Printers and Technology: A History of the International Printing Pressmen and Assistants’ Union 9780231888622

Table of contents :
Foreword
Contents
Introduction
Part I. The Setting
1. Five Hundred Years of Printing
2. Technological Unemployment?
3. Critical Problems of Master Printers: Prices and Supervision
4. National Organization of Printing Craftsmen
Part II. Rise of the International Printing Pressmen and Assistants’ Union of North America
5. Disaffection Within the Typographical Union
6. Birth of the Pressmen’s Union
7. The Fight for Independence
8. Pressmen Win Trade Autonomy
Part III. Craft Conflict within the International Printing Pressmen’s Union
9. Advent of the Webpress
10. The Ippu Becomes The Ipp&Au
11. Union Status of Webpress Printers
Part IV. Union Action and Employer Responses
12. Development of Union Controls Over Foremen
13. The United Typothetae, the Unions, and the Syracuse Agreement
14. Typothetae, Newspaper Publishers, and Foreman Union Membership
15. The Rise of George Berry – The Fall of the Typothetae
Part V. The Pressmen’s Union Comes of Age
16. President Berry’s First Five Years: Laying New Foundations
17. Years of Painful Growth, 1913–1940
18. A Mature Printers’ Union
Part VI. Technology Threatens Craft Organization
19. The Offset-Lithographers, 1913–1956
20. The Specialty Workers, 1934–1956
21. Today’s Organizing Problems
22. A Final Glance
23. Summary and Conclusion
Appendixes
I. Congressional Hearings on Union Democracy
II. The International Playing Card & Label Company
III. Settlement of the Estate of George L. Berry
IV. The Adams and Cylinder Press Printers’ Association: Certificate of Incorporation 1884
V. Agreement Between Pressmen and Typothetae, 1903–1907
VI. Conventions and Presidents
VII. Emblem and Labels
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

PRINTERS AND TECHNOLOGY

PRINTERS AND TECHNOLOGY A HISTORY OF THE INTERNATIONAL PRINTING PRESSMEN AND ASSISTANTS' UNION

By Elizabeth Faulkner Baker BARNARD COLLEGE, COLUMBIA

UNIVERSITY

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS, NEW YORK 19 5 7

Copyright Published

© 1957 Columbia

University

Press, New

York

in Great Britain, Canada, India, and Pakistan by the Oxford University Press London, Toronto, Bombay, and Karachi

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: Manufactured

in the United States of

57-11448 America

To Marie

FOREWORD

Documentary histories of American labor unions are all too few to gratify the ever widening interest in industrial and labor relations. In the general field we have the authoritative four volumes of History of Labour in the United States by John R. Commons and his associates at the University of Wisconsin, completed in 1935. In the graphic arts industry we have Ethelbert Stewart's "A Documentary History of the Early Organizations of Printers," George A. Stevens's New York Typographical Union No. 6, George E. Barnett's The Printers, and George A. Tracy's History of the Typographical Union. None of these works reaches beyond the year 1913.1 Moreover, no history has ever been written of what has become the largest of the international printing trades unions—the International Printing Pressmen and Assistants' Union of North America. For this reason, published notations on the nature and development of this Union have sometimes been misleading. It is hoped, therefore, that the present volume which carries the account through September, 1956, may serve as a reference source for both practical and academic students of industrial relations. In the early 1930s, when "technocracy" was in the air and widespread technological unemployment was feared, this author began tracing the effects of changing techniques in the production of the printed word. To the layman, when the mechanization of printing is mentioned, it is usually the linotype that comes to mind—the machine that modernized the composing room in the 1880s. One rarely finds a layman who thinks of the printing pressroom where for fifty years power-driven machines 1 The major concern of the recent volume Union Democracy, by Lipset, Trow, and Coleman, is the internal politics of the International Typographical Union rather than a documentary history of that union.

viii

FOREWORD

had been printing from type set entirely by hand, where a constant stream of improved mechanisms made only the pressroom financially profitable for commercial printers and publishers. Professor Baroett found in 1926, as reported in his Chapters on Machinery and Labor, that the linotype had displaced far fewer hand typesetters than had been feared. By 1933, the present writer had likewise discovered little technological unemployment in commercial pressrooms as a result of the introduction of mechanical feeding of paper into the press, and the published work, Displacement of Men by Machines, revealed that more, rather than less, skill was required. Investigation of the results of changing techniques evoked curiosity about the effect upon pressroom operations of the Pressmen's law that their foremen must be union colleagues, and in 1951 two articles were published in the Industrial and Labor Relations Review that threw some light on the subject. Having gone this far, the author's appetite was whetted to inquire into the origin and development of what some leading representatives of employing printers declare is "the most powerful, the most singularly important union in the industry." This study was begun while the author was serving as executive officer of the Economics Department at Barnard College. The task has been long and arduous because of the complicated nature of the subject and the confusion inherent in working with source materials which are, in large part, union records, minutes, and proceedings, and official and nonofficial publications. The work has nevertheless been rewarding because it has revealed the extraordinary vicissitudes through which a misunderstood if not unknown labor organization has struggled to win and to hold the enviable position among printing trades unions which it enjoys today. To trace the history it was important to glance back a half millennium, to the days of Gutenberg; then to review the records of the International Typographical Union (first known as the National Typographical Union) which embraced all of the organized graphic arts craftsmen until, beginning with the Pressmen in 1889, advancing technology drove them apart. What follows is a documentary account of the rise and growth of the Pressmen's Union, making its adaptations to changing techniques and new products, to shifting relations with employers and with other printing unions, to the raiding by organizations from outside the industry, and, perhaps most important of all, to the demands of its

FOREWORD

ix

membership composed as it is of crafts more varied than in any other printing trade union. The Pressmen appear always to have been conscious of making history. Thirty years ago their president, George L. Berry, noted their expressed wish to publish the story. He reported, however, that in view of the great expense of such a project the board of directors had decided to settle for continuation of the historical record in the official monthly journal, begun in 1890. Thus, while many other primary and secondary sources have been drawn from, The American Pressman has been the major mine of information in preparing the present volume. The writer has also received unstinting cooperation from the officers and staff of the International Union, by correspondence, and in person during a three-week visit in the Union's headquarters at Pressmen's Home, Tennessee. There, through the assistance of Associate Editor Fred Roblin, who served as a cordial and alert liaison agent, all requested records were made accessible, and many hours and days were spent in conferences in which no subjects were barred. It is important to add that the Union placed no restrictions upon the author's freedom to make the final decisions on the presentation of material. Basic aid has also been received from several local associations of employing printers, and from Printing Industry of America, which in 1945 superseded the United Typothetae of America. The Columbia Council for Research in the Social Sciences, which financed the research for Displacement of Men by Machines, also granted a generous sum for a new and broader study of "technological employment." For unavoidable reasons, the effort had to be abandoned after substantial progress had been made, and this director of that project thanks the Council for allocating the small remaining fund to the present work. The writer is indebted to her colleagues, Professors Paul F. Brissenden and Leo Wolman, who read the manuscript in its earlier form, and to the present members of the Council for endorsement of the final draft for publication by Columbia University Press. Grateful acknowledgment is also made of the unflagging assistance of the directors and staffs of the Columbia University libraries where the writing has been done. Nor can the author forget the willing advice given by the members of the staff of the Columbia School of Library Service on source material and bibliographical problems.

X

FOREWORD

Thanks are due to Dr. Leona M. Powell, author of The History of the United Typothetae of America, who greatly advanced the work in several months of analytic reading of annals; and to Mae Armstrong, former student at Barnard College, who assisted in the initial gathering of material. To another former student, Dr. Felicia Johnson Deyrup, Associate Professor of Economics at the New School for Social Research, this author owes a special tribute for her guiding comments after a careful reading of the work. Profound thanks go to several other friends who have read some or all of the chapters and offered needed criticism. Finally, the author expresses deep appreciation of the patient and constructive editorial services of Mr. Edwin N. lino of Columbia University Press in preparing the manuscript for publication. With all of this help, errors have certainly been minimized, but in a volume of this kind perfection cannot possibly be achieved and the author must assume full responsibility for any inaccuracies that remain. E. F . B. Columbia University January, 1957

CONTENTS

FOREWORD

VU

INTRODUCTION

xiii

Part I.

The

Setting

I. FIVE HUNDRED YEARS OF PRINTING

3

II. TECHNOLOGICAL UNEMPLOYMENT? III. CRITICAL

PROBLEMS OF

MASTER

15 PRINTERS:

PRICES

SUPERVISION

31

IV. NATIONAL ORGANIZATION OF PRINTING CRAFTSMEN

Part II.

Rise of the International

Pressmen and Assistants' of North

45

Printing

Union

America

V. DISAFFECTION WITHIN THE TYPOGRAPHICAL UNION VI. BIRTH OF THE PRESSMEN'S UNION

59 69

v n . THE FIGHT FOR INDEPENDENCE

87

VIII. PRESSMEN WIN TRADE AUTONOMY

Part III.

AND

113

Craft Conflict within the International Printing Pressmen's

Union

IX. ADVENT OF THE WEBPRESS X. THE IPPU BECOMES THE IPP&AU XI. UNION STATUS OF WEBPRESS PRINTERS

145 162 181

xii

CONTENTS Part

IV.

Union

Action

and Employer

Responses

Xn. DEVELOPMENT OF UNION CONTROLS OVER FOREMEN

215

XIII. THE UNITED TYPOTHETAE, THE UNIONS, AND THE SYRACUSE AGREEMENT XIV. TYPOTHETAE,

240 NEWSPAPER

PUBLISHERS,

AND

FOREMAN

UNION MEMBERSHIP

260

XV. THE RISE OF GEORGE BERRY—THE FALL OF THE TYPOTHETAE

Part

V.

The

Pressmen's

Union

Comes

of

282

Age

XVI. PRESIDENT BERRY'S FIRST FIVE YEARS: LAYING NEW FOUNDATIONS

311

XVII. YEARS OF PAINFUL GROWTH, 1 9 1 3 - 1 9 4 0

339

XVIII. A MATURE PRINTERS' UNION

Part

VI.

Technology

Threatens

373

Craft

Organization

XIX. THE OFFSET-LITHOGRAPHERS, 1 9 1 3 - 1 9 5 6 XX. THE SPECIALTY WORKERS, 1 9 3 4 - 1 9 5 6 XXI. TODAY'S ORGANIZING PROBLEMS

415 437 455

XXII. A FINAL GLANCE

464

XXIII. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION

477

Appendixes I. CONGRESSIONAL HEARINGS ON UNION DEMOCRACY II. THE INTERNATIONAL PLAYING CARD & LABEL COMPANY III. SETTLEMENT OF THE ESTATE OF GEORGE L. BERRY

487 502 510

IV. THE ADAMS AND CYLINDER PRESS PRINTERS' ASSOCIATION: CERTIFICATE OF INCORPORATION

1884

514

V. AGREEMENT BETWEEN PRESSMEN AND TYPOTHETAE, 1903-1907 VI. CONVENTIONS AND PRESIDENTS VII. EMBLEM AND LABELS

516 520 521

Bibliography

523

Index

529

INTRODUCTION

"Our Organization is made up of rather separate units—more so by far than any other printing trade union," President Thomas E. Dunwody reminded the delegates at the thirty-fifth convention of the International Printing Pressmen and Assistants' Union in 1952. "It embraces men and women employed in many and varied . . . occupations in the printing and allied industries." But, he hastened to add, with representation of each segment on the board of directors "distinction begins and ends. It is the union of no faction; it is the union of no member; it is, therefore, the union of all members." 1 After two years in office the president recalled the creed of the organization: "Have confidence when acting rightly"—Confide Recte A gens. "Our union has paced the progress of our country," he declared, "because we have had a purpose. . . . We have sought to be militant without being belligerent —powerful but responsible. And, if you will, democratic without [being] opportunistic. We have sought in our way to restore confidence in [union-management contracts] . . . our creed . . . is more than a motto. It is a standard of performance." 2 Thomas Dunwody is the ninth president of the Pressmen's International, but the creed he hails was adopted in 1892, when the Union was three years old—graphic testimony to the continuity of outlook of the leaders in their aim for peaceful adjustment of differences within the Union and between members and employers. A more concrete example of persistent effort to serve both the membership and the industry democratically was the ardent advocacy of biennial conventions by First Vice-President J. J. Birmingham in 1897, so that the smaller 1

American Pressman, Vol. 62 (October, 1952), Proceedings, p. 4. 'Ibid., Vol. 64 (May, 1954), pp. 4, 6.

xiv

INTRODUCTION

unions might be represented. This cause, along with the election of officers by referendum, had to wait for young George Berry to win after he became president in 1907. Then by convention consent, he extended the practice to the point of having the International meet the full expenses of delegates so that all unions, large and small, would have direct voice in the proceedings. And this ruling is in full effect today. Another example of consistent leadership lies in the Union's theory that one of its most potent defensive and offensive weapons is good craftsmanship. Hence, since The American Pressman was founded in 1890 it has been devoted to the technical education of pressworkers and to pressroom management as well as to building a strong International Union. Today the Pressmen are proud of a million-dollar Technical Trade School, to which manufacturers have generously donated machinery. The school offers instruction to members and required courses for apprentices; and printing pressrooms now receive without charge on-the-spot service by school technicians at the request of employers. Nevertheless, about all that the layman has ever heard of the Printing Pressmen's Union has come in the form of fragmentary reports of the long administration of President George L. Berry—unfortunately with main emphasis on his undeniable failings and little on his equally noteworthy services to "the organization I love better than myself." This book is more than a historical case study of the International Printing Pressmen and Assistants' Union, however, although it presents many expressed feelings of members and their leaders in an attempt to reveal the motives which led to their official action. In the process of tracing the course of policies and acts, we follow two closely allied issues: effects of technology upon printing and printing trades unionism, and the changing role of foremen and of union-management relations. Today, automation worries our mass production workers because it employs machines to direct machines and to inspect and correct work. But true automation seems remote indeed for an industry of some 25,000 plants whose skilled craftsmen turn out an estimated 300,000 items of manufacture. Technological change in the graphic arts has nevertheless been ccascless, and the p r c s r m c n more th-.-.n any other group have experienced all its bewildering phases—basic shifts from hand to machine, continuous improvements in mechanisms, methods and materials, new products. The changes in job content which tech-

INTRODUCTION

xv

nology has wrought have sharply affected Pressmen's lines of negotiation with employers, provoked jurisdictional disputes with neighboring crafts, and demanded settlement of conflicts within the Union, sometimes painful and disrupting ones, as member groups vied for security of employment and of status. The arresting story of the Pressmen's growth thus reveals a long tug of war with the Compositors. The conflict ranged from the Pressmen's determined attempts to fight free from the thralldom of the deeply entrenched typesetters; through years of intense struggle to attain pressroom supervision by pressmen instead of by compositors in the Government Printing Office and elsewhere; through wrangles over trade autonomy that led to the formation of the International Allied Printing Trades Association, composed of five craft unions—Pressmen, Compositors, Bookbinders, Photoengravers, and Stereotypers and Electrotypers. Furthermore, the conflict led to the denial of the allied label to the "one-man shop." More recendy it led to a modernized constitution for the Allied Printing Trades Association which allows for autonomous settlement of jurisdictional disputes among the member unions and for collective self-defense against possible intrusion upon their group independence, in the name of labor unity in the graphic arts industry, by the united American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations. In this history we shall see, however, that the new allied agreement has become so fraught with competitive jurisdictional claims that it bodes no certain peace in the foreseeable future. For, although the Amalgamated Lithographers of America, which is a craft-oriented industrial union, is also an AFL-CIO affiliate, it has not been received into the family of printing trades unions; and a forty-year effort of Pressmen and Photoengravers to absorb its members is now intensified by the aggressive entry into the dispute of the worried Compositors. Throughout their struggles, the Pressmen have recognized that science and technology may strike a death blow to a labor organization unless it develops flexibility of oudook and practice, and willingness to expand even to the point of altering its structure. Hence, the growth of offsetlithography and of the more recent branch of "specialty" printing has led the Pressmen, after being the first to organize as a separate craft, to be the first to act upon the need to include a form of industrial unionism as well.

xvi

INTRODUCTION

Unlike some other labor organizations, such as those of the garment trades and the carpenters, Marxian socialism seems never to have laid hold of printing craftsmen. The New York Printers' Union of 1850-52, which preceded the initial national graphic arts organization, the National Typographical Union, embraced employers as well as journeymen with the hope of wiping out cut-throat competition in the sale of printed products. To do so the union strove to maintain fair wage rates, encourage good workmanship, aid sick and distressed members, and elevate the scale of social life. Moreover, a group report held that in printing the "ultimate and only radical cure" for the wage system was printing offices "owned and worked by practical workingmen." "There must be union between employed and employers to make things permanent," an employing printer added, "the interests of Capital and Labor are synonomous. We are not to regard Capital as tyrannical. Every employer has been a journeyman and he has not lost the feelings he then had. If we can only unite both parties upon a just scale the thing will be accomplished." Hence publisher Horace Greeley, first president of the National Union, counseled that "a committee of the coolest heads" should confer with employers to agree upon a "scale of prices" for workmen "with strict regard to justice." 3 The employer-employee cooperative movement waned and the wage system waxed but the printing unions did not reach for any other Utopia. Employing printers continued to be union members in the intensely competitive, small-unit commcrcial branch of the industry, as many are today. And although more compositors than pressmen become proprietors, it is the Pressmen who have gained a reputation in the trade for preferring peaceful methods of settling disputes. There is no ready answer to why this is so, but certainly the unceasing changes in printing techniques from which pressroom workers have never been free are a partial explanation. Another point comes to mind. The renowned scholar-printer, Theodore L. De Vinne, advising the National Editorial Association in 1891, remarked, "Upon the pressmen, more than any other workmen, depends the credit of your office." In fact, pressmen, themselves, have always been aware that the pressroom is the proving ground of the printing shop, the place where errors and defects come to light, defects which exist after all have done their best: compositors, platemakers, 'Stevens, New York Typographical Union No. 6, pp. 204, 218, 221, 237.

INTRODUCTION

xvii

artists, paper-makers, inkmakers, roller-makers, and the rest. In the whole printing process variables occur that cannot be foreseen in a practical way. Thus the most experienced press craftsman is always conscious of the possibility of low production or serious faults in the finished product which he may be called on the carpet to explain. This circumstance would seem to foster modesty and humility along with a sense of long suffering that may save him from arrogance. George Berry declared in 1947, "there is a community of interest between the investor, management and labor . . . and therefore we have tried to the best of our ability to make the industry prosperous." This is not to say that the Pressmen have always seen eye to eye with employing printers and publishers. On the contrary, in their attempts to adjust to one innovation after another they have at times victimized employers by pressroom union quarrels. Moreover, employers have accused local unions of insistence upon disproportionate wage scales for the less skilled members, upon over-manning the machines, and upon unreasonably long periods of apprenticeship. But the Pressmen have not delayed technological progress by extreme featherbedding tactics as some unions, such as those in the building trades, have done. They have recognized that change means growth, and that they must accept it and adjust to it in order themselves to grow. Unwittingly they seem to have moved in obedience to a theory which the late Professor Joseph A. Schumpeter expounded. That theory was that the competition which has the greatest impact upon our economy is not that of price but "the competition from the new commodity, the new technology, the new source of supply, the new type of [business] organization . . . competition which commands a decisive cost or quality advantage and which strikes not at the margins of the profits and the outputs of existing firms but at their foundations and their very lives." 4 As innovations altered pressroom work, therefore, the policy of the IPP&AU has been to expand its jurisdiction rather than to delay progress. In fact, the Pressmen's Union has been an adroit exponent of the Commons-Perlman theory of job-conscious unionism, pursuing the doctrine of "considered reasonableness" with which it was originally instilled, as we shall see. We shall find that the organization we have under study has thus enjoyed an almost uninterrupted arbitration agreement with the Ameri' Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy,

p. 84.

xviii

INTRODUCTION

can Newspaper Publishers Association, and that today, and ever since the Taft-Hartley bill became law, it is the only union which has arrived at an international arbitration agreement with Printing Industry of America in the commercial branch. It seems pertinent, therefore, to quote from a conclusion made by John W. Seybold, industrial relations director of Philadelphia's Allied Printing Employers' Association, after a careful study of local unionmanagement relations in 1949 which he considered more or less typical of collective bargaining experiences in other printing centers. His conclusion was that "the Pressmen's Union, in particular, has exercised its control in a fashion generally regarded by the employer as beneficent, with a stern hand so far as its obligations are concerned, and with a hand so light and dextrous in the employer's affairs that he is frequently not aware of its existence or of its strength. . . ." 5 Thus, as the following chapters will attest, nothing like what has been called "bureaucratic crustification" is to be found in the Pressmen's International Union. What will be found is a relatively consistent and resourceful will to keep members employed by advancing abreast with the times and changing technology. ' Seybold, The Philadelphia

Printing Industry,

p. 60.

PART I THE SETTING

CHAPTER I

FIVE HUNDRED YEARS OF PRINTING

In 1940 we celebrated the five-hundredth anniversary of Gutenberg's invention of printing from movable type. In that half millennium the printing industry has had a history of mechanization rivaled only by those of the spinning and weaving trades. "Automation" is not the word to describe what has taken place, for highly skilled men rather than machines must still direct the work, of which much must be done by their own hands. What can be said is that in a single century output has risen from a few hundred printed impressions a day on a hand press by one man to as much as a thousand printed feet a minute on a machine operated by only four or five men. In the chapters that follow we shall see that the International Printing Pressmen and Assistants' Union is a product of this technological transformation as certainly as are today's great multicolor magazines. Let us take a quick glance at the march of printing to prepare for the story. THE HAND TRADES

In earlier years when written matter was converted by hand into lines of type for printing, each line was set in a composing stick, letter by letter, and "justified" by inserting metal blanks to make lines of equal length. From the stick the lines were transferred to a galley, proof was pulled, and errors corrected. Type was then made up into pages and was locked firmly in a metal frame on the "stone," thence carried to the press for printing. Because the form was composed of hand-cast types of varying age, its great unevenness required much "make-ready" before an even impression could be made. The printing done, the letters and spacing materials were redistributed to their proper places by hands that flew so fast the eye could scarcely follow. Primitive as all this seems in

4

THE SETTING

today's mechanized world, where most type is machine-set and where photography and electricity are employed in reproducing the assembled characters and lines, it is still common practice to hand-set some of the type in most plants—so vastly uneven in tempo is the advance of technology. Presswork was far more laborious than typesetting because pressure was required to squeeze the paper against the inked type to make the impression. Students of printing history disagree on the exact nature of the Gutenberg contrivance 1 but the mechanics employed in the American colonies are well known. Here, two upright timbers supported two crossbeams. The upper beam was pierced by a great wooden screw set to press down upon a "platen," or flat surface; the lower beam held a flat plate of wood or of stone called the bed, or coffin. The locked-up type was laid on the bed and daubed with ink by beating with a hair-stuffed leathern ball. A sheet of dampened paper was laid on the inked type and covered with a blanket to soften the impression. By hand the platen was screwed down from above hard enough to squeeze the paper against the type. The platen was then screwed up, and the printed sheet pulled away and hung up to dry. Presswork on both sides of the Atlantic was usually performed by two men with strong arms, backs, and legs—one beat the ink while the other screwed and pulled. Each man took a turn every hour beating or pulling. In small offices where a boy inked the type the man was not likely to get relief except between jobs. The work was hazardous as well as backbreaking, for the wooden screw wobbled and sometimes broke, injuring the men. It was thus inevitable that this cumbrous, repetitive process would stimulate the imagination of inventors—first in Europe, then in the United States—long before the gentler art of typesetting. SAVING LABOR IN THE

PRESSROOM

Sometime about 1620 a Dutch cartographer is said to have combined several improvements that lightened presswork; but the lag in its prac1 The "cheese-press" theory seems to have had its origin in the findings of German antiquarians who, Pottinger tells us, "undertook some eighty years ago to reconstruct Gutenberg's press on the basis of three fragments of oak dug up in a cellar hole in Mainz. A m o n g them was a crossbeam with a threaded hole and an inscription dated 1441. This press is now in the possession of the Book Museum at Leipzig. More recent antiquarians have pointed out that the fragments on which it was based are altogether too small for a printing press and that any screw that would fit the beam would have too small a pitch to give the requisite force. The au-

FIVE HUNDRED YEARS OF PRINTING

5

tical acceptance—always characteristic of technological change—caused English printers to continue using the old methods for a century and a half, until the steam engine brought new life to the industrial arts. Then came cast-iron platen presses that supported greater pressure than wooden frames, followed by a flatbed cylinder press in which a revolving cylinder carried the paper to the type bed, inked now by rollers. Early in the nineteenth century a steam-driven machine was devised in which the revolving cylinder brought the paper to a reciprocating bed of inked type that turned out 800 impressions an hour, as compared to a maximum of 250 on the hand press—the first successful model for the ubiquitous flatbed cylinders of today. Thus a machine had been born to supplant the printing press. True, the squeezer mechanism, operated by less-skilled men, is still in wide use—in fact in these 1950s it is experiencing a renaissance—but it is the machine that has brought progress in rapid printing, even though it is still called a press. For the London Times, inventor Friedrich Koenig built a two-cylinder machine which produced the entire four-page issue of November 29, 1814, at a rate of 1,100 copies an hour—a most timely advance to meet the avid demand for news of Napoleon's escape from Elba and his final defeat at Waterloo in June, 1815. Proprietor John Walter acclaimed the mechanism "the greatest improvement connected with printing, since the discovery of the art itself." Soon came a machine with four cylinders— two printing one way and two the other—that turned out the four-page paper "at the astonishing rate of 4,320 an hour." The operation of this press required four paper feeders and four boys to remove the sheets, aside from the pressmen and their helpers.2 EARLY PRINTING IN THE UNITED STATES

What is generally believed to be colonial America's first printing press arrived eighteen years after the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth.3 It came to meet the needs of lawmakers, ministers, and educators for a printing thorities of the Museum have recently withdrawn it f r o m exhibition 'because,' as the Director writes me, 'it is a fantastic and whimsical reconstruction not worthy to be mentioned in serious studies. T h e History of the Printing Press," in Wroth, ed., A History of the Printed Book, p. 324. ' Ringwalt, ed., American Encyclopaedia of Printing, p. 130; Kjaer, Productivity of Labor in Newspaper Printing (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Bulletin No. 475), pp. 2 2 5 - 2 8 , 29. ' B i s h o p , A History of American Manufactures from 1608 to I860, I, 153-54. More recently, McMurtrie has shown evidence that a press was operating in Mexico in 1538. The Book, Chap. 27.

6

THE SETTING

office as an adjunct to their new university at Cambridge; 4 and from that tiny enterprise burgeoned our six-billion-dollar printing industry of today. In present vernacular, it was a book and job, or commercial, office—that branch of the industry with which this book mainly deals. Eighty years later, when Benjamin Franklin was learning to set type in his brother's printshop, there were nine such offices in the colonies. 5 Others were set up as new groups of settlers arrived. But inasmuch as "learning has brought disobedience, and heresy, and sects into the world, and printing has divulged them," in the words of Virginia's Governor Berkeley, presses were forbidden in New York, and King James authorized their halt in Massachusetts. 8 Thus the first "genuine" colonial newspaper, Publick Occurences, published in Boston in 1690, was promptly suppressed. The Boston News-Letter that began in 1704, however, lived on to the year of the Revolution, 7 and when the war was over Thomas Jefferson is said to have remarked that newspapers were to be preferred to government if one had to choose between the two. By 1810 there were about 400 printing houses in the new nation. 8 Growing communities wanted more news than they were getting. Manufacturers and business firms wanted advertising space. Industrial expansion demanded an ever-widening stream of printed jobs—billheads, account books with headings, tickets, posters, catalogues. Free education was possible only with the aid of piles, then mountains, of school books. Adults called for books—classical, theological, law, medical, along with archetypes of the "wicked" dime novels of the sixties and seventies. The Saturday Evening Post appeared in 1821, and by the mid-century it boasted a circulation of 42,000. Godey's Lady's Book, "The Banquet of the Boudoir," began its beguiling career in 1830 and reached a circulation of 150,000 just prior to the Civil War. 9 "Freedom of speech and of the press are the inalienable birthright of every American citizen, and ' Here the colonies' first book was printed, known as the Bay Psalm Book. Roden, The Cambridge Press, 1638-1692, Chap. 2. 'National Printer Journalist, January, 1933, p. 26. 'American Pressman, Vol. 61 (August, 1950), p. 30; Clark, History of Manufactures in the United States, I, 69; Thomas, The History of Printing in America, II, 286. ' Jones, Journalism in the United States, 22-50; Brigham, History and Bibliography of American Newspapers, 1690-1820, I, xii, 340. 'Statistical View of the United States, Compendium of the Seventh Census [1850], pp. 155-56; Thomas, History of Printing, II, 513-14. ' Mott, A History of American Magazines, 1741-1850, I, 581, 594, 797, 800; II, 36.

FIVE HUNDRED YEARS OF PRINTING

7

constitute the aegis of his liberties," said the editor of the Statistical View published in 1854. "In every country the Press must be regarded a great educational agency. Professor Tucker well remarks: 'In attending to the vast it does not overlook the minute. We meet with the speculations of wisdom and science, the effusions of sentiment, the sallies of wit. The most secluded hermit, if he only takes a newspaper, sees as in a telescope, and often as in a mirror, every thing that is transacted in the most distant regions; nor can any thing memorable happen, that it is not forthwith communicated with the speed of steam to the whole civilized world.' " 10 THE U N W A N T E D

FOREMAN

Struggling master printers had no need of supervisory assistance in the early years, for they themselves were apprenticed journeymen. Hence the position of foreman appears to have been little known and little respected, even among well-established printers. A leading Philadelphia proprietor related this incident about the reception which a prosperous New York printer, Hugh Gaine, gave to a journeyman who applied "for a berth as foreman of his office . . . 'A foreman!' exclaimed Gaine: 'What is a foreman? he who first stalks out of the office to dinner?' The man was abashed at this unexpected, though applicable reproof, and walked off." 11 Whence the hapless job seeker had come was not recorded, nor was his occupational fate. It seems not to have been long, however, before supervision of larger printing offices was sometimes entrusted to a journeyman typesetter. It appears also that from the beginning the close relation between the selected man and the proprietor caused organized journeymen to eye him with suspicion. The scant records reveal one instance in 1824 in which the Washington City Typographical Society brought charges against three of its members: a proprietor and his foreman were accused of paying an under-the-scale wage to a journeyman who was deemed equally guilty for accepting it. The offenders contended that if all parties agreed to the arrangement as individuals, it was none of the society's affair.12 10 U.S. Census Office, Statistical View of the United States, Compendium of the Seventh Census, p. 154. 11 McCulloch, "McCulloch's Additions to Thomas's History of Printing," Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, N e w Series, X X X I (April 1 3 October 19, 1 9 2 1 ) , 9 5 - 9 6 . M Stewart, "A Documentary History of the Early Organizations of Printers," in U.S. Bureau of Labor, Bulletin No. 61. pp. 8 9 2 - 9 3 .

8

THE SETTING

Another case was that of an employer-member of the Philadelphia Typographical Society in 1832 who was said to be planning to employ women as compositors and to have offered a nonunion printer the foremanship of his office to take effect when the women started work. The rumor provoked so much resentment in the society that the employer wrote a letter to be spread upon its minutes disclaiming any thought of such a move. 13 The craftsmen's objection appears to have been twofold: first against the employment of women at their trade, and second against a nonunion foreman who they believed would do harm to union standards. Thus, the theory that the printing foreman should be a member of the union of the men whom he supervised—a theory which was destined to become written "law"—was in the air long before the unions took permanent form. THE MARCH OF PRINTING

TECHNIQUES

Americans on the move used the little hand platens for some years after they had been superseded in the "old country." J. Leander Bishop noted that "when population is stretching over a vast continent . . . the Printing Press travels beside the wagon of the pioneer, and rests only on the vanguard of the army of emigrants, that it may send back intelligence of their progress." 14 In stationary offices in the 1830s, pressmen proudly pulled 500 to 1,000 impressions an hour for fine illustrated bookwork from the steam-driven "Adams" platen—the press, as we shall see, that inspired the pressmen's revolt against the typesetters for failing to recognize them as printers. In the sixties, Hoe-improved Adams presses were producing the 225,000-copy edition of the Agricultural Report in the Government Printing Office. 15 For short-run job work for business and social purposes there was the sturdy "Gordon jobber" in many styles which one person could operate either by foot or by steam, feeding in the sheets and taking them out one by one. Small power-driven platens, reduced in cost and turned out in enormous quantities, became the Fords and Chevrolets of the printing world. Easy to keep clean, to make ready, and to operate, they have been continuously remodeled to do superior halftone and color " Ibid., p. 884. M Bishop, I, 165. The "Washington" hand press that was popular for printing newspapers may still be seen taking proofs in photoengraving rooms. a Ringwalt, pp. 2 1 - 2 2 ; American Pressman, Vol. 56 (May, 1946), p. 26.

FIVE HUNDRED YEARS OF PRINTING

9

work as well as everyday printing, and at good speed. Neighborhood printers buy them in any printer's supply store to install in their own living quarters or small shops. In the last few years, heavy-duty platens have been specially designed, some of them roll-fed and multicolor, to do embossing and die-cut jobs and miscellaneous printing ranging all the way from cardboard advertising displays and wooden rulers to bread wrappers and all sorts of labels. When steam power was applied to the cylinder machines, also in the 1830s, they began to displace the platens for newspapers in established shops. The cylinders could turn out some 2,000 impressions an hour— "as fast the feeder could lay the sheets down," and twice as many could be produced on the double cylinders to which two men fed the sheets. 16 Near the middle of the century came flatbed perfecting machines with large cylinders that printed both sides of the sheet in one operation. There were also single large-, or "drum-," cylinder presses for fine book printing and for special commercial jobs such as large posters that could not be run on the small job platens. By this time the "type-revolving" or rotary press began to take over city newspaper printing from the flatbeds. Here the type form was no longer flat but was fastened around a cylinder to revolve against the impression cylinder, greatly increasing speed; and when more impression cylinders were added—two, four, six, eight, ten—production was so rapid that morning dailies could receive news up to midnight and still be ready for six-o'clock home delivery.17 At first these machines were sheet-fed by hand, as many still are, but faster still was the web rotary press—mechanically fed from a continuous roll or web of paper—which in the last year of the Civil War could produce 10,000 copies of a four-page paper in one hour, nearly ten times more than the revolutionizing performance of the London Times press in 1814. Hence, while book, job, and country newspaper printers were operating flatbeds and platens, large city publishers were adopting " K j a e r , pp. 228-31. The Hoe cylinder machines excelled the foreign models, and won for the United States a lead in press manufacture which it has never lost. " Publishers were paying some $20,000 a year for a telegraphic service, and railroad expansion had extended the circulation areas of the weekly editions. Hence advertising patronage rose. P. T. Barnum is said to have taught Americans that "advertising pays" when in 1850 he managed the tour of Jenny Lind at whose opening concert at Castle Garden he cleared some $18,000 and charged a New York hotel $1,000 a week for the privilege of having the Swedish nightingale as a guest. Jones, Journalism in the United States, p. 291.

10

THE SETTING

the rotaries; and in the Government Printing Office sixteen Adams platens gave way to a webpress for the Agricultural Report,18 The effectiveness of rotaries for long-run editions was enormously enhanced by the development of curved stereotype plates that could be duplicated for use on as many machines as desired. Previously all done with hand tools, it was hot, heavy, time-consuming work that took a crew of stereotypers two hours to prepare for a daily paper. 19 Thus another printing craft had come of age, soon to be followed by the sister craft of electrotyping. Stereotype plates were less satisfactory for books, popular periodicals, and Sunday news-magazines than for newspapers. The coarse quality of the stereo matrix and the soft metal in the heavy plates caused them to wear down under extended use, reducing the sharpness of the printed word. Hence the forms were electrotyped in copper or nickel that made durable, light-weight plates for very hard wear. 20 NEW YORK CITY AND CHICAGO—THE PRINTING CENTERS

By the 1860s New York City had become the nation's chief printing center, and nineteen of the eighty-four Illinois shops were in Chicago. 21 " R i n g w a l t , p. 186; American Pressman, Vol. 56 (May, 1946), p. 26. In 1881, the Government Printing Office was operating sixty power presses, according to K e r r (History of the Government Printing Office, 1789-1881, p. 8 0 ) , who indicates the advance of techniques in a listing of Hoe-machine performance over a period of 37 years: 1843 Single-cylinder flatbed 1,200 papers per hour on one side 1853 Double-cylinder flatbed 2,500- 3,000 1858 Four-cylinder flatbed 8,000-10,000 1863 Eight-cylinder flatbed 16,000-22,000 1880 Double-web rotary perfecting press 30,000 papers per hour on both sides, cut, pasted, and folded In 1886 a new H o e webpress was added to print the Congressional Record, doing a job in one h o u r that had taken A d a m s presses an entire day ( A m e r i c a n Pressmen, Vol. 56 (May, 1946), pp. 27-28. u Kjaer (pp. 90-102, 2 3 9 - 4 1 ) gives an excellent description of the work involved. It was largely relieved in 1901 by the Wood autopíate stereotype casting machine that made plates in ten to fifteen minutes with n o handwork but the pulling of control levers (Kaempffert, ed., A Popular History of American Invention, I, 2 3 9 ) . 80 Theodore L. D e Vinne described the electrotype foundry on the sixth floor of his printing house in 1890 as " a miniature machine shop, with [man-driven] machines on every side—to plane, to saw, to bevel, to rout, to mold, to melt, to carve" ( " T h e Printing of 'The C e n t u r y , ' " The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine, November, 1890, p. 9 1 ) . Many improvements have been made in electrotyping since that time. " U.S. Census Office, Manufactures oj the United States in 1860, pp. cxxxiicxxxiii.

FIVE HUNDRED YEARS OF PRINTING

11

Though most printing offices were very small, as they are today, enough larger ones had emerged to bring the average number of hands employed in a New York City plant up to 37, and to 13 for the country as a whole. 22 It appears that at least one departmentalized all-purpose house was operating in New York. This was the "Steam Printing House" on Fulton Street which devoted its basement to newspaper printing, the second floor to jobbing, and the third and fourth floors to "Book, Law and Pamphlet work, on Adams Presses." The proprietors described their establishment as "so complete in all its developments, that every description of printing, from a Book to a Newspaper, or a Card to a Mammoth Show Bill, can be executed on the premises at very short notice. By the aid of twenty-four steam presses (running all night, when necessary to rush out large orders), the proprietors are enabled to deliver all work at the time promised, and keep pace with their rapidly increasing business." 23 There was also the firm of Harper and Brothers which made great claims as a book printing house. In the early fifties the company occupied "no less than nine five-story buildings in the vicinity of Cliff Street and Franklin Square, New York," the editor of Harper's Magazine tells us in the centennial issue. "By this time the . . . establishment was believed to be the largest of its kind . . . in the world. . . . It employed several hundred people, and it combined . . . 'all the departments of labor necessary for the production of books in their perfected form' —editing, composition, presswork, engraving, binding, storing, and selling." 24 In Chicago, the world's first mail-order catalogue came to life in 1872 in the twelve-by-fourteen-foot room of Montgomery Ward and Company. It was an eight-by-twelve-inch sheet that listed small stock and dry goods for sale. In two years the publication was an eight-page, threeby-five-inch catalogue. In another two years it was a book of 152 pages " O n e New York City house was turning out 31,000,000 copies of newspapers a year, another produced 20,000,000 copies, and a third printed 1,500,000 copies of magazines annually, ¡bid., p. ccciii. " Advertisement in The Printer, November, 1858, p. 183. " " O n e Hundred Years of Harper's," Harper's Magazine, October, 1950, p. 26. In his Printing for Profit, Charles Francis wrote (p. 131) that when Harper's Magazine was born in 1850 the firm was headed by "far-sighted business men. They had the best machinery and best equipment of any concern of their time, and they at once set a new high mark in typography, in literary contests and in efficiency." We shall have occasion in the next chapter to observe what a Harper's foreman thought about the new machines.

12

THE

SETTING

w i t h w o o d c u t i l l u s t r a t i o n s o f its w a r e s . B y 1 9 0 4 , 3 , 0 0 0 , 0 0 0 f o u r - p o u n d catalogues were being printed.25 A NEW ERA OF PRINTING W h a t h a s until r e c e n t l y b e e n c a l l e d t h e m o d e r n e r a of printing, w h i c h d a w n e d in t h e 1 8 8 0 s , b r o u g h t g r e a t rotary p r e s s e s for b o o k s a n d m a g a zines.20 Photochemically

p r o d u c e d line e n g r a v i n g s and h a l f t o n e

cuts,

w h i c h c r e a t e d t h e n e w c r a f t o f p h o t o e n g r a v i n g , b e g a n to h i g h l i g h t s t e r e o type and electrotype plates. T h e linotype and m o n o t y p e c a m e to enable t y p e s e t t e r s t o set u p the t y p e f o r m a b o u t f o u r t i m e s faster t h a n b y h a n d . A n d c o u l d t h e G a y N i n e t i e s h a v e b e e n g a y w i t h o u t the m u l t i c o l o r p r e s s w h i c h u n d e r brilliant e l e c t r i c l i g h t s d i s g o r g e d " y e l l o w j o u r n a l s , " s p e c trum-hued Sunday supplements,27

florid

magazine covers, posters

P h i n e a s T . B a r n u m ' s "greatest s h o w o n e a r t h , " e l a b o r a t e

for

calendars,

handsome holiday books? Soon, presses and linotypes w e r e driven by clean, individual electric m o t o r s , s o t h a t the u n s i g h t l y d u s t - c o l l e c t i n g m a i n s h a f t a n d c r o s s b e l t s of the steam-engine period could be weeded out.28 Also, automatic sheetf e e d i n g m a c h i n e s t o e l i m i n a t e h a n d f e e d i n g of t h e p r e s s e s w e r e o n t h e threshold. In the n e w century, automatic feeders were gradually

at-

* Printers Ink. January 3, 1929, pp. 129-30. * "Scholar-printer" Theodore L. D e Vinne made history when he installed a specially designed Hoe rotary machine in his great New York plant to print, cut, and fold the plain and advertising parts of his Century Magazine, then another that produced the entire book, fine illustrations—"the jewels of the magazine"— and all. De Vinne wrote of these innovations with the zeal of a missionary. With him, one may witness their marvelous operations by turning to his written account in "The Printing of 'The C e n t u r y , " ' in The Century Magazine, November, 1890, pp. 92-94. " V i s u a l i z e the 112-ton, double-sextuple webpress—two three-deck sextuples, thirty-five feet long and half as high—that printed Sunday newspaper supplements in five colors at the rate of 48,000 sixteen-page papers an hour operated by a crew of a dozen or more men and boys. Hoe, A Short History of the Printing Press, pp. 82-86; Kjaer, pp. 141, 144, 147. 38 The hard business problem of replacing steam power by electric motors in the pressroom had been sufficiently solved before 1900 to stimulate leading employing printers to glimpse the need of more science in management (United Typothetae of America, Proceedings, 1900, Appendices I and II; American Printer, February, 1908, pp. 6 4 2 - 4 4 ) . Perhaps because they looked to the pressroom for their profits, there was less concern about the need for electricity in the composing room. Hence, as we shall see, U.S. Labor Commissioner Carroll D. Wright found book and job linotypes being propelled by gasoline engines as late as the midnineties, while only two newspaper houses out of five investigated were driving linotypes by electricity. The first individual elcctric motor attachment for linotypes, according to the Mergenthaler Linotype Company, was made in 1901, after which adoptions were rapid.

FIVE HUNDRED YEARS OF PRINTING

13

tached to old machines, and many new styles and kinds of self-feeding units in small and medium sizes were installed to meet the insatiable demand for job work at acceptable prices to buyers in a competitive market. For today's commercial printing, improved multicolor web rotary presses have taken an increasing amount of work from the flatbed cylinder machines; and two new rotary printing processes—gravure and offset-lithography—have become both supplementary to and strong competitors of the five-hundred-year-old letterpress, or relief process.2® New inks, electronic devices, and precision instruments are constantly advancing these methods, reducing the need for continuous inspection and lowering production costs. More or less with success the uncanny photoelectric eye stops and starts some presses, detects and sets colors, detects and corrects press vibrations, adjusts register, adjusts illumination intensity, and exercises various other controls. One of the most spectacular of recent developments is mass printing on corrugated fiber and cardboard containers, on wax papers, on foils and films for flexible packaging, on metal bottle caps, etc. Here is a new branch of the industry known as specialty printing whose bright-colored products are to be seen in food markets and candy stores, on toy counters, and almost everywhere you look. These technological events in the pressroom have brought repercussions that will be described as we proceed. They have been accompanied by changing techniques in the composing room which have also been sensational. Thus, beginning with the miniature office in Cambridge in 1638, the 30,000 printing and publishing establishments reported by the Bureau of the Census in 1952, that ranged from one- and two-man shops to mammoth printing factories, formed the second largest collection of manufacturing establishments in the United States—more than eleven percent of all manufacturing units, or one unit in every nine. In that year, $3 billion and more were paid out to 773,000 employees in salaries and wages, nearly $2 billion in wages alone; and the value of the printed products added by the industry amounted to more than one-twentieth of the corresponding value of all fabricated items. Since the turn of the century the value added by printers and publishers has grown from less than $300 million to $5,660 million, and during the Second World " See illustrations below, p. 323.

14

THE SETTING

War the War Production Board estimated that commercial printers turned out some 300,000 different items. 30 PRESSMEN LEAD THE WAY TO PRINTING CRAFT UNIONISM

The march of printing techniques gave rise to specialization of skills and prompted pressmen to organize their craft separately from that of typesetting and bookbinding. Born on October 8, 1889, the International Printing Pressmen's Union of North America was destined to keep pace with the times and to advance the job security of the men who actually do the printing. Early methods had made most journeymen all-around craftsmen— "printers" in the truest sense of the word. The man who set the type also knew how to print and bind. When the National Typographical Union was organized in 1852, skills were still closely interwoven and competent foremen were certain to be versed in all the processes. As technology advanced, it decreed a division of the crafts and of their supervision. Hence, despite sharp and persistent opposition by the parent body, pressmen drew away to be supervised by their own men and blazed the way for four new international craft unions affiliated with the American Federation of Labor, each with its special problems —Pressmen and Assistants, Bookbinders, Stereotypers and Electrotypers, Photoengravers. Today the International Printing Pressmen and Assistants' Union of North America is the largest international printing trade union in the world. " U . S . Bureau of the Census, Annual Survey of Manufactures, 1952, pp. 26, 126; Census of Manufactures, 1947, II, 345; New York State Department of Labor, Industrial Bulletin, April, 1950, p. 11.

CHAPTER II

TECHNOLOGICAL UNEMPLOYMENT?

The history of technological progress has taught that the original shift from hand to machine operation is on the whole more acutely felt by the workers directly involved than are the intensive, more gradual improvements which follow. The fears of unemployment among printing craftsmen were thus probably keener in the nineteenth century than they have been in the twentieth; and mechanization disturbed pressmen much earlier than typesetters. For while type was being skillfully picked, set, and distributed by hand, pressmen were operating a variety of steamdriven machines at ever-increasing speeds. The backaches of their fathers and grandfathers were supplanted by mental anxiety over the rapidly changing nature of presswork, which cost them status as handicraftsmen if not a place in the industry. Was it then strange that the London Times pressmen were distressed when they read in the morning edition of November 29, 1814, which had been secretly printed on the new Koenig cylinder machine, that: "Our journal of this day presents to the public the practical result of the greatest improvement connected with printing, since the discovery of the art itself'; that an "almost organic" system of machinery had been devised which relieved the human frame of most of its laborious work; that after the type had been set and enclosed in the form "little more remains for the man to do than to attend upon and watch this unconscious agent in its operations"; that, supplied with paper, the machine "itself places the form, inks it, adjusts the paper to the form newly inked, stamps the sheet, and gives it forth to the hands of the attendant," then repeats the operation which turns out "not less than eleven hundred sheets . . . in one hour"? 1 1

Ringwalt, American Encyclopaedia of Printing, p. 130. See also Musson, The

16

THE SETTING

Indeed, here was an impressive early example of an ill-chosen method of introducing a major labor-saving innovation which, unfortunately, managements in all industry have all too often applied. The story is that on the dramatic night of November 28, when the hand press was ready to run, the pressmen were told to wait for important news from abroad. They waited until six in the morning, only to be stunned with surprise by what they then beheld: Proprietor John Walter, with a handful of papers that bore his enraptured account, announcing that "the Times is already printed by steam." 2 Walter told the men that protest was useless, and if they accepted the change every displaced man would receive his wages until he found another position. Perhaps both master and men were thus prompted to come to terms because they had heard of the mutually damaging riots at the center of England where angry Luddites, possibly at that very moment, were smashing new textile machines. 3 Looking back upon this event, it may be permissible to suggest that unwarranted assumptions such as Walter's—that press operations would require only "attendants" instead of skilled pressmen—may have affected the attitude of typesetters generally toward their press colleagues, may have inflated a ready sense of superiority that contributed to the struggle between the two groups of craftsmen, which is treated in later chapters. AMERICAN PRINTING CRAFTSMEN

EXPRESS THEIR

FEARS

On this side of the Atlantic both masters and men tended to react conservatively to innovations, in line with English tradition during the centuries prior to the Industrial Revolution. Hence there was nothing new about the repudiation of the country's first steam press when the Boston inventor Treadwell attempted to put it on the market in 1822. Nor was it strange that when he set up his own shop to run his presses by horse power, the prompt demolition by fire was attributed to hand pressmen "who were intensely hostile to his invention." 4 Typographical Association, p. 50. It seems that from this early time printing pressmen in England have been designated as "machine minders," or some variation of that term. ' Kaempffert, A Popular History of American Inventions, I, 246. • For a dramatic description of the attacks of workers upon machines during the long wars between England and France, Ernst Toller's play The MachineWreckers is fascinating reading—especially the stirring address of poet Lord Byron in the Prologue which challenged the House of Lords for their derelictions. 4 Ringwalt, p. 360. It was only after Treadwell established a second print shop, in which his presses were run by a water wheel, that purchasers were finally

TECHNOLOGICAL UNEMPLOYMENT?

17

Eleven years later the two-year-old Typographical Association of New York prefaced its revised constitution with "Introductory Remarks" which explained the state of the trade as journeymen printers saw it. Some employers, they said, were profiting at the workmen's expense by paying less than the uniform scale to men who had come from a distance to New York, where business was good, and to those who had not served the full apprenticeship, that is the "two-thirds men" who "have always proved a great pest to the profession." Moreover, "roller boys, having gained admission to the interior of a printing office, have in short time fought their way from the rear to the front of the press, to the discharge of the regular pressmen." Pressmen had already suffered "extremely by the applications of machinery," the document continued, "and while a few individuals were growing rich, as they asserted, for the benefit of the public at large, many who had spent from five to seven years of the flower of their lives in acquiring knowledge of their profession were left without employment." 5 Typesetters were also somewhat worried about their own future. Curved stereotype plates had not yet arrived for rotary machines, and the linotype was still several decades away; but duplicate flat plates had been gradually applied to cylinder presses for fast printing of longedition books such as the Bible and school texts, so that no matter how many plates were needed the quick-fingered work of typesetters need be done only once for each set of copy. Thus the "Remarks" noted that "the numerous improvements in the art [of stereotyping] . . . rendered it every year more and more difficult for compositors to support themselves and their families," adding: "To the disgrace of some employers, every advantage was taken of the necessities of the workmen, and impositions were continually practiced upon them." 8 That the personal dignity of pressmen continued to be offended was attested by Thurlow Weed in the mid-century. Although Weed was a politician and onetime editor of the New York Evening Journal, he was found, in 1825 or 1826. Kjaer, Productivity of Labor in Newspaper Printing (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Bulletin No. 475), p. 226. 'Stewart added that the alternative to unemployment was resort to some other occupation which constrained pressmen to serve "a sort of second apprenticeship." (A Documentary History of the Early Organizations of Printers [U.S. Bureau of Labor, Bulletin No. 61], p. 897). See also Stevens, New York Typographical Union No. 6, p. 108; and U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Bulletin No. 604, p. 122. •Stewart, p. 897.

T H E SETTING

18

also a pressman apprenticed to the "Art Preservative of all Arts," as he put it; and apparently he still thought as a pressman. "Progress and Mechanism have divested our Art of much of its interests," he commented ruefully in a letter to the New York Typographical Society: I have never been able to look with complacency upon these innovations; and if our great exempler [j/c], Franklin, could revisit Earth, his spirit would grieve at the vandalism which has robbed "Press Work" of all its intellectuality. Benjamin Franklin, though a good "Compositor," was a good "Pressman" also, and worked as such, from choice, while a journeyman. . . . The customs of the Press Room, along with its labors, are all obsolete." A FOREMAN'S VIEW

It seems that it was still not common practice in the 1850s to employ a printing foreman, but we know there were some supervisors who also operated machines in the largest of the book and newspaper houses, such as Harper and Brothers in New York. A story has come down about one of them which indicates where his sympathies turned when faced with a basic labor-saving innovation. Harper's chief foreman Farrington had just learned of the company's decision to replace hand presses with steam-driven machines. When he went home that evening, instead of giving an elated account of the firm's rosy prospects his perhaps typical tale was weighted with anxiety over the impending plight of his men and himself: He dropped into the first chair he came to, and actually wept. Of course, his wife and children were very much alarmed. As soon as he could get control of himself, he said, "They are going to do something dreadful at Harper's. It will take the bread out of the mouths of so many of the boys. It is terrible to think of how much misery it will cause." "Why, what can it be?" asked his wife. "Have they failed or lost money, and must they cut down the force?" "No, it is not that," said Farrington, "but they have decided to put in a steam engine and get presses that run by steam. There's no telling how many of us will be thrown out."

Some fifty years later a press equipment manufacturer told the sequel to the incident with the hope of quieting pressmen's fears of laborsaving improvements: "Harper's did put in steam," he said, "but John Farrington continued to be foreman until his death, with more and better paid men under him; for the steam presses did more printing and ' Munsell, comp.,

Printers'

Scraps,

IX, 3.

TECHNOLOGICAL UNEMPLOYMENT?

19

the Harper's made more money and could and did pay better wages." 8 And to some extent the Pressmen's Union corroborated the manufacturer's claim. It reported that without a strike in 1866 the Adams and Cylinder Press Printers Association (which later led pressmen out of the International Typographical Union) won a minimum wage of $22.00 a week "chiefly through the independent liberality of Harper and Brothers" for which it thanked them in leading newspapers.* Thus while many individual workmen must have lost their jobs when the new power-driven machines were installed—because of age, indisposition to change from hand to machine work, or lack of opportunity to learn, as has been true of the twentieth century with the advance of mechanical techniques—the rapid expansion of the industry which we noted in the preceding chapter actually increased the number of persons employed. As the cost per unit of printing declined, competitive prices of the products also went down, and the effective demand for printed products rose.10 CONGRESS AUTHORIZES

INVESTIGATION

Fortunately we have reliable data on this trend. Before the close of the century, Congress had become concerned enough about the "great machinery question" to authorize the Commissioner of Labor to investigate and report upon the effect of the use of machinery upon labor and the cost of production, the relative productive power of hand and machine labor, the cost of manual and machine power as they are used in the productive industries, and . . . whether changes in the creative cost of products are due to a lack or to a surplus of labor or to the introduction of power machinery. 1 1

This was a very large order which required qualitative as well as statistical analysis. It could not have fallen into better hands than those of our first labor commissioner, Carroll D. Wright, who published a scholarly report. After minute examination of a great mass of data collected from dozens of manufacturing industries, Wright concluded that under the "International Printing Pressmen and Assistants' Union, Official Convention Souvenir, 1901, inset after p. 64. 'International Printing Pressmen's Union, Official Convention Souvenir, 1895; n.p. "Little is known about the elasticity of demand for printing, but there is no doubt that more printing has been bought as techniques have advanced. 11 U.S. Bureau of Labor, Hand and Machine Labor (1898), I, 5.

20

THE SETTING

modern system "there has been a larger increase in the number of persons required for the production of the articles considered, in order to meet present demands, than would have been necessary to meet the limited demands under the hand-labor system," and that the quality of the machine product was usually superior. For individual industries Wright was able to show how much time of how many persons was consumed in making each of a number of specific products by hand and machine methods respectively. For the printing industry, the accompanying table summarizes Wright's comparative data on the number of individuals employed, man-hours worked, and the wage-cost in dollars of creating given units of book and job products under the primitive, or "hand" method, where equipment was simple, and under the more complicated modern, or "machine" method, "as of the present day"—1895-96. In some instances both hand and machine methods were in use at the time of investigation, so that comparison could be readily made. In others, verification of data on old-fashioned methods required hunting up retired employers or workmen. 12 While the summary table yields no information about displaced workers, a good statistical clue to fears of unemployment felt by the people involved may be found in Column E where total man hours worked to produce the unit (Column D) was in all instances sharply reduced. Lessened also was the wage-cost (Column F), despite higher hourly rates for machine workers. In Column C we find that for units of some products more persons were employed with the machine than with the hand method, but this was owing either to more operations (Column B) or to the addition of a machinist and an engineer whose services were not required under the primitive method. The number of compositors employed at linotypes on all four of the typesetting units would have been reduced even more had it not been for the need of the engineer and machinist. Linotype men did the work from three and a half to ten times faster than hand compositors, depending upon the nature of the work, the size of the type, and individual skill. In the production of 100,000 railroad tickets the number of different persons needed under the two methods was the same, but we are told that the foreman worked at the job ten hours a day using the hand "¡bid., p. 12.

TECHNOLOGICAL UNEMPLOYMENT?

21

process while the combined time of foreman and engineer in the modem plant was only 37% minutes. Column E shows that the total time chargeable to the production of these tickets fell from 340 hours to 25 hours and 38 minutes. The steam-driven presses which printed, folded, and gathered the sheets for the 1,000 pamphlets with the two-color cover greatly reduced both the number of different pressworkers needed and the total manhours worked. The output of hymnbooks would appear, from the table, to have profited least of all from modern methods—man-hours worked being cut not even in half, wage-cost little more than a fifth, and the number employed by some 26 percent. However, in this case only the pressroom and bindery of this plant had been mechanized. While the printing, folding, stitching, etc., were all done by electric power, the type was still hand-set and electrotypes were made by hand and steam power. To print one thousand hymnbooks of 512 pages, words and music, two flatbed power presses, with one pressman and two assistants to each, produced 32 pages at a time and required only 20 hours of work, whereas three hand presses, with one pressman and two assistants on each, had printed only 16 pages at a time and required a total of 1,152 hours of work. This was a labor-saving ratio of more than 57 to 1 in favor of the modern method.13 In the production of 10,000 copies of a 64-page magazine, Wright reported that the steam-driven press, operated by two persons, ran only four hours to turn out 64 pages at one impression, while the hand press, operated by three persons, ran 960 hours, to print eight pages at one impression. The operators of the automatic folding machine required six hours and forty minutes to fold the sheets, as against 240 hours by hand with a bone folder. Eight persons were employed by the modern method as compared to five persons by the primitive method, but the total time worked in 1896 was only some 15 hours, as against 3,170 hours in "The small total advantage of the modern method in hymnbook production could thus be charged to the slow work of typesetting and electrotyping which would have been the same for 15,000 or even 100,000 books as for the unit of 1,000 that was adopted for comparison. Had the hundreds of hours consumed by these old-fashioned methods been deducted from the total to make a comparison similar to those for other units investigated, the time left for printing and binding would have been 120V4 hours under the modem method and 1,606% hours under the primitive method—a ratio of more than 13 to 1 in favor of the modem method. Ibid., I, 359-61.

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