To a toast, at a banquet in honor of the 36th session of the
“International Typographical Union,” given at the Hotel Victoria,
Kansas City, Mo., June 14th, 1888.
MR. CHAIRMAN, AND GENTLEMEN: The advertisement of Webster’s Unabridged
Dictionary asserts that the book contains 180,000 words. I have read,
somewhere, a statement that even Shakespeare’s wonderful vocabulary
embraced only 10,000 words. And yet, on an occasion of this character,
while it seems to me that I could make use of at least a million, I am
humiliated by the consciousness that the command of five hundred words
would be an opulence of language that would make me rich indeed.
I am confounded, too, by the printed text of your programme. The local
committee telegraphed me, this morning, that I was to respond to the
sentiment, “The Sunflower State,” but on arriving this evening, I was
handed a programme, in which the toast, “Our Country,” is assigned me.
This reminds me of a story I heard, years ago, concerning a tramp
printer. He had walked all the way from Denver, and, on arriving at a
frontier Kansas town, was arrested as a horse thief. It seemed to him a
cruel irony of fate, and he indignantly protested. Taken before the
Mayor, whose office was the printing office of the village, he readily
established his innocence, and was discharged. He then asked: “Who owns
this printing office?” The Mayor replied: “I do.” Said the typo: “Who is
the foreman?” The Mayor responded: “I am the foreman.” Said the typo:
“Don’t you want to hire a printer?” The Mayor responded: “No, I am the
printer, and the pressman, also.” “Well, my friend,” said the wandering
typo, “you seem to be spread out a good deal for one man.”
It seems to me that I had better ignore the toasts, and not attempt to
spread out too much. I would like, indeed, to tell you something of
Kansas. Better still, I wish you could see Kansas; and I give you a
cordial invitation to visit the Sunflower State, and learn, by practical
observation, something of the resources, the development, and the
possibilities of that diamond set in the heart of the American
continent. Kansas is gridironed by 8,335 miles of railway. It is a State
of common schools. It has the smallest percentage of illiteracy shown in
any State of the Union. Its people believe in printer’s ink. There are
eight hundred and fifty newspapers published in Kansas, and seventy-two
of them are dailies. Fully four-fifths of the Kansas newspapers are, I
think, owned and edited by practical printers. And within the borders of
the State are gathered 1,650,000 intelligent, energetic, industrious
people, who believe in school houses and popular education, who
patronize the printer, who believe in printer’s ink, and have spread it
everywhere in advertising the State of their love and their faith.
Mr. Chairman, I accepted the invitation of your local committee, to be
present at this banquet, with sincere pleasure. I have a right, indeed,
to hail the guests of this occasion as fellow-craftsmen. I entered a
printing office, in the old town of Brownsville, Pa., at the age of
fourteen, and served a three-years apprenticeship. Those of you who are
graduates of an old-time printing office, before the era of patent
outsides or plates, know what such an apprenticeship meant. During those
three years I was, in succession, office-boy, typesetter, pressman, job
printer, and foreman, and, occasionally, I enjoyed the keen delight of
seeing some item of local news I had written, printed in the paper on
which I was employed.
I have come to believe that the stains of printer’s ink on a man’s
hands, though invisible, are indelible. Certainly one who has been
educated in a printing office can never forget or outgrow his training.
Cases, type and presses have for him an undying fascination, and the
cunning of a printer’s nimble fingers, once acquired, is never lost. I
might not be able, just now, to set type as rapidly and accurately as
many of you can, but it is, and always has been, a source of
satisfaction to me to believe that, after a few weeks’ practice, I could
“hold a case” in almost any office.
I greet and welcome you, therefore, with a craftsman’s pleasure. I
welcome you as the accredited representatives of one of the largest
bodies of American workmen. I welcome you as representatives of a craft
whose knowledge of affairs, and familiarity with events of current
importance, is more general and intimate than is that of any other body
of American workmen. I greet you as men whose art preserves all other
arts; whose skill is the voice of every craft; whose labor instructs all
other laborers; whose work exalts and inspires the active brains and
trained fingers of every man and woman employed in any of the activities
of this busy world. I trust your deliberations will be pleasant and
harmonious, and that, above all, they may be distinguished throughout by
that practical common sense which ought to be, and, as a rule, is
characteristic of men who have been trained as you have been, in a broad
field of intelligence, where hands and brains move together, and where
all the faculties are educated and disciplined.