Should the student aspire to collect his journalistic work, or
the less ephemeral part of it, into book form, he will do well to
apply to some old and established firm of publishers, who will
give him a reasonable estimate for its production, plus the cost
of advertising, warehousing, wear and tear, office expenses, etc.,
etc., to which must be added the customary Fee.
The book so issued will be sent to the Press for notice and review,
and will, some weeks later, be either Remaindered or Pulped. It is
important to have a clear idea of these processes which accompany
an author throughout his career.
A book is said to be _Remaindered_ when it is sold to the
secondhand bookseller in bulk; 10 per cent. of the sums so
received, less the cost of cartage to and fro from shop to shop,
and the wages of the Persuader who attempts to sell the volumes,
is then credited to the author in his account, which is usually
pressed upon the completion of the transaction.
The less fortunate must be content with _Pulping_. In the midst
of their chagrin they will be consoled by the thought that their
book enjoys a kind of resurrection, and will reappear beneath some
other, and--who knows?--perhaps some nobler form. The very paper
upon which these words are printed may once have formed part of
a volume of verse, or of Imperialist pamphlets subsidised by the
South African Women’s League.
A book is said to be _Pulped_ when it is sold at so many pence the
thousand copies to the Pulpers[25] for Pulping. The transformation
is effected as follows:--First the covers are thoroughly and
skilfully torn off the edition by girls known as “Scalpers” or
“Skinners,” and the Poems (or whatnot), after going through this
first process, are shot in batches of twenty-four into a trough,
which communicates by an inclined plane with open receptacles
known technically as “bins.” Hence the sheets are taken out by
another batch of hands known as “feeders”--for it is their duty
to “feed” the marvellous machine which is the centre of the whole
works. The Poems (as we may imagine them to be) are next thrown by
the “feeders,” with a certain rapid and practised gesture, into a
funnel-shaped receiver, where they are caught by Six Large Rows of
strong Steel Teeth[26] known as the “Jaws,” which are so arranged
as just barely to miss each other; these work alternatively back
and forth, and reduce the hardest matter to shreds in an incredibly
short time.
The shreds so formed fall on to a wide endless band, which carries
them on into the “bowl,” where they are converted under a continual
stream of boiling water, into a kind of loose paste. Lest any trace
of the original Poetic (or Prose) composition could remain to
trouble the whiteness of the rapidly forming mixture, this water
contains a 30% solution of Sardonic Oxide, two kilogrammes of which
will bleach one thousand kilos of shredded Poems or Essays in from
thirty-five to forty minutes. When the Poems or whatnot have been
finally reduced to a white and formless mass, they are termed
_pulp_ and this pulp is laid out into frames, to be converted once
more into paper, Art, glazed, and medium.
This principle of “the Conservation of Paper” or, as Lord Balton
(Sir Charles Quarry) has himself called it, “the Circulation of
Literature,” is naturally more developed among the Anglo-Saxon
peoples than upon the Continent. The patriotic reader will be
pleased to hear that whereas of existing German books barely 35%
are pulped within the year, of French books not 27%, and of Italian
but 15%; of our total production--which is far larger--no less
than 73% are restored to their original character of useful blank
paper within the year, ready to receive further impressions of
Human Genius and to speed on its accelerated round the progress of
Mankind.