Z4.73 HZ3AI3 A ==x 1 § 1 ==" 6^i 4 ^^^ 1 ^^S —1 2 2 4 ^^^ THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES vr. H. Alexander Holmes. :i- -n « mi !» M m - ■« - «. ^ «■ ■. , ^ :i/ sMPErs mm imm. A SERIES OF NARRATIVES, DIALOGUES, BIOGRAPHIES, AND TALES, FOR THE INSTRUCTION AND ENTERTAINMENT OF THE YOUNG. (Bnihrllisjirii iiiitji NIMEROUS AND BEAUTIFUL ENGRAVINGS. M-^. >^^'. fmr^'mm, :mmm% "^^-^m THE ^ la i\ iii ?* is js 0I{, UOW THE STORY BOOKS ARE MADE Tiff hb mririJ UBM^ ■ ■ ■ ■ v - ■W 7.S0709 Entered, according to an Act of Congress, in the year one thousand eight hundred and fifty-five, by HARPER & BROTHERS, in the Clerk's Office for the Southern District of New York. Hl^M^ PREFACE. This series of Story Books, though they are intended to Ih^ A\Titten in a simple and lucid style, so as to bring them within the comprehension of all, arc by no means designed exclusively for children. The subjects of many of them will be sucli that tiiey can only be appreciated by minds that have attained to some de- gree of maturity, and are accustomed to habits of careful and pa- tient thought. The subject of the present number, the great Printing Estab- lishment of the Harpers in New York, is one of this class ; and though I have endeavored to make my description sufficiently fidl in its character, and simple in its details, to be intelligible to every class of readers, I have made no attempt to bring it down to the capacity of children. The older and the more thoughtful of the sons and daughters of a family may derive gi-eat instruction from the perusal of it, especially if they'are assisted by the explanations of the father and mother as they read, but the younger ones must expect to find it above their reach. They had their turn in the Story of Timboo and Fanny. I have taken great pains to make all tlie statements contained in tlie work in respect to all the structures, niacliincs, and process- Mil PREFACE. OS described strictly exact, so that gentlemen in the interior of the country, who take a practical interest in subjects connected with mechanical science, may rely on the correctness and accuracy of the information which tliis account furnishes. In these efforts I have been greatly assisted by the various gentlemen who have had the charge of tlie several portions of the work of constructing the edifice, as well as those who are now employed as overseers in the different processes of manufacture. I have been especially indebt- ed to tlie following named persons not only for information ob- tained from them, in the first instance, in respect to the various branches to which their responsibility extends, but also for their assistance in the careful revision of my descriptions and state- ments after they were %vritten : James Bogardus, Engineer, constructor of the iron front of the buildino;. John B. Corlies, Architect and Builder. James L. Jackson, designer and manufactiu-er of the iron col- umns and girders. AiiRAi^i S. Hewitt, of the firm of Cooper & HcAvitt, manufac- turers of the iron beams. C N T E N T S. CIIAPTEI! rAUK I. UENKRAI, STRUCTURE OF THE EDIFICE 13 II. THE FIRE-PROOF FLOORS 25 III. MANUF.tCTURE OF THE IRON BEA.MS 32 IV. INTERIOR OF THE CI.IFF STREET HUll.DINU 41 V. THE COURT-YARD 5W VI. CO.M POSITION •''■I VII. PROOFS AND CORRECTINO ^'^ VIII. TYPE-FOUNDING 74 IX. MOULDS FOR TYPK-FOUNDINO 85 X. ELECTROTYPINU 'Jfi XI. ENGRAVINOS '"3 XII. THE PRESS 1 !•* XIU. DUYINO AND PKESSINO THE SHEETS 123 XIV. FORWARDING 130 XV. MARBLING XVI. FINISHING XVII. THE DISTRIBUTION 135 115 156 E ]\ G R A V I xN G S. PAdE FRANKLIN SQUARE FRONT FrontlSpUCt. THE COUNTING-ROOM 16 THE PLAN 21 VIEW OF CLIFF STREET FRONT 21 MECHANISM OF THE FLOORS 28 SECTIONAL VIEW OF THE CLIFF STREET BUILDING 42 INTERIOR OF THE COURT-YARD SI TYPE OF A LETTER 51 TYPES SET UP 55 COMPOSING-STICK 56 THE CASE 56 FRANKLIN 63 FORMS 66 THE ROLLER 68 THE BALLS 68 CASTING 77 THE JET 79 THE DRESSER 83 THE M ATRICE 86 THE PUNCHES 87 SPECIMEN OF SCRIPT TYPE 93 SPECIMENS OF BORDERS AND FANCY TYPE 94 BLOCKING THE PLATE 97 THE VAULTS 101 COPPER-PLATE PRINTING 105 THE DESIGN 109 THE STUDIO 112 THE HAND-PRESS 116 XU ENGKAVINGS. PAGE franklin's press 118 the power-press 120 the drying-room 125 hydraulic presses 126 stabbing 131 the sawing machine 132 the cutting machine 134 the marbling-room 136 sprinkling the colors 138 burnishing 14:3 GILDING 147 EMBOSSING PRESSES 151 THE FINISHING-ROOM 155 THE STOCK-ROOM 157 THE MAGAZINE CORNER 159 HARPER E8TA]]LISI[)[E.\T. CHAPTER I. GENERAL STKUCTUKE OF TllK j:i)lFl(;i: Situation ortlie Harper Buildings. The Franklin Square Oonl. rpill'] Iniildings of tlie TTarper I'^staLlislinioiit arc situatod in Now -*- York, on Clitt" iStrect and Franklin Square. Tlic cstaLlish- nicnt covers about half an acre of gi'ound, and consists chiefly of two Llocks of buildings, one fronting on Cliff Street, and tlie oiIkm- fronting on Franklin Sfjuarc, ^vitli a court between. The two blocks of buildings are united, and made, as it 'were, one, by a se- ries of iron bridges connectiufr the various stories of the two blocks with each other and with a large circular tower in the court, which contains the common stairway for the "whole establishment. The edifice is constructed almost exclusively of stone, brick, and iron, and is as perfectly fire-proof as the present state of architectural science and art can make it. The frontispiece represents that jiortion of tlie l)iiildiiig wliieli fronts on Franklin S(iiiare. Jt is five stories in height, with a cellar and sub-eellar l»elow, making seven floors in all. The front is built wliollv of iron. It consists in eacli story of twenty-one Corinthian (dluiiiiis, with loftv windows fllliiiij: tin; intereoluiniii- 14 GENERAL STRUCTUBE OF THE EDIFICE. Statues. The court-yard. Cellars. Stores. ations. Each range of columns supports the bases of the range above, and thus they rise, tier above tier, to the topmost story. Over the entrance-door is a full length statue of Benjamin Franklin in iron. Between the windows of the fifth story, too, is a row of smaller statues of Washington, Franklin, and Jefferson. Above them is the cornice of the roof, supported by massive truss- es. There is no entrance in the front of the building for the re- ceipt and dehvery of goods. The place for this business is in the court-yard between the two buildings, which is entered by a pas- sage-way from Cliff Street. Thus the front of the building is nev- er encumbered witli carts or drays coming to or leaving the estab- lishment, nor are the sidewalks obstructed Avith bundles of paper or boxes of books. There are two cellars under this block, one of which is, howev- er, entirely out of ground on the back side, where it fronts the court-yard. The depth of the foundation of the edifice may be in- feiTcd from the fact that the floor of the lowermost cellar is twen- ty-two feet below the sidewalk. A large portion of the space in these cellars is used for the storage of paper. This paper is taken across, as fast as it is wanted, into the lower stories of the build- ing on Cliff Street by a subterranean railway under the court. This will be more particularly explained by-and-by, when we come to the engraving of the court-yard. There are no stah'cases leading from one story to another in ei- ther of the buildings within the walls, but there is one common staircase for the whole establishment in the round tower already . mentioned, Avliicli has been built for the pui"pose in the coiut-yard. GENERAL STKIJCTURE OF THE EDIFICE. 15 No staircases within the buildings. The counting-room. Thus the several floors of the Luikling.s are continuous and entire tliroughout. This construction is adopted as a safeguard against iire ; for, as there are no openings through the floors, and as the floors tliemselves are Luilt of brick and iron, and are thus coni- ])letely flre-proof, no fire can be communicated througli them in any way. The staircase in the tower is connected witli cacli story of both buildings by iron bridges, and is found to be amply sufficient for all purpo.ses. This, also, will be particularly ex- plained when Ave come to the hi.story of the court-yard. Thus, with the exception of the gi-eat staircase ascending from tlie entrance-door in front to the counting-room, which will present- ly be described, all the floors are continuous throughout — of solid brick and iron — and thus the spread of fire among the contents of the buildings from floor to floor is rendered impo.^sible. There is, indeed, nothing but the contents of the buildings that can burn, for the edifices themselves are constructed, almost without excej)- tion, of materials entirely incombustible. The height of the stories, and the general magnitude of the scale on which the whole building is constructed, may be appreciated by comparing the edifice with the ordinary four and five story build- ings on each side of it in the engraving. The general counting- room is in the centre of the building on this front, in the first story above the principal basement. The access to it is by a very broad staircase — twelve feet wide — ascending from the centre door. ^ ou will see the top of this staircase, and the interior of the great count- ing-room into which it opens, in the engravijig on the next page, liesidcs the counting-room, this building contains the. utock and 16 GENERAL STRUCTUKE OP THE EDIFICE View or the interior of the counting-room. GENEKAL STRirCTURE OF THE EDIFICE. 17 View or the counting-room. The Tour brothers Harper. stores of the cstablisliment, consisting of vast quantities of pa- per and otliex* materials in the cellars antl on the lower floors, and books by hundreds of thousands in the various stages of manufac- turing stock in the stories above. The extent and the arrange- ment of these vast magazines will be hereafter described. The engraving on the opposite page represents the counting- room. The view is taken from the back side of the room, looking forward. The staircase is seen in the centre, coming up from the great door on the Franklin Scjuare front, as seen in the frontispiece. We see a person just ascending the stairs, near the top. The tliree other sides of the opening through which the stairs come up arc inclosed by a strong and ornamental balustrade. In the background of the picture, which represents, of course, the front side of the room, there is a rectangular space, about forty feet by fifteen, inclosed by a railing, which may be considered the counting-room proper-. Here are the desks and seats of the pro- prietors of the establishment, with sofas and chairs along the sides of the inclosure for visitors, or persons having business with the proprietors personally. This area is the constant resort of book- sellers, authors, artists, travelers, and persons of distinction from every part of the United States, and, indeed, from all (puirtcrs o( the world. The four brothers Harper, the original founders and present proprietors of the establii^hment, arc almost always to be seen here, engaged in their various duties, such as receiving re- ports and listening to inquiries from the various mechanical de- partments, issuing orders, answering questions, holding consulta- tions, considering new projects, waiting upon authors who come 1(1 1> 18 GENERAL STRUCTURE OF THE EDIFICE. Business of the counting-room. Tiie furnishing of it. to offer inaniiscripts, and artists who bring in drawings or engrav- ings, and in other like occupations. It is an animated and busy scene, though the arrangements are so complete and convenient, and the space so ample, that there is no bustle or confusion. A Vast deal of very important business is transacted here, and often by men of high distinction both in the literary and business world ; but it is transacted with few words, and in a very prompt and de- cisive, though very quiet manner. Without the railing, on each side of the staircase, are several desks. Four of these are seen in the engraving. They are placed so as to face toward the centre of the room. They are occupied for the various departments connected with the book-keeping and accounts, and for business connected with the city trade. Beyond these, and still nearer to the foreground, are other appointments and fixtures. On the right are cases for exhibiting samples of books. There are two of these cases in different positions. One stands with its front toward us, showing us the books which it contains. The other has its back toward us. We see a lady and two gen- tlemen standing by it, examining the books. A clerk stands near one of the gentlemen, and seems to be conversing with him. On the left we see a large iron safe. The eases above referred to are only intended for the purpose of showing specimens of the books which the house publish, as a guide to booksellers and others in making up their orders ; for very little retail business is done at this establishment — none, in fact, except as a matter of convenience and courtesy to individual purchasers. The business of the house is almost exclusively the IIENERAL STRUCTURE OF THE EDIFICE. 19 Immense quantities of books in store. The biiM. puLlishing of books to be sold in quantities to booksellers. The general stock, therefore, does not consist of individual copies of books arranged on shelves as in a library, as is usual in ordinary book-stores, but of quantities packed in bins, with specimens only in the show-cases below. We see a portion of these bins on wliat seems to be the side of the room on the right. It is not really the side of the room, however, Avhich appears in tlie engraving, but only a double block or tier of bins built up from the floor to the ceiling, to furnish receptacles for the books. This bluck of bins is two stories high, as seen in the engraving. Access to the upper story is obtained by means of a gallery, which extends along the whole length of the block. AVc see men upon this gallery bringing books down to be packed and sent away. There are two openings like wide doonvays through this construction to another part of the room, which is suiTOundcd on all sides by bins. On the left-hand side of the room the an-angement is the same, though it is not shown in the engraving. Indeed, only about three quar- ters of the length of the apartment itself is shown, there being the same space between the range of columns on the left and the range of bins forming the partition, that there is on the right, thougii tliis space in the engraving is cut off on the left side. This space is twenty feet, and the wiiolc length of the part of this floor of the building Avhich is inclosed between the two ranges of bins is eigh- ty feet. The depth of the apartment from front to back is seven- ty-iive feet. Beyond, on both sides, arc wings, which are entered through the openings in the ranges of bins above described, and which extend, including tlie depth of the l»ins, about twenty-five 20 GENKKAi. STJilJCTlJKE UF T1IJ-: EDIFICE. The sales-room. Boxes and bundles. The plan. feet farther, making the whole front one hundred and thirty feet. Tliere are four openings leading to these wings, two on each side. The number of bins on both sides of tliis great hall, including those within the two inner compartments, is about one thousand, and each one is of sufficient capacity to hold nearly one thousand ordinary duodecimo volumes. The back part of the room, a small portion of which only is seen in the foreground of the engi'aving, is occupied for the pm-pose of filling orders for books, packing the books in boxes and bundles, mailing the subscribers' copies of the Magazine and Story Books, keeping sundry accounts, and other similar purposes. It is from this place that the vast issues from the establishment are daily made. The boxes and bundles are wheeled, when made up, out through a door in the rear of this part of the room, which conducts across the court by an iron bridge to the hoist-way, where tlie steam-engine takes them, and lets them gently doAvn to the cart or wagon waiting in the court below. We shall see the arrangement of this mechanism more particularly when we come to the court. But the relative position of tlie packing-rooms, the bridge, and the hoisting, will be seen on the plan on the adjoining page. Tlie plan represents the first or principal floor of each building, namely, the publishing and counting-rooms of the Franklin Square building, and the great press-room in the Cliff Street building. The former is on the right, as seen in the engraving ; the other on the left. At the extreme right of the Franklin Square room is seen the counting-room, between the head of the staircase and the front of GENERAL STKUCTURE OF TIIK EDIFICE. 21 22 GENERAL STRUCTURE OF THE EDIFICE. General arrangements of the sales-room. the Luilcling. The desks and other furniture arc represented on the phm. There are two entrances to the inclosurc, one on each side of the great staircase, and the space itself is only separated from the rest of the apartment by a railing, as shown in the per- spective view on a previous page. On the other side of the staircase, toward the centre of the apartment, is the area marked C, which is appropriated to the city trade. It is veiy convenient for this purpose, being easily ac- cessible from the entrance to the building. Tlie area is partially inclosed by desks, safes, counters or cases for the exhibition of samples of books, and other similar furniture. These objects are represented in the plan, but they can be seen still more distinctly in the perspective view. At the back side of the room, near the centre, i* the area mark- ed F, devoted to the business of receiving and answering foreign orders. Here are large tables for assembling and packing books, and desks for keeping the accounts, and trucks for drawing away the boxes and packages, when they are made up, to the door lead- ing to the hoist-way, which is close at hand. There are two doors, indeed, leading to the court, near this part of the building. One opens upon the bridge that conducts to the hoist-way, the other to the one that leads to the staircase in the round tower, and thus to all parts of the Cliff Street building. These two bridges are seen in the plan. To the right of the space devoted to the foreign trade, looking toward the back side of the room, is another inclosure, marked !M on the plan, which is appropriated to the work of mailing peri- GENERAL STRUCTURK OF THE EDIFICE. 23 Ranges or bins. Plan ortbe court. The great press-room. odlcaLs. The great busines.s at this place i.s, of course, the mail- ing of tlie subscribers' copies of tlie ^lagazine. On tlie north and south sides of the apartment may be seen the ranges of bins, marked B, I>, B on the plan, surrounding two in- elosures of the form of Avings. These bins consist of ran<;e3 of very strong shelving, about five feet deep, separated by a solid brick Avail, which forms the back of the rows of bins. Tlie parti- tions extend from the floor to the ceiling. The upper tiers are reached by galleries, as seen in the perspective aIcw. The oi)en court, marked in the plan, is accessible by carts through an arched passage-way in Cliff Street. This passage-way is not shown on this plan, being on the story below the one here represented. The two Avails inclosing it are, hoAvever, seen at the end of the Cliif Street building. The position of tAVO of the bridges, the hoist- Avay, H, the circular tower, the great square chimney, - crations connected Avith tlie printing and binding of books. They Avill be d(fscribed hereafter. In the mean time, a \'iew of the front of this portion of the edifice is given on tlu^ next page. Tiie 0|)cn- inir Avhere Ave sec the cart froinir in is liic rntran't* to the court. 24 GENERAL STUUCTUliE OF THE EDIFICE. View ot the front on Cliff Street. Illi fi!ii^- w VIEW OF THE CLIFF STREET FRONT. THE FIKE-PKUUF FLOOltS. 25 Difficulty of making large baildings flre-proof. (jlLUn^KR 11. THE FIRE-PROOF FLOORS. The great difficulty in the construction of fire-proof buildings is the Avork of making the floors. Walls may easily be built of brick or stone, but wood alone has been considered hitherto, until Avithin comparatively a short time, almost essential for floors ; since for floors, which must necessarily, to so great an extent, sus- tain themselves, with as little support as possible from below, there is required a degree of strength and lightness combined whicli has hitherto been found to exist in no other material. It is true that architects have long been accustomed to build floors of brick or stone by supporting them on arches, which rest on columns or walls in the room below ; but these arches, on any mode of construction heretofore adopted — at least until within a few years — have rcrpiired columns or walls to supj)ort them so massive and solid, that the room below was necessarily encumber- ed with obstructions, and made, indeed, almost useless, in order to furnish support for tlie floors of the rooms above. We see this construction in the basement stories of tlie old and central portions of the Capitol at Washington, the New York Exchange, and in such buildings as the Pantheon in Paris. In all these and simi- lar buildings, the basement story is rendered dark, and giiwmy, and dungeon-like by the immense number and massive fonns ot tlie walls, piers, columns, and groined and vaulted arches, necessary 26 THE FIRE-PKOOF FLOORS. Floors of masonry in churches. Uequirements of modern buildings. to support the floor of the principal story above. Then, again, above this principal story, in such buildings, there could be usual- ly nothing ; for the rooms in it, if large, as in most cases they nuist necessarily be, could only be kept free from obstructions sim- ilar to those below by some vast roof or dome for a covering, con- structed at great expense, and rising necessarily so high as to pre- clude the jDOSsibility of having any useful apartments above it. All this, however, was of no very serious consequence in the case of churches, and other similar structures, where the dungeon- like basement might be used as a crypt for tombs and other such purposes, and where, also, the very nature of the edifice required that all tlie space above the principal floor should be occupied as one story. It was very different, however, with such buildings as are required for the practical purposes of modern mechanical arts. In these cases, what is necessaiy is to di\'ide the whole height of the building — fifty or eighty feet, perhaps — into many distinct sto- ries by floors made as thin as possible, so as to economize space, and each self-sustaining, so as not to encumber the story below it with supports. To do this with wood has been easy. But wood is highly combustible. How to do it with any incombustible ma- terial has long been a great desideratum. The object was at length finally accomplished, and the first successful construction by the new method, as at length perfected, is the edifice we are describing. Indeed, it was in the construction of this edifice that the method was perfected. If the reader will turn back to the eno;ra\-ino* of the countino;- room in page 16, and look up to the ceiling, lie will readily under- THE FIRE-lMtOOF FLOORS. 27 General arrangement of the columns and girders. stand the mechanism of these floors, for the whole structure is there almost entirely exposed to view. You observe three rows of col- umns extending through the room from front to back. These columns support a range of ornamental girders, the mechanism of which will be hereafter explained. Each one is essentially a cast iron arch, the lower ends of which are connected by a rod of wrouglit iron. The fonn of it may be likened to a bow of cast iron, with a wrouglit iron string. Upon the girders, and extending from one row of pillars to the other, there rest the ends of a range of wrotuj/it iron beams. The double lines seen in the engraving in the ceiling, runnino; from left to right, from one ranjje of columns to another, represent the lower edges of these beams. The beams themselves, by means of broad flanges wTouglit on the lower side of them, sup- port a series of flat brick arches, which extend from one to another of them, and thus furnish a continued bearing for the flooring above. The upper surface of the arches, when the masonry was completed, was leveled by tilling up the spandrels with grouting, strips for nailing the floor-boards to having been previously laid for the purpose, and then the whole was covered witli a wootlen floor. Thus tlie whole structure consists simply of a series of long, narrow, flat brick arches, supported by wrought iron beams, tliti ends of the beams being supported in their turn by girders of wrought and cast iron, and these by a range of cast iron columns, supported by a similar range in the story below. The whole system is accurately represented in tiio following drawincr. 28 THE FIRE-PROOF FLOORS. Explanation of the mechanism of the fire-proof floors. MECHANISM OF THE FLOORS. The round rod connecting the ends of the girders is the tension- rod. It is of wrought iron. It acts as a tie-beam to prevent the two ends of the girder from spreading by the pressure of the weight on the arches above. These rods are two and a half inches in diameter. The whole mass of iron lying between the tension- rod and the range of arches above forms the body of the girder, and is cast in two parts, one for each side, the line of division be- ing at the centre. These parts correspond in their function to the rafters of a roof, while the tension-rod answers to the tie-beam. The tendency of the weight resting on the floors above is to crowd ti)e centre ends to£retlier, and to force tlie lower ends of the ffirrl- THE FlKE-PKOresses. In the paper-room the weiglit is still great- er, there being sometimes nearly twenty tons of paper on a space ten feet square. Paper, when lying in compact masses, is exceed- ingly heavy. It weighs about tliirty-five pounds to the cubic foot. The floor.s, however, are calculated to bear a burden of from three liundred to five hundred pounds to the square foot ; that is, they would be probably safe for five hundred, but are absolutely certawi for three hundred. This would allow of covering the floor all over with stacks of paper ten feet higli, or to fill the room full of men as close as tliey could stand, /// tfu-cr, or faur tiirs, itm- ovrr f/ir 32 MANUFACTURE OF THE IRON BEAMS. Statistics of the fire-proof flooring. Manufacture of the beams. oilier. Indeed, some engineers have considered that the construc- tion has been made unnecessanly strong. I was somewhat surprised, on making a calculation with the architect, at the statistics of this fire-proof flooring. The number of cast iron columns and girders — similar to those shown in the drawing of the counting-room — -in both parts of the edifice, is over two hundred and fifty. This, too, does not include the eighty ex- terior columns in the front of the building on Franklin Square. The number of brick arches, averaging about four feet span, and fifteen feet in length from girder to girder, with wrought iron beams to support them, is about two thousand, and the whole area of floors thus supported in the difi*erent stories is between two and three acres. Let a farmer in the country select from among his fields a two and a half acre lot, and imagine the whole surface of it floored over, at a height of twelve feet above the ground, with a series of brick arches, supported by two hundred and fifty cast iron columns below, and covered above with a very close and com- pact yellow-pine floor, and he will have some idea of the magnitude of the scale on which this vast structure is planned. CHAPTER III. MANUFACTURE OF THE IRON BEAMS. The construction of the floors described in the preceding chap- ter, by means of "wrought iron beams, and by light segmental arches thrown from beam to beam, is a very important feature in the construction of these edifices. It is novel also, these edifices MANUFACTURE OF THE IKON BEAMS. 33 Great loss of property by fire. Essential requisites or a beam. l)eing the first in which the principle has been thoroughly tested. The nature and character of these beams, therefore, and the mode by which they are manufactured, deserves especial notice, jiartic- ularly on account of the economy which they are the means of introducing in the structure of tire-proof buildings, both in respect to the cost, and to the space which the floors occupy. It is no new thing to build a fire-proof structure, but it is a new thing to build one at a cost which places this desirable restJt Avithin the means of all who build in large cities. It is estimated that the loss by conflagrations in the United States amounted to twenty-five millions of dollars during the year 1854. This sum would easily pay the interest on the extra cost of making fire- proof all the structures in the country in the manner here de- scribed. Besides, the mere loss in dollars does not cover the dis- astrous consequences of this vast destruction of property. The domestic misery and moral degradation which inevitably result from such sudden and overwhelming calamities are beyond ]>ocim- iary estimate. Iron was early proposed as a substitute for the arches or ma- sonry originally employed, because it could be placed horizontally, like wooderi beams?, and would cost less than the stone-work. In a beam, however, the essential requisite is that it shall })c .v/z/f enough to sustain the load. To secure this qualify, the beams must be of a depth proportioned to the width of the Rj)acc they are to cover. For all ordinary purposes, this rcfpiisite involves great weight of iron in each beam. It is well known that many tons of cast iron can be melted and fr)nm'd info u sinirle ])iccc : 10 C 34 MANUFACTURE OF THE IKON BEAMS. Use or cast iron. Use of wrought iron. Advantages of the latter. but cast iron is comparatively too weak to resist a transverse strain, which is tlie pectdiar strain produced on a beam by a loaded floor. To be perfectly secure, then, Avith cast iron, it was necessary to use a much larger quantity of material than would be required of wrought iron. The cost was thus increased to such an extent as to confine the use of such beams to a really limited sphere. Be- sides, cast iron is liable to flaws, a single one of which might en- danger the safety of an entire building. It also has another pe- culiarity, namely, that by being repeatedly loaded and released from its load, some internal change is produced in the texture of the iron, which weakens it, so that it has less power each time to resist tlie strain than before ; and hence, in floors subjected to great intermitting strains, the ultimate failure of the cast iron beams is certain, if the loads approach nearly to the measure of the strength of the material. The total destruction of some large buildings and bridges in Eng-land led to the investigation of the cause, and to the estabHshment of the facts above stated. Attention was next turned to "v\a-ouo;lit iron. AVrouo-ht iron has all the properties necessary for a beam in far greater perfection than cast iron. It does not break suddenly, but, when overstrain- ed, gives notice of the approaching failure by slowly bending. It is much stronger than any other material to resist a transverse strain, and therefore may be made proportionately light, thus saving weight in the walls and foundations of the building, and head-room in the respective stories. Patient experiments were made to de- termine the best form in which to distribute the material. The liighest mathematical knowledge and skill were required to determ- MANUFACTURE OF THK IRON BEAMS. 35 Flanged beams or wrought iron proved to be the best. ine the laws -wliich governed the strains upon wrought ir<)n, and it is one ot'the proudest triumphs of modern science tliat a tew short months onlj were required to determine linally and forever, on scientific principles, the laws of construction for cast and wrought iron, which the blind experiments of centuries before had failed to discover. For building purposes, it was finally settled that flanged* beams of wrought iron are most desirable when the requisites of strength, lightness, and convenience of application are considered. This point being determined, it was necessary to devise the best mode of producing beams in this material. Two modes of working wrought iron are known, one by hammering it, the other by roll- ing it into the required shape. Hammering is an expensive oper- ation, and is found to make the beams too costly for use. Flanged beams of the requisite weight had never been rolled. In fact, the whole process of rolling iron is comparatively new. It was in- vented by Cort in the last century, who, by Iiis invention of tiie puddling process as well, did more than any otlier man, except Watt, for modern industry, and Avas rewarded with poverty in his lifetime, and is now almost forgotten in the grave. '!'<» him is due the manufacture of iron at a cost which enables it to be iised with such profusion in the mechanic arts, thus gi-eatly cheapening all the artificial necessaries of civilized life. The difficidty of heating and handling heavy masses of iron, * A flanire upon a beam is a flat projection cxtcndiinj from oiul to eiui of it. -\ good example of a flange is seen in the projecting rim of a rail-roaJ wheel, which serves to keep the wheel from running olT the track. 3() MANUFACTURE OF THE IRON BEAMS. Riveted beams. Expense of them. The Trenton Iron Company. though a very serious one at first, was nevertheless overcome long before any practicable process could he devised for making bars deep enough, with ilanges broad enough, to answer for spanning any considerable distance between walls. Hence, to use wrought iron at all, it became necessary to rivet separate pieces together into the shape of a flanged bar. But, as separate pieces are never as strong as a single piece, and as the rivet-holes necessarily di- minish the strength of the material, it becomes necessary to use more iron, besides expending great labor in fastening tlie pieces together. This made the beams expensive, and, although fire- proofing now became practicable, and free from most of the objec- tions Avhich could be urged against the other modes, it was still too costly for ordinary purposes, owing to the complex character of the beams. The desideratum was therefore to make a solid rolled flanged beam of the right shape and proportions, and of the weight re- quired for the spans ordinarily adopted in the buildings of large cities. The method of rolling such flanged beams was finally brought into successful operation at the iron-works of the Trenton Iron Company, situated in Trenton, N. J. The difiiculties to be overcome in contriving and constructing the necessary machinery were very great. The mass of iron required for each beam, and which has, of course, to be pressed through the rollers at almost a white heat, is enormously heavy. Then the difiiculty of construct- ing the rollers so that the iron, in passing through between them, shall have formed upon it flanges so wide as are necessary for beams, was very serious. We can not here describe the means MANUFACTURE OF THE IKOX HEA.MS. 37 William Borrow. Ilia death. Value of hm Invention. bj which at length the end was attained.* The arrangement was invented hy a young EngHshman named William Boitow. He was a relative of the author of Lavengro and of tlic ]>iblc in Spain. Mr. Peter Cooper, under Avhose generid charge the o])eration was conducted, was specially interested in the work, from the desire to employ such Leanis for the purpose of making fire-proof the large cdiHcc which he was then erecting iu New York for the Scientific Institution. He calculated that he should be able to j)ut up the machinery in four montlis, and at an expense of about thirty tiiou- sand dollars. The difhculties were, however, found .to be far greater than had been foreseen. Instead of four months, it was two years before the machinery was brought into successful operation, and the cost of it, instead of thirty, was a hundred and fifty thousand dollars. And when at length the machinery was made to work successful- ly, the designer, ]\Ir. Borrow, suddenly became iU, and died with- in a week, from the prostration of all his energies, luental and phys- ical — a martyr to the difficulties which beset the practical workers of the Avorld, whose story is seldom told, and who die without odes or funeral orations to celebrate their triumph or to honor their memory. And yet it is very likely to prove in the end that Will- iam l>orrow has been one of the benefactors of his race. His in- vention will probably save millions of property from destruction — will ward off sorrow and calamity from iimumerable he^irths and * The process of rolliiijj out these imiiiciise bars of jjlowitig iron forms « very mag- iiifieent spectacle. It can he witnessed al any time l>y visilinfj llic works at Trenton, which arc always readily shown to strangers. MANUFACTURE OF THE IKON BEAMS. The Harpers' decision to adopt the wrought-iron beam. liomes ; and, by the preserving of capital from destruction, give vigor to great industrial enterprises in many future years. It Avas just about the time that the machinery for rolling these beams was brought to perfection that the J\Icssrs. Harper were making arrangements for the erection of the new buildings for their establishment, and, after giving the subject a careful consideration, they determined to adopt them. The result has been triumphant- ly successful, and this mode of building is now likely to be exten- sively adopted. After a full and careful examination of the sub- ject by the government, it has been decided to adopt the plan in all the custom-houses and other public edifices in the United States. A wrought iron beam of this principle seems a very simple thing, both in its structure and in its functions, and yet it is surprising what a vast combination of means and instrumentalities is neces- sary, and on what a prodigious scale the work must be performed, in order to produce such beams with sufficient economy to make the invention of practical value to society. It has already been stated that a solid wrought iron beam might be made by hammer- ing, but that its cost, if thus manufactured, would be too gi'eat to allow of its use. The expense would, however, in this case, be in- curred in the jwocess of inannfacturing rather than in the orig- inal outlay for machinery. An outlay of twenty-five thousand or thirty thousand dollars would enable solid hammered beams to be made, but then the expense of the process of manufacturing would bring the cost to ten or twelve cents per pound. Rolled beams are made at five or six cents per pound, or about one half MANUFACTURK OF THE IRON BEAMS. 39 Great investment or capital required in the maiiufiicture. the above rate. But then tlie cx|x;nditurc of capital required in the iirst iustauce, in order to cticct this reduction, is enormous. In the first place, in order to make iron cheaply, the works must be on a large scale. Tliis precludes the use of charcoal as a fuel, be- cause it can not be got in (juantities sufficiently large for great works without soon drivuig tlie woodchopper to a distance from the works so great as to destroy the value of tiie coal by the ex- pense of hauling it. ^lincral coal must therefore be used, and some site of manufacture must be selected to wliicli both ore and coal can be conveniently brought in large quantities. Then ex- tensive blast furnaces must be erected for tlie conversion of tlie ore into pig metal, and a forge built for turning the pig metal into wrought iron by the processes of puddling* and rolling. The works of the Trenton Iron Company are upon tiie smallest scale which will combine all these processes in an economical manner, and yet the total expenditure for mines, furnaces, mills, water and steam power, in establishing them, is about om; million of dollars. The number of hands employed directly are about two thousand, and the labor of all these is essential to make a single beam at six cents per pound. Besides tiiis, the coal-mines nuist be opened and operated on an extensive scale, in order to produce coal cheaply. At least a million more is essential for this pur- pose ; for, although the iron-works do not take all the coal, yet, if the mines were not operated extensively, the coal would not be cheap enough to enable the maimfacturer to make beams cheaply. * Puddling is a j)cculiar process liy wliicli cast iron is converted into wrought iron \>y means of passing it between rollers at a j;reat heat. 40 MANUFACTURE OF THE IRON BEAMS. Subsidiary agencies required. Future progress of manufacturing arts. Then the coal and ore must be got to the works. This is accom- plished by the Leliigh Canal and the Morris Canal, which have cost some twelve or fifteen millions of dollars, and are maintained bj a large annual expenditure. Then the pig iron must be trans- ported to the mill over works that have cost two millions of dol- lars more ; and, finally, the beams must be brought to New York either by the Delaware and Raritan Canal, or by the Camden and Amboy Rail-road — works which have cost some ten millions of dollars more, thus making essential for the production of a single rolled beam at six cents per pound, instead of a hammered one at ten cents per pound, an investment of from twenty-six to thirty millions of dollars, which, though of use for countless other pur- poses, is still essential for this purpose ; for if a single link in the chain were wanting, the extra cost would more than cover all the difference between the hammering and the rolling of iron. This simple statement will serve to explain why the comforts and luxiuies of life are made accessible to all ranks by modem in- dustry, while only two hundred or three hundred years ago they were confined to a very small j)oii;ion of the community. When- ever any article can be made on a scale sufficiently large to take advantage of the best method, it can be cheaply made ; when but little is required, the cost must be great. Hence, in the progress of society, manufactured articles Avill be brought within the means of all when all require them. INTEKIOK OF THE CLIFF STREET BUILDING. 41 The sectional view of the edifice. The basement story. CIL\TTER IV. INTERIOIi OF THE CLIFF STREET BUILDIXG. The edifice on Franklin Square is mainly devoted, as has al- ready been explained, to the purpose of storing j)apcr and books, and the various other suppHcs of stock and niaterial.s used in tlie establishment, while the processes of manufacture arc carried on altogether in the Cliff Street building. In order to give the read- er a distinct idea of the arrangement of thi.-; buikliiig, and of the manner in which the different floors are appropriated to their sev- eral uses, the artist has drawn a sectional view of the edifice, rep- resentin'T at one view the whole interior of it. Bv tuniintr over the leaf this engraving wiU be seen. It represents the seven tloor.s of the building, with the operations which are jxjrfomied in each. I propose, in this chapter, to take, with the reader, a cursor}- sur- vey of the whole, with a view of afterward considering the several operations by themselves, one by one, and describing them in full detail. The lowermost story seen in the section is the basement. -Vt the extremity of it, on tlie left, we see parts of the engine and ma- chinery which supply moving power for all the 0})e rations of the establishment. This power is conveyed to tiic different floors by a system of axles, pulleys, and bands, extending from story to story. The main work which this engine has to perform is the driving of the presses on the floor above. 42 INTEKIOIt OP THE CLIFF STREET BUILDING. Sectional view of the Cliff Street building. IXTEKlOli OF llli: CLIFF STKKKT JU 11.1)1 NG. 43 Various objects seen in the basement Btorj'. Farther toward the right, in the basement story, we see a door Avhich leads to the hoiler-rooin in the court-yard. Farther still, near the centre of the room, several hydraulic standiiig-jiresscs are seen, and also, still farther to the right, some printing-presses. The principal use of this lower room is to receive the pajx;r from the store-room in the Franklin S([uare building, and prepare it to be put upon the printing-presses in the room above. It retjuires to be pressed in the standing-presses in order to make it smooth, and to be damped that it may take the ink properly from the im- pression. Of course, only a very small portion of the operations perlbrmed in this room can be shown in a section like this. Tiie room is, in fact, more than sixty feet wide from front to back, while the section shows only a single line of operations from left to right through tlie centre of it. ,\.t the very extremity of the room on the right, we see a door wliich leads to the subterranean vaults, where the electrotype and stereotype plates are stored. Still far- ther to the right, beyond tlie partition wall at the end of tlie room, we see a liorse and cart cominer iVom thi; court throutxli the archccl passage-way, and directly beneath is a section of one of the vauhs, with two men going into it by the light of a lantern. The hrst story above the basement, which is the principal or first storv of the buildinsj;, is the irreat itress-room. This is tiie room Avhich is represented in the ground plan on j)age 21. Then^ we saw the position of the presses on the floor; liere, on th«' otluT liand, we have a front elevation of one tier of them. 'I'hcre arc three tiers, ten in eacli tier, except two spaces opposite tlie doors, making twenty-eight in alL The weight of these presses is about 44 INTERIOR OF THE CLIFF STREET BUILDING. The presses in the press-room. The feeders. Preparing the forms. five tons each, making ten tons for the two which stand between each two of the columns. The distribution of these columns, and the arrangement of the girders and arches on each of the floors, is very distinctly seen in this sectional drawing. We observe that each of the presses is attended by a girl, who stands upon a raised platform by the side of it. Her duty is to feed the press with j)aper, placing one sheet at a time. The sheet is throwTi over when it is printed by what is called the fly, which is a light wooden frame, like a hand with a multitude of straight slender fingers, Avhich lifts the sheet when it has received the impression, and throws it over upon the pile formed by those which had been printed before. At the right-hand end of the room this fly may be seen very distinctly in the act of going back after another sheet of paper, and on the other presses along the line we see it in various positions, bringing the printed sheet over. At the extreme end of the press-room, toward the right, we see two men standing at a table. They are preparing a form for the press. This is a very important operation, and will be, hereafter, more fully described. Near them is a flight of steps leading up to an elevated compartment directly over the passage into the court-yard, v/here we see the horse and cart coming out. This is tlie office of the foreman of the press-room. Over his desk is a large opening, through which he can survey his whole dominion, and observe the action of all the presses and machinery. The men who are employed in preparing the forms for the press are directly beneath this window. At the other end of the press-room, namely, at the extreme left," INTERIOR OF THK CLIFF STREET BinLDIXO. 45 The drying and pressing room. Apparalus for dr> ln(f. is a hand-press, used for working off hand-bills, circulars, and for otlier small operations. We noAV pass to the next story above, which is called tlie dr>'- ing and pressing-room. The jmnted slieets, as fast as they arc taken from the presses below, are brouglit to this room through the lioistway in the com-t-yard. The entrance to this hoistway is seen opposite the third press in the press-room, counting from the right toward the left. It is a -wide opening closed by double doors, and directly above it, in each story, is a similar oj)pninfT lead- ing to the hoistway. In one of the stories the doors are open. The range of doors leading to the staircase in the tower is a little to the left of the openings leading to the hoistwav. Tlie doors leading to the staircase are narrower, it will be seen, than those of tlie hoistway. All the other openings in idl the stories are windows. But let us return to the drying and pressing-room. At the ex- treme right, over the office of the foreman of tlie press-room, is a range of hydraulic presses, where the sheets are pressed after being printed. They are, however, dried before they are pressed. This dr\-ing operation is performed at the other extremity of the room, namely, on the left. There is a compartment inclosed lierc wiiich is kept constantly heated by steam-pipes, with a system of large frames, like horses for drying clothes, which can be drawn in and out. We sec the compartment in the engraving in the first tlivi- sion of this room on the left, that is, in tiic part between the wall and the lirst tier of pillars. Between the tirst and second tier of pillars we sec two of the frames out. One of them is already filled 46 INTERIOR OF THE CLIFF STREET BUILDING. The hydraulic presses. Piles of pressed paper ready to be folded. with sheets of paper, and the workman is in the act of pushing it in to the heated compartment, in order that the sheets may be dried there. Tlie other frame is not yet ready to go in ; a workman is employed in putting sheets upon it by means of a pole with a cross-bar at the top, as seen in the engraving. When the sheets are dry, they are taken on trucks — one of which is seen standing near — to the other extremity of the room, to be pressed in the hydraulic presses. An enlarged view and a more full description, both of the drying apparatus and of the hy- draulic presses, will be given in a subsequent chapter. The hydraulic engine, by which the pressure is applied to the sheets and the presses, is represented in the engraving, though I am not certain that the reader will be able to iind it. It stands in the division of the room which comes between the first and sec- ond columns, reckoning from the right. It stands near a window, a little to the left of where two men are at work piling up a stack of paper to go into one of the hydraulic presses. To the left of the hydraulic engine is a range of tables — only one of which, how- ever, is seen in the engraving — where the sheets are prepared to go into the pi'esses, and aiTanged when they come out. The op- eration, which is quite a curious one, will be more fully described hereafter. In the centre of the room are to be seen, stacked up in large racks, a number of great piles of sheets of paper that have been pressed and dried, and are now ready to be folded for the binder. These stacks are some of them so high that, in order to put on the uppermost sheets, the men are obliged to mount upon ladders, as INTERIOR OF THE CLIFF STREET BUILDING. 47 Folding-room. r;as fixtures. Wanning apparaius- seen in the engraving, and the weight is very great wliich comes upon the girders and beams of the floor below. The next stoiy above, namely, the third above tlie basement, is called the folding-room. The principal operation performed in it is that of folding the sheets of paper after they are pressed, and preparing them to be stitched or -sewed. Tiie work of folding is perlbrmcd by girls, who sit at long tables arranged in the room for this purpose. One range of these tables, with the girls at their Avork, is seen represented in the engraving, occupying the left half of the apartment. Clas hxturcs, at proper distances, are su.spcnd- ed over the table for evening work in winter. Similar burners are to be seen in various other parts of the building. Near each end of this table is to be seen an apparatus present- ing the appearance of a frame of parallel bars, rising to a hciglit of two or three feet above the floor. These are sets of steam-pipes, by which the apartment is warmed. Similar sets of pipes arc seen in various other places on tlie ditierent floors. At the time of folding the sheets, it is necessary to insert, in then- proper places, between tlie leaves, all such engravings as have been printed separately from the body of the work. 'J'he case of shelves seen at the end of the apartment, on the left, near the end of the tabic, is used to contain supplies of these engravings, ar- ranged for use. The doors leading to the hoistway are represented open on this story, and some men are in the act of drawing in a loail of printed sheets from the platform. A part of the macliinery of tin- t-leva- tor is seen tln-ough the opening. 48 INTERIOR OF THE CLIFF STREET BUILDING. The hydraulic presses. The pump. Long tables. Clock. ^ To the right of the hoistway door, in the fourth story, near the right-hand end of the apartment, is seen a massive structure, form- ing a base for the support of heavy presses in the room above. These are hydraulic presses of great weight, and a special support was accordingly provided for them, consisting of extra columns in the second and third stories, resting on a very thick wall coming up from the stories below. These presses are used for pressing the folded sheets, so as to bring them together into a compact form, ready for sawing the backs and binding them. There are two of these presses in fact, though only one of them is shown in the sec- tion. The hydraulic pump by which the pressure is applied is seen to the right of the press, near the end of the room. A little to the left of the press is a small machine called a sawing machine, which will hereafter be more fully explained. The man on the ladder, to the left of the sawing machine, is engaged in making some adjustment of the machinery that runs along from end to end of the room, under the ceiling, to supply motive power to the va- rious engines in the apartment. The remainder of tliis apartment is occupied by girls seated at long tables, and employed in the work of sewing or stitching the sheets. A clock is seen hanging upon the wall, opposite the centre of the tables. A little to the left of the clock is the desk of the man who superintends these op- erations. The next story, that is, the fifth above the basement, is called the FiNlSHlNG-ROOM. The various operations performed in this room will be described in detail hereafter. The foreman is seen sitting at a desk, on an elevated platform, in the last division but INTERIOR OF THE CLIFF STREET BUILDING. 49 Great number or presses. Marbling. FmiHtungrooin. one toward the right. We see the clock on the wall behind hitn. Before liim are a large number of men engaged in what is called forioardlng the books — that is, preparing and fitting the covers, pasting down the fly-leaves, trimming the edges, and pertbrming other such processes preparatory to the stamping and gilding. On the extreme right is a row of standing-presses, used for pressing the books after they are sewed and put together, this raakhig the fourth time in wliich the books, or the materials of which they are composed, have been subjected to pressure in the ditterent stages of the manufacture. The number of presses required for all these varied operations is not less than twenty-five. Of printing-press- es — cdl massive macliines of great power, and driven by steam — there arc tliirty-three in the principal press-room and in the story below. In the back corner of this apartment, toward the right, is an in- closure for the process of marbling. Other portions of the room, toward the left, are also inclosed for different processes of finishing work. In the first division on the left, we see the men engagetl in sprinkling the backs of the books for the purpose of producing tlie mottled appearance often seen on the backs of the covers of books bound in leather. The second and third divisions of this apartment arc occupied by a room in wiiich gilding and otiier fin- ishing processes are performed. We observe a number of small i'lirnaces on the table. In these the irons for gilding are lu-ated. Tiie fire is made by flames of gas. This brings us to the upper story, which is the great composing- room of the establishment — that is, the. vcjom wIutc the ty}M's an- 10 1> 50 THE COURT-YARD. The court-yard. Chimney. Staircase tower. Hoistway. set, as will be hereafter explained. The electrotyping operations are also perfonned here. Having thus given a general view of the arrangement of the Cliff Street building, and. a summary account of the several opera- tions performed in it, we shall now proceed to consider some of the most important of these operations in detail, beginning with com- position, which is the first step in the complicated process of print- ing a book. We have first, however, in order that we may fully complete our general suiwey of the buildings themselves, to take a view of the interior of the court-yard. CHAPTER V. THE COURT- YARD. The two edifices of the Harper Establishment, fronting respect- ively on Chff Street and Frankhn Square, are separated fi:om each other by a court-yard. This coiu't-yard is about twenty-eight feet wide, and extends the whole length of the buildings. It contains, near the centre, three principal constructions : 1. The great chim- ney of the estabKshment ; 2. The brick tower inclosing the circu- lar staircase ; and, 3. The hoistway, by which the various supplies of materials and books in the different sta2:es of manufactui'e are conveyed up and down to the several stories, as required. Nu- merous iron brideres, connecting; the difterent stories of the two building.s A^ath the hoistway and the tower, pass across this court, and form one of the most striking features of it. A view of the whole is presented in the engraving on the opposite page. THE rOT'RT-Y ARD. 51 iMTIiUIUU OK 52 THE COUKT-YARD. Entrance to the courtyard. The machinery of the boistway. The entrance to the court is by an arched passage-way leading from Cliff Street. A cart is represented in tlie engraving as com- ing in. The hoistway is the framed stnicture on the left, as seen in the engi-aving. It extends from the ground to some distance above the topmost story of the Cliif Street building. There is within it a movable platform, which rises and falls from top to bottom. This platform is worked by machinery connected with the steam-engine, which is placed in the court beyond the tower. This machinery acts upon the platform by means of a cable which passes over a pulley at the top of the hoistway. This pulley may be seen in the engraving, with a roof above it to protect it and the rope from the rain. The platform itself is represented in the engraving as near the bottom of the hoistway, with a man standing upon it, whose busi- ness it is to raise and lower it, in conveying goods up and down. He controls the motions of it by means of levers placed within his reach on the platform. One of these levers communicates with the steam-engine ; the other with a brake which encircles a friction- wheel, and, when in action, retards the descent. This mechanism can not be here fully described in its details. It is sufficient to say that, by the management of these levers, the man in charge can cause the platform to ascend or descend at wiU, with himself and all its burden upon it. He can make it move as fast or as slow as he pleases, and by means of a ratchet-wheel connected with the mechanism, can lock it at any moment wherever he wishes it to stop. He can place it in this manner opposite the doors lead- ing to any of the various stories of the Cliff Street buildina:, or to THE COURT-VAiil». 63 The iron bridges in the court-yard. Gloss roor over the boilers. the bridges leading to the Franklin Square building. AVlien the platform is so placed, the floor of it fonns a continuous surface with the floor of the bridge or of the doorwa}', as the case may be, and thus the trucks containing the books or the paper, or Avhatever else it may be, that is to be transported up or down, can be drawn directly upon it. The hoistway is six feet square, and as the lireadth of the court is twenty-eight feet, it leaves twenty-two for the length of the bridges leading from it to the Franklin Square building. The bridges leading from the tower are not so long, tlie tower being sit- uated nearer the centre of the court. Some of the bridges are level, others are more or less inclined, owing- to the difl'crent relative hci";lits of the several stories of the two buildings. The tower itself is ten feet in diameter outside, and eight with- in. It contains a spiral staircase of iron, with landings opposite the bridges leading to the several stories of the two buildings. The chimney, which is seen rising like a moiuimcnt to some dis- tance above the roof, is the only ])ortion of the original establish- ment not destroyed by the tire. It presented a singular spectacle, rising above the blackened ruins which lay smouldering around. All that part of the court-yard which lies beyond the tower is roofed over with glass. This roof is shown more distinctly in the plan on page 51. The inclosure contains the boilers of the steam- engine. The boilers are placed thus in the court-yard for the double purpose of security against fire, and to prevent any dam- age to the Ijuildings themselves from an explosion. 54 COMPOSITION. The windows. Question of iron shutters. (.'omposition. The windows that open upon this coui't, as well as all the ex- terior windows of the buildings, are framed and sashed with iron, and are of very large size. Those of the principal floors are each six feet wide by twelve feet high. The average size of all the windows in the building is four feet by nine, and the whole num- ber of Avindows is four hundred and thirty-four. Portions of each sash are made to move on pivots for ventilation. It Avas thought best not to apply iron shutters to the windows opening into this court, as the communication of fire across the court, by the burning of the materials in any room of either build- ing, to the opposite room in the other, is deemed all but impossi- ble ; and the iron shutters, if applied, would operate to prevent the breaking out of a fire fi-om being so soon observed by the watch- man, in case the accident should occur. CHAPTER VI. COMPOSITION. The printer's type, notwithstanding the -o'onders that it per- fonus, and the vast influence which it exerts on the welfare and destiny of man, is in itself a very sim- ple little thing. It is a siuall, short metallic bar, with the form of the letter Avhich it is intended to print cast on one end of it. This engraving repre- sents a type of the letter m, of the natui-al size — TYPE OF A LETTER, fliat Is, of ouc of tlic uatural sizes, for, of course, the coM^o^5lTl(J^. 55 Great number and variety oftypes. The cotiiposing-BUek. Lreadtli and thickness of the little bar varies according to the size of the intended letter, thougli the lengtii is always the same, being made to confonn to a connnon standard. Besides letters, there are types for commas, periods, quotation marks, and all other characters used in printing. There arc also , shorter pieces of metal, which are put in between fl you will o8 COMPOSITION. The art of deciphering. Curious method by counting the characters. only find one for every sixty e's. Indeed, the proportion of the various letters in all English writing is much more regular than one would have supposed, so that it may be made quite a subject of calculation. A very curious use of this principle is made in what is called the art of deciphering. In time of war, when letters containing orders, or any important intelligence, are sent from one officer to another, under circumstances in which it is probable that they might fall into the hands of the enemy, it is customary to vaiie them in cipher, as it is called, that is, in secret characters ; and when such letters are seized by the other party, it is a great art to decipher them. Now if the cipher, that is, the secret mode of \\Titing, consists only of using, instead of each letter of the alpha- bet, some other letter or character in its place, the work of deci- phering is very easy. You have only to count the number of times in which the several letters or characters occur in the writ- ing, and the work is almost done at once. The character which has the highest number is of course e, and the others follow in almost regular order. There are a number of other curious meth- ods and contrivances which assist in identifying the various letters and characters, that I have not time here to explain ; such as if the character which stands for e comes at the end of a word of tlu-ee letters several times, the other two letters are probably t and /i ; and also, if any word of a single letter occurs in the course of the wi-iting, it must be either a or I, as only those letters make single words in common use in our language. By these and a few other similar princijiles. a number of tlie characters are soon ascor- COMPOSITION. ."ii> Exceptions to the general rule. How the compositor mu the type. taincd, and every one that is thu.s ascertained help.s very much to disclose the next. Indeed, thi.s mode of -writing is so easiiv deci- phered that it is now never used ; other much more difficult meth- ods take its place. It must not, however, be su])posed, from wliat has been said, tliat the proportion of the different letters as they occur in dilfercnt Looks is by any means entirely uniform. If a writer of a tale, for example, were to choose such a name as Zizinc for the heroine of it, the compositor, in setting it up, would very soon get out of s''s. Something like this, substantially, continually occurs ; that is, tiie subject or character of a work may be such as to occasion tiie fre- quent recuiTence of particular words, and tliis brings tiie letters ■which are contained in that Avord into unusual demand ; so tiiat different books 7'U7i, as the compositors express it, upon dilfercnt letters. Still, the general principle is true. But let us return to tlie compositor at his case. He does not look at the face of the type to see what letter it is wiien he takes it up and sets it in the composing-stick, but takes it for granted, if it comes from the right compartment, it is the right letter. He has not time to look at it more than to give it a sligiit glance to see that he puts it into the composing-stick right end up and right side to. He is assisted in this by what arc called tin* nicks on the side of the type, whicli arc small notches made on the side which is to be turned outward wiicn the type is set in the composing-slick. It is much easier to .'^et the type right by a "glance at th^sf iiolclics, wliicli an* vrrv (••m.-^piciioiis. than to look 60 COMPOSITION. Facilities for composing. Measuring by ems. An hour's work. at the letter on the face of it, and sec which i.s the top and which is the bottom of it, for this, in the case of some of the letters par- ticularly, as, for exam2)le, the o and the s, would require very close attention. Thus every possible arrangement is made to facilitate the work of the compositor, and enable him to get the types up as rapidly as possible from the several compartments, and to place them with the least delay in the right position in the composing-stick. By means of these facilities — that is, by having the types that are most frequently used placed nearest at hand, and having them all mark- ed so that they may be placed in the right position at a glance — a good compositor can proceed very rapidly w4th his work. He has every inducement to learn to work fast, for he is paid, not by the time, but by the quantity of work which he accomplishes. The number of pages that he sets up are measured from time to time, and the amount entered on a schedule ; then, at the end of the week or fortnight, he is paid according to what he has done. The unit or standard of measurement for the Avork is the type of the letter m ; that type being exactly square in its form, it is easy to measure by it, for there will always be as many eras in a line as there are lines in a space up and down the page equal to the length of the line. To set up a thousand ems in an hour is considered pretty good work, though some compositors will set up fifteen hundred. To do this, however, the man must be all the time on the alert, and the motions both of his eye and his hand must be very quick in- deed ; for we must remember that, in a thousand ems, there are COMPOSITION. (51 Number or types on an average in a ihottnand ems. many more tlian one thousand types to be handled, since a great many of the types, the letter i for example, and the comma, and the period, and the spaces, arc so tiiin that it would take several of them to make an i/i. I learn that, ujion an average, tiiere are about three times as many types in a page as the number of ems which measure it. If this is so, a man, in order to set up a thou- sand ems in an hour, has to take up and place three thousand dif- ferent pieces of metal. And Avhen we consider that lit" has to select all these separate pieces from a gi*eat many ditfcrcnt conijjartmeuts, not less than one hundred and forty in all, some of them almost as far off from him as he can reach, and that he must place every one in just such a position in the composing-stick, and must then justify the line — that is, must adjust it exactly to the allotted length, it is plain that his movements must be very active to en- able him to place three thousand of them in an hour. There is a great difference in different men in respect to their natural capacity to make quick compositors. This difference does not depend altogether on their mental qualities, such as their en- ergy, industry, and attention, but much, also, on the physical con- stitution of the nerves and muscles of the eye and the arm. There is a difference analogous to this in the action of certain musical in- struments, such as the piano or the organ. Some respond (juiik- er to the touch than others, on account of nice and delicate differ- ences in the interior mechanism ; that is, the connection ot the series of effects, whatever they are, which intervene between tiie touch of the key and the production of the somul, in some instru- ments, is such that the process is run through with great rapidity, 62 COMPOSITION. Rapid compositors. Requisites. Number of motions to be made. and the sound follows the touch almost in an instant. In others it is more slow. On instruments of the former kind, very rapid music can be played ; on the latter, only slow music, for you can go with the succession of notes no faster than the sounds can be produced after touching the keys ; in other words, you can go no faster than the nature of the instrument allows. They may be excellent instruments notwithstanding — that is, they may be excel- lent for the kind of music they are adapted to. They may be richer in tone, and more perfect in every respect than the others except the single one of speed. It is in some measure so with the nerves and muscles of the arm. When the compositor takes into his eye, from the copy which lies before him on the upper case, any particular sentence or word, quite a long nervous and muscular process has to be gone through before the types representing the word find their places in the composing-stick. His mind first separates the word into its letters. His eye must then point out the several compart- ments, one after another, where the letters are to be found. His hand must move to them, and as he brings each type in toward the stick, his eye must glance at it for an instant to catch the po- sition of the nicks, and to direct the hand in respect to the manner in which the type has to be turned, and then must be off again in an instant to find the compartment which the next letter is to come from, in order to be ready to direct the hand there the in- stant that the first type is placed. Then, in turning the type over, and bringing it in a right position into its place in the stick, several separate motions of many different fingers are necessary, COMPOSITION'. (?3 Franklin amusing himself in Iuh old age with composing. eacli of Avliich requires a distinct volition of tlie mind, and a dis- tinct transmission of orders down the nerves of tlie arm. In a Avord, the whole process, quick as a skillful compositor is in tlie performance of it, is extremely complicated in its nature, and it can oidy Le performed at the rate of over a tliousanf it. which, when the roller is finished, becomes the spindle on which it revolves. PKOOFS AM) (OliKKCriNC. ♦;«> The inking. Tlie liand-press. Errora in composition. power-presses now in general u.se in all the great printing estaln lishment.s, there is a system of these rollers incorporated in tlic ma- chinery, so that the types of the largest forms are inked witiiont any manual labor whatever. This will be explained more fully by-and-by. CliAPTEU Vil. PKUOFS AND OntRECTINiJ. The proof, that is, the tirst impression trom the type, mailc to enable the proof-reader to examine his work, and to mark the nec- essary con*ections, is taken, as has already been said, on a small pres.s, in contradistinction from tlic power-presses tiiat are worked by steam and machinery. One or more of these liand-presses stand in the composing-room for the purj)0.se of taking proofs. A view of one of them is given on page 1 16, where it will Ix' fully described. The impression is taken on a small sheet — a quantity of such sheets, previously dampened, being always ready at hand for this purpose. The best proofs contain some errors, and most proofs many. Words are misspelled by tlie accidental substitu- tion of one letter for another: spaces are omitted: now and then a letter is Avrong side up ; and perliaps a period or a note of interro- gation, instead of taking its })lace ])ropcrly at the end of the sen- tence, has intruded into the middle of a word. It woidd, I have no doubt, amuse those of my readers who have; never seen a proof, if I were to insert a specimen here, with jUI its errors, just as they appeal- wlicii tlie fust impression is taken: I'ut if! were to pro- 70 I'liOOFS AND CORRECTING. Marks for correcting proofs. Correcting the errors. pose to do such a thing, I presume there is not a printer in the llarj)er Establishment who would not be shocked at the idea of allowing any matter in such a state to go out into the world at all, on the pages of such a work as this, even as a curiosity. When the proof has been taken, the proof-reader examines it carefully, and marks all the errors. Printers have a peculiar set of marks for the purjiose of calling the attention of the compositor to the several errors, and to direct him how they are to be cor- rected. The compositor takes the form containing the pages of type which are to be corrected to a sort of high table, which is of a very solid and substantial construction, and there, after having loosened the pages by driving back the wedges by which they were "locked up," he proceeds to make the corrections by taking out the types that were wrong, and putting in right ones in their place. In pulling up the types that are to come out, he uses a sort of bodkin or awl, with a sharp point. This he presses against the side of the type that is to come up, and thus draws it out, and then puts the right one in its place. When the errors consist sim- ply of wrong letters, the corrections are easily made ; but if he has omitted any word, or has inserted any not found in the copy, it is more difficult to manage them. If the word to be put in is short, he can sometimes do it by taking out the spaces between the words and putting in thinner ones, thus making room for the new word. So he may sometimes take out a small superfluous word, and fill out the line by putting in thicker spaces. When there are very wide spaces between the words in any line, it is (i.sually because the compositor has taken out a word in this way. PJ400FS AND COKRECTING. 71 Reading the proof by copy. Distributing the type. But lie is not allowed to make the spacing so wide as to injure the appearance of the page. If he can not get in or take out the word in this way, he has to overrun the matter, as it is called ; that is, to carry forward one or more words from each line to the next, down to the end of the paragi-aph. When t!ie corrections are all made, the pages are locked ujd again, and are then returned to the press, in order that a new proof may be taken. The process of proving the work is repeated several times before it is found to be quite coiTCct. Once it is read over carefidly "by copy," as it is called, that is, by the manuscript ; and Hnally, aft- er it seems to be right, it is sent to the author, that he may give it a final revision. \.i he has made his manuscript correct in the first instance, and if the compositor and proof-reader have done their work properly, his revise will come back with very ifi.\j marks upon it. The final corrections, however, which the author directs, having been made, the pages are ready to be sent to the clcctro- typing-room, in order that a copper fac simile of the face of it may be formed in a thin plate, for more convenient handling. AVhen this is done, the pages of type are returned to tlic compositor who set them up, in order to be distributed. The process of distributing the type — that is, of putting back the letters in the several compartments of the case where they belong, seems very surprising to those who first witness it, on account of the great rapidity with which it is performed. The compositor takes up a luimber of lines of type on his rule, having previously wet the whole page. This wetting causes the types to adhere to- gether slightly, and makes it mucii more easy to manipulate them. 72 I'JiOOF.S AND COKUECTING. Importance of correct distribution Bad management of authors. The compositor proceeds to take up several words at a time, and tlien, hy a very dexterous motion, lie throws off the several letters into their various compartments, moving his hand for this purpose with astonishing rapidity, to and fro, all about the case. A com- positor Avill distribute five or six times faster than he can com- pose. The success of the compositor, in all his work, depends very much indeed upon the correctness of his distribution ; for, of course, if he has wrong type in any compartment, those type will come up when he is setting, and fill his proof with errors. It is very seldom that he sees the face of a type when he is composing ; he can not stop to identify the letter in that way ; he only looks at the compartment fi^om which it comes, and at the nicks in the side of it, in order to know in what position to place it. Of course, the correctness of his composition is greatly dependent upon the correctness of his distribution. There is a great difference in different compositors in respect to the accuracy of their work. Some proceed Avith so much system and care, that the whole amount of correcting which their work requires is not more than an hour or two a week. Others have to lose as much time or more every day. This, of course, is so much deducted from their earnings, since compositors are only paid for * the amount of corrected work that they do. Authors often unconsciously add to the labors of the compos- itor by inconsiderate management of various kinds, especially by making additions and alterations to their writing in the proof, so that, after the compositor has once set up the work, and taken a PliOOFS AND COKRECTING. 73 Follow copy. Two good rules for young auibors. great deal of pains, by two or three corrections, to get it precisely according to the copy, and then sends a proof to the author to see if it is right, it comes back marked with numerous chamjes, and thus the work has all to be done, as it were, over again. It would seem, sometimes, that the author makes use of the first labors of the compositor merely to obtain a fair copy of the manuscript, in order that he may more conveniently correct and improve it. The compositor, however, receives pay for making any alterations from copy, lie keeps an account of the time so employed, and charges for them. This is, of course, no more than right, as his proper business is merely to "follow copy." There are two rides to be strictly observed by all persons whu write any thing for the press : 1. Finish the writing of your book or article before you begin the printing of it. In other words, make the copy perfect, just as you wish tlie work to appear, before you put it into the printer's hands, so that, if possible, no alterations wliatever may be required after it is once in type. 2. In preparing the copy which you intend for the compositor, write only on one side of the sheet of paper, and write in a plain, distinct, and legible hand, every Avord in full, and all the para- graphs, divisions, lieadings, and stops, and other marks, just as you wish them to appear. The compositor's rule is to contorm to the copy precisely in all these particulars. Indeed, the rule whicii Benjamin Franklin gave to the journeymen in liis otiice, and which is, in some sense, the rule of all good compositors to the present d.iv. was. Follow vour copv, if you ti)llow it out of (lie window. 74 TYPE-FOUNDING. Type-founding. Visit to a foundry. Conversation with the proprietor. It unfortunately happens that some authors are so careless with then- manuscripts, that, in following this nile when setting up for them, the poor compositor gets sent, as it were, out of the wmdow very often. CHAPTER VIII. TYPE-FOUNDING. I HAD often heard that the making of types was an exceedingly ingenious and curious process, and when I had finished the fore- going description of the manner in which these little wonder-work- ers are set up, it occurred to my mind that it would be a good plan for me to visit one of the principal foundries in New York, and see for myself how the work of manufacturing them was performed. I accordingly called upon the Messrs. Harj:)er, and asked one of the gentlemen for the address of one of the foundries from which they obtained their supplies. He accordingly gave me the ad- dress, and I immediately proceeded to the t}^e-founding establish- ment. One of the proprietors received me A'ery kindly, and con- ducted me through the rooms to witness the different processes. " In former times," said he, as we walked together up stairs in going to the upper stories of the building, where the various oper- ations of the manufactory were carried on, "in former times, it was customary to cast types in httle moulds held in the hand, the melted metal being poured in from a small ladle, but now they are made far more rapidly by means of a machine." lie also explained to me the composition and the properties of TYPE-FOUNDING. 75 Qualities or good type metal. Composition or it. tlie metal used for the casting. It seems that it must possess the following properties : It must be hard., but not too britthi. It nm.st also be easily fused, and not subject to rust. It must be hard ; for, if it were soft, like lead, the face of the type would not stand under the great pressure required in print- ing, and the edges of the letter, too, would be battered and bruised from the little knocks which the t>^es necessarily get from each other in the processes of being set up and distributed. For a similar reason, it must not be brittle, for then the edges would break and crumble. It must be easily fusible. Iron, for example, docs not melt at less than a red heat, and it would be exti-emely dithcult, if not im- possible, to manage such small castings jat so great a temperature. It must be a metal, too, not subject to rust ; for, in using tlie types, it is often necessary to wet them, and thus, if they were made of any easily oxydizable metal, they would soon become rusted and spoiled.* For this reason, therefore, as well as for the other, iron would not answer for types. In fact, there is no one simple metal that is suitable. There is some good and valid objection to every one. The type-makers have, iiowever, discovered a compound of three metals which an- swers the purpose very well. The three metals are lead, tin, and * When iron rusts, the metal combines at the surface with one of the componrnts of water, called oxygen. This compound of iron and oxygen forms the lirown powder which we call rust. Lcad^vihcn thus combined with oxyxcn. forms a irhitr powder, and sometimes a red powder. But lead will not combine with the oxyjim by simple exposure to the atmosphere, or cont.irt with water, as iron will. I,cad, therefore, is said not to be easily oxydizable 76 TYPE-FOUNDING. Examination of a specimen. The casting-room. Pin machine. antimony. Neither of them by itself would make a good type, but, combined together in certain proportions, they form just the material that is required. The compound melts easily, and it be- comes hard, but not brittle, when cold. Then there is another point which is of great importance, namely, that it does not shrink much in cooling. If the metal were to shrink in cooling, then the face of the type would lose its fullness and sharpness of form, and thus become more or less imperfect and irregular. While the proprietor of the foundry was explaining these tilings to me on the way up stairs, he stopped at a little office in one of the rooms to show me some specimens of type metal. He cut some of these with a knife, to let me see how hard and tough the metal was. It seemed to be harder than lead, but not nearly so hard as copper. Soon after this we entered the casting-room, which was in the upper story of the building. There was a range of workmen all around the room, each busy casting type at his little machine. The machines had each its own separate iui-nace and reservoir of metal, so that they looked like so many little forges ranged in or- der all about the room. We walked up toward one of the machines that stood near a window, to witness the operation of it. I was greatly astonished at the spectacle. I have seen very ingenious mechanical contriv- ances before — those for making pins, for example — where a coil of wire is drawn in at one end of the machine, and pins drop out of the other almost as fast as you can count them. But this seemed more surprising still, for it was a mass of hot, melted metal, bub- TYPE-FOUNDING. 77 Operation or the type machine. The mould. Operation or it. Hing and simmering, as it Averc, over its little furnace that supplied the material. By the simple turning ot* a crank on the part of the operator, as a hoy would turn a small grind.'^tone or a coffee-mill, this melted metal was taken u}>, a lit- tle at a time, at tlie upper part of the machine, and dropped out in types be- low, cool and solid. But I must describe the machine a little more par- ticularly. It appeared to be complicated in its con- stniction, but tlic princi- ple of its operation, as is usually the case, indeed, with all great inventions, was very simple. The essential thing is a mould to cast the types in, made in parts, so as to open for tlie purjiose of letting the type drop out, and tlicn to sluit up togctlicr again very clo.sely and exactly. U'he several parts fonning the mould are so connected Avith macliinery worked by the crank that they are o})ened and shut again every time tlie crank is turned once round. Jiesides this action of oj)e)iing and shutting the mould, with all 78 TYPE-FOUNDING. The little force-pump. Types caught by an apron. the complicated mechanism which is connected with it, it has an- other movement. Eveiy time the crank revolves, it is brought up to what miglit he called the mouth of the furnace, to receive the supply of melted metal, and then is brought away again. This mouth is very small, the orifice not being much larger, perhaps, than a large pin-hole. At the instant the mouth of the mould is brought up in contact with 'this little opening by the moving of the crank, a jet of melted metal, just enough to fill the mould, is forced in by means of a small force-pump in the reservou". This force-pump is worked by the same crank which gives motion to the mould. In a Avord, the machine is so contrived that the oper- ator, by simply turning this crank, brings up the mould to the furnace, pumps in enough of metal for the casting of one type, witlidraws the mould, opens it to let the type drop out, and then puts the mould together again for a fresh operation. The types, though cool enough to be solid when they droj^, are still very hot. They are caught, therefore, as they fall, upon a little paper apron under the machine, and thence, cooling as they go, they are gradually shaken down by the types that continue to fall upon the apron from above, and finally descend into a box placed a little below to receive them. The operation was performed with astonishing rapidity. I took out my watch while standing near one of the fastest of the ma- chines, in order to see how rapidly the types were produced by it. I found that thirty-six types were dropped in a quarter of a min- ute, or over eight thousand in an hour. It is true that this ma- chine was casting small type, and that it worked faster than most TYPE-FOITNDTNG. 79 Duties of the type-founder. Great care requisite. The jet. others in the room. The average, however, coukl not have Lcen less than two thousand in an liour. It is by no means to be supposed, liowever, that because tlic operation of the machine thus described seems so simjjle, the arti- san who works it has nothing to do but to turn a crank. This is, indeed, all the mechanical work that he has to perfonn, but in the exercise of judgment, skill, and discretion, he has a great deal to do. He must watch his furnace and his reservoir of melted met- al, to see that the metal is always of the proper temperature. He must be careful, too, that he docs not turn the machine too fast, for this Avould heat the mould too much, and thus prevent tlie })er- fect fonu of tlie type. He must continually keep his eye on the little orifice where the metal is ejected from the reservoir, to see that all is right there, and that no little globules of melted metal remain on the outside of it to prevent a perfect junction of the face of the mould with the outside suriace. In a word, a person, to be a good type-founder, notwithstanding all the help he obtains from his machine, must be a man of great skill, careful judgment, and practical dexterity. The metal, in being injected or forced into the mould, passes through an opening, which forms a sort of long, slender funnel, which enters at the lower end of the mould. This fun- nel itself, as well as the mould, becomes filled with met- al, so that, when tlie type drops upon tlie jiajier below this metal remains attached to it in the form of a long and slender wedge-shaped projection called a />/, which THE iKT if* represented in the adjoining engraving. This jet 80 TYPE-FOUNDING. Process or breaking. Very rapid and dexterous performance of it. must, of course, be removed in the process of finishing the type. Indeed, the removing of it is the lirst step in the finishing process. They break it off. It breaks very easily, being quite slender at the point of its junction with the type. One would not suppose that there would be any thing particularly curious or interesting in so simple an operation as this, but I found it quite curious, on account of the great rapidity with which the boys, whose busi- ness it is, perform it, and the arrangements which were made to iacilitate the work. The process is called breaking, and the boys who do it are called breakers. The breaker is seated, when at work, at a sort of low table, witli sides all around it, to prevent the types from tailing upon the floor. The centre of the table directly before him is covered with a sort of cushion, or, rather, as perliaps I ought to say, the bottom of the box which the table forms is lined with a sort of cushion covered Avith smooth leather. At one end of the table, within the box, is a great pile of types, with the jets attached to them, just as they come from the moulds. These the boy continually draws down upon the surface of the cushion, where he breaks oflT the jets from them with an inconceivably rapid motion of the fingers, and then separates the parts by pushing the jets one way and the tj^es another. The boy whom I watched performed the operation so rapidly that, with the closest observation, I could not follow the motions of his finoers at all, or see bv what means he contrived to accomplish the object. Of course, at the point where the jet was broken off, the- mark of the fracture would remain at the end of the type, producing a Til^E-FULNDlNG. 81 Rubbing. Description of the stones. Mould not perfectly tigbt. sort of blemish. It was curious to see how siin})ly and easily tliis mark was afterward removed. A long row of the types were set up together, side by side, in a long and slender frame, and then a little plane, tlie rim of which came almost to a point, and was ground at the end to the form of an exceedingly small gouge, was passed along the whole line, and thus, by a single stroke of the tool, the fractured portion was cut out from the ends of hundreds of types at a time. The next process to breaking was what was called rubbing. The rubbing was the work of women and girls. The room where this operation was pertbrmed had two or three long low tables ex- tending through it from end to end, with what seemed to be a row of grindstones lying upon them. These stones were large and not very thick, and they were lying on their sides upon the tables. The upper surface of them seemed to be very level and ilat, and were of about the roughness of sand-paper. Before each stone sat a female operative rubbing types. The object of this rubbing was to smooth the sides of the type, and to remove a Httle thin pro- jection of metal which is apt to be left, after the casting, at the edges. This projection is caused by the protnision of the metal a little way into the joints of the mould ; for the mould, you will recollect, is made of several distinct parts, which open after, the casting, to allow the type to drop out, and then shut together again. Now it is not possible to make these joints perfectly tight, 1 sup- pose. Indeed, it is necessary to allow suHicient opening to permit the escape of the air, for the metal can not enter the mould any faster than the air which was previously in it can go out. Now JO F 82 TYPE-FOUNI>ING. Account of the process of rubbing. Setting. Types placed in rows. the metal itself, at the moment of casting, will protrude a little way into these interstices, and to remove the protrusions thus formed is one object of the rubbing. The girl takes up a handful of types, and lays them down, side by side, on the stone. She takes ten or twenty at a time. She then lays two of her fingers across the types, and, by a sweep of her arm to and fro, she rubs them back and forth on the flat sur- face of the stone. This smooths and evens the under sides of the types. Then she brings the types to the edge of the stone, so as to allow the ends of the whole row to project a little, and by a veiy dexterous movement — so dexterous and quick, indeed, that you will have to look very closely to follow it — she turns them all over together, and then proceeds to nib the other side, and finally pushes them into a box ready near tlie stone to receive them. After a time, the stones, I was told, become glazed over, as it were, by the rubbing of the types upon them, and then it becomes necessary to restore the roughness of the surface before they can be used any more. This is done by grinding them with sand. The next process is setting. This consists of the work of ar- ranging the types in rows for inspection and for the final finishing. The setters are usually small gMs. The types are taken up by thenj from a box, where they lie in bulk, and are placed in a row upon a long stick, like a yard-stick. It is astonishing to witness the rapidity of motion and the accuracy which these girls display in taking up and placing the types, arranging them all the same way, that is, with the same side toward them, and the letter faces all turned downward. In the first instance, the girls set the types TYPE-POUNDING. 83 Picture of the dresser examining the types with a niagnifying-glaaa. in a shorter stick, much like a composing-stick in respect to the manner in which it is used, only it is eight or ten inches long, and just wide enough for one row of types. As fast as this stick be- comes full, the girls transfer the row of types to the long stick, which lies on a little shelf Lefore them, and when this is full the whole Kne is made ready to he passed into the hands of the dresser. This brings us to the next operation, which is that oid/'csniny the type. The dresser caretiilly ex- amines them, and rejects those that are impertect and bad, and then trims those that are perfect to an exact and a unifonn standard. The casting, to be sure, leaves them nearly uniform, but not quite. It is the last fin- ishing touch to form the types which the dresser gives to them. For this object, he arranges them on an instnunent which has the appearance of a THE DHEssER. vcry loni; ruk'. There is a ledge below for the foot of the types to stand upon, and a sort 84 TVl'E-FOUNDING. Very dosu exuiniiiation required. Rapid manipulations. of chock at each end, one of which is movable, and works by a screw. By means of these, the types, when necessary, may be all clamped together. The dresser arranges his types in a line on this rule, and places them in a strong light at a table opposite the window. They stand there before him in a strong and glitter- ing row, like a long line of soldiers waiting for inspection. Hold- ing a little awl or bodkin in his right hand, and in his left, close to his eye, a small magnifying-glass, he passes his glass along the line, looking closely at the face of every type. All that are per- fect he passes ; but, whenever he sees any little blemish or imper- fection on the surface of the metal which forms the face of the let- ter, he instantly pulls the type forward out from among its fellows with his bodkin, and it drops, condemned and disgraced, into an apron placed below to receive it, whence it is sent back in due time to the melting-pot, to try its chance again. As near as I could judge, something like one tenth of the types were thus con- demned. The types that pass inspection are then screwed up together to receive their linal trimming, the dresser maneuvering and manip- ulating them for this purpose with surprising dexterity, causing them to change front, face about, and turn,, now this side toward him and now that, all together, with an adroitness that would as- tonish the most skillful general that ever maneuvered soldiers on It is in the course of this process of dressing that the workman planes out the mark of the fracture left at the foot of the type by breaking off the jet, as has before been explained. MOULDS IY)Ii TYI'i:-F(irNI»I.\(i. 85 Types packed Tor sale. Modern improvements in the art or printing. Moulds. When the dressing process has been completed, the types are finished. They are then set up together sohd, in square blocks of about tlie size of one of these pages, those of tiie same letter or character together. These blocks are then caretiilly enveloped and packed, and are ready for sale. The quantity of metal thus cast hito types at the establishment that I visited amounts to not less than 500,000 pounds every year, and nearly two hundred liands are constantly employed in the various processes. This fact alone shows on how magnificent a scale the printing operations of the present day are conducted. One of the results of the progress which the printing art has thus made is, that more copies of the Bible are now printed in two years than the whole number that had ever been printed before the commencement of the present century since the art of printing was discovered. It is very probable that in respect to the printing of book.s and newspapers the advance has been greater still. CHAPTER IX. MOULDS FOR TYrE-FOUNDING. The process of forming the types themselves from the melted metal, nice and curious as it is, is by no means the most delicate and difficult part of the type-founder's work. Tlic great thing is the making of the mould, or, rather, of that part of the monld by which the face of the letter is formed. Tlie part in (luesfion i.s called the ?;ia^Wfc, because it i.s tlie mother, as it were, of all tlio 86 MOULDS FOR TYPE-FOUNDING. Picture of a matrice. Description of it. The punches. types that are cast in it. The matrice is a short and thick bar or block of copper, with the form THE MATRICE. pf thc Icttcr wMch it is intended to produce from it stamped in one of the four sides of it, near the end. It is about as long as a type, but a great deal broader and thicker. Of course, there must be a separate matrice for every separate letter or character. The matrices are all of the same length, and are so made that any of them that belong to the same set can be inserted into any mould, though the letters and charac- ters which are stamped upon them are of course different in each different matrice. In every machine or mould for casting type there is a place for inserting the matrice, and the founder can put in any one he pleases, according to the type or character which he wishes to cast. The matrice is so placed in the mould that the part on which the letter is stamped comes exactly opposite the head of the t}^e, and thus the metal, at the moment of casting, flows into the stamped depression, and forms the letter that is stamped upon the matrice, whatever it may be. Thus we see very easily how the letters are formed on the types by means of the impression in the matrice, but now the question arises how the impressions in the matrices are made. The an- swer is, that they are stamped in the copper by means of what are called j)zi)ic/ies. By examining the engraving on the following page, the reader will be able to form a pretty con-ect opinion of how punches are made. MOULDS FOR TYPE-FOUNDING. 87 Mode of making the punches. Drives. Complicated process. The punch consists of a small steel rod, with a letter cut upon one end, and a flat head, to receive the blow of a hammer, at the other. The punch- es are about two or three inches long, '"^ "^•^^"'^«- and are made of the best and hardest steel. The letter is cut upon them by hand, in the use of chisels, files, and other such instnimcnts ; and as the form and fashion of all the impressions in the matrices, and of all tiie ca.slings on the types, and of all the letters in the printed books whicii may come from them, depend upon their shape and finish, the utmost possi- ble pains is taken in perfecting them. The letters are formed in the matrice by means of the punch, the letter end of it being driven into the copper by the blow of a hammer. A man who owns a set of punches often sells a set of impressions from them to a type-founder, to save the founder the expense of making the punches himself. lie calls it selling drives. Thus, in coming to the punches, we come at last to the point where the form of the letter has its actual origin. It begins with tlic punch, the punch makes the matrice, the matrice makes tiic type, and the type makes the electrotype, and tiic electrotype makes the letter on the printed page. Thus every letter which you see in this book has come to you tlirougli all tiic^e Jive differ- cnt forms. This seems, at first view, to be taking a great dciil of trouble ; but, on reflection, we shall sec that the proc^css is adniinibly calcu- 88 MOULDS FOR TYPE-FOTINDING. Advantages of the eystem. Immense maltiplication ofresulte. lated to save labor and trouble. If, for example, every type Avere formed by itself, by cutting out the letter upon the end of it with chisels and files, instead of casting it in a matrice, the work of forming them would be pretty much the same as that of making the punches — a day's labor nearly to each one ; whereas now they are cast, as we have seen, at the rate of from two thousand to eight thousand in an hour. So in respect to the matrices. To form a matrice by means of cutting-tools would be' even more laborious and troublesome than the making of a punch, and there would be only one matrice when it was done. But the punch, once finished, is the means of making hundreds of matrices, each being formed at a blow. The effect of the whole system in respect to the multiplication of results is amazing, as will be readily seen by the following cal- culation: One punch will make from fifty to one hundred mat- rices. These matrices, distributed in the various machines of many different founders, will cast each many millions of types, making many hundreds of millions of types from one punch. Each of these types used in electrotyping will give from five hundred to one thousand electrotype copies, and every electrotype used in printing will give a million of impressions on a printed page. This makes an aggregate of many thouscmds of omUions of millions of printed letters from one single father punch, the common progen- itor of all. This is no imaginary or fanciful calculation. It is a fair and honest statement of the actual powers of the system as now in constant operation, and it is in consequence of this enor- mous multiplication of results that the art of printing is enabled MOULDS FOR TYPE-FOUNDING. 89 Care in making the punches. Great number and variety required to perform such wonders, and to exert such an influence as it does on the destinies of man. Of course, a punch that is to exert so wide-spread an influence in the world well deserves that no pains or expense should be spared in giving it, at the outset, the most perfect jiossible form. Consequently, the cutting and the polishing of the punches is one of the most delicate and important of all the processes connected with the typographical art. Tlie punches are, consequently, very costly, and a good set of them is highly prized. A very large number, too, are required in every extensive foundry. One might at first suppose that a few hundred would be enough, as there are only twenty-four letters in the alphabet, and a comparatively small number of stopb and marks besides. But, instead of a few hund- reds, many thousands are required. In the first place, there must be two sets of capitals, and one set each for Roman and Italic let- ters, and one set for figures, for every size of type. These, witii the necessary stops and other characters, make at least three luindred punches for every size. Then the number of sizes and styles of letters in ordinary use is very large, so that there is scarcely any limit to the number and variety of punches that are required. They amoimted, in the establishment that I was vis- iting, to many thousands, and the value of them was from tliirty to forty thousand dollars. 'J'hc value of the matrices, too, was about the same. I went to see the iron safes where this valuable prop«M-ty was deposited. These safes — which arc the same with those custom- arilv used bv the New York merchants for keeping their account- 90 MOULDS FOR TYPE-FOUNDING. The safes where the punches and matrices are kept. books and other valuables from thieves and fire — are great iron chests, made movable on monstrous castors, with walls eight or ten inches thick all around. These walls are formed inside and out of thick plates of iron, bolted together in the most substantial manner, and fiUed in with a mineral composition peculiarly adapt- ed to resist the action of fire. The doors are of the same con- struction as the walls, and they move, of course, very slowly and heavily on their massive hinges. The first safe that I visited contained punches, and the whole interior of it was filled with a system of small shallow drawers, each of which contained a number of round tin boxes, in which the punches were packed, those of the same size in the same box. They were packed in an upright position, with the letters on the upper end of them. I afterward went to see the safes that contained the matrices. There were two of these safes, and they were much larger than the one which I had first visited, for the matrices are far more nu- merous than the punches. These safes, too, were filled with little drawers, all of which were appropriately numbered and labeled ac- cording to the denomination, style, and character of the letters which the matrices that they contained were intended to make. The contents of these safes were of very great value. In addition to the usual securities for the protection of them in case of fire, they were banded very strongly with thick bars of iron, made to close over the doors after they were shut, and to lock independ- ently of them. The object of these bands was to assist in pre- venting the safe from bursting open when falling through the floors MOULDS FOR TTPE-FOUNDING. 91 Fall of heavy safes in case of fire. Great strenglb required. of the building into the cellar in case of a fire ; for always, when a building is burned that contains safes of this character in the upper stories, the safes, as soon as the timbers of the floor on which they stand are weakened by the fire, break through, and fall with a dreadful crash down through all the other floors into the cellar. Indeed, so great is the force of the fall of these safes some- times, that they bring down the walls of the building with them, the ends of the floor-timbers being built into the walls in such a manner that when the timbers are broken off" and borne down in the inside, the walls are pried over as by a lever, and come down Avith a dreadful crash and confusion into the street, overwhehning and burying the firemen, perhaps, in the ruin. The safes of a type-foundry are pecuharly heavy, being filled, not with books and accounts, or otlier comparatively light articles, but with pieces of metal, which, though individually small, are so numerous, and so closely packed, that the whole safe, in respect to its heaviness, is very much as if it were one soUd mass of iron six feet square and three feet deep. Of course, so ])onderous a body as this, in falling fifty or sixty feet through the floors of a burning building, must come down to the cellar floor with a tremendous concussion, and there would be most imminent danger that it would burst itself open, unless its fastenings were secured in the strong- est possible manner. Indeed, the whole building used for tlie pur|-)Oses of a tyi)e-foun- dry must be made extremely strong, on account of the great weight which almost every part of it has to carry. The packages of tyjx;s, of course, as aiTanged on the shelves of tlic store-rodin, ready to he 92 MOULDS FOR TYPE-FOUNDING. Comparative quantities required of different letters. boxed for their various destinations, are as heavy almost as so many blocks of solid metal. I saw one set of very strong and massive shelves, perhaps ten feet Avide, and ten feet high in all, which contained packages of type that weighed, in all, I Avas in- formed, not less than ten tons. The whole solid stock of tj^Dc on hand in the establishment weighed usually not less than forty or fifty tons. In fitting up the types for use, those of each letter are put to- gether in a package by itself, so that one package, when opened, is found to be all «'s, another all ^'s, and so on. The reader might perhaps suppose, at first thought, that the number of types for each letter of the alphabet would be equal. But this is by no means the case, for some letters occur much more frequently than others, and, of course, more types of them are required in proportion than of the others. For example, almost twice as many are required of the letter e as of any other letter, for the e occurs twice as frequently as any other letter of the alphabet in the English language. This sub- ject has already been referred to in describing the setting of type. Next to the letter e, the letters (2, w, and o are most common. For every seven pounds of d's they usually put about four pounds of «'s, ?i's, and c's ; that is, a little more than one half as many. The most unfi:equent letters are q, x, and z. Of each of these only one quarter of a pound are required for every seven pounds of ^ ®f iffl^iE3ir< ^^lrl( 6t|ebeHl. here to show how great is the variety of work accompUsh- ed by the punch, and how nice must he the skill of the cutter to work such fine and G^S' complicated designs in the sohd metal. - 4 - ^ :g ^-^JK4ga-E^-^-:^-a-E»>gwa^g-s^ ^lany of these bor- ^ ^^^ ->*. o^ ^^j.g ^j.g ^g^ large and exceedingly elaborate. Others are small and very delicate in style of execution, and by varying the combinations of them a great variety of effects may be produced. In the margin is a small cu'cle formed by ar- ranging together the four corner types of a particular border, with a specimen of fine print- ing within it, which shows to how great a de- gree of minuteness the work of cutting the punches is sometimes carried. And here I will close the account of tliis cmious manufacture, only adding that the types made where the English language is spoken are by no means restricted to the English language in speaking themselves. They can talk in any language in which the alphabetic characters are the same as in our own. Thus the progeny of the same punch, formed by an American workman in New York, are scattered in innumerable thousands over the world. MOULDS FOR TYPK-FOUNDING. 95 Types can speak in many different languages. They talk Spanish in Mexico, Portuguese in Brazil, and French in New Orleans or INIontreal. They are employed, too, in every variety of duty. Some, in spelling-books or primers, are set to the Avork of teaching millions of little children in schools to read ami spell. Others, that came out, perhaps, originally side Ly side with the former from the same matrice, are employed in Latin diction- aries, or in new and beautiful editions of the ancient classics, to aid the learned researches of scholars in colleges and universities. Some amuse in books of romance. Others, the brothers and sis- ters of the former, puzzle and perplex in books of mathematics. Some go to Washington, and make fierce political speeches, now in favor of one party, and now in ftivor of the other, equally in- different to both ; others to a Bible House or a Tract House, and earnestly plead the cause of human salvation ; while others still devote their lives to the fireside entertainment and instruction of thousands of families through the pages of story-books or maga- zines. All this time the parent punch from whom they all sprung remains wholly unconscious of the immense diffusion of his off- spring, and of the vastly varied character of the duties which they are severally called upon to fulfill. He pays no heed to these in- calculable results of what he has already done, and least of all does he show any disposition to be satisfied with them. Ills duty is to go on producing; so he holds well to his temper and to his edge, and keeps steadily on, adding continually, tlu-ough the new mat- rices tliat he produces, millions and millions more to his already innumerable progeny. 1)6 ELECTROTYPING. Advantages of the electrotypirig process. The plate. CHAPTER X. ELECTROTYPING. The electrotyping process is one which has been discovered within a very few years, and it very greatly facilitates all printing operations which are carried on upon an extensive scale. It con- sists in producing from the solid page of t}^es, or of types and en- graved blocks together — which, of course, is very heavy and un- wieldy — a plate of copper, with all the faces of the letters and the lines of the engravings precisely repeated on the side of it, just as they appear in the solid page which the compositor had set up. The original page of the types can then be sent back to the com- posing-room and distributed, and the new and comparatively light, thin copper plate can be used to print from in its stead. Tiie electrotype plate is about three sixteenths of an inch in thickness. In length and breadth, of course, it corresponds with the size of the page that it was made from. The face of it is of copper ; the back of it, including the principal portion of its thick- ness, is of type-metal. When it is to be used in printing, it is placed upon a block of wood of such a thickness that the block and the plate together shall equal the thickness of the original page of type. The block is provided with a pair of clamps to secure the plate in its place. The upper ends of these clamps are seen in the engra"\ang, on the edge of the block that is towai'd us, projecting over the edge of the ELECTROTVFIN<;. 97 Blocking electrotype plates. The clamps. Engraving of a block. plate, which is beveled to receive them, "i'lic Lack edge of tin; plate is also beveled, and ])asses under two fixtures projecting on that side, which are attached iirmly to tlic block. The clamps on the hither side are movable, being made so that they can be drawn back or driven forward by means of the toothed wheels, which are seen near the back edge of the block. These \\ liccls are each con- 'mm^smrn'm BLOCKINO THE PLATE. stnicted with a brass rod, which seiwes as an axle, and coinniuni- cates with the clamps on the front side of the plate. The rods arc connected with these clamps by a screw, so that, by (iiniing the toothed wheels, the clamps may be drawn in over the edge of the ]t]ate, and thus made to hold it down securely on the face of tlu^ block. Tlie otiicr side of the jilatc is hehl down, of course, by ihe 10 'J yb ELECTROTYPING. How the thin copper plate is strengthened. beveled edge being brought close under the fixed clamps on that side. The instrument with which the toothed wheels are worked, both in fastening in the plate and loosening it again when required, is seen above, as held when in use by the workman. The plate, as will be seen by the engraving, is quite thin. It shows on the upper surface a map, occupying the centre of the page, with a few lines of letter-press above and below. Of course, in forming this page, the wooden block on which the map was en- graved was placed in the centre, and the lines of type, after being set up in the composing-stick, were placed at each end. The whole page was then wedged up in a chase, and sent to the electrot^^jer. The upper surface of the electrotype only — that is, the one which contains tlie forms of the letters and the lines of the engraving, is of copper. The remainder of the thickness of it, as has already been said, is of type-metal, which is cast upon the back of the thin copper plate, to stiffen and support it. The chief interest in respect to the electrotyping process is the manner in which this thin copper plate is made. A visitor going into a room where the electrotyping process is going on, sees little else but a large number of square boxes or tanks, filled with some chemical-looking liquor, and connected to- gether by means of a great number of bent and crooked wires, which run in irregular curves from one tank to another. These wires are for the purpose of canying an electric current to the liq- uor in the tanks. Tlie current is supplied from what is called a galvanic battery, which also stands in the room. ELECTKOTYPING. 99 Galvanic battery. Singular eflects oftlio current of cicctriciiy. To describe the construction and uses of a galvanic Lattcrv Avould lead me too far away from the subject of printing. It will be sufficient for my present purpose to say, that a current of elec- tricity from such a battery, directed upon the liquor in the tank, is essential to the success of the clectrotyping process, and, ac- cordingly, the battery and Avircs arc an-anged for tlie purpose of supplying such a current. The general principle on wIulIi the process is conducted is this. It has been discovered Avithin a few years that if a lifpiid con- tains any metal in solution, an arrangement may be made of elec- tric wires, so that, under the influence of the electric current brought by the wires, tlic particles of the metal in the solution will be slowly deposited upon any metallic plate which may be im- mersed in the liquid, although no such effect would be j)roduccd witliout the electric current. For example, if a liquid containing copper in solution were to be placed in a tank, and a silver dollar were to be immersed in it, no effect would be produced.* If, now, a galvanic battery be established near the place, to supply a cur- rent of electricity, and wires are placed in a peculiar way, connect- ing the battery with the li({uor in the tank, and also with the sil- ver dollar, the copper will begin immediately to leave tlie liquor, and to deposit itself In a thin iilin all over the surface of the silver, and will soon encase it entirely. This process will go on as long * Copper itself, in its metallic state, can not be dissolved in water ; but some of its compounds with other substances can be. For example, blue rtlnol, which in a com- pound of sulphuric acid and copper, is easily solul>lc. (If course, in a solution of /line vitriol in water, we should have the particles of copper dillused throU|,'hout iho liipiid, though in a wholly invisible form. loo ELECTJtOTYPlNG. Formation of the mould. Depositing the copper upon it. MS the current of" electricity continues, and the supply of copper in the solution holds out. Thus a copper covering of any required thickness may be applied to the silver. The process of electrotyping is conducted on this principle. A thin film of copper is deposited in the manner above described upon a mould which contains a perfect impression of the whole page which is to be cast, both type-matter and engravings. The mould is formed from the page as it is set up in the composing-room by pressing the face of it into a certain plastic substance prepared for the purpose. When the mould is thus formed, and the surface of it is prepared properly for receiving the metallic deposit, it is placed in one of the tanks, and then connected with the battery by the wires. The deposition of the copper all over the surface of the mould immediately commences. The particles find their Avay into all the interstices of the type, and into the very finest lines of the engraving, so as to reproduce exactly every touch and lineament, however delicate and fine, of the engraved work. After the process has been continued several lioui's, until the workman considers that the coating of copper is sufficiently thick to sustain itself under the subsequent operations, he takes the mould out, and the copper coating is detached from it. The plate is exceedingly slender and thin when first detached, but all the let- ters of the types, and all the lines, and even the very finest shades of the engraving, are represented upon it with beautiful distinct- ness and precision. The impression is, of course, in relief on one side, and in intaglio on the other. This thin plate is then placed on a sort of frame, with supports to keep it extended in a true and ELECTROTYPING. inl l.S I'KUIUH UK 1 lit. V/ 102 ELECTROTYPING. Finishing the plates. The subterranean vaults. New editions. even position, and a backing of type-metal i,g cast upon what a lady would call the wrong side of it, and thus a solid, substantial plate is formed, thick and firm enough to be used safely in print- ing, and yet not one fifth part as heavy as the original page of type-matter from whicli it was formed. The plates are all minutely examined when they are cast, and are properly trimmed and finished. They are made as nearly as possible of a uniform thickness. Of course, there must be one plate for every page of the book to be printed. The accumulation of electrotype plates in a large establishment that has been long in operation is very great. In the Harper Es- tablishment, the stores now on hand are enormous. Those of the Magazine alone are rapidly approaching ten thousand. The plates are stored in subterranean vaults built under the streets that surround the building. The entrance to these vaults has already been shown in the sectional view of the Cliff Street building, on page 42. A more enlarged view is shown on the pre- ceding page. The vaults extend under ground for two hundred feet in length, and in dimensions are eight feet wide by eight feet high. They are shelved on both sides, and the shelves are load- ed Avitli plates — stereotype or electrotype — representing all the works published in the estabUshment. There is one plate for ev- ery page of every one of the many hundreds of volumes Avhich the house publishes, making from fifty to seventy tons in all. When a new edition of any book is required, the plates are brought out from these vaults and put upon the presses. When the work is finished, thev are taken back again to the vaults. ENGRAVINGS. 103 Two distinct kinds or engravings in common ose. CHAPTER XI. ENGRAVINGS. To those who Iiavc not had an opportunity to know much about the processes of printing, there is quite a mystery in respect to the manner in which the ene:i'avino:s are made. There are two entirely distinct modes of making and printing engravings in common use. These two modes are usually distin- guished as eojyj^er-j^late or steel engravings, and icood engravings.* The former kind — that is, the copper-plate engravings, were made by cutting the lines of the picture in the surface of the copper-plate, and then fdling these lines with ink, and afterward taking up the ink upon the sheet of paper by a strong pressure. The second kind — that is, the wood engi-avings, were made by drawing the figure on the end of a block of very hard and close- grained Avood, previously made smooth for the puq^ose, and tiicn cutting away the wood from between the lines of the drawing, so as to leave the lines themselves in relief^ thus exactly reversing tlic process in copper-plate engraving, in which the lines them- selves were cut away. The iigurc was then transferred to the pa- per by inking the faces of the lines, and printing from tlicm in u connnon ])rinting-prcss, precisely as from types. * Uesidcs these, there is a third class of illustrations imicli in use, ralleil lilhogniphs. They arc, however, not properly engravings, lieinrr printed from simple drairtngs made upon stone, and, therefore, they arc not included here. 104 ENGKAVINGrS. Copper and steel engravings. Advantages of this method. The names coppei--plate engraving and wood engi-aving are, liowever, no longer strictly appropriate; for, instead of plates of copper, plates of steel are now generally used for the former mode. The steel is softened in the first instance, so as to facilitate the cutting of the lines upon it, and then is afterward hardened again, so as to make it more endiuing under the constant rubbing to which it is subjected in the process of printing. It is wholly on account of its being so much more enduring than copper that steel is now more generally used for the material of the plate on which this class of engravings are made. The essential distinction between the two modes is that, by the former, the lines of the design are cut in intaglio^ as it is called, wliile by the latter they stand in relief. Copper or steel engraving has this advantage over wood, name- ly, that finer work may be executed in that way. This, we might easily see, must necessarily be the case, since, in engraving a fine design, it must be much more easy to cut the lines themselves in the material of the surface to be engraved, than to cut away the material on each side of the line, so as to leave the line itself in re- lief. It is subject to this great disadvantage, however, namely, that it requires an entirely different mode of printing from the or- dinary letter-press of books — one, moreover, that is very laborious and slow ; for, in the first place, the whole sui'face of the plate is covered with ink by means of a roller. The plate is then care- fully wiped, so as to remove all the ink from the surface, and leave only that which lies in the lines of the engraving. The ink, lying as it does beneatli the surface of the ])late in the engraved lines. ENGRA\aNGS. 105 Mode of printing Oom copper and steel engravings. must be hroxight up, as it Averc, by tlie impression ; and this re- quires a very great foree. This force is applied by passing tlic plate, Avith tlie sheet on Avhich tlie impression is to be taken, un- der a roller. By this means, the whole force of the pressure is brought upon the diftcrent portions of tlio sheet in suc- cession, at tlic line of con- tact Avith tlio roller, instead of being diffused OA'cr the whole Surface, and thus, in a great degree, AA'eakened. The adjoining engraA'ing represents the general form of one of these printing- presses as used fifty years ago. Great improA'ements haAC been made in the construction of these presses since those (lays, Imt the ])rinciple is the same at the present day. In ])rinting from Avood engravings, on the other hand, or from electro-plates, Avhidi are fac similes of thfin in copper, the lines of the design are in relief, precisely like the faces of the types ; and the ink may be taken off from them by the same general press- ure, exerted simultaneously over the Avholo surface ol the plati-, as lliat Avhicli takes the impression from the tyi)cs. 'J'liis species ot engraving can consequently be Avorked in tlie same jiatre with let- ter-press, and by the same impression. Tliis difference is of immense iiiiportiince in resjtect t.^ the prae- orl'ER-ri.ATK I'KINTINC lOG ENGRAVINGS. Slow and laborious nature orthe process. tical working of the two methods, where gi'eat numbers of impres- sions arc required. The engravings for Harper's JMagazine, for example, by being cut in relief, can be Avorked in the power-press- es with tlie other matter of the number. By this means, they can be printed with gi-eat rapidity, although still, on account of the A'ast number of copies that are required, the operation occupies a considerable time. If, however, the engravings were all in one form, the whole hundred and forty thousand copies could be worked off in a little moi'C than a month from one press.* If, now, on the other hand, we suppose the engravings to be ex- ecuted in steel or copper, the result would be astonishingly differ- ent. I find, by an examination of the last number of the Maga- zine that has been issued at the present time, that it contains not less than sixteen solid pages of engravings. If we suppose that two of these pages were engraved on one plate, it would require, at the usual rate of printing by this method — say two hundred and fifty impressions per day- — not much less than tino years to work off the necessary number of copies from one plate, and that would be only two pages out of the sixteen ; so that it would take ticelve or fifteen years, with one copper-plate press, to print all the en- gravings required for one number, instead of a month or therea- bout, as by the present method. Of course, by multiplying the * In point of fact, the engravings are scattered through many forms, and it takes several presses, therefore, to print the engravings of one number within the month ; and as portions of several numbers are being printed at the same time, there is an av- erage of ten or twelve presses constantly employed on the Magazine. Sometimes twenty are at work upon it at one time. ENGRAVINGS. 107 Wood superior in certain respects. Kind of wood uaed. presses used, the work would be hastened, hut it would require many hundreds of presses to do the work of one number within the month. Thus we see that steel and eopper-plate engravings can only be used as illustrations of literary works in cases whore the number of copies to be issued is comparatively smalL Then, moreover, they can not be printed on the same page with the descriptions re- ferring to them, except at great additional expense, but must be on separate leaves. In some respects, moreover, wood engravings, wlicn executed in tlie highest style of art, arc superior to tho.'^e on copper or steel. There is a certain indescribable boldness and richness of cftect that characterizes this mode when it is carried to perfection which can not be produced on copper or steel. In making a wood engraving, the first thing to be done is for the artist to draw the design on the block of wood to be engraved. The wood used must be of a very fine and compact grain. Box- wood is the kind generally employed. In fact, no other wood has yet been discovered with a grain close enough to serve for fine en- gi'avings. As the boxwood is a small tree, blocks of sufficient size for large engi'avings can be procured only by gluing together a num- ber of pieces. It is prepared by being sawed off in bhicks from the end of the log, and then squared and smootlied in a very exact man- ner. These operations are performed by means of very ingenious machinery, at large establishments devoted expressly to the busi- ness. The thickness of the blocks is uniform, being the same as tlie length of the types, in order that the blocks, when engraved, 108 ENGRAVINGS. The designer. Ilis mode of proceeding lJoi)ler. may be set up with the types in a page of matter. Tlie size of the block, of course, varies with the size of the design. In making the design, tlie artist sometimes reads the work of the author, and selects his subject, and sometimes the author him- self selects the subjects, and gives the designer a description of them. The artist then makes a design and drawing correspond- ing to the description. To illustrate this more fully, I give here an actual description of a design, selected at random from the last set which I sent to j\Ir. Dopier, the artist Avho makes many of the drawings for these Story Books, and insert also an engraving of the design which he made, that the reader may compare them. The desig-n belong-s to a set made to illustrate a future number of the Story Books entitled John True. Of course this block will be used twice. It is employed here to illustrate the nature of de- signing. In the story, when we reach it in the series, it will come in again, in its proper place, to illustrate the narrative. The following is the description sent : LUNCHEON. A comer in a handsome breakfast-room in the Fifth Avenue. A small table neatly set for luncheon near a large bow window. Rich furniture partly or wholly shown. Handsome curtains to the window. Two pretty children, John True, and his sister, five years old, are at the table eating their luncheon, which consists of chicken-pie, and a tumbler of milk for each. Pitcher on the table. The children are dressed very plainly and simply. On the facing page vou will see the design wliich tlie artist made. ENGRAVINGS. Specimen of a design to be compared with the deacription. 101» THE UL>li By comparing the description with the design, tlic reader will see how miicli in all cases is necessarily left to the inventive ge- nius of the artist in respect to all the details of the work. Some- 110 ENGRAVINGS. Common mistake. Designing an intellectual art. Preparation of the wood. times persons imagine that being able to draw prettily upon paper or Bristol-board, from engravings or from drawings made by other persons, is evidence of qualifications to make original designs on wood for the engraver, but a very few trials will in most cases convince them how great is the mistake. The penciling is merely the mechanical part of the work. Designing, on the other hand, is purely an intellectual process, and it requires intellectual quali- ties of the highest order to perform it successfully. There must be a poetical fancy, great powers of invention, and a refined and delicate taste combined. The putting of the drawing on the wood is only a mechanical rriode of expressing the conceptions of the mind. The success of the work will depend, of course, altogether on what the conceptions are that are expressed, and this depends on the structure of the mind, and not on the skill or training of the hand. In other words, a designer is a ])oet whose hand has been train- ed to express his mental conceptions by drawing. Where the conceptions of the mind are meagre, weak, and prosaic, no skill of the hand will be of any avail, for the hand can not change the conceptions. It can only express them as they are. In drawing on the wood, the artist first whitens the surface of the block by applying a composition to it. He usually sketches his design first in outline on paper, and then transfers the tracing to this white surface by pressure. He then goes on to finish the drawing. It Avould be difficult to draw on a thick block, if it were placed by itself upon a table or desk, for want of a support to the ENGRAVINGS. Ill The drawing-board. Materials and implements. Models. hand, especially at those parts of the design "wliich come near the edges. To remedy this inconvenience, the artist uses a sort of drawing-board or tablet to place his block in while he is drawing upon it. This tablet consists of a board with a flat border on two sides of it. The border is about two or three inches wide, and is of the exact thickness of the block. The block is placed \ipon this board in the angle of the border, and thus the upper side of the border forms a continuous surface Avith the upper side of tlie block, and serves as a support to the hand in drawing. Besides this tablet, the designer requires but few instruments or implements for his work. He nmst have a A\iriety of })encils, of various degrees of hardness and blackness, and a pair of compass- es, and scales of equal parts, and tracing-paper, brushes, and India ink, and a few other similar materials, and this is all. He, how- ever, requires many aids in the Avay of models and patterns. It is true that, in all original designs that he makes, he must depend upon his own inventive fancy for the general concojition of the scene, and for the selection and disposition of the objects that lie introduces ; but in drawing the details, he must have either tliese objects themselves before him, or else good ch-awings of them made by others, except in the case of those comparatively few forms Avhich he has drawn so often that he already knows them thor- ouglily. This makes it necessary for him to liave in Jiis studio a great number and variety of models of forms, and also book.s and })ortfolios of engravings, and other objects and works of art, to aid him, and these generally make the studio a very atlrartivc place. 112 ENGRAVINGS. View of Dopler's studio. THE STUDIO. ENGKAVINQS. 113 Mode of engraving the blocks. Lines of the shading. The shadow. When the artist has finished a set of designs, the blocks con- taining the drawings arc sent to the engraver to be cut. This ■work of cutting consists, as has been ah'cady cxphiined, in cutting out all the wood between the lines of the design, so as to leave the lines themselves in relief. This any one not well acquainted Avith the subject might well suppose to be impossible, so tine are the lines, and so close togeth- er do they lie in a good drawing. Just look, for example, at the engraving of the Studio, and observe the drawing of the . is the Led. Tlic form to be printed is placed upon it. In the engraving, the press is represented as prepared for printing one of the hirge j)lacards for Harper's Magazine. We see the words in the form as it hes in its place upon the bed. The words are, of course, reversed, Ijut they will come right when printed, or when soen in a looking-glas.s. T is the tympan. The sheet to be printed is placed upon it. F is the frisket. The use of the ii'isket is to iiold the sheet close upon the tympan Avhen the tympan is turned over upon the form. The frisket is a light iron frame, covered with paper, and moving on hinges, with openings in the paper to correspond with the pages of the form that is to be printed. AVhen the sheet is j)laced upon the tympan, the frisket is brought down over it, to hold the paj)cr, and then the tympan is brought down to the form. Of course, tlie paper comes over the face of the t}i)es, which have been pre- viously inked by the rollers seen behind, and the tympan comes upon the back of it. The tympan consists of a piece of India-rub- ber cloth stretched upon a frame, with one thickness of flannel or something similar placed beliind it, and kept in its place by a lining of nnislin. Its object is to equalize, as it were, the press- ure upon the sheet of paper on the form. And now the bed of the press, B, eanying the form, with the tympan and frisket folded over it, is run Ijackward along the rails, 11, K, on a sort of concealed carnage, worked ])y a crank, seen in the side of the rail, until it is under the ])la(cn, I'. This ])laten 118 THE PKESS. Comparison of the modern press with those of old times. is simply a thick iron plate, strongly braced, and arranged so as to be movable through a short space np and down. L is a lever connected with a joint which furnishes tlie power for pressing the platen down. It is worked by means of the long handle extend- ing to the right. The pressman inins the form in under the plat- en with his left hand by means of the crank, and then, with his right hand, pulls the handle, and forces the platen down with very great power upon the tympan, thus pressing the sheet hard upon the face of the types, and causing it to take the impression. Then pushing back the handle, the two spiral springs seen above on each side lift the platen up, and the form is released. The pressman then runs the fonn out, as he had run it in, by turn- ing the little side crank, and, unfolding the frisket and t}TTipan, he takes out the sheet and puts in an- other. While he is doino: this, the roller, seen be- hind, by means of some curious machineiy con- nected with it, comes for- ward, and inks tlie form so as to be ready for a new impression. The adjoining engrav- ing is a coiTect represent- FRANKLIN S PRESS, THE PRESS. 119 Great progress made in the mechanical arts during the last hair centar}'. ation of one of the presses used by Franklin before the Rcvplu- tion. It is of comparatively very rude construction, but the read- er will observe that the same essential parts arc to be seen in it that have been described. The frisket is folded down, and so does not appear ; but the tympan is there, and the bed, and tiie car- riage, and the platen, and the power, which in this case is a screw. The great difference in the mechanism of the two machines il- lustrates in some measure the immense progress that has been made in the course of the last half century in tiie mechanical arts : and yet, to get a full and complete idea of this progress, we must compare Franklin's press, not Avith the hand-press already de- scribed, but with one of the gi-eat poAvcr-presscs, by means of wliich almost all the prodigious printing operations of the present day are performed. A representation of one of these ])resses, as it stands in the great press-room of the llai-jicr ]vstablislimcnt, is seen in the following page. It is too complicated to be fully de- scribed in detail, but some of the more prominent features of it may be pointed out. The girl who stands at it is called the feeder. She has a pile of damped paper on a stand over the press. Tiic pile is inclined a little toward her, so as to make it easier for her to draw off the successive sheets. Under this pile of paper is tlic platen. We recognize it by the iron braces partially seen beneath tlie stand on which the paper is placed. The form is beneath the l)laten, and is not in view. It rests there on the bed of tlie press, Avhich is likewise hidden. To the right, Ave see a jiart of tiic sys- tem of rollers by Avhich the form is inked. The feeder has just ])laced a sheet to be printed on tlie inclined table before lier. This 120 THE TKESS. THE PRESS. 121 Description of one of (he power-presses. table is called the ajn'on. In a moment a set of iron fingers will come up from below, and, taking hold of the lower edge of the pa- per, will draw it in under the platen, between the platen and tli(^ form. The revolution of the machinery will then bring an im- mense power into operation, by means of cams and levers seen bt;- low, by which the bed of the press, with the form and sheet upon it, are pressed up for a moment "with great force against the plat- en. This makes the impression. The form then descends again, and the sheet, by a very ingenious and peculiar mechanism, pass- es out under the apron on which the feeder originally placed it, to- Avard the left, where the edge of it jumps up very mysteriously upon a series of endless tapes, which may be seen in the engraving through the fly-wheel.* From these it is taken up by a light frame, formed of long and slender rods of wood, and is carried over and laid down upon the pile at the extreme left of tiie engraving. Thus the work goes regularly on, with no attendance whatever except the placing of each successive sheet within tlie reach of the iron fino;ci-s which are to cb^aw it into the machine. A'isitors wdio watch the motions of the press while it is pcrt'orm- ing its work are always particularly pleased with the life-like ac- tions of the iron fingers that come up and take iiold of tiie lower edge of the sheet of paper on tlic apron, and, after lifting it gently over the ledge formed on the lower side of the apron to prevent its * The tenn cntUrss, wlicn used in such a connection as tliirt. in the dcitrription of machinery, denotes that the hand, or chain, or wliatover else it may Iw to which it is applied, passes over two pulleys at a distance from each other, and is joined nl iho ends, so as to revolve confinuouslv between and over the pulleys 122 THE PRESS. Ingenious mechanical contrivances. Appearance of the press-room. sliding down, draw it in under the platen to be printed ; and Avhen the sheet comes out again, under the apron, after receiving the impression, they wonder by what means the edge of it is made to leap up so dexterously upon the tape-lines that are to carry it away. They often watch this motion very closely a long while without being able to discover how the effect is produced. The explanation is, that the edge of the sheet is blown up by a puff of wind from below. There is a pair of bellows concealed in the frame-work of the press, and at precisely the right instant the rev- olution of the machinery gives a putf from it up through a row of holes exactly under the edge of tlie sheet of paper. The impulse of this puif throws the edge of the sheet up to the tapes, and the long fingers of the frame which is to lift it over and place it upon the pile having previously laid themselves between the tapes, the sheet is received upon them, and immediately afterward is earned over. In the engraving, this frame, which is called a fly, has just carried over one printed sheet, and is coming back for another. There are nearly thirty of these presses in the great press-room, and there is something imposing and almost sublime in the calm and steady dignity with which the ponderous engines continue their ceaseless toil. There is, indeed, a real dignity and a real grace in the movements which they perform. The observer looks down the room from the elevated desk of the foreman, and surveys the scene Avith great interest and pleasure, Avondering at the com- plicated massiveness of the constructions, and at the multitude of Avheels, and pulleys, and bands that mingle and combine their mo- tions Avith the revolutions of the machinerv. His attention is DRYING AND PRESSING THE SHEETS. 123 Storage of the electrotype plates. Dr) ing and pressing. particularly attracted to the action of the Jiies, as they rise in suc- cession, one after another, in all parts of the room, bringint^ up tlie Leautifully printed sheets from the press, and, carrying tliem over, lay them gently down upon the gradually accumulating pile. When all the fomis of tlie Look which is in hand have been "worked oif," as tlie phrase is, the electrot^-jjc plates of the sev- eral pages, having been previously separated from the blocks, are taken back to the subten-anean vaults, and arc there safely stored away in the compartments assigned to them. The place of tlie entrance to these vaults was shown, and some account of their ex- tent Avas given, in a previous chapter. The number of plates ac- cumulated there, enormous as it is, is increasing at the rate of, upon an average, two hundred a day. CHAPTER XIII. DRYING AND PRESSING THE SHEETS. Sheets of paper to be printed require, as has already been re- marked, to be made damp before being put upon the ])rcss. When perfectly dry, they do not take the ink well. Of course, ai'ter tlu-y are printed, the first process is to dry them. Newspapers are not dried, but arc distributed to the subscribers just as they come from the press. There is not time to dry them, for they must ordinarily be issued immediately, liut sheets wliifli are to be folded and formed into books require to be dried and then to be pressed. Tiiis pressing is necessary, not only for the purpose of flattening out the Avari)iii<2:s and twistiiiu^-* in the sheets." 124 DRYINa AND PRESSING THE SHEETS. The drying-room. Mode of placing tlie sheets on the drying-frames. produced by their having been wet and dried, but also to remove the little burr or protrusion in the paper made by the pressure of the types. The process of drying the sheets has already been referred to, and the place where it is performed is shown in the section on page 42. It is in the second story, and in the first division of that story toward the left. The opposite engraving gives an enlarged view of tlie drying apparatus. The men on the left are bringing the sheets to be dried. They take them down from a stack of sheets piled up in the racks so high that it requires a ladder to reach them. The sheets are moved from place to place about the floor by means of trucks. One of these trucks stands by itself in the foreground. In the centre of the j)icture, three men are em- ployed in placing the sheets upon one of the frames, which has been drawn out for the purpose from the drying-room. The work- men put tho sheets on the lowermost bars of the frame with their hands. The higher bars are reached by means of a pole, with a eross-bar at the top of it. The form of this instrument, and the manner in which the workmen load it with the sheets — several at a time — is seen by the action of the man who is standing at the truck, near the frame. When the sheets are put upon the pole in this way, they are lifted up and placed across the upper bars of the frame, as we see in the action of the central figure of the group. When all the bars of the fi-ames are filled mth sheets, the frame itself is pushed into the drying compartment. The end of each frame consists of a board of the same width as the distance at which the frames stand apart when they are in their places, and DRYING AND PRESSINC. Till: SHEETS, 125 Construction and arrangement of the drying-room 1 iiL u.; . i: lliiis these boards, when tlie frames arc all in, fomi one continuous ]):irtition, which shuts off the compartment closely from tlic rest of the room, and keeps the hot air within it confined till tlie sheets are dried. Of course, there is a proper arrangement for ventilation, in order tliat the vapors produced hy the process of drying may bo carried away. 126 DRYING AND PRESSING THE SHEETS. View of the hydraulic presses. IIYPKWLIC PRESSES DRYING AND PRESSING THE SHEETS. 127 Account or the hydraulic pump and of the hydraulic presucs. There are over forty of these frames in the compartment. They ■jvill contain twelve hundred sheets each, making about fifty thou- sand sheets in all that may be dried at one time. The process of drying requires about a day. The frames can be moved in and out very easily, for tliey are all suspended by pulleys or trucks, that run upon little railways placed near the ceiling above. When the sheets are dried they are to be pressed. The press- ure is applied by means of a hydraulic pump, \ view of this engine is seen on the right, in the foreground. Though it does not appear large in the engra\'ing, the force of pressure which it exerts is not less than five hundred tons. It consists simply of a double-acting force-pump, with cylinders of small bore, but with a great force from the engine to act upon the pistons. This forces the water through a very strong pipe beneath the floor to other cylinders, fitted also with pistons, under the presses. These oth- er cylinders are large. Of course, whatever force is applied to the small pistons in the pumps, an equal amount of pressure is pro- duced on every square inch of the large pistons in the cylinders under the presses, and thus a prodigious pressure on the sheets of paper is the result. We see the upper part of one of these large cylinders under tiic first of the presses on the left. Above it is a square iron plate, which forms a base on which the pile of sheets of paj)er to be pressed rests. This plate, like those of similar function in the printing-press, is called the platen. It is very thick, and is stif- fened beneath liv iron braces, whicli are ]iartially seen in thf en- 128 DllYlNG AND PJiESSING THE SHEETS. Mechanical contrivances. Shifting the sheets. graving. The little circular handle which is seen rising up out of the floor, opposite the end of the press, is connected with a valve, by which the water in the great cylinders may be let off, and the pressure relieved. The presses themselves stand in a row at the end of the room. They occupy the right hand of the second story of the building, as shown in a sectional view of the diiferent stories on page 42. Each press may be connected with the pump, or disconnected from it at pleasure, so that one may be giving up or receiving a supply of sheets while the others are full and in action. The manner of placing the sheets in the press is shown in the engraving, where a man is seen at the third press in the row, stand- ing on a step-ladder, and making up the pile. The arrangement for taking this pile out when it has been sufficiently pressed is ex- ceedingly ingenious and convenient. In front of the row of presses is a little raihvay, as seen in the engraving. This railway is trav- ersed by two small cars, one of which is seen distinctly in the foreground. The other is in the distance, and is partly concealed. Tliese cars serve the purpose of bridges to convey the piles of pressed paper across the railway, or as cars to move along it, as may be required. For this purpose, two short rails are laid across each of them. We see these cross-rails very distinctly in the bridge which stands in the foreground. By means of these cross- rails, the whole pile of paper may be run out upon the bridge ; for the pile itself, while in the press, rests upon trucks and rails above the platen, which are, however, concealed from view. The ma- chinery is so arranged that when the bridge is placed opposite one DKVlNa AND PKES.SINU THi: .SHEKlfi. 121* Tbe railways. The llyiag bridges. Paateboard abeeu. of the presses, the rails on the bridge correspond exactly with thr, rails on the platen in the press, which tiic pile of paper rests upon, and also with the rails of a square stand placed opposite, just out- side the long rails. We see one of these stands, with a low pile of paper upon it, where the boy is at work taking the })aper away. In a word, by trundling the bridge along the railway in the floor, it may be placed in such a manner as to form a railway above, ruiming across from the presses to the stand outside, by means of which the whole pile of pressed sheets may be rolled out at once to a situation Avhcrc the boys can come conveniently to take tiiem away, wliilc, in the mean thne, the press itself is at liberty to be tilled up at once again. These facilities for moving the masses of paper are the more necessary, on account of the great quantity that the presses receive at a time. The stack is nearly six feet high, and Avcighs about a ton. Each sheet, when it is put into the press, is placed between two sheets of thin, but very smooth and hard pasteboard. It is very plain that the sheets would not be pressed smootli by coming in juxtaposition with each other. The processes of putting the sheets in between these pasteboards, and taking them out again after they are pressed, is quite an interesting one, on account of the very systematic and rapid manner in which it is pei-tbrmcd. Opposite the presses, and just beyond the right-hand margin of the last en- graving, there stands a range of very wide tables where thi.^ work is done. It re(|uires two men at each table to do it. One takw out from between two sheets of pasteboard the .«hect of paprr th.it in I 130 FORWARDING. Changing the sheets. Gathering. The signatures. has been pressed, and the other, at the same instant almost, puts another in, shifting the several sheets, both of paper and pasteboard, from pile to pile, in the course of the manipulation, with a dexteri- ty and rapidity that is surprising. As fast as a sufficient number of the rearranged sheets are ready, a boy takes them away, and places them in the press, while another boy continually brings a fresh supply of those that have been pressed to take their places. The pressing which the sheets receive in this operation makes an astonishing diiference in the smoothness and beauty of the page when the book comes to be bound. CHAPTER XIV. FORWARDING. When the sheets are folded, they are gat/cered, as it is termed ; that is, a pile of each sort being laid out along a table, a girl takes from each pile one, and puts them together in the proper or- der, so as to form the book or pamphlet. These separate sheets are all marked at the foot of the outer page of each of them with what is called the signature, that is, with a letter or figure which denotes Avhat sheet it is of the series. The girl glances her eye at these signatures when gathering the sheets, and thus makes sure that there is no mistake, but that she is taking them in their proper order. You will see these signatures in this book by looking at the foot of the pages following every six- teenth page — that is, at the foot of pages 17, 33, 49, &c. You will observe that the letters succeed each other in regular order. FOKWAKUING. i;;i The process of stabbing. Sewing. Sawing the baeka. If tlie work i?^ a pamplilet, as, for example, a miinbtr uf tlit- ]\Iagazinc or of the Stury IJook.s, it is stitc/ted. If it i.s a Louml book, it is to be ,scu:ed. To proj)avc the pamphlet lur stitchiii<^, tiirec holes arc made through the sheets by means of a machine called a dabbnuj ma- chine. The pamphlet to be stab- ^ bed is laid by the Avorkman upon a flat board, and then, by means of a pedal, or lever, worked by the foot, three steel points arc brought down through the paper, so as to make the three holes re- quired for the twine by which the pamphlet is to be stitched. You will see these holes, and tht; twine passing through them, by examining any pampldct. Books that are tc be bound arc seiocd, as it is called ; this is quite a different process from stitching. To prepare the books for being sewed, the first step is to fiuiv small grooves through the backs of them, deep enough to receive the bands of twint- to which each sheet is secured. The sawing of these grooves is pcrlbrmcd in what is called a sawing; machine. This machine consists df a table, with two iron rails upon it running iViuii niij ti» ciiii. ( )n ihoso rails is a sort of 1)o\, or rather tVamc, with sides ami back. '^%^ 132 roRWARIMNU. View of the machine for sawing the backs. THE SAWINQ MACHINE. Imt no front. This frame traverses the table to and fro on the FORWAia»iN(i. i;i;{ Account or the sawing machine. Tables (or sewing books. rails. The workman takes a quantity of folded sheets from a sujv plj made ready for him on the tallies near, and, placing tiiem in this frame, he wedges them in securely. Beneath tlie tabic arc placed several circular saws, arranged at the proper distance from each other. The teeth of these saws project a little above tlie ta- ble, through an opening made in it, in sucli a manner that, when the frame is run along over them, the grooves are sawed in the backs of the sheets. The sheets are then to be sewed. This operation i.s perturmed by great numbers of girls, seated at long tables, extending in rows along the room, as shown in the sectional view in page 42. The sewing of the books is a great work. The ranges of tables de- voted to it are so extensive as to furnish accommodations for one hundred girls, and each place is provided with a seat and a stool, that may both be raised or depressed, to suit the comfort and con- venience of the occupant.* Every visitor who sees these girls at their work is struck with the extreme rapidity and dexterity of their movements, and with the healthy, and happy, and highly at- tractive appearance which they themselves and tlie scene of their labors exhibit. Indeed, so far as my observation goes, one of the chief subjects of remark with strangers, after coming away from a visit to the whole establishment, is the intelligent and manly bear- ing of the men who are employed in it, and the attractive ajjpear- ance and lady-like manners of the girls. ♦ The number of girls employed in the fjildint'-room in 12. in the »cviinj{-room. 100; in the gathering and folding-room, 150; and in the |.ri-sH-ro.)m. 30. niaknii; nearly 300 in all. ]84 i'ORWAKDING. View of the cutting machine and of the great shears. MAKBLING. 135 Machine for trimming the edges of books. Martiling. On the opposite page is an engraving of one of the ditierent kinds of machines by which the edges of the books, when sewed, an* triiii- raed. A pile of the books is screwed up very tight in a massive frame, as seen in the engraving, and then a long and straight blade of steel is made to traverse to and fro with great rapidity, the frame gradually rising, as the blade cuts its way through the pile of books, until the edges of the whole pile are trimmed smooth. The books are then turned, and the same operation is repeated on the ends. The great shears seen in operation at one side are used fur cut- ting up sheets of pasteboard to form covers for the books. These preliminaiy processes, which all belong to tlie department of binding caWcii foncarding, are performed chietly in the Hftli story of the Cliff Street building, as is shown more ])lainly in tin* sectional view. CHAPTER XV. MARBLINO. In a comer of the forwarding apartment there is a small inclo- sure, partially separated from the rest of the room by low parti- tions, that is appropriated to the process of mnrhHtuj. 'J'liis is one of the most curious processes to be seen in the whole estab- lishment. There are two fonns of it — one the marbling of sheets of paper, and the other tliat of the edges of books. Tlie process is essentially the same in both cases. It consists of sprinkling the colors first upon the surface of a licpiiil, in a sort of tank, .-iiul 136 MARBLING. General account of the marbling process. then taking them off upon tlie surface to be marbled by bringing the paper, or the edges of the book, down gently upon the colors, and thus, as it were, sponging them up from off the surface of the liquid on which they were floating. One would suppose that su.ch an operation as this would be per- fectly impossible, and visitors who witness it for the first time re- gard it with astonishment and delight. THE MARBLINO-ROOM. The engraving represents a workman in tlie act of taking up a sheet of paper which he had just before laid down upon the sur- face of the liquid in the tank. On the riglit is a bench containing MAKBLlNli. The pots of colors. Mode of sprinkling them upon the sizing. the pots of colors. They are mixed with water, and are of the proper consistency to sprinkle easily from a brush. TJiey contain, however, some composition which prevents their blending with each other when sprinkled, one after another, upon the surface of tho liquid in the tank. Each drop, when falling upon the spot made by the preceding drop, instead of mixing Avith it, remains perffctlv distinct, only crowding the color of the preceding drop away a lit- tle to make room for itself, as we shall presently sec. The pots contain but a small quantity of coloring matter, little more than enough to cover the bottom of them. If it were other- wise, too much would be taken up by the bioishes. Tlie Inu.-^he.s themselves are of somewhat peculiar form, tlic bristles cxtiMuling laterally more than is usual. When tlie surface of the liquid in the tank is ready to^receive the sprinkling, the workman takes one of the brushes, and rolls it between his liands, by the handle, be- fore he takes it out of the pot, in order to throw off the superfluous coloi'ing from it ; and then, holding it over the tank, he proceeds to sprinkle the surface of the liquid with it, throwing off minute drops from the brush by a peculiar and very dexterous motion. The drops fall upon the surface of the liquid in the tank like drop.>< of rain upon a pond, only, instead of sinking and disappearing, they remain on the surface, spreading into pretty large and exceed- ingly well defined and beautiful circular spots of red, blue, green, or violet, as the case may be. Tlie drops spread, some of them to the size of a quarter of a dollar, and are almost matheiiiatically perfect in their form. Tlie Avorkman tlien takes aiiollier lnush fVum anotlier |Mif. and 138 MARBLING. The colors do not mingle. Mode of sprinkling them. SPRINKLING THE COLORS. sprinkles the surface again with another color. If the first color was red, the second may perhaps he blue. In this case, the blue drops, instead of mingling with the red, remain perfectly distinct from them, crowding them, moreover, more or less out of their places, and modifying the forms of them. For example, if a blue drop were to fall directly upon the centre of a red spot that was produced by the previous sprinkling, it would crowd out the red color to a wider circumference, while it would itself occupy the MAKHMNi;. l;;ii Curious eflects produced by the Bprinkling. ccntro, and avc sliouki liave, in that case, a central blue spot sur- rounJed hy a concentric ring of red. On the other hand, if thi- Lluc drop were to fall upon the margin of the red drop, then it Avould push one half of the red spot back upon itself, straiglitening the side that it came in contact -with, and expanding the opposite side. The result would be, in this case, a large circular spot, one half of which would be blue and the other half red, the boundary between the two being a straight line passing from one side of tlie spot, through the centre, to the other side. Of course, it is not often that either of these two cases precisely occurs. The drops of blue fall indiscriminately all over the surface of the liquid in the tank, and come upon tlic drops of red in every variety of position, producing, consequently, an infinite variety of forms by tlio com- binations of the two colors. In the mean time, the workman continues the pi*ocess of sprink- ling, lie takes next some other color : it may be yellow, or green, or dark purple. Whatever it may be, the third set of drops fall as the others did, each making for itself a place by crowding the others out of the way, and producing new and still more compli- cated varieties of form. 'J'liis sprinkling is followed by another and another, until at length there may be five, six, or eight differ- ent colors combined, and tiien, on closely examining tlie surface, you Avill perceive that the original red is still entirely distinct fVoni the colors that iiave been subsequently added, not having mijKjlea with them at all, even at the lines of contact with them, though the form of the spaces wiiicli it occupies is entirely changed. The original circles lia\'c cntirelv disaiip<';irc(l, and the red is now seen 140 MARBLINCJ. Various modifications of the coloring. Different patterns. occupying only the curved and irregular interstices which lie be- tween the drops formed by subsequent sprinklings. In a word, the whole surface of the liquid in the tank has become covered with brilliant and' variegated colors, each different, one being sep- arated from the next by distinct and well-defined lines, that wave and curve among each other in beautiful and endlessly-varied con- figurations. The reader will understand all this much better by examining some piece of marble paper, if he can iind a specimen at hand. By counting the number of colors, you can ascertain how many sprinklings were required for that particular sheet, and by observ- ing the forms of the different masses of color in the light of the explanation given above, you can almost detex'mine the precise or- der in which the different sprinklings were applied. Sometimes the arrangement of the colors on the liquid in the tank is modified in a very curious Avay by drawing a sort of rake or comb along the surface of it. The instruments used for this purpose are of different kinds, varying in the fineness of the teeth, and in their distance from each other. These teeth, being dra^vn over the surface of the liquid in the tank, have the effect of draw- ing the colors, as they term it, and thus modifying the configura- tions in a very curious manner, producing a sort of honey-combed or scalloped appearance very difficult to describe, but which those who have seen it will easily remember. This is called the comb pattern. When at length the sprinkled surface is ready, the workman takes a sheet of white paper, supposing that it is marbled pajjer .MARBLING. 141 How the colors are taken up by the paper. < Number of pattemii. that he now wishes to produce, and lays it carefully down upon the liquid, beginning at one corner, and letting the sheet graduallv down until it lies wholly on the liquid. He then immediately }>roceeds to apply a second sheet, the tank lieiiig of a size to re- ceive two sheets at a time. He then takes the two sheets uj) again, one after the other, when it is found that the beautifully variegated colors which have been floating on the licpiid have been wholly transferred to the sheets. They have been taken up by the paper, and so completely absorbed, too, into the substance of it, that the surface, all wet and dripping as it is, may be rubbed Avith the finger without in any degree disturbing the colors. The siicets, as they arc taken up, are laid across a wooden rod, and hung upon a frame near by to drain and dry. We sec the frame in the engraving, with the sheets hanging on it, to the loft of the workman. Of course, the number of patterns which can be formed by the different combinations of colors, and the different modes of apply- ing them, are infinitely A-aried. If, for example, all the colors that are to be used in the pattern are applied to the liquid before the comb is drawn over the surface of it, then one effect will be pro- duced ; but if one of the colors is reserved until after the combing, and then sprinkled on, the effect, as may easily be seen, would be totally different, and this difference may be varied by rfsir\ ing any one of the dozen different colors that are to be api)li«'d. And so Avith every otlicr stop in the, oonq)licatod process. There is one peculiar pattern, callod the n-Kn patti-ni. it is characterized by a series of waves in the coloring. 'I'hf waves 142 MAKBLING. The wave pattern. How it is produced. The burnishing. succeed each other at short and regular intervals, passing diagon- ally across the sheet. This eftect is produced simply by the mode of laying the sheet upon the colors. The workman begins at one corner ; but then, instead of letting the successive portions of the paper down by a slow and uniform motion, he gives it, very dex- terously, a series of gentle impulses, letting down the paper a short space at each impulse. This occasions a sort of fluctuation on the surface of the liquid, and the colors, whatever they may be, are taken up in waves. Then, besides the fine combs, there are large and coarse ones, with teeth several inches apart, by means of which the colors may be drawn in various Avays over the surface of the liquid, so as to produce the appearance of streams, and an endless variety of other beautiful configurations. It will easily be seen that the number of patterns which may be formed by the different combinations of these and other similar elements is literally infinite, and, of course, to be a good marbler, a man must possess excellent judgment and taste, as well as great skill. The beautiful gloss which Ave see upon finished marble paper does not appear upon it Avhen it first comes from the marbler's hands. This gloss is the result of a subsequent process of hur- nishbig, which is represented by the engraving on the opposite page. The burnishing is produced by means of a piece of polished fiiut or agate, which passes rapidly to and fro over the surface of ALA.JiBLlN(ji. I4;i View or the burnishing machine in action. BUH.MSIIINU. 144 MARBLING. Operation of the burnishing machine. The bed. Skill required. • the paper, the sheet being held for the purpose upon a sort of bed prepared for it to lie upon, on a very solid bench or table. The burnisher, as is shown in the engraving, is attached to the lower end of a long lever that descends from the ceiling. At the upper end of the lever is a joint, by means of which the lower end may be moved to and fro. Near the lower end is a bar, which may be seen passing oif toward the window, where it is attached to a crank on the outer side of the wheel. When the axle of that wheel is put in motion by means of the band coming down from above and passing over the pulleys — seeu at the left-hand end of the axle — the crank is turned, and the bar pulls the burnisher to and fro very rapidly over the surface of the paper. The bed on which the paper rests while undergoing the opera- tion is a block of wood set in a frame that is screwed to the bench. The end of it is seen in the engraving under the sheet of paper. The upper surface of this block is made concave, so that the bur- nisher, in moving to and fro, shall always be in contact with it. This bed is not absolutely fixed, but is susceptible of being moved up and down, so as to press with a greater or less degree of force against the burnisher, as may be required. This pres.sure is reg- ulated by means of a strong spring connected with a pedal below. As the process of burnishing goes on, the operator draws the sheet forward by a very slow and carefal motion, so as to subject all parts of it in succession to the polishing effect of the friction. It requires considerable skill to manage the sheet so as to produce upon it a smooth and uniform gloss. The operator, in holding the sheet, begins in the middle of it, and works first toward the farther FINISHING. 145 Cases made separately for books bound in muslin. side by drawing the sheet gently forward as the process goes on. She then turns the slicct, and, taking the liaU' ah-eady polisliod to- ward her, she proceeds witli the operation on the other half in the same manner. Not only marble ])aper, but colored papers of all kinds are bur- nished in this manner. CHAPTER XYI. FINISHING. When books are to be bound in muslin, the covers of them are not formed upon the book itself, but are made and iinished separ- ately, and are afterward applied to the book and properly secured. These covers, before they are applied to the book, are called cases. They are made in great quantities by a series of separate process- es, each workman performing one process upon a great number of covers, and then passing the whole stock into the hands of anoth- er workman for the next process. Tlius one cuts out the pasteboard for the sides of the cover by means of the great shears shown in a previous engraving. The frame to which the shears are hxed is so made that tlie pasteboard is measured by the very operation of cutting it. The workman has only to slide the sheet along as far as it will go, and then cut. lie is sure to cut it in the right place witliout any tliought or care. y>y this plan, the work is not only performed more rapidly and easily, but also far more exactly, than would be possible by any other method of measuring. The sides thus cut, tun, are ]trocisrly 1.1 K 146 FINISHING. Cutting out the sides. Description of the process or gilding. of tlie same size, and they are afterward trimmed so square and true that, when they are piled up upon each other on the table, they seem to form, as it were, one solid block, like a block of wood standing on end. Another workman cuts out the muslin or the leather, whichever it may be, that the book is to be covered with. This operation is performed with so much system, and with such excellent arrange- ments for facilitating it, that the work is done with astonishing ra- pidity and precision. Then the parts of the case are put together. The back, connect- ing the two sides, is formed, and the sides are covered upon the outside, and lined within. The case is now finished as to its form, and it is taken into the stamping-room to be lettered, and also em- bossed or gilded on the sides or back. In the engi'aving on the opposite page, a pile of covers or cases, such as are used for the bound volumes of Harper's Magazine, or any other volume of that size, are seen lying on the table in the foreground on the left. Other piles of a smaller size are seen upon the tables, where the girls are at Avork upon them. The employ- ment of these girls- is to apply the gold leaf to tlie covers in the process of gilding them with the lettering and the ornaments of various kinds Avitli which the backs of handsomely-.bound books are usually embellished. The manner in which these o-ilded letters and ornaments are o made is very curious. To illustrate and explain it, I will take a very simple case. Let us suppose that a book is to have its title — one single word, we will say — put on in gilded letters on the FlXlSHlMii. 14< Mode of applying (he gold. View orilic tables Lack, and tliat tliis word is to Lc put in letters of such a size that it Mill occui)y a space about half an inch wide directly across the hack of tlic book, at a proper distance from the top. The cover is brought to the table seen in the engravino;. One of tiic girls, witli a small jiicce of sponge, whicli slie has dijipcd jircviously in a cer- tain preparation, formed chiefly of tlie white of an cgu', of whieli 148 FlKlSHlNU. Detailed account of the process of gilding. Mode of managing the gold. she has a supply before her ready for use, moistens that part of the cover where the lettering is to come. She then cuts out a strip of gold leaf half an inch wide, and long enough to extend across the back of the book, and places it upon the part which she has moistened. It adheres a little, and forms a gilded stripe across the case in the place where the letters should appear. This is what the girls are doing at the long table in the pre- ceding engraving. They are putting on strips of gold on all those parts of the cases of the books where the letters or the ornaments are to come. They keep their supplies of gold leaf in the drawers. They have an apparatus, of the form of a little stool, on the table before them, to work upon, and they use a variety of curious im- plements for dividing and moving the gold leaf, which is so thin and light that the least breath of wind would blow it away. In- deed, so great is the danger of this, that they are obliged to have a sort of screen placed before them on the table, to shelter their work from the accidental draughts which might be produced in the room by an open window, or by persons Avalking to and fro. This screen consists of some transparent texture spread over a frame. Thus it does not intercept the light, while yet it protects the work from the slightest movement of the air. But let us return to the cover, which was to be gilded with its title only on the back. When it has had placed upon it the strip of leaf large enough for the title, it is taken to a kind of press to be stamped. In this press is what is called a die — that is, a block of metal with the letters of the title of the book cut upon it in re- lief, precisely as the letters are cut upon the ends of the steel FINISHING. 14y The die. Effect or it. Manner or fixing the gold. punches used in type-founding, as has already been described. This die is made hot when it is placed in the press by means of steam circulating in concealed channels around it. The case is then slipped in, and it is placed with the face downward under it, and that instant the bed of the press rises by the action of the machinery, and forces the case against the die. Every thing is so adjusted beforehand that, in coming up, the faces of the letters are brought to bear with great force upon the strip of gold leaf which had previously been laid upon the case. There are two distinct effects produced by the operation. First, the substance of the leather or the muslin that comes directly upon the face of the let- ters in the die is compressed, and an indentation is made — one not very deep, it is true, but still very certain and distinct. And, secondly, the heat of the die causes the gold leaf to adhere where it touches — ^that is, where the faces of the letters come, while it has no effect on the other parts. TJuis that portion of the gold leaf which corresponds with the letters is forced, as it were, into in- dentations in the muslin or the leather, and fixed there by tiie heat and pressure of the die, while all the rest of it remains at liberty, and may be wiped away by a cloth, or a cushioned brush of soft leather. Tiie cover, when it is first witiidrawn from tiie press, looks very much as it did when it went in, the forms of the letters being at first scarcely visible ; but, on wiping away the superflu- ous gold leaf, tlicy come out fully to view, distinctly defined, and extremely brilliant and beautiful. One would at first suppose that tliis must be a very wasteful mode of making gilded letters, inasmuch as so large a portion of 150 FINISHING. Apparent waste. The drawer. Press for stamping and embossing. the leaf first applied has afterward to be brushed or wiped away. It is true that only a small part of the whole strip Avliich the giid first puts on the cover remains imprinted there by the action of the die, for the space lying between the letters, and above and below them, is much greater than tlaat occupied by the faces of the let- ters themselves. But then the portion of the leaf that is removed is by no means wasted or lost. The wiping away of the super- fluous gold is performed at a table well protected from currents of air, and having holes in it that communicate Avith a drawer below. The gold leaf that is rubbed off from the covers of the books pass- es down through these holes into the drawer, and once in three months it is sent to the goldsmith and sold for old gold. So great is the amount of gilding done at this table, that the value of the rubbish, as it might be called, which accumulates here every three months is not less than three hundred dollars, making twelve hundred dollars a year. The engraving on the opposite page shows the form of the press used for the stamping process just described. It is made very solid and massive, as the force of the pressure which is often required is enormously great. There is a massive top, which is called the platen, the function of it being the same as that of a platen of a printing-press, namely, to stand against the pressure of the bed rising from below. This top i« supported, or rather held down, by four wrought iron pillars, two of which are seen in the engraving. It is obvious that the chief purpose of these pillars is to hold the platen down rather than to hold it up, for when the bed below rises at the time of stamping or embossing a case, it riNisiiiNc. 151 View of one of the presses used Tor stamping and embossing. EMOnsSINO P 152 l-JNISHINU. Necessity of great strength in the press. Process of embossing lifts, SO to speak, with prodigious force against tlie platen, and if the cohinms that hold it Avere not very strong, and the bolts and screws by Avhich it is fastened to them were not very secure, it would be forced upward bodily and broken away. The die which contains tlie letters or ornaments that are to be stamped upon the case is placed in the platen. It is inserted in a receptacle used for it in the under side of the platen, and prop- erly secured there. There is a circulation of steam in channels within the platen, as has already been intimated, which serves to keep the die always hot. Cases can be stamped in these p)rocesses at the rate of sixteen impressions a minute — that is, as fast as a man can put the cases in and take them away ; and that witliout regard to the amount of gilding that may be required, whether it be only a single line, or whether the case be completely covered. Sometimes the covers of books are embossed with ornamental figures impressed into the leather or muslin without gilding. The patterns for this embossing are cut in solid brass plates of the size of the cover to which they are to be applied. A great number of these plates are seen in the engraving, on the shelves at the end of the room. When the die for gilding, or the side plate, as the case may be, is fixed in its proper position in the platen, the workman, Avitli a pile of cases at hand, sets the machine in motion, and the bed — that is, the solid mass of iron which forms the central part of the block which the man's hands are resting upon, is forced upward by means of what is called a T^mee-jomt below. The position of this Icnee- llNlSlllNd. 15iJ Operation of a knee or toggle joint. Great force exerted by it. joint may be seen in the engraving, underneath the bed of the press. This sort of joint is often used in presses. It is some- times called a toggle joint. The operation of it may be illustrated in this way. Suppose a man to stand with his back against a wall, and then to bend his knees a little forward. Of course, by ])ending his knees, his head is made to descend. Imagine now that a by-stander pushed his knees in, back to their place, so as to straighten his legs. His head will be forced up again. It Avouid be forced up, too, Avith great power — that is, provided the man be made of iron, and with no joints in him except those at his knees, and if they are bent only a little. It is true, his head would be forced up only a very sliort distance, but tlirougli that short dis- tance it would rise with great force. This is exactly the operation of a knee or toggle joint. Look in the lower part of the press in the engraving, and you will see the iron knees. They are bent a little, for the bed of the press is now down. A man is just putting a case in. In a moment the knees will be straightened by means of a wheel connected with a steam-engine acting on a case. The consequence will be, that the bed will be forced upward. It is cm-ious, too, that as the knees become more and more nearly straightened, the force witli which the bed rises becomes more and more powerful, imtil at the last instant, when the knees are just arriving at absolute straightness, it becomes enormous. This ultimate force may, moreover, be reg- ulated at pleasure by bringing tlic platen down or raising it up a little. The platen, and consequently the die or side-plate wliicli it contains, may 1)C adjusted in this way by means of an apparatus 154 II.NISHINC. Mode of regulating the pressure. Books bound in leather. Mode of gilding them. above. There is a horizontal wheel to be seen at the top of the press, which is connected with a system of wheels and screws so contrived that the workman, bj stepping up upon some support, and turning this wheel one way or the other, may raise or depres.; the platen so as to regulate the pressure that comes upon it at Ills will. The screws hold it firmly wherever lie sees fit to place it. There are two gauges on the bed of the press, one at tlie side and one at the end, whicli regulate the position of the case when it is put into the press, and cause it to take the impression in pri'- cisely the right manner. When books are to be bound in leather, they are finished in a different way. In this case, the bands to Avhich the sheets are sewed are fastened securely to the sides of the cases, and the cases are then covered, lined, and finished while attached to the book. The engraving on the opposite page gives a view of the room where these operations are performed. It is called the finishing-room. The gilding upon the books is applied by hand, though tlie gen- eral principle of the process is the same as in the case of those stamped in the machine. The furnaces seen upon the tables are used for heating the stamps by which the gilding is fixed. The fire in these furnaces is a flame of gas diftused over a considerable surface on the bottom of the furnace within. The manner of using the stamps in gilding the backs of the books is seen by the posi- tion of the figure in the foreground, at the end of the central table. IIMSIIINC. lo.'. 156 I'HK DISTKIBUTIOX. Necessity of large supplies of books on hand. CHAPTER XVII. THE DISTKIBUTION. In order to have always on hand a sufficient supply of copies of tlie many hundreds of works publislxed by the house, so as to he able promptly to till the orders from tlie trade as they come in, very extensive store-rooms are required to contain the books. In the early part of this volume, an explanation was given of the situation and arrangement of the bins — in number almost a thou- sand — in which the supplies of finished books are kept ; that is, those bound, complete, ready for delivery. But these are not by any means the most considerable portion of the stores kept on hand. The principal part of the edition of any book that is print- ed is kept in a partially finished state in respect to binding, and is then completed in quantities as copies may be required. The view on the following page represents one of the ware- rooms where this unfinished stock is stored. It is situated on one of the upper floors of the Franklin Square building, across the court from the sewing-room, which is on a floor nearly correspond- ing to it in the Cliff" Street building. The sheets of each new edi- tion of any work, after being dried, pressed, folded, gathered, and stitched or sewed, so as to be ready to be finished at very short notice, are trundled over one of the iron bridges tliat leads across the court, and are deposited in this ware-room. They are placed — the sheets of each work by themselves — in bins, similar to those THE DISTKIBLTIUX. 157 The stock-room. View of one of the principal avenues in it. THE STOCK-BOOM. used ill the warc-rooin.s for finished work below. These bins are Luilt up from the floor to the ceiling, and stand in ranges, divided by passages that cross each otlicr at right angles, and furnish very convenient access to every portion of tlic stores. Tt is only a very small part of the room that is shown in the engraving. There arc 158 THE DISTKIBUTJUX. Store-rooms for unbound books. The Magazine. Immense number of copies. two principal avenues, one hundred and thirty feet long, passing througli it from end to end, only one of whicli is here seen. As fast as is necessary, the unfinished books are taken from these hins, in quantities of hundreds or thousands, as the case may be, and conveyed across the bridge again to the bindery to be finished. Tlien they are sent down by the lioistway to tlie great sales-room below, to replenish the bins assigned to them there which have been emptied, or nearly emptied, by previous sales. In this lower store-room is performed the work of selecting and packing the books ordered by the correspondents of the house, and sending them away. Every morning a large pile of letters comes in from the mail from booksellers, committee-men, librarians, di- rectors of public institutions, teachers, and gentlemen in private life, containing lists of the books which they wish the house to forward to them. These lists are handed to the clerks, who proceed to col- lect the books required for each, and to arrange and pack them. One of the principal operations of this department is the monthly distribution of the edition of the jMagazine, which consists, at the present time, in round numbers, of one hundred and forty thousand copies. Few persons have any idea how large a number this is as applied to the edition of a book. If magazines were to 7'ai)i down, and a man had only to pick them up like chips, it would take him a fortnight to pick up the copies of one single number, supposing him to pick up one every three seconds, and to work ten hours a day. A portion of the edition of the ]\Iagazine, and also of the Story Books, are sent off in bales and boxes to booksellers and agents THE DISTRIBUTION. 159 View or the office where the Magazines and Story Books are mailed. THE MAGAZINE CORNCU. Avho take tliem in quantities. Others are seat to individual sub- scribers by mail. Tlie office shown in the engravinfj, -which is situated in the back part of the great room in the Franklin Square building that contains the counting-room, is the place where these copies arc addressed, and then mailed in bags sent from the Post- ItiU THE DlSTlilJiUTlON. Authors connected with the Harper Establishment. Conclusion. office to receive them. Here, too, all the accounts are kept both of the Story Books and the Magazine. The authors, whose writings the proprietors and conductors of this establishment bring before the public by the aid of the im- mense mechanical means and facilities they have at their command, and the still more immense business organization which they have built up, and which extends its ramifications to almost every city street and every rural village or mountain hamlet throughout the land, are very numerous, and they occupy every variety of intel- lectual and social position. There are classical scholars who pur- sue their studies in learned libraries, and make profound research- es into Greek and Roman lore. There are intrepid travelers, who follow whales in the Pacific Ocean, or lose themselves among the fields and mountains of ice in the Polar Seas. There are clergy- men, who instruct the world with their expositions of Scripture, and of moral and religious truth; and statesmen, who discuss ques- tions of politics ; and novelists, Avho invent ingenious tales to fur- nish amusement and recreation for the weary and the solitary ; and tourists, who give accounts of their tours ; and embassadors, who relate the history of their embassies ; and multitudes besides. The productions of all these, and of many others, come into tliis vast es- tablishment each in the form of a single roll of obscure and seem- ingly useless manuscript, and then, a few weeks afterward, are is- sued in thousands and tens of thousands of copies, beautifully printed, embellished, and bound, to instruct, entertain, and cheer many millions of readers. THE END. UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY Los Angeles This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. APR 2 2 IBaii 7 ^©o'» im ■ICT 161987 ORION pp. , tD/URL rtB 1 90 lESK Ull: ' RECO LD-Uffl 0EC18 1S86 «ICiy P, ■ KB 3 1390 4 31 41985 ItfR s Form L9-100m-9,'52(A3105)444 ■^ >388 4 198 "^.e- FUANKLIN SQUARE. ilNi itmM II III' II ll'll. 00899 2728 AA 061164102 4