with him while a long process was being brought to completion and the product marketed. In order to carry on the business to any advantage a considerable number of persons must be employed. Under these circumstances printing was necessarily from the beginning an enterprise which required the co-operation of capital and labor to an extent hitherto unknown.

Another reason for the decline of the guilds may be found in the increasing power of the government and its progressive control of the citizen. The control and protection thus exercised by the government rendered the protection and control exercised by the guild over its members not only unnecessary but improper. While in some respects governmental control and the freedom of a well-organized system of courts did not protect the rights of the individual and insure the quality of product as effectively as the guilds had done, it was inevitable that particular regulations should give way to general regulation and that the individual should not only be taught but compelled to look to the state rather than to an association of individuals for the protection of his rights and the definition of his duties.

It was probably this more than anything else which brought about an increasing antagonism between the guilds and the state in every country. In the years of their growth and power the guilds, as we have seen, had been the strong supporters of the social order, the pillars of the state, and the firm reliance of the government, or at any rate of that party in the government which they supported. When the government became strong enough to desire to stand alone, the power of the guilds, which had formerly been useful, became decidedly objectionable, and the entire influence of the state was more and more directed against them.

Another important social change was the development of free labor and free capital, resulting in the separation of industrial classes. Under the guild system there was no separation between labor and capital, or between the employers and the employed as classes. The guilds were associations in which labor and so much capital as there was were combined in a close organization, while there was neither labor nor capital in any particular amount outside the guild. With the gradual change of conditions, growth of population, increase of wealth, and greater intercourse between communities there grew up on one end of the social scale groups of laborers who were not members of any guild and on the other end accumulations of capital which were either in the hands of men who were neither craftsmen nor guild members or of those who had larger accumulations than they could use in their own business. This development of laborers seeking employment and capital seeking investment was fatal to the guild system when once the progress of invention made the factory system possible.

One of the factors which accelerated this movement was a curious combination of high prices fixed by the economic law of supply and demand and low wages fixed by the ancient law of custom. It must be remembered that at this time the science of political economy did not exist. People did not know the laws which govern business and control prices and wages. They ignorantly supposed, as some persons still suppose, that these things may be governed by statute, being entirely unaware of the fact that they are really the product of causes for the most part beyond human control. In the early Middle Ages wages and prices were fixed on a basis of custom. The three centuries which formed the golden age of the guilds were a period of very slight industrial changes. There were no great changes in population. There was no colonizing, with the consequent opening of new markets. There were no modern inventions. There was no particular change in the amount of gold and silver in circulation. Consequently the law of supply and demand made itself felt so little through variations in prices and in wages that it was entirely neglected. It became the custom to pay a certain amount for each commodity, and especially to pay a fixed rate of wages in certain occupations. Nobody thought of paying less or of asking more than this customary sum. In case anybody did attempt any modification of this sort he was promptly checked by law. Attempts were also frequently made to prevent by law variations in prices.

This condition of things was completely upset by the changes which took place about the time of the discovery of America. One of the immediate results of the opening up of the mines and treasure hoards of Mexico and Central and South America, with the consequent enormous increases in the amount of gold and silver in circulation, was a rise in general prices of about 100 per cent or, to put it differently, a cutting in two of the value of gold and silver. Gold and silver are just like other commodities. When the amount of gold in a given market is doubled its value is halved; that is to say, you have to pay twice as much for whatever you want to buy.

The opening of new markets and the stimulus given not only to invention but to production and communication by the intellectual movement and consequent discoveries and inventions which were going on at this time upset industrial conditions tremendously. As usual, however, the workmen were the last to feel this change. Men paid more gold for commodities because they could not get them at the same old price, but wages for a long period remained fixed by custom. The laborer, like other people, had to pay more for what he bought, but unlike other people did not get any more for what he sold. This condition was made even worse by ignorant and sometimes disastrous attempts to control by legislation a situation which nobody understood. Statutes to fix prices and curtail profits are never enforceable unless backed by a government monopoly of production. Consequently the extensive legislation for these purposes was useless. Unfortunately there was also legislation forbidding combination of workmen, forbidding their passage from place to place in search of work, and forbidding their asking or receiving more than the customary rate of wages. Some of this was old legislation revived. Some of it was new. While not entirely effective, it was much more effective than the legislation with regard to commodity prices, because in the nature of things it was much more easily enforceable.

The natural consequence of these conditions was the disruption of the old economic order. The employer and employed, who had been associated together in the old guilds, separated into antagonistic, if not hostile, camps. Capital and labor instead of co-operating contested for supremacy. Guilds, if they survived at all, gradually became associations of masters. We shall see how this worked out in the development of the Community of Printers. The workmen gathered into organizations of their own which were the ancestors of the modern labor unions. The modern industrial system with all its power and with all its abuses came into existence.

Printing did not fit into the guild system at all. As has already been pointed out, the very nature of the industry prevented it. Indeed it was not legally regarded as an industry or a mechanical occupation until the great reorganization of the trade in 1618, a date to which we shall have frequent occasion to refer. At first it was regarded as an art or profession and those who practiced it were legally recognized as not being mechanics and not being liable to the laws governing mechanics. From 1450 to 1618 the printing industry was a sort of industrial outlaw. It was not under guild control on the one hand and was not amenable to the general statutes regarding industry on the other. That meant that the regulations which were at this period so advantageous to the other industries did not apply to this one, with numerous unfortunate results.

The industry at first attached itself to the universities. It was utilized, as we have seen, not for a commercial purpose as now, but for the production of Bibles, the classics, and other learned books almost exclusively. As we have also seen, the universities attempted to control the output of the press until more effective methods of censorship were devised.

Previous to the invention of typography there had been a sort of guild of the makers and sellers of books. In most places this was known as the Confraternity of St. John the Evangelist, sometimes as the Confraternity of St. Luke, and in one place at least as the Brothers of the Pen. This organization continued to exist as an association of printers, but it did not have the power and standing of the great trade guilds of an earlier period. Soon after the invention of printing the journeymen and apprentices formed an association of their own, which very soon developed into something like a labor union. The result of these conditions was great disorganization in the trade. Strikes were frequent. In France particularly the period from 1539 to 1544 was one of great disorder. Accounts of a series of strikes in the city of Lyons at this period read almost like the accounts of a serious labor disturbance of the present time. Shops were picketed. There were parades of strikers. There were riots by the strikers and their sympathizers, and an appeal to the town authorities to settle the matter. The settlement proposed was so unfavorable to the master printers that they threatened to leave Lyons in a body. This would have been a very serious matter, as printing was then one of the great industries of the city, and the disturbance was finally settled by a compromise which granted the journeymen some of their more important demands and yet left enough to the masters so that they felt that they could continue in business. The great grievances complained of were low pay, poor food , too many apprentices, and the unwillingness of the masters to allow them to work at certain times when they wanted to work, such as on the eves of Sundays and feast days and the like, and to abstain from work at certain times when they did not want to work.

Attempts were made to stop the disturbances in the trade by the intervention of the government. This intervention was entirely on the side of the masters. The journeymen were forbidden to do anything whatever to injure the masters or to impede their business and they were denied the limitation of apprentices for which they had asked. Guild regulations limited the number of apprentices taken in other industries and it seemed only reasonable to the journeyman that similar regulations should obtain among the printers, but the royal authority was constantly exercised against them. This attempted settlement by royal authority was immediately followed by still more serious strikes. The masters complained that the agitation was due to the pernicious activity of labor leaders and invoked the royal edicts. The journeymen alleged abuses, claimed their rights, and undertook to enforce them by combination. The royal authority was exercised in the effort to coerce the journeymen even to the point of threatening by an edict of 1617 that workmen who interfered with the conduct of their master's business should be put to death. This, however, was the last expiring effort of the old order of things. In the next year, 1618, a royal edict organized the trade and prescribed the regulations under which it should be conducted.

This organization, which we shall proceed to study in detail, was the basis of the conduct of the printing industry in France until 1789. It did not bring industrial peace and it did not remedy all existing evils. As we shall see, the history of printing is a history of industrial conflict throughout the whole period until 1789. Henceforth, however, the regulation of the trade, the establishment of a responsible organization, and the fixing of regulations between masters and men changed the field of strife. We hear little or nothing more of strikes. The state was recognized as the source of regulation and as the arbiter of questions which might arise between the associated employers on one hand and their partially associated employees on the other. The industrial struggles hereafter took the form of litigation rather than of strikes. The outlaw industry at last obtained a recognized, responsible position in the industrial world.

So far as the industry itself was concerned the important feature of this edict was the organization of the Community of Printers. This Community embraced all the printing trades; that is to say, printing, book binding, type founding, and bookselling. The master workmen carrying on shops in any of these allied industries were members of the Community. It differed from the trade guilds in that it was an organization of employers only. It did not include even the master workmen who were not employers.

Certain matters were decided upon by the Community as a whole, but the work of the Community was carried on for the most part by a sort of Executive Committee called the Syndics. This Committee consisted of a chairman, who is usually referred to as the Syndic, and four associates or assessors. This board was chosen annually. Originally the elections were held in general assemblages of the industry at which all members of the Community were entitled to vote. Later the elections were in the hands of a board consisting of the five syndics for the year, past members of the board of syndics, and twenty-four electors. Of these twenty-four, eight were printers, eight booksellers, and eight binders. The type founders appear never to have been very important members of the Community and probably soon ceased to be represented among the syndics. At the time the Community was organized typefounding was not a separate industry, but was carried on by the printers themselves.

The duty of the syndics was to act as the corporate representatives of the industry. They fixed wages and prices. They adjusted disputes between their fellow-members and acted for the employers in dealing with the employees. They had powers of visitation and supervision. Through these they were supposed to exercise a sort of censorship over printing, to maintain the quality of work done, to see that trade regulations were enforced and trade agreements carried out; in a word, to exercise the same minute control over the industry which was exercised by the guilds.

The Community was undoubtedly very useful in giving a corporate center to the industry and also in giving more support to trade usages, contracts, and agreements. On the other hand its efficiency was greatly weakened by the quarrels which immediately broke out between the three elements of the Community and which lasted until the final break-up of the old conditions in 1789. The quarrel was mainly between the printers and the booksellers or publishers. The binders were soon recognized as forming an independent industry and they were before very long eliminated from the Community of Printers. They formed a Community of their own in 1686 and need not be further considered.

The hostility between the booksellers and the printers began with the invention of printing. Their interests were so closely related and yet so antagonistic that an attempt to combine them in one Community while at the same time keeping their functions separate resulted in constant quarrels and in a weakening of the influence of the Community itself.

Before considering the organization of a shop and the conditions under which the work was done, it is worth while to look into a printing establishment of the sixteenth, seventeenth, or eighteenth century and see how the work itself was carried on. This general view of an old-time printing plant will be made fairly full even at the cost of some repetition of facts already stated elsewhere on account of the importance of presenting here as complete a picture as possible of the life and labor of printers in the centuries under discussion.

Originally the printer did everything except to make his paper and his presses. He designed and cast his type, he made his ink, he edited his manuscript, printed his books, bound them, and, for a time, sold them. We have just considered his relations to the bookseller. He got rid of his type casting about one hundred years after the invention. The type foundry of Guillaume Le B?, established about 1551, seems to have been the beginning of type founding as a separate industry, although in later years some very large establishments maintained type foundries and even paper mills as incidents of the business; but the printer from this time on began to get his type outside.

Bookbinding came to be regarded as a separate industry at about the same time.

Ink making was done by the printer until comparatively recently. The ink balls which were used for distributing the ink on types were made by the printers themselves until the ink ball was superseded by the roller with the coming in of modern presses. Even then rollers were made in the shops for a long time, and indeed the practice is hardly now entirely discontinued.

The early paper was hand-made and was thick, with a rough, furrowed surface. It was grayish or yellowish in color and was very strongly water-marked. It was very costly, but very durable. It was heavy and hard to handle, especially as it was handled without mechanical appliances.

The early types were irregular in face and body as the natural result of being cast in hand moulds from hand cut dies. The early types were cast on large bodies and were used without leads. The point system, which reduced type to uniformity and did away with the annoying irregularity in size of the old types, did not come into existence until the middle of the eighteenth century, three hundred years after the invention of printing. Of course, all composition throughout this period was done by hand. Women were employed as compositors as early as 1500, but they apparently disappeared from the industry before long, as we find no evidence of their presence after the reorganization of 1618 or for some time before that.

The ink was good--well-aged linseed oil, boiled until viscous when cool, and mixed in a mortar with resin black. It was mixed in the proportion of thirty-two ounces of oil to five ounces of black. Of course, it was variable, its quality depending upon the quality of the ingredients and the care exercised in preparation. It was spread on the type by means of balls of leather stuffed with wool and firmly attached to wooden handles. One of these balls was taken in each hand, a small portion of ink was spread evenly over the balls by rubbing them together, and the ink ball was then passed over the type so as to distribute the ink as evenly as possible.

Composition was done by the full page. This was a fairly reasonable method of reckoning, as the kinds of printing were not varied as they are now. Compositors worked "on honor" and were paid by time. Payment by ems is a very late advance, not having been adopted until about 1775.

Imposition was done practically as now.

The pressman's day began by the preparation, through softening and cleaning, of the balls which were to be used on the day's run, and the mixing of the amount of ink considered necessary for the day's work. Make-ready, adjustment of margins, register, and the like had to be attended to before the impressions could be taken. Meanwhile the paper had been dampened. The old screw press could not print on dry paper. Paper came from the mill in "hands" or packages of twenty-five sheets, folded once and laid inside each other as note paper is now sold by the stationer. A "hand" was dipped in a tub of water. It was then taken out and the sheets were placed flat under weights to squeeze out the superfluous water and keep the sheets in shape. After the water had been squeezed out the sheets were re-folded into "hands" and sent to the pressroom to be placed upon the press while still damp.

Two men worked together on the press, one inking the type and the other making the impression. They worked turn and turn about in hour shifts so that the more and less laborious work was equally distributed.

Two-color work was done by taking two impressions from one form. The parts which were intended to be printed in red were set in higher type than the rest and a perforated frisket was used. The red ink impression was taken first. The type for red ink was then removed and slugs were put in, making the form type high throughout. From this form the impression was taken in black ink. As might be supposed, the register was almost always imperfect.

The printed leaves while still damp were piled under weights to remove the counter impression of the type which naturally struck through the damp paper.

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