Invention of printing--Effects of that art--A daily
newspaper--Provincial newspapers--News-writing of former
periods--Changes in the character of newspapers--Steam
conveyance--Electric telegraph--Organization of a London
newspaper-office--The printing-machine--The
paper-machine--Bookbinding--Paper-duty.
The art of printing offers one of the readiest and most forcible
illustrations of the advantages that have been bestowed upon the world
by scientific discovery and by mechanical power. Although there is,
happily, little occasion now to combat any wide-spread hostility to
machinery, the argument for its use derived from printing may be very
briefly stated.
It is nearly four hundred years since the art of printing books was
invented. Before that time all books were written by the hand. There
were many persons employed to copy out books, but they were very dear,
although the copiers had small wages. A Bible was sold for thirty pounds
in the money of that day, which was equal to a great deal more of our
money. Of course, very few people had Bibles or any other books. A mode
was invented of imitating the written books by cutting the letters on
wood, and taking off copies from the wooden blocks by rubbing the sheet
on the back. Soon after, the idea was carried farther by casting metal
types or letters, which could be arranged in words, and sentences, and
pages, and volumes; and then a machine, called a printing-press, upon
the principle of a screw, was made to stamp impressions of these types
so arranged. There was an end, then, at once to the trade of the
pen-and-ink copiers; because the copiers in types, who could press off
several hundred books while the writers were producing one, drove them
out of the market. A single printer could do the work of at least two
hundred writers. At first sight this seems a hardship, for a hundred and
ninety-nine people might have been, and probably were, thrown out of
their accustomed employment. But what was the consequence in a year or
two? Where one written book was sold, a thousand printed books were
required. The old books were multiplied in all countries, and new books
were composed by men of talent and learning, because they could then
find numerous readers. The printing press did the work more neatly and
more correctly than the writer, and it did it infinitely cheaper. What
then? The writers of books had to turn their hands to some other trade,
it is true; but type-founders, paper-makers, printers, and bookbinders,
were set to work, by the new art or machine, to at least a hundred times
greater number of persons than the old way of making books employed.
But there is a far more important mode of viewing this matter than any
consideration resulting out of the increased employment that the art of
printing unquestionably has created. If printing, which is a cheap and a
rapid process, could by possibility be superseded by writing, which is
an expensive and a slow operation, no book, no newspaper, could be
produced for the use of the people. Knowledge, upon which every hope of
bettering their condition must ultimately rest, would again become the
property of a very few; and mankind would lose the greater part of that
power which constitutes the essential difference between civilization
and barbarism. The art of printing has gone on more and more adapting
itself to the increase of our population, during the three centuries and
a half in which it has been exercised in this country. Herein consists,
perhaps, one of the mightiest differences between our condition and that
of every generation which has preceded us. Through that art, no idea can
now perish. Through that art, knowledge is fast becoming the common
possession of all. Through that art, what the people have gained in the
past is secured for the future. It has established the empire of public
opinion.
There is possibly no more striking example of the manifold combinations
of mental labour, of scientific power, of mechanical invention, and of
the use of rapid means of communication, than the forces now called into
action for the issue of a London daily newspaper. Nor is there any
production of literary industry which more pointedly illustrates the
distinctive qualities of printing as compared with writing--the
rapidity, the cheapness, and the general diffusion. Let us endeavour to
supply a rapid sketch of the wonderful organization that is required to
produce this great necessary of modern society.
The essential characteristic of a newspaper is news. It may be
philosophical, or critical, or imaginative--it may pour forth treasures
of learning or eloquence, to live but a few hours and then be too
readily forgotten--but no amount of ability will give it currency if it
be deficient in news. It is the imperative demand for news, embracing
every movement of human life in every class and every country, that sets
in action the wondrous organization that produces a daily newspaper. Its
ministers of communication are almost ubiquitous. They are in the
Bow-street police-office, watching the effrontery of the detected
felon;--they are on the heights of Inkermann, to stir our hearts "as
with a trumpet," and fill our eyes with tears as they tell us
"How sleep the brave, who sink to rest
By all their country's wishes blest."
They are at the city feast, where all is blandishment and turtle;--they
are at the coroner's inquest upon a street-starved pauper. They furnish
news to all the world; and they receive news from all the world.
But there are similar organizations going forward through the country.
The increase in number of the provincial papers, and their efforts to
procure intelligence, are equally remarkable.
The London editors have the not very easy task of glancing over the
five hundred local papers of the United Kingdom. These are, in ordinary
cases, the vehicles from which they obtain their home intelligence. If
any local matter of general interest is to be specially attended to,
their own correspondent, or their own reporter, furnishes the details.
Some unexpected event puts, occasionally, the electric telegraph in
motion, to tell the world of London, on Saturday morning, what occurred
at Liverpool on Friday night; and the Liverpool merchant reads on the
Exchange at noon of that Saturday, in the newspaper printed at a
distance of two hundred miles, some notice of an arrival in his own port
during the hours when he was sleeping. Even the state of the weather at
different parts of the kingdom is thus daily transmitted. But the London
editors, and some of the provincial, have to look out for news at a
greater distance than is comprised in our "nook-shotten isle of Albion."
They have to search the papers of every land and every people--whether
written in English, French, German, Italian, Greek, or Turkish. Of
course translators are always at hand. For the London daily papers the
electric telegraph is "throwing its shadows" before the authentic
heralds of "coming events." For them is the steamer bringing the special
correspondence from the gold-diggings in Australia, and from the camp in
the Crimea. For them do the people's representatives make long speeches
to empty benches, secure that there is a medium of communication for
unnumbered eyes, although the ears be shut of those who listen not to
the voice of the charmers. For them do great ministers go into obscure
places, and, addressing an enthusiastic dinner-table, or a solemn
corporation, speak to the world. For them does every discoverer of a
private grievance claim public redress. For them is produced, in letters
"to the editor," that great chaotic accumulation of fact and theory, of
wisdom and folly, of calculation and impulse, whose atoms finally
resolve themselves into a solid mass called public opinion.
The mental labours attendant upon the provincial newspapers are more
narrowed. But they are nevertheless very important; and the extension of
their functions by the enormous extension of the facilities for
obtaining intelligence is equally striking. The old county papers,
circulating steadily through the rural districts, and duly chronicling
session and assize, markets and misdemeanours, have been stirred into
activity by newspapers issuing from great commercial and manufacturing
centres, which have arisen with the immense development of our industry.
Liverpool had two papers in 1803,--it has now ten; Manchester,
Birmingham, Derby, Leicester, Nottingham, which had each one at that
period, have now each four. Many towns that had one paper at the
beginning of the century have now two. There are about eighty provincial
English papers now published in towns which had no journal at that
period. Some belong to manufacturing districts which then contained a
small population; such as Bolton, Bradford, Hanley, Kidderminster,
Macclesfield, Stockport, Sunderland, Wakefield, Wolverhampton. Others,
to places of fashion and luxury which have grown up out of changes of
society, such as Brighton and Cheltenham. Others, to new local centres,
which, through the great modern facilities of communication, can
circulate their weekly sheets at little expense, instead of sending
their own messengers throughout the small towns and villages. The local
changes in these vehicles of intelligence are strikingly connected with
the other great social changes which have been noticed in this volume.
It is satisfactory to know that the provincial press is no imperfect
representative of an age of progress.
The history of news-writing and news-publishing is a mirror of many of
the changes in social necessities and conveniences. In 1625, Ben
Jonson's play of 'The Staple of News' exhibited a countrywoman going to
an office of news, and saying to the manager, who sits in state with his
registers and examiners,--
"I would have, sir,
A groatsworth of any news, I care not what,
To carry down this Saturday to our vicar."
This was written news. In London, before a newspaper existed, there were
private gazetteers, who made a living by picking up scraps of
intelligence in taverns and barbers' shops. This class of persons
continued even when there were newspapers; for the news-letter, as it
was called, is thus described in the first number of the 'Evening Post,'
issued in 1709:--"There must be 3_l._ or 4_l._ per ann. paid by those
gentlemen that are out of town for written news, which is so far
generally from having any probability or matter of fact in it, that it
is frequently stuffed up with a 'We hear,' or 'An eminent Jew merchant
has received a letter.'" The same 'Evening Post' adds,--"We read more of
our own affairs in the Dutch papers than in any of our own." Sir Roger
L'Estrange, who published 'The Intelligencer,' with privilege, in 1663,
says that he shall publish once a week, "to be published every Thursday,
and finished upon the Tuesday night, leaving Wednesday entire for the
printing it off." The first advertisement in an English paper appeared
in 1649.
At the beginning of the present century the public used to look with
wonder upon their "folio of four pages," and contrast it with the scanty
chronicles of the days of Charles II. and Anne. We of the present time,
in the same way, contrast our newspapers with the meagre records of the
beginning of the century. The essential difference has been produced by
steam navigation, by railways, by the extension of the post, dependent
upon both applications of steam, and by the electric telegraph. The same
scientific forces and administrative organization that bring the written
news from every region of the earth, re-convey the printed news to every
region. It is sufficient to glance at the lists of foreign mails, and
the low rates of postage from the United Kingdom, to see the enormous
extent of that intercourse which enables our government, by the packet
service, to transmit a letter for sixpence to the British West Indies,
to Hong-kong to our North American colonies, to Belgium; to nearly all
the German States, by an uniform British and foreign rate, for
eightpence; to France, Algeria, Spain, and Portugal, for ten pence; to
the Italian States for a trifle more; to Turkey in Europe for one
shilling and five pence; and to India for one shilling and ten pence.
With this certain and rapid intercourse, it is not likely that the least
enterprising newspaper editor would have to repeat the doubt of
L'Estrange, who says, "Once a week may do the business; yet if I shall
find, when my hand is in, and after the planting and securing my
correspondents, that the matter will fairly furnish more, I shall keep
myself free to double at pleasure."
It is the external communication so wonderful in our own times, we
repeat, which has chiefly changed the character of our newspapers. When
we read in a London daily paper the one line,--"The Overland Mail--by
electric telegraph,"--we have two facts of the highest significance.
"The Overland Mail" would appear, of itself, a marvel great enough for
one age. The Overland Mail has brought London within a month of Bombay.
It has joined India most effectually to England for all commercial and
state purposes. It gives us the news of India, by the aid of the
electric telegraph, in as little time as we ordinarily received news
from Vienna at the beginning of the eighteenth century. The steamer and
the electric telegraph made the blood of England beat quicker in every
heart, when our newspapers recorded, on the 13th of November, the most
sanguinary and heroic battle of modern times, fought in the Crimea only
a week previous. When Marlborough was setting out for his campaign of
1709, and so many political, if not patriotic, hopes, were fixed upon
the probable issue, 'The Tatler,' then a newspaper, had the following
paragraph:--"We learn from Brussels, by letters dated the 20th, that on
the 14th, in the evening, the Duke of Marlborough and Prince Eugene
arrived at Courtray, with a design to proceed the day following to
Lisle, in the neighbourhood of which city the confederate army was to
arrive the same day." The account of the movement of the great allied
generals was transmitted from Brussels six days after the movement had
taken place, Courtray being only distant forty-six miles; and the
important news from Brussels, of the 20th May, was published in London
on the 28th, London being distant some two hundred and fifty miles. The
distance from Balaclava to London is about three thousand miles.
[Illustration: Old hand-gunner.]
The function of a great newspaper, in connexion with the positions of
armies and the events of siege and battle, is as different from the
function of the journalist of fifty years ago, as the rapid firing of
the soldier of the Alma with his Minie rifle contrasts with the slow
evolutions of the old hand-gunner. In the war with Russia the presence
of the newspaper reporter gives a new feature, strikingly characteristic
of our times and our country. It is necessary to have the earliest and
the most detailed accounts of this eventful contest; for the people, one
and all, understand that they are deeply interested in its issue, and
that, if their country fails to assert the superiority of freedom and
intelligence over slavery and barbarism, the material prosperity of
that country can be of no long duration. Wisely, therefore, did the
London daily papers each send their active, fearless, and eloquent
correspondents, to endure some of the hardships of the march and the
bivouac--to observe the battle-field, not secure from its dangers--to
write of victories, surrounded by the dead and dying--to be the
historians of a day, and thus to furnish the best materials for all
future historians. The life of a London reporter, although a life of
constant labour, is generally accompanied by much ease and comfort. The
senate does not acknowledge his presence; but it provides the "stranger"
with the best seat. He takes his place at the public dinner as an
honoured guest--one whose absence would be more regretted than that of
the city's mayor or the borough's patron. But in a campaign, where his
duties are new, he must fight his way through every difficulty. His
function is recognised in an age when it would be useless to suppress
intelligence, even if it were possible. He finds a ready mess in every
tent where a scanty meal is set out; he stands by the side of the
commander, and gazes with him upon "the currents of the heady fight."
How he wears after two months of unusual service we have some slight
notion, when we read, in a letter to '_The Times_' of November 30, that
the writer had seen an officer who had lately parted from the special
correspondent. "The chances of war had deprived him of nearly all his
garments; and when last seen he was walking about in a rifleman's
jacket, much too small for his portly person; and his nether garments
had been converted into breeches by a constant scrambling amongst rocks
and briers." Let us not forget our obligations to the men who, in peril
and suffering, have made heroic action more familiar to us; and have
contributed no mean part in giving a moral impulse to our country, as
essential to future safety and honour as the material wealth which has
made us a people amongst the foremost of the earth.
[Illustration: Carrier-pigeon.]
What the carrier-pigeon was in the conveyance of intelligence in the
middle ages, and even within a few years, the electric telegraph is in
the present day. The carrier-pigeon went out from a besieged castle, to
ask for succour, in eastern countries, five centuries ago. The electric
telegraph, land and submarine, brings the tidings of slaughter and
sickness from Sebastopol, and England and France send instant
reinforcements. The carrier-pigeon, in the last century, was despatched
by the merchants of the English factory, from Scanderoon to Aleppo, to
announce the arrival of the company's ships. The electric telegraph
communicates to London the arrival of an Australian packet at
Southampton. Within the last ten years one of the annual expenses of a
London newspaper was 1800_l._ for pigeon expresses. The pigeons have
lost their employment. The price of stocks and shares in 'Change-alley
is known every quarter of an hour upon the exchanges of our great
commercial marts; and the closing price of the French funds is in type
before midnight at our daily newspaper-offices. The carrier-pigeon
travelled sixty miles an hour. The time which it takes to transmit a
message by the electric telegraph is inappreciable. The newspapers of
the United States employ the electric telegraph far more extensively
than our English papers; for the distances between one State and one
city and another State and another city are so great, that steam
travelling would not accomplish the object of communication with
sufficient rapidity. The density of our population renders the
employment of the telegraph less necessary for the ordinary transmission
of intelligence. But private curiosity, in a time of great public
interest, steps in; and one of the most remarkable exhibitions of our
provincial towns at the time at which we are writing--when an agonizing
anxiety for the fortunes of our heroic defenders in the Black Sea is the
chief thought of millions--is the crowd about the telegraph-office to
know something more than the morning paper, brought by railway speed,
can furnish to this universal excitement. In America the distance
between Quebec and New Orleans, a distance of three thousand miles, is
overleaped by the electric telegraph. Two lines, each two thousand miles
long, connect New York with New Orleans; and over this space messages
are transmitted, and answers received, in three hours. When we read long
paragraphs in the London morning papers, received by electric telegraph
after midnight from Paris, we wonder how this is accomplished. Eighteen
words, which are equal to about two newspaper lines, are transmitted
every minute; and the full message from Dover, carefully transcribed, is
in the hands of the newspaper editor in half an hour.
To carry out all this scientific conquest of time and space, by the most
perfect mental and mechanical arrangements in the newspaper-office
itself, appears, at first sight, almost as great a wonder as the rapid
communication. Nothing but the most perfect organization of the division
of labour could accomplish the feat.
There is, after midnight, in the office of a morning paper, a constant
necessity for adapting the labour of every quarter of an hour to the
requirements of the instant time. Much of the newspaper matter may have
been in type in the evening; some portion may be quite ready for
printing off. But new necessities may derange much of this preparation.
Say that the Parliament is sitting. The reporters are in the gallery at
the meeting of the House, and each arrives at the office with his
assigned portion of the debate. A heavy night is not expected, and the
early reporters write with comparative fulness. Suddenly an unexpected
turn is given to the proceedings. A great debate springs up, out of a
ministerial statement or an opposition objection. Then come reply and
rejoinder. Column after column is poured in. Smaller matters must give
way to greater. The intelligence that will keep is put aside for the
information that is pressing. The debate is prolonged till one or two
o'clock, and the paper is approaching its completion. But an electric
telegraph communication has arrived--perhaps an important express. Away
goes more news. Advertisements, law reports, police reports,
correspondence--all retire into obscurity for one day. There is plenty
of manipulating power in the great body of compositors to effect these
changes. But not in any department is there any apparent bustle. Nor is
there any neglect in the labours that wait upon the work of the
compositors. One word is not put for another. The readers are as
vigilant to correct every error--to have no false spelling and no
inaccurate punctuation--as if they were bestowing their vigilance upon a
book to be published next season. The reporters are as careful to make
no slips which would indicate a want of knowledge, as if they were
calmly writing in their libraries after breakfast. The one-presiding
mind of the editor is watchful over all. At four or five o'clock the
morning paper goes to press.
[Illustration: Cowper's machine.]
But there are many hundred copies to be despatched by the morning mails.
Manchester and Glasgow would be frightened from their propriety, if the
daily London papers did not arrive at the accustomed hour. The London
merchant, banker, lawyer, would go unwillingly to his morning labour, if
he had not had one passing glance at the division in the House, the
state of the money-market, the last foreign intelligence. Late as the
paper may have been in its mental completion, Manchester, Glasgow, and
London will not be kept without that illumination which has become
almost as necessary as sunlight. Machinery has been created by the
demand, to carry the demand farther than the warmest imagination could
have anticipated. In 1814, Koenig, a German, erected the first
printing-machine at the "Times Office," and produced eighteen hundred
impressions an hour on one side. The machine superseded the duplicates
of the type which were once necessary, painfully and laboriously to keep
up a small supply, worked by men, with relays, at the rate of five
hundred an hour. In 1818 Edward Cowper produced his cylinder-machine,
which effected a revolution in the commerce of books; and, in connexion
with the paper-machine, enabled the principle of cheapness to contend
against an impolitic and oppressive tax. This is still the machine in
general use for many newspapers and much book-printing. We will briefly
describe the operation of printing a sheet of paper on both sides by
this instrument.
Upon the solid steel table at each end of the machine lie the pages
which print one side of the sheet. At the top of the machine, where the
laying-on boy stands, is a heap of wet paper. The signal being given by
the director of the work, the laying-on boy turns a small handle, and
the moving-power of the strap connected with a steam-engine is
immediately communicated. Some ten or twenty spoiled sheets are first
passed over the types to remove any dirt or moisture. If the director is
satisfied, the boy begins to lay on the white paper. He places the sheet
upon a flat table before him, with its edge ready to be seized by the
apparatus for conveying it upon the drum. At the first movement of the
great wheel, the inking-apparatus at each end has been set in motion.
The steel cylinder attached to the reservoir of ink has begun slowly to
move,--the "doctor," or more properly "ductor," has risen to touch that
cylinder for an instant, and thus receive a supply of ink,--the
inking-table has passed under the "doctor" and carried off that
supply,--and the distributing-rollers have spread it equally over the
surface of the table. This surface, having passed under the
inking-rollers, communicates the supply to them; and they in turn impart
it to the _form_ which is to be printed. All these beautiful operations
are accomplished in the sixteenth part of a minute, by the travelling
backward and forward of the carriage or table upon which the _form_
rests. Each roller revolves upon an axis which is fixed. At the moment
when the _form_ at the back of the machine is passing under the
inking-roller, the sheet, which the boy has carefully laid upon the
table before him, is caught in the web-roller and conveyed to the
endless bands or tapes which pass it over the first impressing
cylinder. It is here seized tightly by the bands, which fall between the
pages and on the outer margin. The moment after the sheet is seized upon
the first cylinder, the _form_ passes under that cylinder, and the paper
being brought in contact with it receives an impression on one side. To
give the impression on the other side the sheet is to be turned over,
and this is effected by the two drums in the centre of the machine. The
endless tapes never lose their grasp of the sheet, although they allow
it to be reversed. While the impression has been given by the first
cylinder, the second _form_ of types at the other end of the table has
been inked. The drums have conveyed the sheet during this inking upon
the second cylinder; it is brought in contact with the types, and the
operation is complete.
Koenig's machine, which was a very complicated instrument, was
supplanted at the '_Times_' office by a modification of Applegath's and
Cowper's machine, which printed four thousand sheets an hour on one
side. But that has been superseded by a vertical machine, which prints
ten thousand copies an hour, on one side. The separate columns of type
are fixed on a large type-drum, two hundred inches in circumference. The
drum is surrounded by eight impressing cylinders; the ink is applied to
the surface of the type by rollers which work between these cylinders;
and the sheets are laid on upon eight tables, (_h_, _h_, _h_,) which, by
a most ingenious mechanism, carry each sheet to a point where its
position is suddenly changed, and it is impressed between the type and
the cylinder; the paper being then suspended by tapes, from which it is
released as it passes forward, to be laid upon the heap which will be
scattered, in a few hours, to every corner of the kingdom.
[Illustration: Times Printing-Machine.]
The printing machines, which have been in full operation for little more
than twenty years, have called into action an amount of employment which
was almost wholly unknown when knowledge was for the few. Paper-makers,
type-founders, wood-engravers, bookbinders, booksellers, have been
raised up by this extension of the art of printing, in numbers which far
exceed those of any former period.
But the printing machine would have worked feebly and imperfectly
without the paper machine. That most complete invention has not only
cheapened paper itself, but it has cheapened the subsequent operations
of printing, in a remarkable degree. It has enabled one revolution of
the cylinder of the printing machine to produce four sheets instead of
one, or a surface of print equal to four sheets. When paper was
altogether made by hand, the usual paper for books was called demy; and
a sheet of demy produced sixteen octavo pages of a book. The paper could
not have been economically made larger by hand. A sheet of paper equal
to four sheets of demy is now worked at the newspaper machine; and
sixty-four pages of an octavo book might be so worked, if it were
needful for cheapening production. Double demy is constantly worked for
books. Thus, one economical arrangement of science produces another
contrivance; and machines in one direction combine with machines having
a different object, to produce legitimate cheapness, injurious to no
one, but beneficial to all.
Let us attempt to convey a notion of the beautiful operations of the
paper-machine.
In the whole range of machinery, there is, perhaps, no series of
contrivances which so forcibly address themselves to the senses. There
is nothing mysterious in the operation; we at once see the beginning and
the end of it. At one extremity of the long range of wheels and
cylinders we are shown a stream of pulp, not thicker than milk and
water, flowing over a moving plane; at the other extremity the same
stream has not only become perfectly solid, but is wound upon a reel in
the form of hard and smooth paper. This is, at first sight, as
miraculous as any of the fancies of an Arabian tale. Aladdin's wonderful
lamp, by which a palace was built in a night, did not in truth produce
more extraordinary effects than science has done with the paper-machine.
[Illustration: Paper-making by Hand.]
At one extremity of the machine is a chest, full of stuff or pulp. We
mount the steps by its side, and see a long beam rolling incessantly
round this capacious vessel, and thus keeping the fibres of linen, which
look like snow flakes, perpetually moving, and consequently equally
suspended, in the water. At the bottom of the chest, and above the vat,
there is a cock through which we observe a continuous stream of pulp
flowing into the vat; which is, always, therefore, filled to a certain
height. From the upper to the lower part of this vat a portion of the
pulp flows upon a narrow wire frame, which constantly jumps up and down
with a noise resembling a cherry-clack. Having passed through the
sifter, the pulp flows still onward to a ledge, over which it falls in a
regular stream, like a sheet of water over a smooth dam. Here we see it
caught upon a plane, which presents an uninterrupted surface of five or
six feet, upon which the pulp seems evenly spread, as a napkin upon a
table. A more accurate inspection shows us that this plane is constantly
moving onwards with a gradual pace; that it has also a shaking motion
from side to side; and that it is perforated all over with little
holes--in fact, that it is an endless web of the finest wire. If we
touch the pulp at the end of the plane, upon which it first descends, we
find it fluid; if we draw the finger over its edge at the other end, we
perceive that it is still soft--not so hard, perhaps, as wet
blotting-paper,--but so completely formed, that the touch will leave a
hole, which we may trace forward till the paper is perfectly made. The
pulp does not flow over the sides of the plane, we observe, because a
strap, on each side, constantly moving and passing upon its edges,
regulates the width. After we pass the wheels upon which these straps
terminate, we perceive that the paper is sufficiently formed not to
require any further boundary to define its size;--the pulp has ceased to
be fluid. But it is yet tender and wet. The paper is not yet completely
off the plane of wire; before it quits it, another roller, which is
clothed with felt, and upon which a stream of cold water is constantly
flowing subjects it to pressure. The paper has at length left what
may be called the region of wire, and has entered that of cloth. A
tight surface of flannel, or felt, is moving onwards with the same
regular march as the web of wire. Like the wire, the felt is what is
called endless,--that is, united at the extremities, as a jack-towel is.
We see the sheet travelling up an inclined plane of this stretched
flannel, which gradually absorbs its moisture. It is now seized between
two rollers, which powerfully squeeze it. It goes travelling up another
inclined plane of flannel, and then passes through a second pair of
pressing-rollers. It has now left the region of cloth, and has entered
that of heat. The paper, up to this point, is quite formed; but it is
fragile and damp. It is in the state in which, if the machinery were to
stop here, as it did upon its first invention, it would require (having
been wound upon a reel) to be parted and dried as hand-made paper is.
But in a few seconds more it is subjected to a process by which all this
labour and time is saved. From the last pair of cloth-pressing rollers,
the paper is received upon a small roller which is guided over the
polished surface of a large heated cylinder. The soft pulp tissue now
begins to smoke; but the heat is proportioned to its increasing power of
resistance. From the first cylinder, or drum, it is received upon a
second, considerably larger, and much hotter. As it rolls over this
polished surface, we see all the roughness of its appearance, when in
the cloth region, gradually vanishing. At length, having passed over a
third cylinder, still hotter than the second, and having been subjected
to the pressure of a blanket, which confines it on one side, while the
cylinder smooths it on the other, it is caught upon the last roller,
which hands it over to the reel. The last process of the machine is to
cut the roll of paper into sheets.
[Illustration: Various processes of Bookbinding.]
In consequence of the cheaper production of the press, and the
consequent extension of the demand for books, bookbinding has become a
large manufacture, carried on with many scientific applications. We have
rolling-machines, to make the book solid; cutting-machines, to supersede
the hand-labour of the little instrument called a plough; embossing
machines, to produce elaborate raised patterns on leather or cloth;
embossing presses, to give the gilt ornament and lettering. These
contrivances, and other similar inventions, have not only cheapened
books, but have enabled the publisher to give them a permanent instead
of a temporary cover, ornamental as well as useful. There are eleven
thousand bookbinders now employed, of which one-third are females. The
number employed has been quadrupled by these inventions. In 1830, the
journeymen bookbinders of London opposed the introduction of the
rolling-machine. Books were formerly beat with large hammers upon a
stone, to give them solidity. The workmen were relieved from the
drudgery of the beating-hammer by the easy operation of the
rolling-machine. They soon discovered the weak foundation of their
objection to an instrument which, in truth, had a tendency, above all
other things, to elevate their trade, and to make that an art which in
one division of it was a mere labour. If the painter were compelled to
grind his own colours and make his own frames, he would no longer follow
an art, but a trade; and he would receive the wages of a labourer
instead of the wages of an artist, not only so far as related to the
grinding and frame-making, but as affecting all his occupations, by the
drudgery attending a portion of them.
[Illustration: Papyrus.]
The commerce of literature has been doubled in twenty years. But it
would be scarcely too much to assert that the influence of the press, in
forming public opinion, and causing it to operate upon legislation, has
doubled almost every other employment. To that public opinion, chiefly
so formed, we owe the successive removals of restrictions upon trade,
which have carried forward our exports from thirty-six millions sterling
in 1831 to ninety millions in 1853. To that public opinion we owe the
abolition of prohibitive duties upon foreign produce, which has given us
a far wider range of beneficial consumption. To that public opinion we
owe the repeal of the oppressive excise duties upon salt, leather,
candles, glass, bricks--which duties impeded production even more
effectually than the extortions and tyrannies of the middle ages.
Strange it is, that the power of the press, which has done so much for
the removal of other fiscal impediments to industry, should have been
able to effect so little for itself;--that the tax upon paper should
still interfere with the commerce of literature, when general education
has no longer to encounter any misgivings in the minds of those who
govern an earnest and patriotic people. The difficulty of procuring the
material of paper has become a serious impediment to the cheap diffusion
of knowledge; and the paper-tax works in the same evil direction. There
have been innumerable obstacles to the extension of knowledge since the
days when books were written on the papyrus--obstacles equally raised up
by despotic blindness and popular ignorance. But it is not fitting that
either of such causes should still be in action in the days of the
printing-machine.