Keeping

America

Informed

T h e U.S. G o v ernment P rinting O ffice

150 Y ears of S er v ice to t h e Nation


Keeping

America

Informed

T h e U. S . G o v e r n m e n t P r i n t i n g O f f i c e

15 0 Y e a r s o f S e r v i c e t o t h e Nat i o n

J O I N T C O M M I T T E E O N P R I N T I N G

111th Congress

Charles E. Sc humer, Senator from New York, Chairman

Robert A. Brady, Representative from Pennsylvania, Vice Chairman

Patty Murray, Senator from Washington

Thomas S. Udall, Senator from New Mexico

Robert F. Benn ett, Senator from Utah

Saxby Chambliss, Senator from Georgia

Michael E. Capuano, Representative from Massachusetts

Susan A. Davis, Representative from California

Daniel E. Lung ren, Representative from California

Kevin McCarthy, Representative from California

P U B L I S H E D U N D E R T H E A U T H O R I T Y O F T H E P U B L I C P R I N T E R O F T H E U N I T E D S TAT E S

William J. Boarman

U N I T E D S TAT E S G O V E R N M E N T P R I N T I N G O F F I C E 1 5 0 T H A N N I V E R S A R Y C O M M I T T E E

George D. Barnum, GPO Historian

For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office, 732 N. Capitol Street, NW, ID CC Mail Stop, Washington, DC 20401

http://bookstore.gpo.gov | toll free 888.512.1800 | DC area 202.512.1800 | fax 202.512.2250

ISBN 978-0-16-088704-8

M. Michael Abramson

Jeff rey S. Brooke

James Cameron

Dean A. Gardei

Yalanda Johnson

George E. Lord

Ok sana Pozda

Katherine D. Clarke-RadiCan

An drew M. Sherman

Gary G. Somerset

BethAnn Telford

Jeff rey Turner

Pamela S. Williams

Emma Wojtowicz
iv
v

TA B L E O F C O N T E N T S

Foreword ......................................................................................................... vii

Introduction ..................................................................................................... ix

Chapter 1

“Publick Printing” and the Founding of GPO ............................. 3

Chapter 2

Industrialization and the Gilded Age ......................................... 19

Chapter 3

The Progressive Era, the Depression, and World War ......... 47

Chapter 4

Expansion and Compterization ...................................................... 93

Chapter 5

GPO in the Digital Era .......................................................................... 117

Afterword ....................................................................................................... 139

Heads of Public Printing, 1861 – 2011 .......................................................... 141

Notes ............................................................................................................... 142

Sources ............................................................................................................ 143

Acknowledgements ....................................................................................... 145

Index ............................................................................................................... 146
The press that became known as “Press No. 1,” bought off the floor of the St. Louis Exposition in 1897. Much of its career was spent printing postal cards, and it remained in service until 1974.

vi
F O R E W O R D

The U.S. Government Printing Office published its last official history 50 years ago, marking its centennial anniversary. 

100 GPO Years 1861–1961 has proven to be a remarkably valuable resource and deserves to stand alone as an enduring 

contribution to the historical record of this great agency. Instead of trying to improve on it, with the approach of our 

150th anniversary we decided to recreate the telling of GPO’s story. Keeping America Informed: The U.S. Government 

Printing Office: 150 Years of Service to the Nation recasts our history in a fresh light, with new contributions and emphases, 

and provides the reader with a greater exposure to GPO’s rich photographic record, with many of the images in this book 

published for the first time. 

Most important of all, Keeping America Informed describes how the agency has transformed itself through the years 

by continually adapting to the most efficient technologies available to get its work done. In the ink-on-paper era, this 

meant moving from handset to machine-set type, from slower to high-speed presses, and from hand to automated 

bookbinding. These changes enabled GPO to keep up with the demands of a growing Nation and helped keep costs down, 

and they were significant for their time. Yet they pale by comparison with the transformation that accompanied GPO’s 

incorporation of electronic information technologies, the single most dominant trend at the agency of the past 50 years, and 

the generator of unprecedented improvements in productivity and hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer savings that 

continue into the present. Today, GPO is fundamentally different from what it was as recently as a generation ago: smaller, 

leaner, and equipped with digital production capabilities that are the bedrock of the information systems relied upon daily 

by Congress, Federal agencies, and the public to ensure open and transparent Government in the digital era.    

Keeping America Informed is a portrait of the generations of men and women who have worked here as compositors, 

proofreaders, platemakers, press operators, bookbinders, printing plant workers, librarians, engineering and maintenance 

staff, accountants, information technology technicians, personnel specialists, police officers, and all the other functions 

required by GPO. Few Federal agencies can count as their heritage the scope of the work GPO has performed, ranging 

from the first printing of the Emancipation Proclamation to providing digital access to the Government’s publications 

today. The men and women of GPO are responsible for that heritage. Keeping America Informed is a new telling of their 

story and their enduring achievements.

William J. Boarman, Public Printer 

vii
Beatrice L. Warde (center) visits GPO in the years immediately after World War II.

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ix

The U.S. Government Printing Office has occupied the same corner of 

North Capitol Street in Washington, DC, since its founding in 1861. In 

1940, after decades of appeals to Congress for more space, GPO opened a 

new, modern building on the site, replacing a collection of firetrap buildings 

that had been accumulating for 80 years. In the marble and brass lobby, 

prominent beside the main elevators, a plaque was placed by the Apprentice 

Class of 1940, which has been seen by all entering the building ever since:

Crossroads of civilization.

Refuge of all the arts against the ravages of time.

Armory of fearless truth against whispering rumor.

Incessant trumpet of trade.

From this place words may fly abroad,

Not to perish on waves of sound,

Not to vary with the writer’s hand

But fixed in time,

Having been verified by proof.

Friend, you stand on sacred ground,

This is a Printing Office.

The words had been written in 1932 by Beatrice L. Warde, an 

American scholar, writer, and typographer who was publicist for the 

Monotype Company in England. She is known among designers and 

typographers for a line of thinking which maintained that type should be a 

largely transparent medium for the communication of information. Warde 

designed a broadside for Monotype’s introduction of a new typeface called 

Perpetua, designed by her associate Eric Gill, featuring the “Crossroads of 

civilization...” text, expressing her beliefs about printing and free societies. 

The broadside, in the end, proved more popular than the typeface, and a 

decade later Warde wrote that, “I can say with deep pride that I’ve seen it 

framed on the walls of nearly every printing office I have visited. ...”1

I N T R O D U C T I O N

Crossroads, Refuge, Armory: This is a Printing Office

Back in Washington, probably at the urging of GPO Director of 

Typography Frank Mortimer, the 1940 Apprentice Class had her words 

cast in bronze, as a sort of blessing and manifesto for the newest building of 

what had become affectionately known as “the big shop.” To Warde, living 

in Britain as the darkening storm of World War II approached, “...came 

news from a remote planet (as it then was), the USA , that the inscription 

was to be cast in bronze and affixed to the 

wall of the GPO in Washington. There is 

something about the very words,” she continued, “...that sends joyful shivers down 

any writer’s back. ...”2 

Seventy years later, at the same 

location but in the midst of a digital era in 

which GPO carries out its work using the 

latest in electronic information technologies, Warde’s benedictory words continue 

to ring true, because they express what 

we know to be the timeless importance of 

reproducing and transmitting the written 

word in our society. Setting down the 

written word for all to see—whether by 

applying ink to paper or locking it digitally 

via public key infrastructure—preserves it, 

authenticates it, and makes it official, the 

real thing. This act in turn makes it possible to replicate and disseminate 

the written word unchanged, providing a common foundation for literacy, 

education, commerce, the arts, and—perhaps most important of all—the 

conduct of government in a free society. It was the elemental importance 

of an informed public to the effective conduct of self-government that 

prompted James Madison’s well-known dictum in an August 4, 1822, 

letter to W. T. Barry:

The plaque that “sent shivers” down 

Beatrice Warde’s back, and has greeted 

everyone entering GPO’s Building 3 

since its opening in 1940.
x

A popular Government without popular information, or the 

means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy, 

or perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance, and 

a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.

Since its founding 150 years ago, GPO has performed the informing function that Madison spoke of, producing and distributing the documents 

created by our unique system of government, serving as the “means of acquiring” information for “a people who mean to be their own Governors.”

From its earliest days, the function of producing and distributing 

government documents in America was known as “publick printing.” Both 

before the Revolution and in the early years after the Federal Government 

was formed, this printing was performed on contract by newspapers and 

other private printers. By the mid 19th century, however, the high costs, 

ineffective service, and repeated scandals of contract printing made it clear 

that the needs of the growing Nation could no longer be satisfied by that 

system. In its place Congress established the Government Printing Office, 

and this effort was rewarded almost immediately with a reduction in costs, 

vastly improved service, and the elimination of scandal. Put to the test early 

in meeting the emergency demands imposed by the Civil War, the new 

GPO carried out its work coolly and professionally, counting among its 

early jobs the printing of the Emancipation Proclamation. In the 150 years 

that followed, this pattern—economy, efficiency, and prompt and effective 

service—continued to repeat itself as GPO, quietly and expertly, carried out 

its mission of keeping America informed.

Most of GPO’s past is the story of how the agency moved through 

successive changes in printing technology to meet the needs and challenges 

faced by the Nation. By the early twentieth century GPO was acknowledged as the world’s largest printing organization, the “big shop.” In that 

capacity the agency supported the needs of the Government through two 

World Wars and the greatest economic crisis the Nation has ever faced, 

continuing in that form well into the 1960s, using machine typesetting 

supported by improving press technology. It was then that the transition 

to modern information technologies began. Only a year after its centennial, GPO and its congressional oversight panel, the Joint Committee on 

Printing, began looking for a new way to compose information already 

captured in Government computer databases. Their initial efforts culminated in 1967 with the installation of the Linotron, a computerized typesetting system developed specifically for GPO’s unique needs. From that point 

forward, the pace of technological change quickened. 

Today, GPO’s present and future are defined by more than a generation of concentrated investment in digital production and dissemination 

technologies, an investment that has yielded unprecedented improvements 

in productivity, capability, product diversity, and savings for the taxpayers. Once an agency of more than 8,000 staff as recently as the 1970s, and 

employing just 2,200 today—fewer than at any time in the past century—

GPO now provides a range of products and services that could only have 

been dreamed of a generation ago: online databases of congressional and 

agency documents with state-of-the-art search and retrieval capabilities 

available to the public without charge, Government publications available as e-Books, passports and smart identification cards with electronic 

chips carrying biometric data, print products on recycled substrates using 

vegetable oil-based inks, and a public presence not only on the Web but on 

Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook. Today, GPO is far more an information 

agency than a printing office, continuing to carry out Madison’s dictum.

At the end of the 20th century, already outfitted with its first Web site, 

GPO chose for its motto the words “Keeping America Informed,” a modern 

take on the concept of “publick printing,” a notion that has been at the center 

of its existence from the first day. GPO has done its job using continually 

evolving and improving technology placed in the hands of thousands of 

skilled men and women who have, in turn, produced and delivered documents of every description for Congress, Federal agencies, and the public.

The story of GPO’s 150 years is a story of the Republic’s need for 

the written word, the machines and technologies that have been used to 

fulfill that need, and the thousands of dedicated men and women of the 

Government Printing Office who have risen to the challenge of producing 

and distributing the documents required by our Federal Government. It 

is the story of what we do, how we do it, and who we are. It is the story 

of humble documents and hallowed, sometimes beautiful and sometimes 

utterly plain. It is the story of remarkable machines that flourished, faded, 

and were succeeded by newer and better technologies. And it is the story 

of people, careers, and lives here on our own corner of Washington, DC, 

reaching across the country, keeping America informed for 150 years. n
18 61 - 18 8 0
2
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I

n the more than 80 years before the establishment 

of the Government Printing Office, the concept 

of printing and distributing the official documents 

of the government had been well established in 

the United States. However, the ways in which 

those functions were carried out left much to be 

desired. Indeed, at least one observer has noted, “the 

National Government was not well served by” those 

arrangements.3

 Work often was performed sporadically 

and there are many examples of incomplete or 

nonexistent records from the early Congresses. Worse, 

the original systems of Government printing were 

costly and frequently subject to corruption and public 

scandal. The story of “publick” printing and the 

founding and early years of GPO is a story of how 

Congress struggled with different systems of keeping 

America informed, and how GPO—once it began 

operations—contributed to that responsibility in an era 

of civil war that included the production of one of the 

most celebrated documents in American history—the 

Emancipation Proclamation.

The Colonial Era 

Printing first appeared in British America in 1639 when a printing 

press was imported from England and installed at Harvard College in 

Cambridge, Massachusetts. The colonists who arrived in America brought 

with them a tradition of printing and literacy, and with the growth of the 

colonies, newspaper printing became an important source of news and 

information. A chief source of revenue for these struggling early papers 

was official “crown,” or “publick,” printing—legislative and other government documents—which newspapers were best equipped to perform since 

they had the equipment, paper, and the necessary skilled labor.

One of those “publick” printers—and there were many, with most 

colonies frequently employing several—was Benjamin Franklin. Franklin 

was an enterprising businessman who produced official documents for 

Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, and New Jersey. His brother James 

worked in a similar capacity for Massachusetts and Rhode Island. Other 

“publick” printers included many now famous names, such as John Peter 

Zenger and William and Thomas Bradford. “Publick” printers first 

set type for the Declaration of Independence. They worked on behalf 

of the delegates to the new state legislatures and later the Philadelphia 

Convention of 1787, setting the type for the new Constitution. Many 

of them also printed the newspaper-based debates on ratification of the 

Constitution that were later collected as the Federalist Papers.

Along with printing, the American colonists brought with them 

from England the Enlightenment notion that the people have a right 

to know about the laws and proceedings of their Government, a notion 

articulated by John Milton in his essay Areopagitica, an argument against 

censorship and the licensing of printing, published in 1644: “Give me 

the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, 

above all liberties. ...” The practice of printing the acts of Parliament 

had been established in England, forming the precedent for “publick 

C H A P T E R 1

“Publick Printing” and the Founding of GPO
4

printing” in the New World. By the time of the Revolution, the concept 

of public access to government information was widespread. The 1776 

Pennsylvania Constitution, for example, included the phrase: “The printing presses shall be free to every person who undertakes to examine the 

proceedings of the legislature, or any part of government.” 5 

The concept of public access was adopted by the new national 

government. The Continental Congress passed a resolution “...that the 

Journals...be printed...weekly.” The Articles of Confederation said, 

“The Congress of the United States...shall publish the journal of their 

proceedings monthly. ...” During the Constitutional Convention, the issue 

of public access to government information came up again. Patrick Henry 

of Virginia said, “The liberties of a people never were, nor ever will be, 

secure, when the transactions of their rulers may be concealed from them. 

...” James Wilson of Pennsylvania agreed, saying, “The people have a 

right to know what their agents are doing or have done, and it should not 

be in the option of the legislature to conceal their proceedings.” Article 

I, section 5, of the Constitution established the requirement that “Each 

House shall keep a Journal of its Proceedings, and from time to time 

publish the same. ...” 6

Printing for the Early Congresses 

Soon after the First Congress organized in early 1789, a recommendation 

was made in the House of Representatives that proposals be invited for 

“printing the laws and other proceedings.” By May, printers’ petitions 

flowed in asking to be employed in the printing for Congress. The House 

Journal for the first and second sessions of the First Congress was printed 

by New York printers Francis Childs and John Swaine, and the Senate 

work was done by John Fenno. The Secretary of the Senate and the Clerk 

of the House were directed by a joint committee to have printed 600 copies 

of the acts of Congress and 700 copies of the journals. When Congress 

moved to Philadelphia in 1790, Childs & Swaine and Fenno moved with 

them, joined by Philadelphian Samuel H. Smith. Together these firms 

produced the bulk of congressional printing from 1793 to 1800. The 

expense of public printing for Congress was not inconsiderable. An act of 

1794 allocated $10,000 for the expenses of firewood, stationery, and printing work, and all other contingent expenses of the two houses of Congress.

When Congress moved to the new capital in Washington in 1800, 

printers followed and set up shop in the raw wilderness city. President 

Thomas Jefferson encouraged Smith to move from Philadelphia, and 

Government Document No. 1

The first official document produced by the government of what 

would become the United States of America is today known simply 

as “Government Document No. 1.” Dated September 22, 1774, the 

document was a 63⁄4" by 41⁄4" broadside, or public notice, issued by 

the First Continental Congress and printed in Philadelphia, where 

the Congress was meeting. William and Thomas Bradford, who 

provided all printing for the Continental Congress from 1774 to 

1776, printed it. Signed by Charles Thomson, Secretary, it called for 

the non-importation of British goods “until the sense of Congress, 

on the means to be taken for preservation of the Liberties of 

America, is made public.” 4 
The Congressional Serial Set I

n addition to devising a system for printing documents, Congress 

developed a system for organizing its documents for posterity. 

Beginning in 1817, serial numbers were assigned to Senate and 

House documents, congressional committee reports, Presidential and 

other executive publications, treaty materials, and selected reports 

of nongovernmental organizations. This numbering scheme proved 

to be an orderly and convenient way of identifying and preserving 

the documents and reports issued by Congress. Now known as the 

U.S. Congressional Serial Set, these publications have been produced 

continuously since that time. In the words of historian Dee Brown, 

it “contains almost everything about the American experience...our 

wars, our peacetime works, our explorations and inventions...If we lost 

everything else in print, except our documents, we would still have a 

splendid record and a memory of our past experience.”

7

The Serial Set contains innumerable unique and unusual items. 

One of these is the first published work of the artist James McNeil 

Whistler, who as a young man worked briefly as an engraver in 

the cartographic section of the U.S. Coast Survey. One copper plate 

etching he produced

was published in the Report of the Coast Survey for 1854...

It contains a map and view of Anacapa Island in California. 

The map itself is credited to Capt. L.W. Stevens, USN. The 

accompanying view of the rocky shoreline in the Santa Barbara 

Channel at the bottom of the page carries a credit to Whistler 

in its lower right corner. The National Archives described 

Whistler’s drawing: “After he completed his etching in the 

approved style, he thought it looked dull. Therefore, he added 

two flocks of gulls sailing gracefully over the rocky headland.”

8

5
6

by 1801 he was printing reports of congressional debates in his National 

Intelligencer three times a week. Its stenographers took notes in Congress 

and later asked speakers to review them prior to publication. Delay and 

inaccuracy were common. In December 1801, a proposal was made by 

Virginia Representative John Randolph to appoint a single printer to 

provide for the “faithful and prompt execution” of printing for the House. 

The measure was defeated, however, and the work was left to enterprising 

local printers.

Not until 1818 was another effort made to address the shortcomings of 

local printing. Congress appointed a joint committee to “consider and report 

whether any further provisions of law are necessary to insure dispatch, accuracy, and neatness in printing done for the two houses of Congress.” In 1819, 

the committee issued a report asking that Congress consider 

the establishment of a national printing office (with a bindery 

and stationery annexed) which should execute the work of 

Congress while in session and that of the various Departments 

of Government during the recess, and should do all the binding, 

and furnish all the stationery for the Departments, as well as 

for Congress...The Committee are of the opinion that such an 

establishment, under the superintendence of a man of activity, 

integrity, and discretion, would be likely to produce promptitude, uniformity, accuracy, and elegance in the execution of 

public printing. ...

The time for reform had not yet arrived, however, and instead of 

a Government Printing Office and a Public Printer, a hasty resolution of 

March 2, 1819, provided that the House and Senate should elect their own 

printers, instruct how the work should be done, and say what price should 

be paid. Thus began the swing of the pendulum between Congress’s use of 

fixed rates and low-bid contracting for printing that would, in their many 

inadequacies, set the stage for the eventual creation of the Government 

Printing Office.

Printing and Profits 

The practice of electing House and Senate printers persisted for forty 

years, and throughout this period there was intense rivalry for these positions. These printers included names now chiefly remembered for their 

connection with Government printing: Gales & Seaton, Duff Green, Blair 

& Rives, Thomas Allen, Peter Force, and Ritchie & Heiss. The reason for 

the rivalry was clear: The volume of work and relatively stable demand 

for their services made many of these firms prosperous and their proprietors well-to-do. Their prosperity stemmed from advances in printing 

technology that made it increasingly profitable to produce public printing 

under Congress’s fixed rate system. Improved presses enabled the production of more work with less labor, yet the fixed rates set by Congress were 

based on older, slower processes. Within five years of securing congressional work, for example, one such firm—Blair & Rives—purchased their 

rented premises, bought handsome houses (including the one now used as 

the President’s guest house, Blair House), and acquired country estates.

To deal with the continuing problem of its printing, in 1840 the 

House appointed a Select Committee on Public Printing and asked it to 

report on prices considered just and reasonable, the propriety of separating 

Government printing from newspaper publishing, and the practicality 

of a national printing office. The investigation resulted in a bill directing 

“that there shall be erected on suitable spot in the city of Washington, to be 

selected by the President of the United States, a building of brick, suitable 

and convenient for a printing office in which all the printing for Congress, 

and for the Executive Departments, and for the Post Office Department, 

shall be performed.” Once again, the bill did not pass, and Congress continued with its system of fixed rates. Another congressional printing study 

was made in 1842, again without result. 

Between 1840 and 1846, Congress passed a series of laws providing 

for competitive contract printing for various Government departments 

and the Supreme Court, and then moved to implement this method for its 

own printing. The House Select Committee submitted a joint resolution of 

August 3, 1846, directing advertisements in local newspapers at the beginning of the last session of each Congress, requesting sealed bids for Senate 

and House printing in the coming Congress. The 1846 joint resolution also 

established the Joint Committee on Printing to manage the requirements 

of the House and Senate, with the authority to adopt measures “deemed 

necessary to remedy neglect, delay, or waste” in Government printing. The 

Committee, known familiarly as the JCP, continues to operate to this day. 

The first printers to win a contract under the new system were Charles 
7

van Benthuysen and Cornelius Wendell. Wendell later would become a 

prominent name in the origin of the Government Printing Office.

The contract system of printing established in 1846, unfortunately, 

“proved the most expensive of any tried up to this time, and perhaps the 

most unsatisfactory.” As one observer has noted: 

While the underlying intent of the new law was to promote 

economy and prevent fraud by opening the printing function 

to a larger field of entrepreneurs... contracts were executed 

without care, and exorbitant printing costs resulted. Plates 

for Government documents were destroyed after a first publication run and had to be redrawn, at considerable expense, 

if additional copies of an item were ordered. Engravings 

produced for one congressional chamber and later sought by 

the other House were priced as originals. 9

As a result, printing costs for the Government during the period 

from 1846–1852 amounted to $3,462,655.12, nearly as much as had been 

expended in the preceding 35 years combined, and at a moment when 

technology was constantly reducing the cost of printing.

Congress sought to address the problem of costs in an act of 

August 25, 1852, when it returned to the earlier practice of the two 

chambers electing their own printers under rates fixed by law. This act 

also provided for a Superintendent of Public Printing to supervise the 

printers for the House and Senate, supplementing the oversight of the 

Joint Committee on Printing. The Superintendent was to be “a practical 

printer versed in the various branches of printing and bookbinding, and 

shall not be interested, directly or indirectly, in any contract for printing 

for Congress or for any department or bureau of the Government of the 

United States.” John T. Towers, of Washington, DC, was selected by 

President Millard Fillmore to serve as the first Superintendent. After his 

term as Superintendent, he went on to serve as mayor of Washington.

The act of 1852 proved a failure, however. One difficulty was the 

lack of an office with proper facilities for executing the printing promptly 

and uniformly. The demands of the Government had increased to such 

an extent that by 1856 no single printing office in Washington was capable 

of handling all the printing required, with the result that layouts, fonts, 

and other printing details varied from job to job. The other and greater 

difficulty was that renewal of the fixed rate system for printing generated 

enormous profits for those performing the work both for Congress and the 

executive agencies. A portion of the profits were converted into political 

contributions, which were given in exchange for preference in the award 

of printing contracts.

Politicians who had no practical knowledge of printing 

succeeded in securing the place of printer, and farmed out the 

work to practical printers at a percentage of the receipts. The 

dominant party elected the printer with a positive understanding that he would devote specified sums out of his profits for 

partisan purposes... In some cases six times a fair rate was paid 

for certain jobs and the plunder thus secured was systematically 

distributed for partisan purposes... 10

Three more Superintendents were selected between 1854 and 1859: 

A.G. Seaman (1853), General George W. Bowman (1857), and John Heart 

(1859). Until 1860, the two chambers continued to elect printers who 

worked under the oversight of the Superintendents. By the close of the 

1850s, however, reliance on newspapers and other printers for congressional and executive agency work was less and less attractive. Public 

outcry over scandals, fraud, and corruption led to major congressional 

investigations in 1858 and 1860, with one investigation in 1860 disclosing 

overcharges to the Government of $750,000.

GPO is Born 

Congressional reaction to this chaos produced a reform bill in 1860, sponsored by Ohio Representative John Addison Gurley, a former newspaperman and chairman of the Select Committee on Public Printing. House 

Resolution 22 (36th Congress) called for the establishment of a government printing office and passed on May 31, 1860, after a vigorous debate. 

The Senate concurred on June 16, and a further Joint Resolution (No. 25) 

was passed on June 23. It directed the Superintendent of Public Printing 

“to have executed the printing and binding authorized by the Senate and 

House of Representatives, the executive and judicial departments, and 

the Court of Claims,” and authorized him to “contract for the erection 
8

or purchase of the necessary buildings, machinery, and materials for that 

purpose.” Joint Resolution 25 stipulated that the new office would begin 

its working life on March 4, 1861, the first day of the new Presidential 

administration.

To carry out this act, then Superintendent Heart moved swiftly 

to negotiate the purchase of the printing establishment built in 1857 by 

Cornelius Wendell at the corner of H and North Capitol Streets in the 

northwest quadrant of the District. The area was still largely farmland 

to the north and east, and was cut through by the B&O railroad, whose 

terminal was at First Street and New Jersey Avenue. Tiber Creek, which 

ran alongside the property, regularly overflowed, creating swampland and 

puddles, and the neighborhood was well known as “Swampoodle.”

Wendell was closely connected with the printing work for both 

chambers in the 1850s, and at various times during the period leading to 

GPO’s creation had been responsible for most Government printing. He 

had been House Printer in 1856, and throughout the last period of private 

enterprise printing was often the subcontractor who actually put documents 

to press for many of the elected and appointed printers of the House and 

Senate. Wendell had profited by his years of congressional work and had 

The first page of the Congressional Joint Resolution that created GPO, June 1860.

Above: The area north of the Capitol about 1830. 

The train crosses Tiber Creek a little to the south of the 

present day site of GPO, which stretches beyond the first 

car behind the locomotive. (Library of Congress)

Right: Cornelius Wendell (1811–1870), printer, entrepreneur, 

and later Superintendent of Public Printing. 
9

built a plant capable of accommodating the large and growing demands of 

the Government. The Printer, in an illustrated article in 1858, reported that, 

“Others who had in turn been [Superintendent] had either been interested 

in the newspaper offices of the metropolis or had engaged them to do the 

work required, but Mr. Wendell determined to have a Public Printing 

Office worthy of the Great Republic.”11 Following the passage of Joint 

Resolution 25, an independent appraiser valued the Wendell plant, including machinery, at $146,545. A contract for the purchase by the Government 

for $135,000 was signed on December 1, 1860, and approved by Congress on 

December 12.

John B. Ellis, in his Sights and Secrets of the National Capitol, described the Wendell plant and its section of Washington a few years after 

its acquisition by the Government:

If you stand on Capitol Hill, at the top of the high flight of stairs 

leading into the Senate, and look straight north you will see the 

Government Printing Office...the settled quarter of the city lies 

west of and behind the printing office. Making a straight way 

across Tiber Creek, which you will cross by stepping stones deposited in its basin, and taking a footpath across lots where geese and 

pigs browse upon plentiful barrenness, you will reach the printing 

house...and hear the hum of its machinery as you take in coup 

d’oeil.12

The approaching visitor first caught sight of the tall chimney of 

GPO’s engine house and the main building, designed by Architect of the 

Capitol Edward Clark in 1856, and opened on November 16, 1857. It 

was the largest printing office in the city, and one of the largest and most 

complete in the Nation. In addition to the imposing main building with 

its cupola and eagle, a machine shop, stable, paper storehouse, and various 

other storehouses and sheds stood on the site.

The plant employed about 350 workers, including a large number of 

women as both bindery workers and press feeders. It was equipped with 

23 Adams bed-and-platen presses and three Napier cylinder presses, all 

steam-driven. The presses were supplied with forms from 93 double composing stands and 349 pairs of cases with more than 25 tons of foundry type. 

Composition, proofreading, and pressrooms occupied the first and second 

View from the roof of the Senate side of the Capitol, June 1861. The building in the middle 

distance beyond the flagstaff is GPO, the smokestack of the engine house is visible in the right 

foreground. (Library of Congress)

Above: Congress bought this brick building and all its 

machinery and equipment from Cornelius Wendell to 

serve as the Government Printing Office in 1861. It faced 

H Street at the corner of North Capitol Street. Right: 

John Dougherty Defrees (1810-1882), President Lincoln’s 

Superintendent of Public Printing.
10

The Binding Division in the 1860s. The Composing Division in the 1870s.

to that furnished under any system which has preceded the present; and 

the experiment of the Government doing its own work, both as regards 

its quality and the economy of its cost, may be regarded as completely 

successful.”

Most of the new GPO’s employees were union members, belonging either to the Columbia Typographical Society as compositors and 

pressmen, or to the bookbinders’ union. Founded in 1815, the Columbia 

Typographical Society was America’s first union, with members working 

throughout the Washington, DC, area, including throughout the newspapers and other printshops that performed congressional work in the years 

before GPO was established. Renamed the Columbia Typographical Union 

(CTU) in 1867, it was an early supporter of the 8-hour work day as well as 

the creation of GPO. The union supported the admission of black members 

and women into its ranks sooner than its counterparts in other craft unions 

and well before such diversity was common in the national workforce.13

The tradition of labor representation in GPO’s workforce continues to this 

day, including CTU, Local 101. 

floors, while the upper floors were devoted to bindery operations, including 

ruling of blank forms and blank books, one of the office’s major products.

To guide the new operation, President Abraham Lincoln appointed 

John Dougherty Defrees, effective March 23, 1861. Born in Tennessee in 

1810, Defrees was the son of a father hostile to slavery, who moved the 

family to Ohio in 1818. The young Defrees was apprenticed to a printer 

in 1814, began as a journeyman at 17, and later worked in Cincinnati and 

Louisville, Kentucky. At 21, he established a newspaper in South Bend, 

Indiana, and in 1846 he purchased the Indiana State Journal in Indianapolis. 

He was to serve as head of GPO three times: 1861–66, 1867–69, and 

1877–82.

Defrees was eager to demonstrate the value of the new GPO. In his 

first annual report, he said “a saving of least $60,000 has been effected [over 

the fixed charges in the 1852 act].” By his second annual report, he showed 

a savings of $205,506, and in his third annual report Defrees was able to 

show a total saving in printing costs of $583,935. He wrote, “The character 

of the printing and binding, in material and workmanship, is superior 
11

Columbia Typographical Union, Chapel 1, at GPO, probably about 1890. The present Local 101 is a direct descendant.
12

Printer, he carried this activism into office. On February 7, 1864, he sent a 

letter of advice to President Lincoln. It asked, “...why not send a message 

to Congress recommending the passage of a joint resolution proposing an 

amendment to the Constitution forever prohibiting slavery in the States 

and territories?” Lincoln’s prompt reply of February 8 said, “Our own 

friends have this under consideration now, and will do as much without a 

Message as with it.”

GPO contributed more than just printing to the war effort. In 

1864, Washington, DC, came under threat of invasion as General Jubal 

A. Early’s Confederate forces approached from the northwest to within 

five miles of the Capital. A number of GPO employees were a part of 

what was known as the Interior Department Regiment, organized to help 

protect the city. Printers and press operators made up Company F and 

bindery workers comprised Company G. Hours were set aside for drill 

and instruction and GPO was guarded at night. With the imminent threat 

of Early’s raid, Company F was mustered and took up defensive positions 

across the Anacostia, probably at Fort Stanton. When reinforcements from 

General Grant’s forces at Petersburg helped repulse the attack at Fort 

Stevens in upper northwest Washington, GPO’s companies returned to 

work in Swampoodle.

The Postwar Period 

The original Wendell building had been expanded in 1865 with a fourstory 

addition at the west end of the main building. Another four-story addition 

fronting on North Capitol Street was added in 1871. In 1879, a fireproof 

building was added south of the main building, and in 1880–81, GPO 

purchased a lot on H Street and put up a stable and a second fireproof 

extension west of the North Capitol Street section. 

Driving these expansions were the ongoing need for adequate space 

and concerns over the safety of workers. As demand grew, cramped conditions and accidents not only injured a skilled workforce, but slowed down 

production and increased overall cost. A typical concern was voiced by 

Superintendent Clapp in his 1869 Annual Report:

The building now occupied by the Government Printing 

Office has, under the increase of its business, become insufficient for its proper accommodation. Indeed it is impossible 

GPO During the Civil War 

Defrees and the new GPO began work in Washington at a tumultuous 

time. In his 1863 Annual Report, Defrees said, “During the last year the 

amount of printing required by the Government...has been very great, 

much greater than at any former period. The necessity for this increase, it 

is needless to say, is to be found in the existing condition of the country.” 

The pattern of wartime as catalyst for GPO growth was set early and continued through much of the next century. 

The war touched many at GPO personally. In 1863, President 

Lincoln responded to a request from Defrees to visit GPO on October 24. 

In a letter, Defrees later recounted an incident from the visit:

A poor girl in the employment of the GPO had a brother 

impressed into the rebel service, and was taken prisoner by 

our forces. He desired to take the oath of allegiance, and to 

be liberated. She sought an interview with the President who 

wrote the note asking me to inquire into the facts, which I did, 

and the young man was liberated on the President’s order.

Defrees was active in the liberal wing of the Whig Party and was a 

delegate to the Whig and, later, National Republican Conventions of 1848, 

1852, and 1856. A skillful and passionate politician, Defrees was an ardent 

supporter of Lincoln and antislavery causes. For the Indiana State Journal 

he had hired such antislavery writers as Henry Ward Beecher. As Public 

Soldiers mustered in front of the Senate side of the 

Capitol. (Library of Congress)

A Civil War camp in Washington, DC. 
The Emancipation Proclamation

I

n 1862, GPO undertook the most significant printing job of 

its day or of any GPO since then: the production of President 

Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. 

After drafting a “Preliminary Proclamation” and previewing 

it with Secretary of State William Seward and Secretary of the Navy 

Gideon Welles on July 13, Lincoln raised the matter again in a Cabinet 

meeting on July 22, to mixed reaction. But his mind was already 

made up, and he brought the document before the Cabinet again 

on September 22, five days after the Union army turned back the 

Confederate army’s advance into the North at the Battle of Antietam. 

Historian John Hope Franklin describes what happened next:

The historic meeting of the Cabinet was hardly over on 

September 22, 1862, before the printing and distribution of 

the preliminary Proclamation had begun. That afternoon and 

evening the employees of the Government Printing Office 

worked late and prepared copies for distribution to the press 

and government agencies. Seward...ordered copies that were 

to go, along with a circular, to the numerous diplomatic posts of the United States in foreign countries. For the War Department, 

fifteen thousand copies of General Orders, number 139, dated September 24, 1862, and including the Proclamation, were printed 

and readied for distribution among the various military commanders and their troops. The Preliminary Proclamation had been 

long coming. But once the decision was made and the document signed, there was no delay in presenting it to the world.14

The Preliminary Proclamation was issued “in general orders format, as an order from the CommanderinChief to the armed forces. 

Because he had direct control over the Army, the President thus made it unnecessary to go through Congress to activate the Proclamation.”15

The printed version of the Preliminary Proclamation was later marked for correction, and the final Emancipation Proclamation, issued 

January 3, 1863, bore those corrections. Well aware of its significance, Public Printer Defrees closely followed the progress of the Proclamation, 

writing in December 1862 to President Lincoln’s secretary, John G. Nicolay, “Only a few events stand out prominently on the page of the 

history of each century...The proposed proclamation of the President will be that one of this century.”16

The first printing of the Emancipation Proclamation with corrections noted in pencil (perhaps from 

GPO proofreaders) that were incorporated into the Proclamation as it was issued on January 3, 1863. 

(Library of Congress)

13
14

now to crowd within its walls sufficient machinery and operatives to keep up with the demands made upon its resources, 

especially in the binding department. The buildings now used 

for storing large quantities of paper necessarily kept on hand 

are insufficient, inconvenient, unsuitable, and unsafe, and 

should be discontinued in their use for that purpose. 

Supporting arguments were marshaled from Architect of the 

Capitol Clark. Clark toured GPO in 1870 and observed in a letter that, 

“Prudence demands that measures should be taken to procure additional 

capacity, and that all heavy loads possible should be placed on the ground 

floor.” In 1878 Clark provided a plan for outside fire escapes, for which 

Congress appropriated $3,000. These were “...of 

brick and iron, very substantial, so that, should 

a fire occur...they would afford additional and 

ample means of escape.” In 1880, fire extinguishers, which had been invented in the early 19th 

century, were acquired and GPO workers were 

instructed in their use.

During this period the practice of having 

a Presidential appointee at GPO’s helm was 

permanently established. The first heads of 

GPO were Presidential appointees with the title 

Superintendent of Public Printing. Cornelius 

Wendell, appointed by President Andrew 

Johnson to succeed Superintendent Defrees 

in September 1866, served to February 1867. 

During his brief term, he averted a major printer’s strike and instituted an eight-hour workday 

and a six-day week. Meanwhile, a Congress at 

odds with President Johnson decided to elect GPO’s head and make him 

an officer of the Senate, with the title Congressional Printer. The Senate 

elected John Defrees, who served from March 1867 to April 1869. In this 

second term at GPO, Defrees secured for the Office the printing and 

binding work of the Patent Office and the Commissioner of Customs.

Defrees was followed by Almon M. Clapp, a Connecticut native 

with many years of printing experience, who was elected in April 1869 as 

Congressional Printer. Clapp was to 

see Congress change its mind about his 

title after the departure of President 

Johnson, and in July 1876, repeal 

the earlier legislation and specify a 

Presidential appointment for GPO’s 

top official, with the advice and consent 

of the Senate. The appointee’s title 

became Public Printer, harking back to 

the title held by printers of government 

documents in the pre-Revolutionary 

War era. In August 1876, President 

Ulysses S. Grant made Clapp the first 

Public Printer. He was followed, as he 

had been preceded, by Defrees, who 

was appointed by President Rutherford 

Hayes in June 1877 and served until 

April 1882. The post has been filled 

by Presidential appointees with the 

consent of the Senate ever since.

It was also during this period 

that the first congressional investigation of the new GPO was launched, 

conducted by the Joint Committee on 

Printing. The Committee looked into 

allegations of cronyism in the distribution of composing work and favoritism 

in appointments to the agency, including a charge that GPO had hired “a man who left this city at the outbreak 

of the rebellion and served three years in the rebel army.” After a thorough 

review, the JCP reported in 1870 that while “your committee do [sic] not 

pretend to say the management of the GPO by the present Congressional 

Printer [Almon Clapp] has been perfect. ...The allegations...are not 

sustained by the evidence, and the services of the Congressional Printer 

appear to have been faithful, and in results valuable to the Government.” 

The JCP’s role in overseeing GPO was established by this investigation 

and has continued to this day.

Almon M. Clapp (1811–1899), the first 

appointee to hold the title Public Printer.

Superintendent Defrees’ order establishing an 8-hour workday on Saturdays, the 

first step toward the 40-hour workweek.

(The order reads: You will please direct 

that, hereafter, the work in this office will 

end on Saturdays at 4 o’clock P.M.

 I am induced to establish this rule 

because I believe that men who labor 

faithfully during the week ten hours per 

day need more recreation at the end of the 

week than they now receive, and, because 

that, if the rule is adopted, they will so 

appreciate it that the Government will 

really lose nothing by its operation. 

 Yours truly, John D. Defrees, 

Supt. Pub. Printing)
15

The Congressional Record

Another development in this period had a lasting impact on GPO’s 

operation and reputation, and is emblematic of the ultimate success of 

the Office’s creation and expansion: the creation of the Congressional 

Record. The publication of Congress’ proceedings was exempt from the 

legislative action that created GPO in 1860, and remained in the hands 

of contractor printers who 

published congressional 

newspapers of various kinds 

using transcripts obtained 

by sending reporters into 

the chambers. One of these, 

the Congressional Globe, had 

begun reporting debates 

in 1831 as a semiweekly 

owned by Francis Preston 

Blair, a Kentucky native 

and member of President 

Andrew Jackson’s “Kitchen 

Cabinet.” Blair took a fellow 

Kentuckian, John C. Rives, as 

partner, and the Globe became 

a weekly in 1833. It persisted 

with varying ownership until 

the 1870s, and was subject to 

criticism from rival printers. 

In 1871, the contract was set 

to be rebid and controversy 

ensued over the charges for 

the preceding several years. 

The contract was awarded to 

F&J Rives and Bailey for one 

year, at the excessive cost of 

$400,000, compared with the 

previous cumulative cost of 

$744,117 for the entire period 

1861–1871. 

The premiere issue of the Congressional Record, March 4, 1863. A “great improvement” according to the New York Times. 

The last issue of the Congressional Globe, 1873. (Law Library of Congress)

In response, the 42nd Congress sent invitations to bid on a proposed six-year contract to printers in nine cities nationwide, including 

the Congressional Printer. After evaluating the bids, Congress passed a 

measure that said, in part, “...until a contract is made, the debates shall 

be printed by the Congressional Printer under the Joint Committee 

on Printing on the part of the Senate.” In the end, GPO’s estimate of 
16

“...$150 for each and every 1,000 ems, printer’s measurement...” was 

accepted in both chambers, by a wide majority, giving GPO responsibility 

for this document. The New York Times reported on March 4, 1873, that, 

“after the Congressional Printer shall have completed arrangements to 

do the work, it is hardly probable that any effort to get the work into the 

hands of private printers can succeed.”

The JCP provided the name of the new publication, to be published 

daily when Congress was in session, and the Congressional Record first 

appeared on March 5, 1873. Congressional Printer Clapp noted that, 

“The change in the form and style of this publication from that previously followed by the Globe was induced by a desire to secure comeliness, 

convenience, and economy for the work; and I am gratified in the assurance that it meets the hearty approval of the Senate and the House of 

Representatives. ...” The first-year charges were $126,000, a substantial 

saving over the contract with Rives & Bailey. Clapp continued, “The 

facilities of the office are so extensive that prompt publication of the proceedings and debates of any day’s session, no matter how extensive or voluminous, will be assured by the following morning without peradventure.” 

Although in 1873 the Record, like all other GPO documents, was entirely 

set by hand (and would be until 1904), the standard of overnight production was established. The Record has been a pillar of GPO’s work ever 

since. In subsequent years, the JCP established the laws and rules under 

which the Record is to be produced, and the committee today remains the 

official publisher of the Record by law. n

The Official Records of 

the War of the Rebellion

Closing out GPO’s early years was the assignment to produce one of the most historically 

significant jobs ever, The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the 

Union and Confederate Armies. Authorized by Congress in 1874 and widely acknowledged as 

the most extensive collection of primary documents relating to the Civil War ever produced, 

the OWR, as it has become known in Civil War bibliographies, was one of the largest single 

printing jobs ever undertaken by GPO. Public Printer Defrees, by then serving his third and 

final term at GPO’s helm, initially estimated the work would make 96 volumes of 10,050 

copies each, totaling 964,800 volumes. As finally published, the OWR consists of more than 

138,000 pages with more than 1,000 maps and diagrams assembled in 128 volumes. The Office 

of War Records compiled the history and composition began at GPO in 1880. The work was 

not completed until the early years of the new century. By then, historic changes in printing 

technology were fundamentally altering the way GPO carried out its mission.

Courtesy of Cornell University Libraries
18 81 - 1915
18
19

As America entered the Gilded Age, the 

Nation’s population was growing, broadening 

the already substantial domestic market for 

goods. Significant technical and scientific developments 

came rapidly and the Government grew in the aftermath of the Civil War. The period saw the apotheosis 

of the American industrial revolution and developments in printing technology were at the forefront. 

Faster and better printing presses and the introduction 

of inexpensive wood pulp-based paper made books, 

magazines, and newspapers a truly mass media. The 

introduction of machine typesetting completed the 

mechanization of printing. At the beginning of this 

period, print shops were still fundamentally like the 

craft-based shops stretching back to Gutenberg. By the 

time it was over, printing took on an industrial face.

Advances in printing technology did not go unnoticed by GPO. The 

agency’s requirements for equipment to meet the rising demand for printed 

documents were to contribute to an always-evolving state of the art in the 

industry. In 1878, Public Printer Defrees observed, “Improvements in machinery for the more practical and economical manufacture of newspapers 

and books are constantly being made and those who do not use them work 

to great disadvantage.” As a result, GPO transformed itself from a large but 

primarily craft-based operation to a giant factory-city by 1905.

The first signs of this transformation were visible in the steampowered Adams presses and cylinders presses that were part of the print 

shop purchased by the Government in 1860. Adams presses, first widely 

manufactured by R. Hoe & Co. in the 1850s, were a bed-and-platen press, 

operated by two workers, capable of turning out high-quality work such 

as book printing at a rate of 500–1000 impressions an hour. Cylinder 

presses, which were just coming into wide use in the 1860s, were better 

suited to less-demanding (at least in terms of quality) newspaper and 

magazine printing.

CHAPTER 2

Industrialization and the Gilded Age

Left: By 1880, the original Wendell building had been subsumed by many additions and 

extensions. The building entrance now faced North Capitol Street, in the same position as the 

present-day main entrance. This engraving probably depicts a much tidier scene than the reality. 

An Adams press, made by R. Hoe & Co., of the type already in service in Wendell’s shop when it 

became GPO in 1861. This view is at Harper Brothers in New York, but is representative; GPO’s 

rolls listed women in the press division who probably worked as press feeders.
20

In 1866, Superintendent Wendell had brought in the first perfecting 

press, a Bullock, fed from a continuous reel or spool of paper. The press 

printed from stereotype plates (impressions cast from hand-set type) and 

printed on both sides of the paper. Paper was fed from the reel, cut into 

sheets by the mechanism, and then carried through the press by tapes and 

mechanical fingers. The press could deliver 10,000 double-sided sheets 

in an hour, ten times more than a 

well-maintained Adams press. With 

the Bullock press, GPO’s industrial 

transformation began in earnest.

Congress’s decision in 1873 to 

print the newly-named Congressional 

Record at GPO provided further 

impetus for GPO’s industrialization. 

New, technologically sophisticated 

presses, as well as supporting machines from electrical generators to 

binding machinery, were added to 

the Office’s inventory in the name 

of—and with costs accruing against the appropriation for—the Record. 

Public Printer Defrees took such a step in 1878 by contracting for the 

manufacture by Cottrell & Babcock of specially-designed two-revolution 

cylinder presses, specifically for the production of the Record. When they 

were delivered, Defrees reported to Congress that “more work can be 

done on these presses than can be done on 12 Adams presses and by the 

employment of one third the number of employees...” As printing capacity grew at GPO, so too did the demand for its products, and the number 

of compositors, pressmen, binders, and other workers steadily increased.

Not only presses were changing. In 1882, the Public Printer’s annual 

report noted the purchase of an “electrical plant, consisting of two dynamos, 

lamps, and all other necessary fixtures and labor,” and soon the motive 

power for presses and other machinery became electricity. Plates were 

struck from type using newer and more efficient methods, extending and 

increasing the efficiency of press runs. Presses continued to grow faster and 

more efficient. Binding was increasingly mechanized. The stage was set 

for GPO’s years of greatest growth. The last great roadblock to increased 

productivity remained technologically immovable until the 1880s: Type 

continued to be set by hand until the invention of two methods of machine 

typesetting that, when finally introduced to GPO in 1904, would allow 

GPO to take its place as “the world’s largest printer,” a distinction it retained for nearly 80 more years.

Public Printer Rounds

President Chester A. Arthur appointed 

Sterling Parker Rounds as Public Printer in 

April 1882. Rounds was born in Vermont 

in 1828. At the time of his appointment, 

the Nation was still reacting to the previous year’s assassination of President James 

Garfield by a disappointed office seeker, 

an event that gave impetus to civil service 

reform legislation. In January 1883, the 

Pendleton Act provided for a bipartisan 

commission to draw up and administer 

competitive examinations for Federal 

jobs. Although directed initially to a small 

percentage of the workforce across the Federal 

Government, Rounds embraced the concept 

and implemented it at GPO. He said, “The 

custom was for each foreman to appoint or 

discharge at will; there was no record aside from the pay-roll, and it was 

simply impossible for the head of the office to know who was in his employ. 

...I adopted the rule that the Public Printer...should make all the appointments.” A daily record of employees by state was introduced, along with a 

weekly report showing “appointments, resignations, deaths, transfers, etc.”

Rounds was an energetic innovator. The problem of a mob scene 

one payday per month was solved by dividing the payroll into three sections and paying on the third, eighth, and thirteenth workdays of the 

month. He renewed old wooden floors and installed new toilets. He abolished the older practice of wetting calendared paper in favor of the more 

popular method of working dry paper that kept its gloss and finish. He 

recommended and obtained from Congress 15 days paid annual leave for 

employees; there previously had been none. He also introduced modern, 

systematic accounting practices.

A Cottrell and Babcock two-revolution cylinder press of 

the type purchased to print the Congressional Record.

Sterling Parker Rounds (1828-

1887), who began to institute the 

competitive service at GPO.
21

the selection and purchase of paper and other supplies, defined the basis 

on which charges for work and prices for documents are set, and outlined 

the working organization of the Office. In their broad outline, these and 

other changes formed the basis for the public printing and documents 

statutes in Title 44 of the U.S. Code 

that continue to this day.

The most important change 

brought about by the Printing Act 

was the transfer of the Superintendent 

of Documents to GPO, a reform that 

capped years of efforts by Congress 

to devise an efficient and effective 

system for ensuring public access to 

Government publications. In the early 

years of the Republic, special acts 

were passed periodically to distribute 

particular documents, at that time 

comprising primarily congressional 

publications, to State legislatures, 

governors, colleges and universities 

in each State, and historical societies. 

In 1813, the 13th Congress enacted a 

resolution providing for the distribution 

of documents on a regular basis to such institutions for that Congress 

and “every future Congress.” This was the statutory antecedent to what 

was to become the Federal Depository Library Program. Over the next 

four decades, this system of distribution was carried out variously by the 

Librarian of Congress, the Clerk of the House of Representatives, and the 

Secretary of State.

In 1857, the responsibility was transferred to the Secretary of the 

Interior, and laws were then enacted in 1858 and 1859 transferring the 

authority to designate the institutions receiving Government documents 

to Representatives, Delegates, and Senators. Subsequent laws required the 

Secretary of the Interior to receive, arrange, and distribute documents, to 

keep accurate statistics on the receipt and distribution of all documents, 

and to distribute maps and charts as well as books. In 1869, the post of 

Superintendent of Public Documents was established within the Interior 

Public Printer Benedict

Thomas E. Benedict succeeded Rounds in September 1886, the appointee 

of President Grover Cleveland. He was appointed again in 1894 in 

President Cleveland’s second term. During his first term, with a workforce 

of about 2,200, Benedict recommended 30 days paid annual leave, which 

was granted in 1888. He began the practice of requiring annual reports 

from division chiefs. He promoted the use of electrotype and stereotype in 

place of printing directly from type, extending the life of type and making 

longer press runs more practical. He noted that craft workers, who at that 

time were paid according to wages set by Congress, were petitioning for 

better wages, and he went on record saying, “rates of wages as fixed by law 

are now insufficient.” He supported premium pay for night work, acknowledging that it was common practice elsewhere in the trade. In 1888, 

Benedict cooperated with the JCP in an investigation into allegations of 

irregularities in making appointments and dismissals from the office. The 

resulting report exonerated GPO, noting, “the management of the GPO is 

thoroughly honest and efficient. ...It is today turning out more work and 

better work than has ever been done before in its history...and compares 

favorably with the best of private printing offices.” 

On returning for a second term in 1894, Benedict found a workforce 

of about 3,600, which he set about reducing. The reduction of 700 jobs 

prompted workers to petition for an extension of civil service protections. 

The President placed GPO in the classified service in August of that year, 

and GPO rules for the competitive service were published soon after. 

Although Benedict remained skeptical of the impact, he acknowledged 

in 1896 that new employees selected from certified lists worked as well as 

those previously appointed.

The Printing Act of 1895

The most significant event to occur during Public Printer Benedict’s 

tenure was the passage of the Printing Act of 1895. The Act brought 

under GPO’s control other Federal printing plants then in existence, 

provided for the production of virtually all other Federal printing at GPO 

itself, and transferred the position and functions of the Superintendent 

of Documents to GPO. The Act also provided rules for sizes of editions, 

established rates of compensation for printers and binders, authorized a 

system of apprentice training, set up a system of standards and rules for 

Thomas E. Benedict (1839–1904). He 

began the practice of paid annual leave 

and premium pay for night work.
22

The Public Documents Library in the early years of the 20th century, after the Public Documents Division moved from leased space into the seven-story annex at the rear of the North Capitol and 

H Street site. The two-tier iron and steel book stacks were the latest in library design.
23

Department, and distribution responsibilities were broadened to include 

executive agency documents. 

In spite of these efforts, however, by the 1890s the management of 

Government documents had become a “hopelessly haphazard operation:”

Copies of documents were ordered with little regard for 

public or official interest. Of the 420 official depositories [by 

1895], some were overwhelmed by mountains of government 

publications, while others received no regular distribution 

at all. Copies ordered for congressional use accumulated in 

Members’ offices until no storage space remained, at which 

time Senators and Representatives dispatched them to home 

libraries to crowd shelves often already jammed with other 

documents that had been obtained by direct distribution. ... 

In addition, no standard system for titling government documents existed. Consequently, practical cataloging was virtually 

impossible.17

By relocating the Superintendent of Documents to GPO, the 1895 

Printing Act made it responsible for cataloging and indexing Government 

publications, distributing documents to depository libraries nationwide, 

and offering documents for sale to the public; “in fine,” according to the 

New York Daily Tribune in December 1894, commenting on the legislation 

then under consideration, “to render accessible to librarians and the public 

generally the vast store of Government publications:”

Under [GPO’s] operation the cost of public printing and binding 

will be materially reduced and a system established which will 

result not only in a more intelligent distribution of Government 

publications, but in placing copies of all of them in depositories 

throughout the country where they will be convenient of 

access to persons who may desire to consult them. The bill also 

provides for the distribution among public libraries and other 

depositories of the vast accumulation of old documents—numbering nearly 1 million volumes—which now occupy valuable 

space in the Capitol and elsewhere in Washington, and against 

further accumulations of the same sort.

The Act was signed into law in January 

1895. To carry out GPO’s new duties, Public 

Printer Benedict appointed Francis Asbury 

Crandall the first Superintendent of Documents 

in March. Crandall immediately began building a 

staff and organization to carry out the provisions 

of the act, among them GPO’s first librarians, 

Adelaide Hasse, Edith Clarke, William Burns, 

and congressional bibliographer J. H. Hickox.

In consolidating the three public access 

responsibilities under the Superintendent of 

Documents—sales, library distribution, and cataloging and indexing—the Printing Act created 

the need at GPO for a comprehensive system of 

records, a “key” as Superintendent Crandall put 

it. The turn of the 20th century was a pivotal time 

in American librarianship, and Crandall, well 

aware of that world, placed GPO in the middle of 

the development of library thought and practice 

by establishing the Public Documents Library. The collection was based 

on the “vast accumulation of old documents” that seemed to be lodged in 

every attic and cellar of every Government building, and was to be built 

up with the addition of all future documents printed at GPO. 

The Library was to serve GPO in various ways. It provided the 

necessary “key” or stock list for both library distribution and sales. It made 

accurate and consistent cataloging and indexing possible by providing 

catalogers a basis for research and comparison. All the functions of the 

Superintendent of Documents grew around the library. The classification 

system devised by Adelaide Hasse and brought into use by the other GPO 

librarians including William Leander Post (who was later Superintendent 

of Documents) was meant to organize and control the library collection. 

The cataloging information that appeared in the Monthly Catalog of 

U.S. Government Publications was gathered from the items on the library 

shelves. Eventually it gave the Superintendent of Documents the resources 

to efficiently answer the many reference queries that came to the Office 

from libraries and individuals in addition to requests for the purchase of 

documents. 

The first Superintendent of Documents, 

Francis Asbury Crandall (1837–1915), 

a Buffalo newspaperman who remained 

employed by GPO for many years after 

his term of office.
Adelaide R. Hasse

Women have always worked for the Government Printing Office but until the 20th 

century few left an individual mark on its history. One exception was Adelaide R. Hasse, 

the first Superintendent of Documents librarian. In her brief two year career at GPO, 

she almost single-handedly set up GPO’s Public Documents Library and devised the classification 

system still in use today. 

Hasse began her 60-year career in librarianship at the age of 21, when she was employed at the 

Los Angeles Public Library. She organized the library’s documents collection, devised a classification 

system for them, and began compiling a checklist which became the first of her almost three dozen 

publications in the field.

In 1895, when Congress established the office of Superintendent of Documents within the 

Government Printing Office, the Superintendent was made responsible for the sale and depository 

library distribution of Government publications. Francis A. Crandall was appointed to this new position. When he assumed 

his post, he confronted a colossal task of sorting and organization. Thousands of documents dating back many years had 

accumulated helter-skelter in various areas of GPO. More publications clogged the storerooms of the House and Senate. 

None of these collections was arranged in a systematic way. Crandall quickly realized that a GPO documents library could 

serve as a “stock key” to the mass of materials in his charge and furnish the reference tools needed to field inquiries. 

With these problems in mind, Crandall turned to Adelaide Hasse. In May 1895, she left Los Angeles for Washington, 

DC to become GPO’s first librarian. Her duties included caring for the documents as well as pulling together the many 

scattered collections stored around the Capitol. Within six weeks of her arrival, nearly 300,000 documents, including 

duplicates, had been organized and classified. It was at this time that Hasse developed the classification scheme that forms 

the basis of the one still in use at GPO today.

By 1897, GPO’s Public Documents Library had grown from nothing to a well-organized collection of 16,841 printed 

documents and 2,597 maps. Shortly thereafter, Hasse received and accepted an offer to join the staff of the New York Public 

Library and build up its documents collection.

By the time of her death in 1953, Adelaide Hasse had become one of the most notable members of her profession. 

She left behind her a rich legacy of achievement affecting all areas of librarianship, including that of Federal Government 

documents. Although her GPO years were few, her impact on the agency’s role in keeping America informed was great and 

long lasting. 

24
25

to Jackson Alley in 1896, in part to house 

the new Superintendent of Documents 

functions. The age and inadequacies of 

this space, however, compelled successive 

Public Printers to implore Congress with 

increasing urgency for more, safer, and 

more efficient space.

Not until the appointment of 

Frank W. Palmer by President Benjamin 

Harrison in May 1889, and his subsequent 

appointment by President William 

McKinley in March 1897, were these pleas 

finally heard. A former Representative, 

Palmer succeeded in convincing Congress 

of the need for a new building, driven in 

part by reaction to the deaths of 22 people 

in 1893 from the structural collapse of 

Ford’s Theatre, used at that time to store 

War Department records. In July 1898, 

Gathering the documents began almost immediately on Adelaide 

Hasse’s arrival in Washington, and the library was set up in leased space 

in the Union Building on H Street a few blocks from GPO. The Public 

Documents Division (of which the library was part) moved to the 

H Street annex building sometime after 1900, and the Library was eventually located on the seventh floor of Building 2. It remained central to the 

life of the Public Documents Division and its public programs until the 

1970s, when a critical shortage of space in the main GPO complex forced 

the Superintendent of Documents functions into leased space in northern 

Virginia, and the Library collection was judged to be too costly to move 

and maintain. Most of it was transferred to the National Archives, where 

it was absorbed into a larger record group. Its only remaining fragment, 

a portion of the catalog used to control the assignment of Superintendent 

of Documents Classification numbers, remained in use and in 2009 began 

to be converted to electronic form to be better incorporated into GPO’s 

overall landscape of catalogs and indexes.

With the centralization of Federal printing and its institutional 

connection to the Superintendent of Documents, Congress completed 

development of the “means of acquiring” Government information that 

Madison had envisioned nearly 70 years earlier. The creation of a system 

that provided for the selection of documents for public distribution 

from the comprehensive body of documents printed by the Government 

marked, in the words of one observer, “the institutional realization of a 

panoply of reforms pertaining to public printing policy.”18 Through the 

years, subsequent Public Printers would use the Act to improve on the 

economic, efficient, and equitable purchase of printing and binding materials as well as the production and distribution of Government documents.

Public Printer Palmer

As GPO’s workload grew steadily, the buildings acquired in 1861 

underwent multiple additions and modifications. By the end of the 19th 

century, most of the halfsquare bounded by H Street NW, North Capitol 

Street, Jackson Alley, and First Street NW (a small part of which held 

the original Wendell buildings) was occupied by a crazy quilt of interconnected buildings, annexes, sheds, and stables. The latest and among the 

largest of these was a seven-story tall but extraordinarily narrow annex 

building built across the western boundary of the property from H Street 

GPO about 1900. The Wendell building is still discernible along the H Street side (right).

The seven-story annex, tallest and 

last of the additions to the original 

North Capitol and H Street site, 

completed in 1896. 
Background image: Architect’s drawing of the façade of the building approved by Congress in 1898–99, now known as Building 1.

Building 1 soon after its completion in 1903. The most prominent image of GPO from 

Capitol Hill.

Building 1 under construction, probably 1902.

26
Congress appropriated $225,000 for the purchase by condemnation proceedings of the properties stretching southward to G Street NW, and later 

that year $2 million was authorized for the construction of a new fireproof 

building. The foundation was begun in 1899 and the construction was 

completed in 1903 at a cost of $2,429,000. James G. Hill, a prominent 

Washington, DC, architect, was chosen to design the building. The preparation of plans and supervision of construction was assigned to Captain 

John S. Sewell, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. 

Shortly before the building opened, William E. Curtis described it in 

the Chicago Record Herald of May 24, 1903:

The new printing office will have a floor space of 619,700 

square feet, which is equivalent to about fourteen acres or four 

ordinary city blocks, which is divided into seven floors almost 

without partitions. Printers need a good deal of light, and it is 

provided for them by 1,500 windows. One-third of all the wall 

space is glass, and, in order that this light may not be lost, the 

walls of the rooms are lined with white enameled bricks which 

can be washed like a bath tub. ...The building is absolutely 

fireproof, or as near fireproof as any building can be. It is also 

as substantial as possible, and its walls are built like those of 

the fortress because type is heavy and printing presses cause 

considerable vibration, and it would be unfortunate to have 

the roof and walls cave in and bury 3,597 American citizens 

under material and machinery that is intended only for the 

dissemination of intelligence.

...The outside walls are three feet thick and to construct them 

10,000,000 bricks were required. Enclosed within them is a 

steel framework weighing almost 12,000,000 pounds, which 

is heavier, perhaps, than the frame of any other building in 

the country. ...The columns, beams, girders, channels, and 

plates were not made of ordinary stock steel, but were forged 

to order, and the steel work is so protected that in case of heat 

being generated by the burning of any material that might 

be placed in the building, its strength will not be affected by 

warping.

Now known as Building 1, this structure still stands today on the 

corner of North Capitol and G Streets, NW, the most prominent image of 

GPO when viewed from Capitol Hill.

Typesetting Transformed

By the time GPO’s new building opened, commercial book and newspaper 

plants had embraced the introduction of machine typesetting. Two types 

of machines were in wide use: the Monotype, invented by Tolbert Lanston 

and manufactured by the Lanston Monotype Company in Philadelphia, 

and the Linotype, devised by Ottmar Mergenthaler and produced by 

the Mergenthaler Linotype Company in Baltimore. Both machines were 

introduced in 1887. 

Each was suited to a particular class of work. Monotype was a twostep system. A keyboard produced a punched paper tape, not unlike a 

player piano roll. When run through a casting machine, the tape produced 

properly spaced pieces of type from molten lead, which were put directly 

27

The first battery of Monotype keyboards, 1905: The “weird machines that set type by punching 

holes in paper.” This modest group rapidly grew.
28

An early shot of the Linotype battery, probably ten years after their introduction in 1904.
29

GPO had one of the biggest batteries of Linotype machines in the world.
30

Monotype casting machines, part of the revolution that changed the typesetting formula from minutes per line to lines per minute.
31

Making up and imposing Monotype, about 1930.
32

into forms. These forms could be locked up for use directly on the press, 

although usually plates were cast. Monotype had as one of its virtues the 

ability to set up complicated tables and charts. A contemporary advertisement for Monotype proclaimed, “Some of the tables that the Monotype 

pumps out without effort would puzzle the most skilled hand compositor.”19 The huge Linotype machine, by contrast, cast a full line of type at a 

time, also from molten lead. Originally built for the newspaper trade, the 

machines were without parallel for so-called straight work, or text set in 

columnar blocks on a page.

GPO’s new building was designed for a workforce that included 

about 800 hand compositors. Public Printer Palmer approached the 

introduction of machine typesetting cautiously, concerned for its ability 

to produce the required work as well as the potential impact on the 

workforce. When pressed by Congress in March 1904, he questioned 

the “economy or adaptability” of machine typesetting, but he ultimately 

assured the Appropriations Committees of his willingness to experiment, and in June 1904, the New York Tribune reported that Palmer had 

announced the acquisition of a trial group of machines. The Tribune 

commented that “It is also believed that the typesetting machines will not 

only promote efficiency and decrease cost, but that they will unquestionably be capable of producing the high standard of work required by the 

Government, and at the same time be of no material injury to the personnel of the establishment.”

The initial order was for 46 Linotypes and 28 Monotypes. The machines were quickly embraced and their respective batteries grew rapidly. 

Linotype entered GPO originally for the production of the Congressional 

Record but was eventually used for a wide variety of other work, including 

patents. By 1915, GPO used 100 Monotype keyboards and 76 Linotypes, 

and by 1916, two-thirds of all type set in GPO was Monotype. By 1925, 

120 Monotype keyboards, with a comparable number of casters, and 147 

Linotypes were in use. GPO boasted the largest number of both machines 

in the world.

The embrace of machine typesetting completed GPO’s industrialization. Over the first 45 years of its existence, presses and bindery machinery 

had grown steadily faster and capable of larger workloads. The final major 

process to join the transformation was typesetting, where the new machines 

changed the measurement of productivity from minutes per line to lines 

per minute. A skillful hand compositor could be expected to set a line in 

two minutes; a comparably skilled Linotype operator was capable of four 

to seven lines per minute. Public Printer Palmer’s concerns over machine 

typesetting proved to be unfounded. Instead, the impact on GPO was striking and almost immediate. By 1915 the Linotype section alone employed 

nearly as many as the total number of hand compositors at the time the new 

building opened, and GPO’s fully industrialized capacity enabled it to meet 

the steadily increasing demand for work as the Government grew.

President Roosevelt and His Public Printers 

The introduction of machine typesetting and GPO’s subsequent growth 

drew increased public scrutiny as the agency struggled to transform into 

a fully industrialized concern. The prominence of GPO in the news also 

drew the close attention of President Theodore Roosevelt, whose involvement with GPO would cost two Public Printers their jobs.

In 1903, President Roosevelt became involved in the case of one 

William A. Miller. Miller had been hired as an assistant foreman in GPO’s 

bindery, in charge of the blank book section, where he began making 

reforms in the operation of the section. He denounced the International 

Brotherhood of Bookbinders and Public Printer Palmer, claiming that 

The Monotype keyboard section in 1915. “The biggest battery of composing machines in the 

world,” according to the Monotype Co.
33

Jefferson’s Bible

Included in GPO’s growing workload was an unusual order for a publication that has remained a 

curiosity to this day: the production of Thomas Jefferson’s Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth, a book 

that later was to become known as Jefferson’s Bible. Prepared between 1794 and 1819, apparently for 

his own use, the book was a cut-and-paste compendium of selections from the New Testament that 

Jefferson believed represented “the most sublime and benevolent code of morals which has ever been 

offered to man,” as he later wrote to John Adams. Left out of this collection were all references to 

miracles and all theological doctrine. It was never published during his lifetime.

Sometime after his death, Jefferson’s work made its way to the Smithsonian, where it was 

discovered years later by Iowa Representative John Lacey. In 1903, Lacey introduced a resolution 

providing for its printing as a House document. He apparently later had second thoughts about 

having the Government print the book and, having found a commercial printer to do the work, tried 

to have the resolution rescinded. But by that time GPO had completed the job, producing 9,642 copies 

“by the photolithographic process,” as the resolution required, at a total cost of $21,258.60. Congress 

suddenly found itself with 9,000 extra copies of Jefferson’s Bible, 3,000 for the Senate and 6,000 for 

the House. Rather than destroy them, a new congressional tradition was started whereby every new 

member of Congress was given a copy, continuing until the supply was exhausted in 1957. Jefferson’s 

other contribution to congressional printing—the Manual of Parliamentary Practice for the Use of the 

Senate of the United States—remained in publication by GPO through 1977, and was incorporated into the rules of the House, entitled 

Constitution, Jefferson’s Manual, and Rules of the House of Representatives, which is still printed by GPO.20 

they colluded to create a “closed shop,” where only union members 

could be appointed or promoted. Miller was expelled from the union and 

later dismissed from his position. He took his grievance to the Attorney 

General, Philander C. Knox, who brought it to the attention of the 

President and Secretary of Commerce and Labor George Cortelyou. He 

also filed a formal complaint with the Civil Service Commission, charging 

that his firing was a violation of their regulations.

The Commission found in Miller’s favor and ordered his reinstatement, which Palmer was slow to act on. Meanwhile, President Roosevelt 

and Secretary Cortelyou’s separate inquiry into the matter concluded that 

the Public Printer had acted improperly. In July 1903, the President directed 

that Miller be reinstated and that an “immediate and thorough investigation” be conducted. The committee formed for that purpose was critical 

of Palmer’s management of GPO, and their findings were communicated 

to the Joint Committee on Printing. President Roosevelt directed Palmer 

to conduct an audit of all accounts, a complete inventory of all materials, 

obtain bonds for all employees with fiduciary responsibility, and specified that all employees be required to “take the ordinary oath of office,” 
34

admonishing Palmer, “It seems to reflect most seriously on 

any Government officer that it should be necessary to make 

recommendations of this kind for the administration of 

his office.” The incident represented a serious loss of trust 

between the President and the Public Printer.

Soon after Palmer directed GPO’s initial contract for 

Monotypes and Linotypes in 1904, a second contract for additional Monotypes was signed. The Mergenthaler Linotype 

Company accused GPO officials of malfeasance in the trial 

of the machines and the subsequent order of machines from 

its competitor, Lanston Monotype. The complaint was made 

at the highest level, leading President Roosevelt to direct 

the newly-formed presidential Committee on Department 

Methods (known as the Keep Committee after its chairman, 

Charles H. Keep) to investigate. The Committee found that the contracts 

were proper and valid but that Palmer’s actions, particularly with regard 

to two of his foremen, who had given unfavorable testimony against him 

before the committee, were improper. After the close of the investigation, 

Palmer brought charges of insubordination against Oscar J. Ricketts and 

L. C. Hay, and ordered them to meet with him. When news of this retaliation reached the President, he asked for Palmer’s resignation and issued 

an order prohibiting him from meeting with the employees. When the 

President was informed that the Public Printer had ordered Ricketts and 

Hay to appear, he immediately removed Palmer from office and named 

Ricketts Acting Public Printer.

Public Printer Stillings 

On hearing the news in 1905 that Public Printer Palmer had been 

removed, a friend remarked to Charles A. Stillings, “That’s a position you 

ought to have.” Stillings, a printer and a member of the New York Board 

of Trade, agreed and made an appointment to meet President Roosevelt 

at Oyster Bay, NY. The President was determined to keep politics from 

guiding his Public Printer appointment, and he was impressed by Stillings’ 

managerial experience and knowledge of printing. While awaiting 

confirmation, headlines appeared in The New York Sun of November 16, 

1905: “Printing Office Scandal. Effort To Defeat Confirmation of Stillings. 

Oscar J. Ricketts, Late Acting Public Printer, Leads The Opposition, 

The Basis of Which Is Alleged To Be the ‘Open Shop’ Proclivities of Mr. 

Stillings.” Nonetheless, Stillings’ confirmation took place without incident. 

But that headline was prophetic: During Stillings’ term, Americans were 

to hear more about GPO than at any previous time in its history. His 

troubles began in June 1906, at the close of the first session of the 59th 

Congress. On July 1, the New York Times reported:

The 1st session of the 59th Congress came to an end at 10 p.m. 

[on June 30th], hours after it should have...incapacity of the 

GPO was responsible for keeping both branches in session at 

least 8 hours beyond the time originally set...The President 

was obliged to waste the best part of a day sitting around the 

Capitol with his Cabinet to sign bills...

The rush at the close of a congressional session is a predictable and 

almost unvarying tradition, and GPO’s inability to cope with it seemed 

Public Printer Stillings was depicted in political cartoons several times during his tenure. Here 

he is seen in the Washington Star caught between the partisans of the spelling reform controversy, 

President Roosevelt at right and Congress (possibly in the person of House Appropriations 

Committee Chair James A. Tawney). 
35

incredible. The Senate lambasted the Public Printer with charges of incompetency and poor work and ordered an investigation. The final report, 

however, not only excused Stillings but in fact showered him with praise 

for the handling of the situation. The Times wryly commented, “The Public 

Printer will rest undisturbed in possession of the bouquet presented to him 

when everybody was expecting...a big stick.” Stillings had little time to 

savor his bouquet. On August 24, 1906, the Associated Press reported: 

President Roosevelt has endorsed the Carnegie spelling reform 

movement. He issued orders today to Public Printer Stillings that 

hereafter all messages from the President and all other documents 

emanating from the White House shall be printed in accordance 

with the recommendation of the spelling reform committee 

headed by Brander Matthews, professor of English in Columbia 

University. This committee has published a list of 300 words in 

which the spelling is reformed. This list contains such words as 

‘thru’ and ‘tho’ as the spelling for ‘through’ and ‘though.’

The spelling reform movement proposed a number of changes that 

have lasted to this day, such as removing the “u” from the spelling of color, 

honor, favor, and rumor. It also had a significant body of respected and 

articulate supporters, including Samuel Clemens—Mark Twain—as well 

as Andrew Carnegie, who provided financial support for the movement. 

But as the Associated Press pointed out, some of its proposed changes 

seemed outlandish. As a result, the press had a field day with the “reform 

spelling crusade,” and editorials and cartoons abounded. The Supreme 

Court entered the fray and directed that its opinions be printed in the old 

style. Congress had the last word when Representative Charles B. Landis 

of Indiana introduced a resolution on December 13, 1906:

Resolved, That it is the sense of the House that hereafter in 

the printing of House documents or other publications used 

by law or ordered by Congress, or either branch thereof, or 

emanating from any executive department or bureau of the 

Government, the House printer should observe and adhere to 

the standard of orthography prescribed in generally accepted 

dictionaries of the English language.

The Washington Star published the complete list of 300 words on September 2, 1906. Many of the 

spellings that seemed radical in 1906 are common in 2011.
36

Machine sewing in the Bindery, about 1905. Most of GPO’s female employees were bindery workers but. . . 
37

The motion passed unanimously. The President let the Public 

Printer and the Nation know that the old style was reinstated. But almost 

immediately another storm appeared on the horizon. In early 1907, 

Stillings authorized a reduction in force and announced the dismissal of 

204 employees, half journeymen bookbinders and half women, mostly 

sewing operators and goldworkers. This action, Stillings said, was necessitated by changes in printing and binding regulations that caused a reduction of work. A special dispatch to the Rochester Chronicle of April 30, 

1907, described the resulting impact: “Many pathetic scenes followed the 

receipt of the dreaded yellow envelopes by the women. A number of them 

could not refrain from shedding tears. ...Several of them had worked 

in the printing office for years.” Stillings further alienated employees by 

ordering physical examinations for the elderly workers at GPO, including 

women. This was reflected in a news item on September 31, 1907: “Many 

of them are widows of Civil War soldiers and they know that they cannot 

hop, skip, and jump in competition with boys and young men.” Stillings 

also ordered the removal of mirrors from work areas, prompting one 

employee to explain on April 27, 1907:

Yes, we had our own mirrors and they were necessary. In the 

main dressing room of each of the floors where the women 

work there is one mirror, but what could a hundred or more 

girls do before one mirror when everybody wants to leave 

as soon as the Government has had our day’s work? Under 

the old order it took each of us but a moment to see how we 

looked and we could go out on the street feeling that we were 

presentable. From half past 4 o’clock until 6 each day is the 

only time we have in which to do our modest shopping, and 

it is a race to get to the stores before they close. Mr. Stillings 

evidently believes we should leave this building all frowsied 

up and looking disreputable. Well, we’ll fool him, anyhow, for 

he cannot prevent our carrying little pocket mirrors and the 

shops will have a run on that article.

The unions also weighed in. A headline in The Boston American on 

March 15, 1907, read “Strike Threatened at U.S. Print Shop.” The article 

went on to say:

. . . there were also female press feeders. The Press Division about 1905. 

The eye of the spelling reform storm at GPO was the proofroom. Opponents of the changes 

claimed that they would necessitate hiring a complete second force of proofreaders.
38

Because they claim Public Printer Stillings is trying to supplant 

them with apprentices and unskilled men, the small army of 

stereotypers and electrotypers at the great government print 

shop are threatening a strike. At a special meeting a delegation 

was named to wait on Stillings and present their grievances. 

On July 22, 1907, the same newspaper reported:

Resolutions denouncing in vigorous terms Stillings’ recent 

order fining proofreaders for overlooking errors were 

forwarded today to President Roosevelt and laid before the 

Department of Justice by Columbia Typographical Union 

No. 1. On October 17, 1907, the Central Labor Union of the 

District of Columbia passed resolutions asking President 

Roosevelt to remove Charles A. Stillings from office.

Public Printer Stillings, who came to GPO with the President’s 

mandate for organizational efficiency as a touchstone, viewed things differently from his critics. He expressed himself on June 24, 1907, before 

a Washington, DC, gathering of photoengravers and electrotypers. A 

reporter noted:

Mr. Stillings said an effort was being made to place the [GPO] 

on a plane with the best printing establishments in the world. 

He described how he had found a more or less disorganized 

force of workmen in many lines; how he had made an attempt 

to place at the head of several departments experts in their 

several lines; how he had met with some opposition; how he 

had been misunderstood in some ways, but how at last it was 

becoming apparent that the [GPO] is not only abreast with the 

best establishments of its kind in the world, but the idea was 

beginning to appear that the true aim is to make it the model 

printing house of the world.

However noble his aspirations, the political realities of making 

unpopular decisions quickly overshadowed Public Printer Stillings and, 

amid many allegations and denunciations, he was suspended by President 

Roosevelt in February 1908 pending yet another Presidential commission 

investigation. While the commission’s report criticized Stillings, concluding that he “had not been a good judge of men,” it also found that he 

“could not be accused of any intentional wrongdoing.” 22 Nonetheless, he 

was not returned to office, and President Roosevelt appointed his next 

Public Printer on June 9, 1908.

Public Printer Leech

John S. Leech had learned the printing trade in Indiana. When appointed 

as Public Printer, he was serving as Public Printer of the recently acquired 

Philippines. One of the first areas he examined at GPO was wages, and 

Mr. Stillings made the papers again in 1907, with his order that all GPO officers (managers) were 

to refer to their subordinates as “Mr.,” “Miss,” or “Mrs.” rather than by first names. Although 

apparently well-intentioned, the order met with some scorn as Stillings’ popularity declined. 
39

he authorized increases for Linotype and Monotype operators as well 

as printers, bookbinders, proofreaders, and other occupations requiring 

special skill. During his brief administration, Leech implemented a detailed system of accounting, showing “monthly the total cost of operation, 

daily the amount of wages earned, and at any moment the amount of 

purchases, the total expenditures to date, and the outstanding obligations.” 

The system was considered to be of “comparative simplicity” and “logical 

arrangement.” Owing to poor health, Leech resigned on December 1, 

1908, the Public Printer of shortest tenure. However, his stay apparently 

was long enough to restore good relations between the Office of the Public 

Printer and GPO’s employees. On Leech’s last day at GPO, more than 

1,000 employees met with him to wish him well.

Public Printer Donnelly

President Roosevelt’s final appointment as Public Printer, made in the 

waning days of his term on December 1, 1908, was Samuel B. Donnelly, 

a former president of the International Typographical Union. He served 

through the term of Roosevelt’s successor, President William Howard 

Taft, until June 25, 1913. Donnelly was well known to Roosevelt, who 

had previously appointed him to a number of special commissions. One of 

Donnelly’s early suggestions, made in his annual report for 1909, related to 

the eighth or attic floor of the new building. He observed:

The majority of employees of the Government Printing Office 

partake of the noonday meal in the workrooms in which 

they are employed. Food is carried into the workrooms in 

large quantities and distributed from convenient points. This 

method is unhealthful and insanitary, increases the difficulty 

of keeping the office clean, and attracts insects destructive to 

certain classes of material.

He went on to request authority to construct skylights in the roof 

and to use the area as a lunchroom. This recommendation would wait for 

nearly 20 years to be instituted. 

Donnelly also set about securing new business. He was able to report 

in December 1910: “In February we undertook the work of printing the 

postal cards. On this work many difficulties were met with, particularly 

owing to paper and mechanical troubles. At the date of the submission of 

this report, however, the work is up-to-date. The Government Printing 

Office printed in the month of October 156,834,000 cards.” Postal card 

production remained a mainstay of GPO’s business until 2007, when electronic mail and other digital messaging finally led to the end of demand 

for postal cards. He also reported the JCP had approved his proposal to use 

a lighter weight paper for the Congressional Record and other Government 

printing, in addition to eliminating other unneeded paper stocks, in order 

to achieve savings.

Donnelly became involved in an incident in 1911 that reflected 

both the developing face of the GPO workforce and that of its home in 

the District of Columbia. During the construction of a garage, the Civil 

Service Commission certified six bricklayers and one laborer for work on 

the project. After a few days on the job, the bricklayers let it be known that 

they wanted the laborer, a black man, removed from the project. When 

this was not done, they walked out. The Civil Service Commission then 

certified six new bricklayers, who happened to be black men. Vociferous 

criticism was leveled at the Public Printer for refusing to dismiss the 

laborer, and for replacing the bricklayers who had left. Donnelly clearly 

John S. Leech served only six months 

as Public Printer, the shortest tenure 

on record.

Samuel B. Donnelly had been president 

of the International Typographical 

Union and was Theodore Roosevelt’s 

third Public Printer.
40

Many binding processes became mechanized around the turn of the 20th century. This is probably the Congressional Record line, 3rd floor, Building 1, between 1905 and 1910. (Library of Congress)
41

Sheet-fed presses in the main pressroom, Building 1, between 1905 and 1910. (Library of Congress)
GPO’s Stables

The GPO stable, about 1903, a leased building on L Street. The carriage at left is identified as the 

Public Printer’s because it has a pair of horses. All other GPO wagons and carriages had only one. 

42

new structure had a 22-horse capacity and stood two stories high, 

the second story serving as a hay loft. 

The cost of a horse generally ranged from $150 to $200. 

GPO’s largest single transportation expense was for forage, 

followed by horseshoeing and harness and wagon repair. In a 

1942 interview, James F. Fletcher, who came to GPO in 1906 as a 

carriage driver, said that horses were bought based on bids stating 

the required quality and breeding. GPO’s veterinarian, Cornelius 

C. Weeks, examined each horse before purchase. Weeks received 

about $2,000 a year from 1905 to 1912 for his services. Drivers like 

Fletcher earned an entering wage of 25 cents an hour 

In 1910, Public Printer Samuel B. Donnelly ordered a study 

to determine whether the Office’s transportation needs would best 

For more than 50 years, horse-drawn transport was a vital 

part of GPO’s structure. When the Federal Government 

purchased Cornelius Wendell’s print shop for the newly 

established Government Printing Office in 1861, the price included 

a stable and carriage house, one black horse, one bobtail bay horse, 

one wagon, one carryall (a light covered carriage for four or more 

people), two sets of single harness, two wheelbarrows, one large 

harness closet, and one large closet. 

In 1881, GPO acquired a new stable and wagon house, which 

could handle 4 to 6 wagons and 8 to 12 horses. In 1896, GPO built 

a new, 7-story extension that claimed the stable land, and the 

displaced horses, wagons, and stablemen moved to rented quarters. 

In 1903, GPO leased a stable and carriage house on L Street. The 

The GPO “motor pool” about 1912.
43

expressed himself on this matter, and was quoted by The Reformer of 

Richmond, VA, on November 11, 1911:

I am loyal to union principles when they stand for protection 

and for fair play to all concerned. Negro bricklayers work sideby-side with white bricklayers in the Washington and other 

Navy yards. I cannot see why in the case of the work to be 

done at the Government Printing Office, the white bricklayers 

should expect an exception to be made in their favor. There are 

400 Negro employees in the Government Printing Office...

[who] work in the various departments side-by-side with other 

employees. ...I wish to declare with all emphasis that any employee of this department who tries to precipitate the devilish 

stricture of race prejudice will be immediately dismissed and 

will not again be employed!

Donnelly proved himself a reformer in other ways. He reported to 

Congress in 1911:

There are employed in the Government Printing Office 

more than 250 persons above the age of 65, and it would be of 

advantage to the Government to provide for the retirement 

of those who have given to the public service the best years of 

their lives and who may be unable to perform an average day’s 

work. This could be equitably accomplished through the adoption of a plan which would in effect amount to an annuity to 

each employee upon arriving at the age of retirement or upon 

becoming disabled. ...Such a plan would result in saving a 

large proportion of the amount that it is conceded generally is 

now lost through the superannuation of employees, and would 

at the same time be an act of justice to the individual and a 

recognition of long and faithful service.

The Civil Service Employees’ Retirement Act did not take effect 

until 1920, but Public Printer Donnelly helped sow the seeds. By the end 

of his term, the full industrialization of GPO had laid the groundwork for 

major improvements to be made in the worklife of GPO’s employees at 

“the big shop.” n

be served by horse-drawn or automotive transport. The 

study concluded that if autos replaced wagons, GPO’s 

total transportation expense, excluding wages, would be 

substantial. In 1912, six electric trucks were purchased 

for $17,373. Charging panels and circuits and a new 

garage cost another $19,160.25. All but six horses and 

two wagons were sold as surplus. By this time, Fletcher 

and his coworkers had been retrained in the new 

technology, learning to drive by practicing turning and 

backing in the stable until they were ready for the road. 

In 1942, Fletcher was still a driver for GPO, an early 

example of accommodation to changing technology in 

the workplace.

GPO entered the automobile age in 1912 with the purchase of six Baker electric 

trucks, built in Cleveland, Ohio.
44

“The Brainery” – proofreaders at work in the proofroom, about 1900.
1915-1959
46
47

By the early 20th century, the character of 

Government publishing had changed substantially. In the early days of the Republic the bulk 

was congressional. By the end of the 19th century 

executive agencies both fueled and fulfilled public 

demand for a wide variety of information, and it soon 

became an expectation that the Government would 

provide everything from reports on scientific endeavor 

and geographical exploration to crop research and 

demographic data. In the decades between 1885 

and 1905 the number of publications issued by the 

Government doubled. The industrialization of 

Government printing enabled GPO to meet this 

demand as printing production and distribution 

became increasingly efficient and economical.

Through the last decades of the 19th century and into the 20th, critics 

and defenders alike commented on the vast growth of Government publishing. Critics tended to focus on the ever-expanding output of agencies. In 

1906, William S. Rossiter, one of the leading voices for Government efficiency who later served as Acting Public 

Printer, wrote in an article titled “What 

Shall We Do With Public Documents?,” 

“Publications...which are intended, 

directly or indirectly, for the benefit 

of the public are quite another matter 

[from congressional publications]...any 

one is privileged to inquire how they 

came into existence, and whether they 

serve their purpose most effectively.” 

Such criticisms were primarily leveled 

at agencies rather than at GPO, and as 

the turmoil of the Theodore Roosevelt 

administration subsided, newspapers 

and magazines, both in the printing 

trade press and for general readers, 

turned out a stream of articles about the 

wonders and capacities of “the big shop” 

on North Capitol Street. These wonders and capacities would be put to the 

test in the coming decades to fulfill the vastly increased requirements of the 

Government for the printing needed to meet the emergencies of two World 

Wars and the Great Depression.

Public Printer Ford and World War I 

In June 1913, newly-elected President Woodrow Wilson appointed 

Cornelius Ford, president of the State Federation of Labor in New Jersey, 

as Public Printer. Shortly after his appointment, Ford submitted his 

recommendations for plant modernization to Congress, including upgradC H A P T E R 3

The Progressive Era, the Depression,

and World War

Cornelius Ford, appointed by Woodrow 

Wilson in 1913, had been president of the 

New Jersey State Federation of Labor.

Left: “The finest view of Washington and the surrounding country that is to be had.” GPO’s roof 

terrace about 1935.
48

ing GPO’s Monotype and Linotype machines. In 1914, he directed the 

replacement of obsolete presses and installed an offset press, marking the 

introduction of this technology to GPO. A year later, he urged the adoption of offset printing, which would “provide for a wider range of work at 

a greater speed.” He also pressed for a new building to relieve overcrowding and provide more space for expanded press operations.

The issue of GPO wages preoccupied Ford throughout his term. At 

that time, GPO wages were still fixed by Congress. This inflexible system 

prevented adjustments to keep wages commensurate with commercial 

wages, making it difficult to attract and retain skilled workers. One of 

Ford’s first recommendations to Congress was to increase the wages of 

compositors and bookbinders, and he was to repeat this same request in 

annual reports for 1914–1917. In his final report for 1920, he pointed out 

with some exasperation:

For the past two or three years only by promises of his utmost 

endeavor with Congress for relief has the Public Printer 

been enabled to retain sufficient efficient employees on the 

legislative rolls to take care of the ever increasing demands of 

Congress, the departments, and the general public. Within the 

past year the office has lost by resignation the services of many 

of its best paid and most efficient employees, and the good 

of the service impels this appeal to the Congress for a proper 

adjustment of these rolls. ...Owing to the seriousness of the 

situation it is urgently recommended that Congress take favorable action so that the salary and wage rate in the Government 

Printing Office will compare with the salary and wage rate 

paid in commercial establishments doing similar work.

Ford promoted a number of health and safety measures. His 

annual report for 1914 mentions: “A ‘rest room’ has been installed on the 

fifth floor of the new building for women employees who may become 

exhausted during working hours. The room is under the supervision of 

the medical and sanitary officer. I consider it a very humane and necessary 

adjunct to the office.” In 1915 he reported: “Realizing that the health of 

employees in the Linotype section was being endangered by fumes and 

noxious gases arising from melted metal in the Linotype pots, I installed 

a ventilating system in that section. ...The installation of this system has 

resulted in a very material change for the better in the atmosphere of 

the room and the general working conditions.” He also noted that: “All 

faucets were removed from drinking fountains throughout the buildings 

and replaced with bubbling fountains...this replacement was a decided 

advance in sanitation.” Ford believed vacations were an important source 

of rest and renewal for employees. He expressed satisfaction at a legal 

opinion on the subject issued by GPO’s comptroller: “A decision dated 

February 15, 1915, definitely decided that employees of this office are 

entitled to leave of absence with pay for 30 working days each year. The 

decision was fair and just. ...” Like Public Printer Donnelly, Ford also 

urged a pension for GPO workers.

Ford’s greatest challenge was in guiding GPO to meet the enormous 

demand for printing following the declaration of war in April 1917. 

Full-scale national mobilization generated mountains of urgent and rush 

work for preparedness and war activities in addition to the continuing 

demand for congressional and agency printing. War demand from the 

Army included “millions of copies of drillbooks, handbooks, regulations, 

etc., clothbound, for immediate delivery. The Navy also needed vast 

quantities of printing and binding....” Among the items GPO printed 

were “75 million thrift cards, 25 million questionnaires and blanks, 27 

million notices of classifications, and numerous orders ranging from one 

to five million each. Agriculture was furnished many millions of posters, 

pamphlets, circulars...” and other work. Along with this workload was 

secret and confidential work, performed by GPO “under strict and ironclad regulations,” and the work formerly produced by printing branches 

located in the State, War, and Navy Buildings, which was transferred to 

GPO by Congress in March 1917. Included in the wartime printing was 

the daily production of the Official U.S. Bulletin, carrying regulatory and 

related information from the Committee on Public Information, a precursor of what would later become a mainstay of GPO’s production operations, the Federal Register. Billings for GPO doubled during Ford’s term, 

from $6.6 million in 1913 to $12.2 million in 1918.

To handle this demand, GPO hired 900 more employees and put 

most divisions on a 24-hour a day, 7-days a week work schedule, with 

additional expenses for overtime and night work. A pre-war program 

to retire obsolete equipment, especially presses, helped GPO meet the 
A Military Funeral

A merica entered the First World War in 1917. Thousands of inexperienced but eager 

young men poured into France, bolstering the weary forces of the Allies in their 

struggle against Imperial Germany. 

By 1921 the Government Printing Office, like the rest of the country, was caught up 

in its own concerns. Yet deep feelings about the war still remained. In August 1921, those 

feelings would emerge because of a unique event — a military funeral held in GPO.

Charles Addison Rhett Jacobs was one of three GPO employees killed in action during 

the First World War. He went to work at GPO in 1914. In 1917 he enlisted in the Marine 

Corps. He participated in active operations in the Chateau-Thierry sector and the Champagne 

offensive, rising to the rank of corporal. He was killed in action on October 3, 1918 and buried 

temporarily in France.

In 1921, Jacobs’ mother, Mrs. Roberta Jacobs, approached Public Printer George Carter, 

saying that “Her son’s life was centered in the Government printery before his entry into the 

service and...no better tribute could be paid his memory than a funeral from the Office in 

which he and his friends had worked.” Carter gave his permission for the service to be held 

within GPO on Wednesday, August 21, at 12 noon.

The body arrived on Tuesday, August 20. That night, Jacobs lay in state on the first floor landing of Building 1, watched over 

by a Marine guard. The next day at noon, GPO veterans of all wars were excused from work to allow them to attend the funeral. 

Representatives of the American Legion, Spanish-American War Veterans, the Grand Army of the Republic, and the Boy Scouts filled the 

staircase and lobby. Other guests included Secretary of the Navy Edwin Denby, Marine Major General John A. Lejeune and other Navy and 

Marine officers, and GPO’s top officials. The casket was surrounded with an array of floral tributes, including an immense wreath of roses 

from President and Mrs. Harding. 

The funeral procession traversed the Capitol grounds to what is now Constitution Avenue, where it was met by several cars which 

transported its members and the casket to Arlington National Cemetery. The cortege was composed of a detachment of Marines and a 

group of GPO veterans, many wearing their old uniforms.

In 1926, the GPO work force purchased and erected two bronze tablets as an honor roll of those who served in the war. Years later, 

photographs of GPO’s World War II dead were placed there. In the 1980s, new tablets commemorating those who served in World War II, 

the Korean Conflict, and the Vietnam Era, designed and manufactured in-house by GPO employees, were added to what is now officially 

designated as the GPO Veterans Memorial.

49
The Pershing Linotype

Mergenthaler Model 5 Linotype No. 14168R, otherwise known as the 

Pershing Linotype, was shipped to Pierre Lafitte & Company, Paris, 

France, on June 6, 1910. When shipped, it was equipped to cast slugs 

.918 of an inch high, the standard then used in France. 

Seven years later, America declared war on Germany and an American 

Expeditionary Force soon embarked for France. Once there, General John J. 

Pershing set up his headquarters in the town of Chaumont. One of his most pressing 

needs was for printing facilities to produce maps, charts, booklets, summaries of 

information, and orders. Pershing’s staff quickly located two Linotype machines in a 

small French printing plant and transported them by canal and truck to Chaumont. 

One of these machines was the Pershing. 

According to Corporal James M. “Jimmie” Kreiter, a Linotype operator 

who later worked at GPO, “There were 10 of us—9 printers and 1 pressman. At 

Chaumont we established ourselves at Camp Babcock, better known as pneumonia 

hollow.” Fourteen-hour days were not unusual. As more men joined the unit, two 

shifts were set up. Kreiter later described the work routine as “much like our work 

period here in the Office. Literally the night side had its ‘Record’ and the day side 

its ‘Federal Register.’ ”

When the American forces advanced, the Pershing and other machines were 

installed in trucks as part of a fully-equipped printing unit run by the 29th Engineers. 

This mobile print shop followed the commanding general for the remainder of the 

war, occasionally subjected to heavy German shellfire.

The Pershing Linotype came home in 1920. After reconditioning, it was transferred to GPO. In 1926, the International Association 

of Printing House Craftsmen presented Public Printer George H. Carter with a tablet bearing the following inscription: “IN HONOR 

OF A LINOTYPE THAT SERVED ITS COUNTRY ON THE BATTLEFIELDS IN FRANCE . . . THERE UPON A THROBBING 

MOTOR TRUCK MID SHOT AND SHELL THIS MACHINE TYPED GEN. PERSHING’S COMMANDS TO AMERICA’S 

VICTORIOUS ARMY.” In 1940, the Pershing Linotype was transferred to the Apprentice Section for use in training and in 1956 was 

placed in GPO’s Harding Hall as a tribute to its unique record of service to the Nation.

50

The Model 5 Linotype machine in Chaumont, France, with Corporal 

Jimmie Kreiter of the 29th Engineers Battalion at the keyboard.
51

The print shop at Camp Babcock in Chaumont, better known as “Pneumonia Hollow”.

The 29th Engineers with the trucks that formed the mobile printing battalion.

The Pershing Linotype and Corporal Kreiter, back at GPO several years after the war.
52

crisis, as did the ingenuity of employees in making combinations of press 

forms, resulting in greater productivity. Wartime increases in the cost of 

materials and supplies were handled within GPO’s scale of prices. Paper 

was a difficult commodity to obtain during the war, especially after the 

Joint Committee on Printing refused to award paper contracts at inflated 

wartime prices, requiring Public Printer Ford to resort to spot buys on the 

open market and direct personal appeals for the required stocks. To meet 

a nonstop schedule, plant and equipment maintenance was subordinate 

to keeping the presses running, and GPO turned increasingly to its own 

resources, establishing its own ink production capability, making marbled 

endpapers and carbon papers in-house, and salvaging and re-melting type 

to save money. During this period, GPO employees suffered approximately 1,600 accidents, an incidence considered low at the time, but more 

than double the number sustained in 1910.

The greatest sacrifice of the era, however, was made by the 338 GPO 

employees who served during the war, and the 10 who did not return. In 

1926, these were memorialized on the landing above the entrance to GPO 

Building 1 in plaques paid for by employee contributions. One of these 

employees, Corporal Charles A. R. Jacobs, had his flag-draped coffin rest 

on the landing on the evening before his burial in Arlington National 

Cemetery. 

Following World War I, Congress sought to further centralize, or 

recentralize, Government printing in GPO. Although GPO’s originating 

legislation in 1860 and the Printing Act of 1895 both required all printing 

for the Government to be performed through GPO, the emergency of 

World War I prompted Federal agencies to resort to new technologies for 

disseminating the typewritten word—mimeographing and multigraphing—with a resulting proliferation of Federal publications that escaped 

the documents system established in GPO. The Printing Act of 1919 

sought to restore that system by giving the Joint Committee on Printing 

approval power over the establishment of printing operations elsewhere 

than GPO.

Perhaps the real reason for the 1919 act, however, was a provision it 

contained giving the JCP the power to approve agency publications. Much 

of the printed matter then being produced by agencies was sympathetic 

to President Wilson’s proposal to create the League of Nations, a proposal 

that the majority then comprising the JCP vigorously opposed. In 1919 

and 1920, the JCP eliminated more than 100 agency periodicals it considered to be unnecessary under its authority to remedy waste and duplication in Government printing. President Wilson apparently believed the 

publications approval provision in the 1919 Printing Act was temporary. 

When the 1921 appropriations act for the Government tried to make the 

provision permanent, he vetoed the bill. His veto message to Congress said 

the JCP’s authority was an “invasion of the province of the President” and 

would allow the Committee to “determine what information may be given 

to the people of the country by the executive departments.” His veto was 

sustained, and subsequently the authority over agency publishing decisions 

was given to the newly created Bureau of the Budget. By then, President 

Wilson had left office and opposition to the League of Nations no longer 

was a concern. GPO was caught in the middle of this exchange and since 

that time it has been careful not to exercise any editorial control over the 

materials it is given to print.23

Public Printer Carter and the “Big Shop”

After the surge of demand for GPO services 

during World War I, the agency settled into 

a period of sustained growth and prosperity 

in the 1920s, led by President Warren G. 

Harding’s appointment of George H. Carter 

as Public Printer in April 1921. Carter was 

an attorney from Iowa who had served 12 

years as chief clerk, or staff director, of the 

JCP when he was nominated. President 

Harding, fondly remembered by GPO as 

the “printer President” because of his background as a newspaper publisher in Ohio, 

had deferred in his choice for Public Printer 

to Senator Reed Smoot of Utah, chairman of 

the Joint Committee. Smoot described Carter 

as “capable and courteous” with “eminent 

good judgment and unflagging industry,” a far cry from the notorious 

“Ohio Gang” of appointees and hangers-on who would dog Harding’s 

time in office and tarnish his legacy. Carter was to serve as Public Printer 

12 years, up until that time the longest term ever served in that office.

George H. Carter was Chief 

Clerk to the Joint Committee 

on Printing for 12 years before 

being appointed Public Printer 

by President Harding.
53

The renovations created a full eighth story with a cafeteria, auditorium, employee lounge, and bowling alley, as well as a new photoengraving plant and storage.
54

The employee lounge, or “Green Room,” provided space for meetings and relaxation. The cases 

display trophies from teams and organizations that sprang up during Public Printer Carter’s term.

Among Public Printer Carter’s first actions was the reconstruction of the top story of Building 1 to 

create new space, most of it devoted to “employee rest and recreation.”

The first of many incarnations of GPO’s duckpin bowling alley, in the 1920s. The bowling alleys 

remained a GPO fixture until the 1960s.

Employees bowled on dinner breaks and after their shifts, and several teams existed on all shifts. 

This photo is from the late 1930s
55

GPO’s roof terrace about 1935, showing the electric signs that once advertised the agency.
The Early Years of Harding Hall

When George H. Carter assumed the office 

of Public Printer on April 5, 1921, he 

found a budget surplus – an unexpected 

balance of about $2.4 million. These funds were 

available for the Public Printer to spend on stock, 

equipment, and the “betterment of plant.” With these 

funds, Carter literally raised the roof. Building 1, 

completed in 1903, originally consisted of seven floors 

and an attic space topped by a pitched roof. Carter 

decided to raise the sides to the level of the roof’s center. 

Although a new photoengraving facility and storage 

area were part of Carter’s building project, his heart was 

really in the construction of a cafeteria and recreation 

rooms for GPO’s employees. In-plant facilities would 

serve to improve morale and health while increasing 

efficiency and productivity. 

When the time came to christen the new assembly 

hall, Carter honored incumbent President Warren G. 

Harding, the man who had appointed him Public Printer. Lest critics assume he 

was merely currying favor with the genial ex-newspaperman from Ohio, Carter 

adroitly noted that the President’s background made him America’s first “printer 

President.”

 Harding Hall’s first informal gathering of employees occurred on 

Christmas Eve of 1921. Those who participated saw a far different hall than 

exists today. Although the 68-foot width was the same, it was considerably 

shorter in length and had smaller seating capacity. The low ceiling seemed to 

loom directly above the heads of the audience. 

56

Harding Hall in its original form before the further raising of its roof in 1930. The camera is about halfway back; 

the present hall facing the doors and the elevator lobby beyond.

GPO has marked the holiday season with celebrations for employees and their 

families that have always included a Christmas tree and a model train layout. 

This is probably 1922.
57

Although just a few feet above 

the floor of the hall, a semicircular 

row of footlights illuminated a small 

but serviceable platform for drama or 

speechmaking. Thanks to employee 

contributions, a $1,600 grand piano 

adorned the stage while an upright 

piano for dancing was available. 

There was also a mechanical player 

with violin attachment installed by its 

manufacturer. During the week, this 

machine provided dance music for the 

lunch period. 

Those GPO employees who 

preferred live music for dancing had 

to wait until Friday, when an all-GPO 

orchestra played from 11:30 a.m. to 

1 p.m. A night unit played from 11 

p.m. to 12 midnight. More than 20 

employees practiced on their own time 

and brought their own instruments to 

these lunchtime concerts. 

The end of each year also 

brought holiday gatherings for 

children, featuring decorated trees and toy trains – another Office tradition still observed today. 

Later in his term, Carter sought and won approval for a further renovation. In 1930, when the new Harding 

Hall was dedicated, it looked much as it does today. Old Harding Hall was gone — but the memories lingered on.
58

Carter said that the President “...instructed me to operate the ‘big 

shop’ on a strictly business basis, to stop waste and extravagances...as 

far as was within the power of the Public Printer.” He was well situated 

for that work, with his detailed knowledge of GPO and JCP functions 

and the goodwill of both the oversight committee and appropriators. He 

was able to begin with his reforms immediately. By June 1921 he cited a 

substantial list of accomplishments in his first annual report, including an 

unexpended balance of receipts of $2.4 million, which he directed at workplace repairs and improvements rather than the stockpiling of paper and 

other supplies that usually happened at the end of a fiscal year.

Carter’s first years in office were characterized by three principal 

themes: employee welfare and workplace improvement, reform and 

expansion of the business, and modification and reform of the labormanagement relationship. Each of these themes played out in a decade of 

vigorous, expanding business as well as lasting changes to GPO’s culture 

and organizational structure. He took over an office bustling with postwar activity and 4,388 employees on the rolls. The number of employees 

had actually declined from a wartime high of 5,300, and would continue to 

drop throughout the decade to 4,072 in 1928. 

The workplace improvements ordered by Carter from the surplus 

of 1921 made a range of progressive reforms and improvements possible. The roof of Building 1, a pitched cement roof behind the square 

Romanesque façade, had cracked and was causing leaks that threatened 

expensive machines and supplies on the seventh floor. Carter had plans 

drawn and quickly won JCP approval to make the roof flat, effectively 

adding a full eighth story of new space, which was devoted to “a much 

needed photoengraving plant, a better location for metal and storage 

rooms, an adequate cafeteria, and suitable rest and recreation rooms 

for employees.” Included in those “rest and recreation rooms” were 

an auditorium, which was named for the President (perhaps the only 

tribute to Harding in a Federal building in Washington, DC), a large and 

comfortably furnished lounge/meeting room, and much-beloved duckpin 

bowling alleys. A rooftop terrace was installed with “the finest view of 

Washington and the surrounding country that is to be had anywhere in 

the city,” according to Carter.

In defending these improvements from critics who called them 

“costly playthings,” Carter set forth a classically Progressive Era manifesto 

for his administration:

The experience of the most successful manufacturers of today, 

nearly all of whom have adopted the modern method of 

helping employees better fit themselves for their daily work, 

clearly shows that such comforts and conveniences as are now 

being installed...are not only worthwhile from a humanitarian 

point of view but are also profitable from a merely commercial 

aspect, owing to the greatly increased efficiency that results 

from a well contented and physically fit force of employees.

A GPO basketball team from 1942.
59

Sports teams were a popular feature of the GPO scene over many years. This baseball team from the 1920s is from the era when GPO, like all Federal agencies, was racially segregated.
60

The new cafeteria was employee-managed and served a full menu on all shifts.
61

Among the many employee welfare and recreation organizations that became part of the life of GPO, the employee orchestra played during lunch hours, for dances, and at functions around Washington. 

This shot is from the 1940s.
62

With these facilities provided, Carter looked to employees to direct 

and manage activities. An employee association was formed to operate 

the cafeteria and sponsor employee activities. The GPO Cafeteria and 

Recreation Association charged dues of one dollar and, in addition to 

operating the cafeteria, sponsored sports teams, clubs, outings, excursions, 

and other activities. During this period GPO gained its own chorus and an 

orchestra that played on Fridays at the dinner breaks on the day and night 

shifts. The Association began the popular Christmas parties for employees 

and their families featuring the large Christmas tree and model train 

layout in Harding Hall. The Cafeteria and Recreation Association existed 

in some form for nearly 70 years, lasting until the mid-1990s. 

For the public, Carter ordered the establishment of a retail bookstore on the first floor of GPO’s documents building, then located behind 

the original Wendell building along H Street. The store was “designed for 

the convenience of the public who formerly had to ride in a freight elevator to the sixth floor,” and was meant to take advantage of the increased 

amount of local sales of Government documents to the growing number of 

national organizations locating their headquarters offices in Washington, 

DC. The store was later relocated to GPO Building 1, where it continues 

to operate today.

In obeying the command to operate GPO on a “strictly business 

basis,” Carter requested that the method for payment of agency work be 

revised by Congress. Since the Printing Act of 1895, funds appropriated 

for printing by executive agencies were paid directly to GPO. This system 

placed an administrative burden on GPO to account for the funds, limited 

the agencies’ control over their own expenditures, and left little incentive 

to curtail waste. Carter’s proposal, adopted in 1922, directed that all agency 

appropriations for printing be put in a single fund in each agency specifically for printing. In order to have funds at the beginning of each year, 

GPO was appropriated a “working capital” fund, which was repaid to the 

Analyzing paper in the Testing Section, another of Carter’s innovations. The Testing Section manufactured inks and adhesives for every purpose in the plant.
63

Treasury as new work was billed and paid. This fund, later modified in 

1954, continues today as GPO’s revolving fund.

Carter reorganized much of the Office, both in the printing plant 

and the Superintendent of Documents operation. He began a department 

with a laboratory devoted to testing and monitoring the quality of printing 

materials like paper and type metal, achieving substantial savings immediately. A dedicated department for job planning was created that greatly 

improved service to agencies by making the writing of job specifications 

more consistent and standardized, thereby improving the plant’s ability 

to deliver economical and better quality work. Although the number of 

employees declined during much of Carter’s term, the volume and value 

of work steadily grew. By 1924, more type was being set and more sheets 

were coming off the presses than at any other time, including the height 

of World War I. GPO’s capacity and plant became known everywhere as 

“the world’s largest.”

Building 1, which was ample at its opening in 1903, was already 

cramped by the time Carter took office. In 1926 Congress authorized 

$1,250,000 for an eight-story addition and garage to be built to the west of 

that building, along G Street NW. The addition, now known as Building 

2, closely matches the style of the 1903 building on the exterior and is 

virtually indistinguishable on the interior. It was opened in August 1930, 

bringing the total working floorspace to 954,000 square feet, or 22 acres. 

An enlarged and improved Harding Hall was dedicated in 1930, with 

raised ceilings, a seating capacity of 1,800, and a full-size, fully-rigged 

stage. The dedication was attended by Members of Congress, printing 

industry officials, the Librarian of Congress, the type designer Frederick 

W. Goudy, and Maj. Thomas Defrees, the son of Lincoln’s Superintendent 

of Public Printing, John D. Defrees. Meanwhile, though Carter continued 

to press for the replacement of the original Wendell building and its many 

additions, it would take another decade for Congress to act.

The construction of Building 2 in 1927 or 1928. The camera is probably on the Massachusetts 

Avenue sidewalk, between the corner of G Street and the Gales School.

Further renovations in 1930 raised the roof of Harding Hall to create a modern auditorium with 

a fully-rigged stage, balcony, and projection booth.
64

The Division of Planning brought order and efficiency to the writing of job specifications.
65

Public Printer Carter created a retail bookstore for Government documents in the 1896 annex building on H Street NW. It later moved to the front of Building 1.
Trees and Trains

December is almost universally seen as “the holiday season” with 

special meanings for different groups and individuals. At the 

Government Printing Office there is no surer sign of that season 

than the appearance of a tree and trains in Harding Hall. Since 1922, this 

holiday display and other programs, parties, and charity drives have lent a 

festive air to GPO at year’s end.

The tree and trains have been a part of the Office’s history for almost 

as long as there has been a Harding Hall. The first Office activity held in the 

hall was on Christmas Eve, 1921. The following year brought the first formal 

holiday program on December 22, 1922, when the GPO Orchestra played 

music for both day and night employees, and over 1,500 children enjoyed 

a “Christmas Entertainment” sponsored by the Cafeteria and Recreation 

Association.

By 1923 there were printed programs for the holiday events. The 

Orchestra played an overture, followed by marionettes, an “Our Gang” 

comedy, trained pigeons, a parade of wooden soldiers, and a playlet set in 

Santa’s workshop. The parade and playlet were performed by pupils of Miss 

Cora Shreve’s Dancing Academy. The program was given twice, on December 

28 and 29 (although the record is silent on the omission of the trained pigeons 

from the second performance).

Through the 1920s and 1930s the programs grew. Jugglers, dancers, 

ventriloquists, and ballerinas added their talents to the Orchestra’s renditions 

of “Jingle Bells” and other holiday songs. The increasingly elaborate programs 

were funded by the Cafeteria and Recreation Association through such projects 

as its candy sale, which in 1925 sold more than 5,000 pounds of candy to defray 

holiday expenses. 

Even the Depression did not dampen the annual celebration. In 1933, 2,600 

children each got a free show, a present, cake, and ice cream. The holiday open 

houses for families continue, although in less elaborate form, to the present. 

66

Harding Hall grew and trees and trains grew larger and more lavish. This 

photo is from the 1940s.
67

In the 1970s, GPO began to sponsor Community Day in December, 

inviting children from the surrounding community to share in the 

good cheer.

Unchanging, however, are the tree and trains, which are 

shown in photographs dating to the 1920s. The earliest shows a 

rather stumpy tree (by later standards), dwarfed by the low-built 

ceiling of old Harding Hall. A portrait of President Harding 

probably indicates that the photo is from 1922. The trains shown 

are real collector’s items, probably “O” gauge. As years passed, 

trees grew larger and more elaborate, as did the train layout. 

Great care and pride continues to be lavished on this annual GPO 

tradition by GPO’s electricians and carpenters.

In 1973 the traditional holiday celebration became a community open house, inviting local youngsters and their families for a look 

at the train, a visit with Santa, and refreshments. This is from the second open house, in 1974. 
The apprentice training program grew in the 1920s, with congressional authorization for 225 apprentices. This is the class of 1923.

68
Apprenticeship

Apprentices were trained at GPO from its earliest days. In the 

late 1880s, apprentices spent four years learning their trade. 

Unlike the later program, no arrangement was made for 

keeping these workers. In 1895, Congress authorized the Public Printer 

to appoint no more than 25 apprentices, but successive agency heads 

did not use this authority, leaving the Office with no apprentices at all. 

This situation began to change with the appointment of Public 

Printer Carter. In 1922, 162 applicants, all male, took an examination 

and 118 qualified for appointment to the 25 slots. Carter also stressed 

the need to utilize World War I veterans. Every person accepted into the 

program was guaranteed a journeyman position upon graduation.

Apprentices in the 1920s and 1930s undertook a four-year 

training program under the supervision of master craftsmen. After 

1925, grammar, spelling, math, and printing history were taught inhouse. In 1923, the ceiling on apprentice appointments was raised to 

200, with new classes entering GPO every year. GPO included at least a 

few African-Americans in the program. In 1935, the first woman graduated from the apprentice school as a compositor.

The coming of the Depression put an end to new apprentice classes from 1931 to 1935, when 100 were selected. The term was 

increased from four to five years, with more academic courses added to training in the traditional craft skills. These classes also did a great 

deal of practical work and fine printing. 

World War II saw another suspension of new apprentice classes until 1947 when one more class, composed solely of veterans, entered 

GPO. In 1956, 50 apprentices began a new era in training, and in 1969 the apprentice ceiling was raised to 400 and the program reduced 

to four years. From 1970 on, half of each class was drawn from within GPO, allowing employees throughout the Office to enter the crafts. 

This move also increased minority representation. 

In 1974, due to the impact of electronic photocomposition, GPO offered retraining to affected employees, effectively eliminating 

the need for most apprenticeships. After 1975, the apprentice program began to operate in much lower gear to accommodate the reduced 

demand for trained personnel in traditional fields. 

The long history of GPO’s apprentice program shows both the Office’s commitment to quality training for its employees and an 

ability to adapt to changing technology and social conditions.

Apprentices had classroom instruction as well as practical experience in the various working sections.

69
70

The apprentice program as expanded in the 1920s was open to women and remained so until the program was suspended in World War II. Women began to be recruited again in the 1970s. 

Here an apprentice operates a Monotype keyboard.
71

The Kiess Act

Like other Public Printers before him, particularly Public Printer Ford, 

Carter worked hard to improve wages and in 1923 argued the necessity for 

a system of pay better than the fixed rates still used by Congress:

With the present wage scale as fixed by law it has been impossible to retain some of the best workers and to attract enough 

other properly skilled...[workers] to fill their places. During 

the year 269 printers, including 108 Linotype operators, 64 

compositors, 23 monotype keyboard operators, and 44 proofreaders, left the service of the Government Printing Office, 

some of them going reluctantly to accept higher wages offered 

elsewhere.

To remedy the wage system and ensure enough workers for GPO, 

Carter recommended that Congress give GPO employees the right 

to negotiate for their wages which was the system used in the private 

sector. The passage of Public Law 276 on June 7, 1924, provided the 

system Carter was looking for. Known as the Kiess Act after its sponsor, 

Representative Edgar Kiess of Pennsylvania, the new law authorized the 

Public Printer to establish rates of pay based on collective bargaining with 

employees organized by the trades. Carter reported:

Much credit is due to the Senate and House Printing 

Committees for the success of their endeavor to end the 

ancient practice of Congress to fix the pay of...[the crafts] at 

long and irregular intervals, and to establish instead a modern 

plan of collective wage bargaining. ...The Keiss Act is the first 

formal recognition by Congress of the right of collective wage 

bargaining and arbitration with Government employees...

[and] establishes also the principle of a minimum wage for 

certain trades. The act may therefore be deemed a landmark in 

labor legislation. 

GPO historian Robert Kling said, “This law relieved Congress of 

the onerous and unfamiliar task of setting wages for the various crafts in 

the Office, and placed the...labor-management relationship between the 

head of the Office and the employees of each craft who were represented 

by democratically elected committeemen.” 24 Wage negotiations between 

committees representing labor and management followed. Agreements 

were swiftly reached and approved by the Joint Committee on Printing. 

The pay of 3,800 employees was adjusted upward. At a meeting of 3,000 

employees in Harding Hall on December 31, 1924, Carter was presented 

with a resolution of appreciation and thanks. The system of wage bargaining begun under Public Printer Carter continues to this day, affecting the 

wages of approximately three-quarters of GPO’s workforce.

Along with the Kiess Act, another of Carter’s contributions that was 

to influence the culture of the “big shop” for decades was his successful 

bid to restore and expand apprentice training. Congress had given authority to the Public Printer in the Printing Act of 1895 for the recruitment 

and training of a small number of apprentices. That authority was not 

accompanied by any mandate, however, and little was done. In the aftermath of World War I, Carter saw a need for a growing GPO to train its 

own journeymen printers and binders. He proposed the establishment of a 

formal apprentice program, which in addition to meeting GPO’s staffing 

needs would provide the opportunity for war veterans to receive vocational training, including those then employed by GPO who had served in 

World War I, the Spanish-American War, and—even at that date—the 

20 who had served in the Civil War. The JCP enthusiastically approved 

the program, observing “it is a good American doctrine to give the 

American boy a chance to learn a trade.” The first apprentices were 

appointed in July 1922, and the program has continued, though changed 

in scope and duration, to the present day. 

Carter also oversaw what would become one of GPO’s most prominent product lines when, in 1926, GPO began producing passports for the 

State Department. The first U.S. passport was designed and produced 

by Benjamin Franklin in Paris while he was a delegate to the conference 

preparing the treaty granting American independence. The document he 

produced was a pass to enter the United States, identifying the bearer as 

a trusted individual who could move freely between America and other 

nations. In the early years of the Republic, an official passport could be 

obtained with a letter from virtually any city or state official, notary public, 

or justice of the peace. In 1856, the State Department established centralized control of passport applications and issuance, and the job of producing 
72

Apprentices learning hand composition, 1939.
73

Apprentices learning page makeup and imposing.
74

An apprentice in the Press Division, 1939.
75

Apprentices running job presses in the Apprentice School, which produced most of GPO’s internal printing, including notices, menus, newsletters, and programs.
76

passports—at that time a single engraved page—was given to the Treasury 

Department’s Bureau of Engraving and Printing. In the 1920s, the League 

of Nations created an international standard for a booklet-style passport. 

The standard established passport size, number of pages, and other aspects 

of its design. Subsequently, the work was given to GPO, which has produced U.S. passports ever since.

It was not only on the printing side of the house that Carter was an 

innovator. Criticism had long been directed at the Government for alleged 

waste in the distribution of public documents. While the Printing Act of 

1895 had transferred the Superintendent of Documents to GPO, by the 

1920s the mechanism for libraries to actually receive materials was an 

ongoing frustration to librarians and GPO alike. Libraries were expected 

to receive and make available whatever GPO sent them, and to keep it 

indefinitely. At Carter’s suggestion, Congress enacted a bill in 1922 directing that no part of the appropriation for document distribution to libraries 

could be used to supply documents to libraries that the libraries had not 

requested. This principle of selectivity was put into practice with a system 

that allowed libraries to tell GPO which classes of documents they wanted 

to receive. The item number system that grew from this change continues 

to drive the distribution of printed documents today.

Cover and inner page of the first generation of passports produced at GPO.
77

Public Printer Giegengack

Following the election of President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932, Public 

Printer Carter continued in his position. However, a novel campaign for 

the position was undertaken by Augustus E. Giegengack, of New York. 

Born in April 1890, Giegengack became a journeyman Linotype operator 

and served as a sergeant in World War I in France. He was supervisor of 

production for the Stars and Stripes, the serviceman’s newspaper, which 

had a circulation of 550,000 and was printed in the Paris plant of the 

London Daily Mail.

Following Roosevelt’s election, Giegengack became active in the 

New York Democratic Club and got the organization to write to the 

President-elect on his behalf. He got the club to invite the new Postmaster 

General, James A. Farley, to a testimonial dinner with Giegengack as 

chairman. He next formed an organization and had letterhead printed, 

“A. E. Giegengack for Public Printer, Graphic Arts Committee. 

Organized to secure the appointment of A. E. Giegengack as Public 

Printer of the United States.” On that letterhead he solicited backing 

from printing groups and other supporters of the President. Eventually 

over 200 letters were bound in a large red and gold volume titled, “A. E. 

Giegengack for Public Printer, which was given to Postmaster General 

Farley for presentation to the President.” Giegengack’s campaign had the 

desired effect, and he was sworn into office in July 1934.25

Public Printer Giegengack, like Carter before him, made a great 

many changes to the GPO organization that would have lasting impact. 

He created a division of Typography and Design and reorganized the 

Layout Section of the Planning Division, “for the purpose of modernizing and improving the appearance of Government publications with 

the intent to create a greater demand. ...” With better appearance also 

came economy. A greater emphasis on simple, standardized layouts and 

typographic standards streamlined not only the look of publications but 

reduced the amount of expensive preparation, makeup, and presswork. 

These changes meant less expense for agencies. The average charge per 

page per thousand copies went from $2.11 in 1937 to $.93 in 1939.

Also like his predecessor, Giegengack took a keen interest in GPO 

employees. He encouraged the founding of veterans organizations, including an American Legion post and auxiliary and a post of the Veterans of 

Foreign Wars. By 1937, GPO’s American Legion Post 3874 numbered 

434 members, one of the largest 

in the District of Columbia. On 

September 21, 1937, the post 

and its band, marching with 

their charter member, the Public 

Printer, participated in a parade 

down New York’s Fifth Avenue.

Group life insurance for 

GPO employees began in May 

1931, followed in 1935 by the 

introduction of group hospitalization insurance. By 1939, 1,629 

GPO employees were members, 

paying 65 cents a month for 

insurance that provided 21 days 

of hospital care in any District 

of Columbia hospital, with a 

10% discount beyond the 21 

days. The GPO Federal Credit 

Augustus E. Giegengack, GPO’s longest serving 

Public Printer, began his career as a Linotype 

operator before managing the production of 

Stars and Stripes during World War I.

“Mr. Public Printer,” caricature of Giegengack in The New Yorker, June 1943.
78

Union traces its origin to this period. In 1935, a charter was granted for 

the GPOFCU, which by 1939 had 2,972 members holding shares worth 

$192,483.28. Worker safety has loomed large as a concern throughout 

GPO’s history. Public Printer Giegengack formed an Executive Advisory 

Safety Committee that was charged with coordinating safety practices, 

establishing shop safety committees, setting safety rules and regulations to 

be issued by the Public Printer, promoting awareness, and keeping records 

to conform with Labor Department regulations. 

As his energetic campaign for Public Printer showed, Giegengack 

had a natural gift for public relations, nowhere more successfully deployed 

than in the three-part profile by Geoffrey T. Hellman which appeared 

in The New Yorker June 12, 19, and 26, 1943, under the title “Mr. Public 

Printer.” This series—the only one of its kind for a Public Printer—closely 

tied Giegengack’s outgoing personality with the work of the Office.

New Buildings for GPO 

Like his predecessors, Giegengack focused on the inadequacies of GPO 

buildings, which still included the Wendell building dating to GPO’s earliest days. In his first annual report in 1934, Giegengack noted that nearly 

a third of the area occupied by employees, equipment, and property was 

housed in old buildings. He said, 

too strong emphasis cannot be placed on the serious danger 

to the lives of employees from fire hazard, possible structural 

collapse of heavily loaded old wooden frame buildings, and 

from the use of antiquated elevators in these old buildings. ...

These conditions have reached a state of emergency where the 

Government should not further delay the demolition of dangerous buildings. They should be replaced with a modern building 

to safeguard the lives of employees and to provide the space 

needed to meet present urgent needs for future normal growth.

His successful gambit was a case of pictures being worth a thousand words (and ultimately several million dollars). Giegengack hired a 

Washington commercial photographer to record the horrifying conditions 

in the accumulation of buildings that had grown like weeds around the 

original Wendell building, on the H Street side of the square. These he 

carefully captioned and bound for circulation on Capitol Hill to the Joint 

Committee on Printing, the Appropriations Committees, and others. The 

following year, in a similar introduction to the annual report but with the 

confident added heading “New Building Project,” Giegengack wrote,

Giegengack successfully petitioned Congress to raze the grab bag of structures that had grown up 

around the original Wendell building. This photo overlooks the H Street site, probably from the 

8th floor of Building 2.
79

With the hearty support of the chairman and members of 

the Joint Committee on Printing and the director of the 

Procurement Division of the Treasury Department, an initial 

appropriation of $2,000,000 [was made], with a total limit cost 

not to exceed $5,885,000...for necessary land and construction of annex buildings...including rights of way, furniture, 

moving expenses, rental of temporary quarters during construction, railroad sidings, alternatives to existing buildings, all 

necessary tunnels connecting proposed and existing buildings, 

demolition of existing structures, and all necessary mechanical 

equipment.

Progress was rapid. The first building to be constructed was a three 

story warehouse on the southeast corner of North Capitol Street and G 

Place NE, facing Building 1. Demolition of old buildings between North 

Capitol Street and 1st Street NE began in October 1936 and excavation 

started in November. The completed building, later dubbed Building 4, 

was linked with Union Station by a railway trestle to accommodate the 

delivery of paper shipped by rail; the paper was then taken through a 

tunnel 30 feet under North Capitol Street to GPO’s production operations. 

Special congressional legislation was enacted to authorize the rail spur into 

the building. The new warehouse was turned over to the Public Printer 

in February 1938, at a cost of $184,367 for the site and $1,264,000 for the 

building. On its exterior, the Art Deco style building featured four basrelief sculptures by sculptors Elliot Mens and Armin A. Scheler. James M. 

Goode, in his book Outdoor Sculpture of Washington DC: A Comprehensive 

Historical Guide, describes the sculptures:

Three low-relief panels, each approximately nine feet high 

by five feet wide, are placed at intervals along the third story 

of the building on the north side. ...The left panel shows 

a printer at work. His muscular body, executed in flat, rectilinear planes, is contrasted with a design of wheels and belts 

suggesting a printing press. The center panel bears the seal of 

the Government Printing Office, with a printing press emblazoned on a vigorous cartouche guarded by an American eagle. 

The right panel...portrays a worker unloading rolls of 

Building 4, on the east side of North Capitol Street between G Street and G Place NE. 

The building connects directly with the railroad by a bridge at the rear over 1st Street NE.

Two of the nine-foot high bas relief sculptures on the north side of Building 4.
80

Public Printer Giegengack lays the cornerstone for Building 3 at the corner of North Capitol and H Streets NW, February 1939.
81

newsprint. He is shown from the back, his left leg thrust powerfully forward as he lifts the heavy rolls.26

Across North Capitol Street, progress on the new building at the 

corner of H Street NW, on the site of the original Wendell building, was less 

swift. Bids for construction exceeded the funds appropriated. Giegengack 

was again persuasive, and the 75th Congress increased the total limit to 

$7,700,000, allowing contracts to be awarded in May 1938. Demolition of 

the old Wendell building, along with its multiple add-ons, began in June. 

In February 1939, at the cornerstone-laying ceremony for the new building, the Public Printer and other dignitaries buried a time capsule, a sealed 

copper box containing a Bible, a flag, photographs of President Roosevelt 

and Giegengack, annual reports, a roster of employees, current Washington, 

DC, newspapers, and copies of various Government publications including 

the Congressional Record and the Congressional Directory.

Designed by Louis A. Simon, the new structure later dubbed 

Building 3 was occupied in early 1940 with a net floor area of 481,975 

square feet. The building design and mass closely follow the pattern of 

the 1903 building, with eight stories, a façade on North Capitol Street of 

nearly equal width, complementary color of brick, and similar proportions 

and arrangement of windows. In place of the 1903 building’s Romanesque 

detail, the 1940 building exhibits a spare Art Deco influence, the only 

decorative elements being the main entrance with stylized carved Art 

Deco eagles, and bronze lanterns flanking all entries. The final cost of the 

building was $5,026,000. With its completion, the total space occupied by 

GPO’s four buildings was 1.5 million square feet, the equivalent of more 

than 34 acres. Most importantly, for the first time in many decades everyone in GPO worked in solid buildings that were not firetraps.

The Federal Register 

Shortly after taking office, Giegengack helped 

to oversee the creation of the daily Federal 

Register, which along with the Congressional 

Record was to become a mainstay of GPO’s 

workload. The need for the Register grew out of 

the increase in executive rules, regulations, bulletins, notices, and orders that accompanied the 

growth of the Federal Government beginning 

in the late 19th century, particularly with the 

establishment of independent regulatory agencies. The conditions under which these documents were promulgated, as well as their form 

and format, were anything but standardized. 

With the advent of the New Deal, there 

was another explosion in these documents, 

and the situation grew increasingly chaotic. 

Writing in the Harvard Law Review, (later 

Dean of the Harvard Law School) Erwin Griswold noted, “in the first 

year of the National Recovery Administration, 2,998 administrative orders 

were issued...[and] numerous regulations and sets of regulations...are to 

be found scattered among 5,991 press releases during this period.” The 

solution, argued Griswold, was “an official publication, analogous to the 

Statutes at Large, in which all rules and regulations shall be systematically 

and uniformly published,” along the lines of the Official U.S. Bulletin, 

Building 3 at its completion in 1940.

The Federal Register began life in 1935, 

and has been published by the Office 

of the Federal Register and GPO every 

business day since.
82

which was published as a sort of daily Government newspaper during 

World War I, published weekly thereafter for a brief period, and finally 

discontinued in the early 1920s. The need for the new publication crystallized in 1934 when Government attorneys found themselves prosecuting 

a case before the Supreme Court under an executive order that was no 

longer in effect.

In 1935, Congress enacted a law establishing the Division of the 

Federal Register within the new National Archives and providing for 

the daily publication of the Federal Register containing all proclamations, 

orders, rules, and regulations of the executive branch.27 The Public 

Printer, along with the Archivist of the United States and a representative 

of the Attorney General, were appointed by law as the Administrative 

Committee of the Federal Register to oversee its publication. Subsequent 

legislation created the Code of Federal Regulations, and the Division of the 

Federal Register over the years was given responsibility for additional 

publications produced through GPO, including the U.S. Government 

Manual, Public Papers of the Presidents, and the Weekly Compilation of 

Presidential Documents. All of these documents became major products of GPO’s 

in-house production operations, and with 

the exception of the Weekly Compilation, 

which now appears online as the Daily 

Compilation of Presidential Documents, continue to be produced by GPO today.

World War II

As the United States approached World 

War II, GPO’s plant employed 126 linecasting machines, 100 Monotype keyboards 

and 130 casters, and 202 presses ranging 

in size from small platen job presses to 

the giant web presses that produced the 

Congressional Record and the Federal 

Register. Printing orders associated with 

war mobilization activities had begun to 

flood GPO even before the Japanese attack 

on Pearl Harbor. By the end of 1941, the 

Selective Service had already received 

144,515,061 finished pieces, costing 

$286,164, which included the postcards 

and forms draftees began receiving in 

late 1940. The Treasury Department 

began a savings bond and stamp 

program that required 10,000,000 

advertising folders, 931,000 fourcolor posters, and 20,000,000 stamp 

albums. By the time GPO printed in 

the Congressional Record President 

Roosevelt’s famous “day of infamy” 

speech requesting a declaration of 

war, GPO had already taken steps to 

prepare for the coming emergency.

The most significant of these was 

the forging of a new partnership with the printing industry. It was clear to 

Giegengack from the outset that as extensive as GPO’s capabilities were, 

the likely demand placed on the agency by wartime printing requirements 

would exceed its capacity. In March 1941, he called together a conference 

of leaders from the industry to discuss threats and agree on a course by 

which GPO would procure printing from the private sector. The Joint 

Committee on Printing agreed and in 1942 issued supplemental rules and 

regulations on the purchase of printing under provisions of the new War 

Powers Act. Giegengack’s central aim was to organize GPO in such a way 

as to manage procurement, scheduling, and the control of equipment, 

paper, and other resources as if all work were taking place in the plant on 

North Capitol Street. In a report issued by GPO in 1947, Public Printing 

in Peace and War, Giegengack described this new “partnership between 

government and industry” which would reshape GPO permanently: 

The [printing industry] groups...collaborated in the preparation and distribution of a brochure on the subject of commercial 

cooperation in Government printing. An informal advisory 

committee of about 50 members, comprising printing trade 

association executives and other trade leaders...was organized. 

The effort was massive, beginning with an inventory of 4,000 

Public Printer Giegengack formed partnerships with the printing industry during World 

War II that set the stage for much of GPO’s 

future. This booklet outlined his desire for 

cooperation during the national emergency.

The volume and variety of wartime 

printing during World War II was vast.
83

firms nationwide, to collect information on capacity, location, 

size of operation, and specifications. As the information was 

received it was coded, classified, and filed for reference as 

needed. ...During the emergency, orders were placed with approximately 1,900 firms, many of which were granted only one 

order while others received hundreds. As the Office’s experience 

widened, a range of contracting and planning practices were 

developed. 

One of the key products of GPO’s 

partnership with the printing industry 

during World War II was the series of 

colorful posters seeking recruits, advertising 

war bonds, warning against the inadvertent 

disclosure of war information, encouraging 

the salvaging of scrap and other materials 

for the war effort, and other purposes. The 

posters are one of the most enduring printing legacies of the war effort, and most of 

them were printed by contract printers who 

had color printing capabilities. The war also 

saw the production of a variety of unusual 

products reflecting the Nation’s commitment to its armed forces, such as the words 

to popular songs and kits for the production 

of plays and shows that were printed and 

shipped to soldiers and sailors overseas. 

Additionally, the war effort drew on the 

talents of a host of writers and designers who were either well known at the 

time or would become so, including Theodore Seuss Geisel, later known to 

millions as Dr. Seuss, who wrote health pamphlets for the Army.

Giegengack’s report on wartime printing also described the establishment of another emergency innovation, regional paper warehouses, to 

manage the necessary supply of paper and prevent shortages:

...a publication to be distributed from the War Department 

depot at Ogden, Utah, might be printed in San Francisco. In 

such a case, it would be inefficient and costly to ship the paper 

for the job from the Printing Office in Washington. The 

establishment of local warehouses in printing centers near the 

largest distribution points maintained by the ordering agencies 

would enable us to procure and store paper nearby and have it 

quickly available at all times.

The functions of storekeeper, purchasing agent, and GPO technical 

liaison were combined in the duties of the managers of the warehouses, 

which were a wartime expedient. They were liquidated in December 1945.

The war was demanding on GPO’s employees and its equipment. The 1939 volume of 6.5 billion printed copies amounting to $18.2 

million soared to 22.8 billion copies in 1945, totaling $77.3 million. As 

it had during World War I, the plant worked around the clock and on 

extraordinary deadlines. Not only were the quantities and the schedules 

challenging, GPO took on 

a wide variety of unusual 

and innovative work 

during the war. Products 

were developed for special 

security needs such as 

special paper for ration 

coupons, soldier ballot 

paper, and prisoner of 

war stationery. Shortages 

of paper, ink, and most 

other basic materials had 

to be managed, often 

calling on the ingenuity 

of employees. In another 

realm, a wide assortment 

of quality projects were 

ordered through the war 

years, including printing for the United Nations Conference and the 

United Nations Charter in 1945, and President Roosevelt’s citation for the 

people of Malta in 1943. Roosevelt, a knowledgeable bibliophile, could be a 

demanding customer, but was quick to acknowledge good work:

One of GPO’s most exacting customers was President Roosevelt. 

During World War II he asked for this elaborate presentation 

of a citation for the people of Malta honoring their valor during 

the early part of the war. 

This is Ann, She’s Dying to 

Meet You, a booklet on preventing malaria, was illustrated by 

Theodore Geisel with text by 

Munro Leaf. Both were 

celebrated children’s authors in 

their post-war careers.
84

but you in the field have seen the imprint of the Government 

Printing Office in all stages of the fight from training manuals 

in camp to the bombing tables used over Berlin and Tokyo.

Nearly 2,500 GPO employees 

served in the armed forces in World 

War II, and of these, 63 were killed 

and 139 disabled. As servicemen and 

women began to return after the war, 

Giegengack established the position 

of Veteran’s Coordinator to “insure a 

central and definitive authority and 

source of assistance for veterans with 

personalized service to each of them on 

return to duty.” By 1947, 1,622 veterans 

had returned to work at GPO.

Public Printer Giegengack 

served until March 1948, a term 

of nearly 14 years, the longest in 

GPO history. Under his leadership, 

significant and lasting changes were 

made at GPO. He left GPO with two 

new, modern buildings and developed the work processes for major new 

product lines, including the Federal Register. Wartime work brought offset 

presses and printing to the forefront, valued for its speed and economy. 

Within a few years offset would supersede letterpress almost entirely. The 

wartime reorganization of the Office remained in place for many years, 

and after the war GPO absorbed several emergency printing plants established for executive agencies in Chicago, Denver, Seattle, New York, and 

at the Washington Navy Yard, which would continue as GPO organizations. Most significantly of all, the cooperative partnership between GPO 

and private printers established during the war set a pattern that would 

develop and expand to the present day.

Public Printer Deviny

Following Giegengack’s resignation, President Truman appointed John J. 

Deviny as Public Printer in May 1948. Born in 1892, Deviny was a native 

I wish to congratulate you and your craftsmen on the splendid 

workmanship displayed on the scroll which was presented by 

me to the people of the Island of Malta. It was very beautifully 

done and I am sure we can all be proud of this product of our 

Government Printing Office. [signed] Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Of all the items sent to GPO for printing in World War II, one 

received unusually careful attention: War Department General Order 29, 

announcing the death and mourning of President Roosevelt in April 1945. 

As Giegengack later reported, 

Copy of the order, to be printed on a black-bordered page 5 7/8 

by 9, was received at 11:30 a.m. April 13. Type was set, proof 

submitted, and okayed proofs returned by the department by 

12:35 p.m. In less than an hour 64 plates were processed by the 

foundry; the first of 16 of these were imposed on the press by 

1:40 pm., and all by 2:35 p.m. Four presses were used for the 

run. At 2:10 p.m. the first lot reached the bindery, where they 

were drilled with three holes and tied in packages of 500, and 

at 2:30 p.m. 1000 copies were delivered to the department. 

Successive deliveries were made during the next three hours...

[the final] 134,000 at 5:30 p.m. The order required 1,010 pounds 

of paper and made 450 packages. ...The entire quantity of 

225,000 copies was printed and delivered within five hours.

Throughout the war, Giegengack worked to maintain employee 

morale, and to keep up the link between GPO and its employees who were 

serving in the armed forces. In a Christmas letter to employees serving 

abroad in 1944, the Public Printer said, 

Don’t hesitate to let those with whom you are associated in 

the service know that you are an employee of the Government 

Printing Office, as this Office has established a work record 

of which you, as an employee, can be justly proud. Your coworkers have printed and bound some of the most stupendous 

jobs in extremely short time. For fear of divulging military 

information I will not mention the names of any publications, 

The war challenged GPO in a variety 

of ways, beginning with the problem of 

replacing productive workers who went 

off to serve. By V–J Day in 1945, 2,500 

GPO employees had left for military 

service. 
85

A big part of the war effort was keeping up morale. Here Harding Hall hosts a dance, raising spirits as well as promoting war bond sales. 
Invisible Writing Made Visible

From late 1942 to mid-1946, the United States experienced 

an unprecedented influx of almost a half million German, 

Italian, and Japanese prisoners of war. They were in a 

position to damage the war effort through attempts at escape and, 

based on prior experiences in World War I with German prisoners 

of war, the possibility of espionage.

Since the Geneva Convention mandated that prisoners of war 

could write home, significant information on prisoners’ locations and 

labor activities could be transmitted through the use of invisible inks 

made from such common substances as lemon juice, milk, washing 

soda, baking soda, starch solution, and even human urine. The War 

Department turned to GPO’s paper chemists for an answer.

After extensive tests, GPO’s experts developed a paper base 

with a silicate or clay coating. The coating contained a powder or 

dyestuff that would react to moisture or any acid water solution by 

turning green. The paper was called Sensicoat.

This paper’s heavy 56-pound weight and high cost were 

negative factors, so GPO then developed a lighter, uncoated, and 

more economical paper, Analith. 

After this paper went into production, secret messages to the 

Axis were greatly reduced. It was a reduction noticed and acted 

upon by German intelligence. 

American censors noticed something very interesting about 

packages of food and clothing addressed to German prisoners 

as 1944 passed the halfway mark. A small amount of putty-like 

material about the size of a 

kitchen match head began 

to turn up in various places 

of concealment. Repeated 

tests showed that the puttylike material was a dry ink.

After several 

conferences with the 

Bureau of Censorship 

regarding this problem, 

GPO’s chemists began work 

on a new paper, bearing 

in mind that it also would 

have to retain its sensitivity 

to fluid invisible inks. The 

result was a coated sheet 

processed with a watersensitive formula and with great sensitivity to the detection of all 

types of dry inks.

By 1945, more than 29 million sheets of the new stationery 

had been ordered at $1.04 per thousand and GPO had blocked a 

potentially dangerous flow of information to America’s enemies. 

It was an achievement shrouded in wartime secrecy, but one 

gratefully acknowledged by those who knew about the technical 

difficulties involved. 

86

(Northwestern University Libraries)
Early in 1945, the State Department requested that GPO 

provide the printing for the United Nations Conference in 

San Francisco. At that time, GPO’s wartime San Francisco 

Warehouse had only five employees, so several additions were 

made to the staff and an emergency call went out to Washington 

for three key GPO central office employees. Until the Conference 

ended, this group carried out an incredible amount of rush work 

on an almost 24-hour a day schedule. Perhaps their most important 

job was the creation of the Charter establishing the United Nations.

The last days of the conference saw the GPO unit racing 

against time and the oddities of Chinese and Russian typefaces to 

complete and deliver one of the Office’s most momentous jobs. 

GPO first found suitable printing paper. In addition to 

permanence, color, and weight, the paper needed to be “friendly” 

to writing inks because the charter would be signed by the 

assembled delegates. One hundred percent rag ledger paper most 

closely met these specifications, but there was not enough in the 

San Francisco area. An urgent message went out to the GPO 

central office in Washington and all available stock was shipped 

express to the West Coast. 

Due to the nature of the written language, the Chinese type 

was handset. Because of last-minute changes, it proved necessary 

to reset about 40 pages of handwritten manuscript. In a frantic, allnight effort, several Chinese typesetters were pressed into service 

to handle this unexpected increase in the workload. The final crisis 

occurred when a pressman discovered that one character from a 

form was missing after printing six preliminary copies. The nearest 

extra characters were a mile away, so the Chinese translator checked 

his proofs and an identical character 

was located on another page. The form 

was opened, the character removed and 

inked from the press ink roller, and then 

struck by hand into its proper place on 

all sheets which already had been run. 

At the last minute, it was decided 

that an “e” rather than a “u” was needed 

on the last page of Russian text. The 

sole Russian typesetter was three miles 

away and there was no way that the 

job could be sent back and still meet 

the deadline. The GPO representative 

suggested that the Russian linotype lines be cut in two and a 

monotype English ‘e’ be inserted in its place between the cut 

portions of the slug.

The English, Chinese, and Russian text sheets then joined 

the Spanish and French sheets at the University of California Press, 

where the signatures were folded carefully to avoid smudging 

the still-wet ink. Finally the charter was rushed to the Executive 

Secretary of the United Nations Conference on International 

Organization, who was waiting, with photographers, for the 

presentation ceremony. 

So ended one of the most harrowing jobs ever undertaken 

by GPO. A handful of employees had planned and coordinated 

one of the most complex jobs ever to challenge the Office. 

Their only reward was a paycheck and the knowledge that 

they had contributed in a small way to international peace and 

understanding. 

(Northwestern University Libraries)

The Charter for the United Nations

87
88

Washingtonian who grew up in the neighborhood of GPO, graduating 

from neighboring Gonzaga College High School. After positions in 

private industry in the 1920s and 1930s, he served on the Social Security 

Board and became a member of the District of Columbia Bar. In 1941, he 

was appointed Deputy Public Printer under Giegengack.

Following his swearing-in Deviny observed, “I hope and expect to 

carry on the very successful policies and methods developed by my distinguished predecessor. ...” His term was, in most respects, a continuation 

of his predecessor’s. The U.S. involvement in the Korean conflict and the 

Government’s civil defense initiatives created an upswing in printing in 

the early 1950s. As GPO printed materials to train Americans to respond 

to military attack, the Office joined the effort in the District of Columbia, 

with shelter areas designated in all four buildings, drills conducted, and 

instruction in first aid and light rescue provided to employees.

After World War II, visitors again became a regular part of GPO 

life. When Building 3 opened, a convenient and comfortable room was 

included for the use of GPO’s tour guides, who were typically members 

of the Apprentice School, and as a waiting room for visitors. In 1953, one 

official noted that, “in the past fiscal year we have had several visitors 

from abroad and also from our own country connected with the art of 

In 1953, the new Congressional Record presses also revolutionized the printing of tax forms and instructions.
89

veto message by pointing out that the provision was “an invasion of rights 

of the executive branch by a legislative committee.” He noted that many 

agencies were using duplicating equipment for the production of printing, 

and that because of recent regulations issued by the JCP defining duplicating equipment as printing equipment, the new law would bring duplicating 

processes operated by executive agencies under the control of Congress. 

President Truman called for a revision of Title 44 that would bring the 

printing statutes up to date, balance the proper roles of the executive and 

legislative branches in printing policy, and establish appropriate definitions 

for printed and duplicated materials. However, Congress did not take up 

the issue, and it was left to be resolved by subsequent generations.28

Public Printer Blattenberger

The 1952 election brought Dwight D. Eisenhower 

to the White House. Eisenhower looked for 

successful businessmen to direct Government 

agencies, and in 1953 he nominated Raymond 

Blattenberger to be Public Printer. A former 

printing company executive, Blattenberger was 

very clear about his brief from the White House: 

“What I’m trying to do is cut costs and run an 

efficient shop as economically as possible. ...I 

didn’t seek the job and I didn’t want it. Now that 

I’ve got it, I’m going to concentrate first on saving 

money.”

In 1954, Blattenberger was able, through 

various modernization measures, to reduce GPO 

printing rates for agency work by 5%, the first reduction in 20 years. 

The following year saw salary increases for both craft and administrative 

employees. In 1953, the working capital appropriation established by 

Public Printer Carter became a revolving fund, and an annual budget 

was made part of the working landscape of the office. The offset and 

letterpress divisions were reorganized, and more efficient equipment was 

purchased. Blattenberger also oversaw the acquisition of modern typesetting machines. And, in what was described by a longtime GPO employee 

years later as the most significant improvement for employees, Office-wide 

air conditioning began to be installed in 1957, at a cost of $1.3 million.

printing. In each instance, we were pleased with 

their remarks as to production, quality of work, 

cleanliness of our pressroom, and the orderly 

manner in which our...[work] is handled.”

In 1949, Congress authorized the purchase 

of three large new web letterpresses for the 

production of the Congressional Record. Deviny 

confidently estimated that the new presses would 

cut costs and improve production. In 1953, the 

Production Manager reported that, “our experience with these machines to date indicates that 

the savings over the years will greatly exceed 

original estimates. This is made possible by 

the savings on income-tax printing which...is 

exceeding our original yearly estimate. ...” That work came at the suggestion of Superintendent of Documents Roy Eastin, who in 1952 proposed 

to officials at the Internal Revenue Bureau a new package of income tax 

forms and instructions. After initial tests in selected cities, the tax package 

proved a significant saving because it could be entirely produced on the 

Congressional Record presses and wrapped as a self-mailer, rather than the 

older practice of various combinations of forms and instructions printed 

on various kinds of paper and on different presses, and then stuffed into 

envelopes. Approximately 48 million packages were produced in 1953 

using the new presses, efficiently employing their capacity at times when 

they were not in demand for the Record and the Federal Register, and 

freeing other presses for smaller-scale work. The savings, both to GPO in 

paper, presswork, and bindery, and to the Internal Revenue Bureau in 

assembly and envelopes, were significant, totaling more than $625,000. 

This tremendous job took three months of production with all three 

Record presses running on two shifts, five days a week, a total of more than 

33 million press impressions.

During Public Printer Deviny’s term, Congress expanded the Joint 

Committee on Printing’s authority over work produced elsewhere than 

GPO by enacting language empowering the Committee to approve the 

establishment of field, or agency, printing plants. Although President 

Truman approved the 1949 measure in order to avoid interrupting 

Government operations, he issued a statement echoing President Wilson’s 

John J. Deviny, Giegengack’s 

deputy who succeeded him 

in 1948.

Raymond Blattenberger, 

who saw GPO through the 

McCarthy era.
90

GPO had been called the world’s largest print shop since the turn 

of the 20th century, and it had steadily grown in capacity and production 

through two world wars and beyond. By the end of World War II, GPO 

was positioned for its last prolonged period of industrial growth. The 

demand for printed documents reached an all-time high during the war, 

and that demand continued into the prosperity of peacetime. The postwar 

GPO was organized around requirements for quick turnaround and large 

press runs. The established GPO ethos of self-sufficiency adapted itself to 

a growing operation. GPO’s wartime expedient of buying printing from 

private sector printers became a permanent practice. From the 1950s to the 

1970s, GPO kept pace with demand, particularly for agency publications, by 

augmenting its own plant capabilities with contracted printing. n

The McCarthy Hearings 

In August 1953, the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, chaired 

by Senator Joseph McCarthy, led an investigation of GPO. Hearings before the 

Subcommittee were conducted largely in closed executive session and the transcripts of 

the proceedings, totaling more than 175 pages, were not released by the Senate until 2003. 

On the basis of testimony provided by an FBI informant, the Subcommittee alleged that 

Edward Rothschild, a GPO bookbinder, had communist ties through his wife, who was 

not a Government employee, and that he had access to classified documents through GPO. 

Rothschild’s attorney advised him to take the Fifth Amendment, and when he did, he was 

suspended from his job without pay. Rothschild was later discharged from Government 

service but never prosecuted. Other GPO employees who were identified as under 

security investigation were either suspended or transferred to the Library of Congress 

until their security cases were reevaluated, but none were prosecuted.29 Although the 

hearings generated sensational headlines in the local newspapers that August, they failed 

to disclose any criminal breaches of security in the handling of Government documents at 

GPO, and by September the Subcommittee had moved on to other targets. Later that year, 

Blattenberger, who along with other GPO officials had testified before the Subcommittee 

and agreed to changes in GPO’s security and loyalty programs, commented on the 

episode in a speech before the Printing Industry Association: “I want to say here and now 

that my experience has been that the vast majority of Government employees are loyal, 

hardworking citizens. ...I must confess that my respect for the Government employee has 

greatly increased over the last five months.”
1 9 6 0 - 1 9 9 0
92
93

The 1960s ushered in an era of unprecedented 

social, political, and cultural change in 

the United States, as Congress and the 

administrations of Presidents Kennedy and Johnson 

enacted sweeping legislation affecting civil rights, 

education, poverty, conservation and beautification, 

space exploration, the environment and the arts, and 

other public policy areas. Over the course of the decade, 

GPO’s volume of business doubled, and by the early 

1970s GPO employment rose to its high water mark 

of 8,572, more people—including more minorities and 

women—than the agency had ever employed. But 

the way GPO carried out its work began to change 

fundamentally during this era, with the introduction of 

computers into the “big shop’s” typesetting operations, 

and the increasing automation of other business and 

support functions. These and other 

changes begun in the 1960s, including 

increased printing procurement, the 

expansion of the depository library 

program, the explosion in documents 

sales, and growing diversity in GPO’s 

workforce, continued through the 

1970s and into the 1980s. With the final 

closeout of hot metal typesetting in 1985, 

GPO marked the end of an era and 

moved into a period of technological and 

organizational transformation.

C H A P T E R 4

Expansion and Computerization

Public Printer Harrison 

The man who led GPO through the 1960s was James L. Harrison, who 

served as Public Printer from 1961 to 1970. At the time he was nominated 

by President Kennedy in March 1961, Harrison had been the staff director 

of the Joint Committee on Printing for a dozen years, which, like Public 

Printer Carter, provided him with invaluable experience with GPO. He 

had worked closely with Public Printers Deviny and Blattenberger and 

was familiar with the opportunities and problems the agency faced. 

Harrison arrived at GPO just as the agency prepared to mark its 

centennial with a banquet in Harding Hall and the publication of the 

original edition of 100 GPO Years, the first official history of the agency. 

The banquet was held June 27, 1961. Guests included Members of 

Congress, representatives of printing industry organizations, and GPO 

employees, as well as Public Printers Giegengack and Blattenberger, the 

widow of Public Printer Deviny, the daughter of Public Printer Carter, 

and the great-granddaughter of GPO’s first executive, John D. Defrees. 

Other guests included the two oldest living GPO retirees. 100 GPO Years

appeared in June 1961. Several histories of GPO had been published previously but none was an official GPO publication. Although credited to the 

100th Anniversary Committee established by Public Printer Harrison, the 

James L. Harrison, like 

George Carter, had served 

on the Joint Committee on 

Printing before coming to 

GPO. He was appointed by 

President Kennedy in 1961.
94

Public Printer Harrison shows the new Consumer Information Center catalog to the First Lady, Lady Bird Johnson, with Presidential Assistant for Consumer Affairs Esther Peterson looking on. GPO has 

managed distribution of CIC publications since 1970 from its distribution facility in Pueblo, Colorado.
95

principal researcher, writer, and editor 

was Harry Schecter, Chairman of the 

GPO Style Board. The book was distributed free to all current employees 

and to depository libraries, and was also 

offered for sale by GPO.

Like Public Printers Carter and 

Giegengack before him, Harrison was 

an effective representative of GPO 

to Congress, Federal agencies, and 

the trade and mainstream press, and 

he kept in close touch with GPO’s 

employees. Typeline, the GPO 

employee newsletter that continues to 

this day, began in May 1968 to inform 

employees of matters affecting them. 

It appeared every two weeks and was 

mailed to employees’ homes (until 1972, 

when such mailings were discontinued 

as an economy measure). Other items 

included were announcements of training opportunities, new personnel policies and programs, new equipment acquired, new processes introduced, 

organizational changes, progress reports on charity drives, bond programs, 

and other GPO-wide programs. Special events such as the holiday open 

house and news of important visitors were also included. An employee 

contest was held to determine the permanent name of the publication. The 

winning entry was submitted independently by two employees, and each 

won a suggestion award of $25.

Harrison’s connection with employees was critically important during 

the 1960s, as GPO’s workload more than doubled, with revenues growing 

from $99.5 million in 1960 to $203.7 million in 1969. The value of congressional work alone rose from $11.5 million in 1960 to $31 million by the 

end of the decade. While some of these increases were due to inflation, the 

majority was the result of growth in volume. The number of original pages 

for regular publications such as the Congressional Record, congressional 

hearings, and bills grew, as did the page count for the Federal Register, rising 

by nearly 55% over the decade. 

Overall, requisitions and print 

orders rose from slightly more 

than 100,000 in 1960 to nearly 

365,000 in 1969. An increased 

amount of work was sent to the 

commercial sector for production, 

rising from $35.6 million in 1960 

to $103 million by the end of the 

decade. During this period, total 

GPO employment grew from 

6,457 in 1960 to 7,971 by 1969.

Part of GPO’s increased 

workload during the 1960s 

was the result of actions by 

the JCP to redirect printing 

work being handled by Federal 

agencies themselves to GPO 

for procurement from the 

private sector printing industry. The objective was to re-establish GPO 

as the Government’s primary resource for printing, and by extension, 

public access to Government publications through the Superintendent of 

Documents. Under this policy, the share of work commercially procured 

by GPO increased dramatically from about a third in the early 1960s to 

nearly three-quarters two decades later. In 1970 GPO established a specialized procurement function focusing solely on printing and expanded the 

number of GPO printing procurement offices nationwide. Beginning with 

the creation in the late 1960s of procurement offices in St. Louis, Boston, 

and Philadelphia, GPO followed by setting up offices in Atlanta, Chicago, 

Columbus, Dallas, Denver, Hampton, VA, Los Angeles, New York, San 

Francisco, and Seattle, and at the Navy Yard in Washington, DC. 

Search for a New Building

With GPO’s burgeoning workload, the dominant issue for Public Printer 

Harrison during his term of office was an effort to move from GPO’s 

buildings into larger, more modern space. By 1961, GPO’s existing 

multistory facilities, which required paper and materials movements over 

GPO published its first official history, 

100 GPO Years, in 1961, for the 

centennial of the agency’s founding. 

Written by a self-described team of 

“ghosts,” the principal writer and 

researcher was Harry Schecter, the 

chairman of the GPO Style Board. 

GPO’s employee newsletter Typeline began in 

1968. The title was chosen in a contest among 

employees.
96

different floors, were considered outmoded and increasingly cramped as 

workload and the workforce grew in size. Efforts to alleviate space shortages at GPO began during the preceding decade when the JCP directed 

a study of expanding GPO’s paper warehouse in lieu of continuing to 

store paper at a leased facility in Franconia, VA. The study was submitted to the General Accounting Office, and the GAO concurred with its 

recommendation to construct an annex of three or four stories attached 

to GPO’s Building 3, along H Street. The plan was approved by the JCP. 

Subsequently, Congress provided authority for the work and $6.5 million 

for site acquisition and construction.

Before the work began, however, discussions with the District of 

Columbia and the National Capital Planning Commission in 1962 suggested that sites might be available within the District for a new GPO 

building. A new, larger, in-line production facility of up to two million 

square feet would remedy space constraints as well as the problems and 

costs of moving paper and materials in a multistory building and was seen 

as a better solution than construction of an annex. With JCP approval for 

a new building within thirty minutes of the Capitol, constructed on one 

level, and in a location served by rail for paper deliveries and shipment of 

finished product, GPO returned the funds for an annex to the Treasury 

and in 1964 obtained approval from the House and Senate Public Works 

Committees for a new building, at a projected cost of $46.7 million.

After fending off a challenge from the printing industry to the 

concept of a new facility, GPO’s efforts then turned to finding a suitable 

The Warren Report 

Perhaps the single most important job of the 1960s was the Report of the President’s 

Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy, known as the Warren Commission 

Report, named after the Commission’s Chairman, Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl 

Warren. Issued in 1964, the complete report comprised approximately 19,200 pages 

overall in 26 volumes of hearings averaging 400 to 500 pages each. These were released 

in November 1964, while the report itself, a volume of 900 pages, was released in 

September 1964 and was widely reprinted commercially. All the official GPO volumes 

were covered in blue cloth and stamped in gold and contained approximately 9,000 

illustrations, including the first public release of still images from the Zapruder film of 

the assassination.

The report was designed by GPO’s Typography and Design Division. Special 

security measures were set up by GPO to prevent unauthorized disclosure of the 

manuscript, including the use of internal monitors to oversee the entire production 

process for the final report. When a leak of one part of the report did occur, a 

subsequent investigation concluded that it did not come from within GPO, and in commenting on the matter, the Associated Press said, 

“The Printing Office has an impeccable reputation of preventing leaks on secret Government documents and advance leaks on publications 

with future release dates.” 30 

President Lyndon Johnson is presented with the report of the Warren 

Commission on the assassination of John F. Kennedy, by Chief Justice 

Earl Warren.
97

site. Of the limited number available, one—at the Bolling Air Force Base 

in southeast Washington—was removed from consideration when the 

Defense Department refused to release it for development. Another, at the 

former National Training School for Boys site at Fort Lincoln, in northeast Washington, was removed from consideration as the result of local 

opposition that culminated in withdrawal of the property by the National 

Capital Planning Commission. GPO then turned to a site near the 

intersection of U.S. Route 50 and the Capital Beltway, in Prince Georges 

County, MD. Although approved by the JCP, this site was also removed 

from consideration as the result of opposition to the departure of GPO 

from the District of Columbia. Two other sites subsequently materialized 

in the District, one called the Harmony Cemetery site, near the present 

day Rhode Island Avenue/Brentwood Metro Station, and the other, the 

coal yard site on 1st Street, NE. However, neither was considered large 

enough for GPO’s plans, and by the end of Harrison’s tenure in 1971, 

GPO’s relocation plans had ground to a halt.31

Development of the Linotron 

More successful was GPO’s initial foray into computerized typesetting. By 

the early 1960s, an increasing amount of work coming to GPO arrived as 

computer printout copy. Manuscript in this format contained information 

all in capital letters with the letters widely spaced, and resulted in bulky 

publications that were difficult to read. Even by photographically reducing 

the pages as much as possible, the volume generated by computer printout 

copy was staggering and costly. Thousands of computers then in use in the 

Federal Government held a significant amount of information, such as 

the results of Federally-funded research and development, which was not 

being printed and made available to the public because of the high cost of 

composition. In 1962, the JCP ordered GPO to come up with a remedy.

In 1964 the Mergenthaler Co. and CBS Laboratories won a GPO 

contract to build a machine called the Linotron. The Linotron took a 

computer magnetic tape from the publishing agency that had been programmed through GPO’s computers, and composed the data in 6-point 

type at the rate of a page every 10 to 12 seconds, up to 1,000 characters per 

second, justified including upper and lower case letters, resulting in a page 

negative made up and ready to be plated and printed. The first Linotron 

went into operation in October 1967 and the second a year later. The reduction in publication bulk was estimated to average 40 to 50%. Keyboard 

production time internally was reduced dramatically. The dean of the 

Senate and Chair of the JCP, Senator Carl Hayden of Arizona, pressed the 

key starting the Linotron 1010 on its first job, the Federal Supply Catalog. 

The Linotrons cost $2.3 million to develop and install. In the first 13 

months of operation the savings were estimated at $900,000. The introduction of the Linotron was characterized by Harrison as “the most important 

development in composition since the introduction of the Linotype 

machine at the turn of the century.” With it, “it can truly be said that in 

1968 the Government Printing Office entered the electronic printing age.”

Senator Carl Hayden, dean of the Senate and longtime Chair of the Joint Committee on Printing 

(center), dedicates the Linotron with Public Printer Harrison (left), and Jack Haley, JCP staff 

director (right). 
98

GPO launched itself into the computer age with the Linotron, a magnetic tape typesetting system developed under a GPO contract by the Mergenthaler Co. and CBS Laboratories.
99

San Francisco in 1969 along 

with outlets in Washington, 

DC, at the State Department 

and other agencies. By 1975, 

GPO had six bookstores in 

the District of Columbia (at 

the main GPO, Commerce, 

the Pentagon, the United 

States Information 

Agency, State, and in the 

Forrestal building) and 19 

other stores nationwide 

(Chicago, Kansas City, 

San Francisco, Boston, Los 

Angeles, Atlanta, Dallas, 

NewYork, Denver, Pueblo, 

Colorado, Birmingham, 

Canton, Ohio—later moved 

to Columbus—Detroit, 

Philadelphia, Cleveland, Seattle, Milwaukee, and Jacksonville). Two 

regional distribution centers were also set up in Pueblo, CO (following 

a proposal by Representative Frank Evans of Colorado, for whom the 

facility was named by an act of Congress in 2010), and Philadelphia. These 

were to reduce turnaround time in filling orders and provide more storage 

space for publications. 

Public Printer Harrison ensured that GPO participated in the New 

York World’s Fair that opened on April 22, 1964, in Flushing Meadows 

Park, Queens, NY, for a two-season run. An exhibit of Government 

publications was held at the Fair, prepared by GPO’s Documents and 

Typography and Design personnel. The exhibit was housed in the United 

States Pavilion, highlighting select Government publications grouped by 

subject area. A general information leaflet about the publications and a 

listing of those on display at the Fair were specially prepared for distribution to interested visitors by the librarians in charge of the reference desks 

in the U.S. Pavilion. In addition to Government documents, fairgoers 

could see the newly introduced Ford Mustang, sample newly invented 

Belgian waffles, and see Walt Disney’s “It’s a Small World” attraction.

Expansion of Public Access

In August 1962, Congress enacted the most significant legislative revision 

of the depository library program since the passage of the Printing Act 

of 1895. Provisions of the Depository Library Act of 1962 significantly 

expanded the scope of publications distributed to depository libraries 

to include documents printed in agency plants. The act also created the 

system of regional depository libraries—up to two per state—to provide 

for permanent public access to all publications distributed by the program, 

while allowing other selective depository libraries to discard their publications after five years. In addition, among other changes, the act revised the 

formula for depository designation. Although it stirred controversy during 

deliberations with GPO (among others) noting the costs and administrative burdens of assuming the new functions, the Depository Library Act set 

the pattern for the Federal depository library program that has survived to 

the present day. 

The immediate effect of the new law was a dramatic growth in 

the number of participating libraries, rising from 592 in 1962 to 993 by 

the end of the decade, and in the number of publications distributed to 

the libraries, which more than doubled during the same period, from 5.3 

million to 10.8 million. Congressional appropriations also increased, as 

reflected in the increase of the Superintendent of Documents Salaries and 

Expenses Appropriation from $4.7 million at the time of the act’s passage 

to $8.2 million in 1969. This pattern of growth continued over the next two 

decades. As a result, the program became one the most prominent symbols 

of the Government’s commitment to keep the public informed.

Along with the expanded distribution of Government documents to 

depository libraries came increased public demand for publications sales, 

with the issuance of noteworthy publications like the Warren Commission 

Report on the assassination of President Kennedy and the landmark 1964 

Surgeon General’s report on the dangers of smoking, as well as the myriad 

of other publications being issued by Federal agencies. During this period, 

income from publication sales nearly doubled, from $10.9 million in 1960 

to $20 million by 1969, with the number of publications sold annually 

rising from 54.7 million to 71.5 million by the end of the decade.

To accommodate this demand, GPO began opening retail bookstores 

around the Nation, beginning in 1967 with two experimental outlets in 

Chicago and Kansas City, Missouri. Additional bookstores were opened in 
100

GPO and Emergency Preparedness 

Early in his term, Harrison directed GPO’s emergency preparations when 

the Soviet Union’s placement of offensive missiles in Cuba in October 1962 

raised the specter of a nuclear confrontation. Like other Federal agencies, GPO took actions to ensure continuity of services in case the plant 

was incapacitated. Vital records, including personnel records, manuals, 

electronic tape programs, systems, rates, and related materials, were moved 

to a secure facility offsite. GPO made arrangements to purchase additional 

paper and materials to meet an expected increase in printing requirements, 

especially for defense agencies, and set up a program to train 60 printing 

procurement specialists to buy an increased volume of Federal printing 

from commercial printers nationwide in the wake of an attack. The early 

civil defense efforts, now known as “continuity of operations” or COOP 

actions, were reactivated at GPO during the early 1980s and have become 

a fixture of GPO operational planning today.

The outbreak of rioting in Washington, DC, following the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., on April 4, 1968, directly 

affected GPO. As disorder intensified on April 5 in the 14th Street NW 

and H Street NE corridors, many Federal employees—including GPO 

employees—left work early. A curfew that night by DC Police prevented 

many GPO nightside employees from reporting to work. As a result, for 

the first time in living memory GPO was unable to print the Congressional 

Best-Sellers: Humble and Historic

Since opening its doors in 1861, GPO has played a part in many of the most important events in American life, printing declarations of war 

and proclamations of peace, reporting landmark decisions and history-making legislation. But every working day since 1861, between those 

peak moments that history remembers, GPO has printed and distributed an unbroken stream of more modest documents that in themselves 

are a distinctive part of Americans’ interaction with their Government.

Most Government agencies have in their fundamental charge the responsibility to communicate with the people. From the most 

general annual report to the most technical results of research, from little pamphlets to ponderous tomes, Government agencies create the 

message and GPO has provided the medium.

GPO has had many big sellers over the years, rising and falling on the tides of current events. Two publications of the more humble 

variety have a place in history for their unusual popularity and longevity. The Bureau of Animal Industry in the Department of Agriculture 

published Special Report on Diseases of the Horse in 1890. Over the next 52 years it would go through seven editions, and thousands of copies 

were sold by GPO as well as distributed by Members of Congress.

Perhaps the all-time bestseller was the pamphlet Infant Care, first published in 1914 by the newly established Children’s Bureau. A GPO 

press release in November 1942 announced the 25,000,000th copy of Infant Care, and captured the significance of this type of Government 

document, “...in 1914 few mothers had access to authoritative information in low-cost form on the care of their babies.” Infant Care remained 

an active best-seller through many more editions, the last in 1984. It was translated into eight languages and published in Braille. 

As the Nation has grown and new media have multiplied, the amount of information widely available and the ease in obtaining it, the 

Government’s role as a source of information has evolved as well. But GPO’s part always has been, and will continue to be, played with jobs 

of historic importance in tandem with the present-day descendants of Diseases of the Horse and Infant Care.
101

Five days of civil unrest erupted following the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King on April 4, 1968. Curfews were imposed beginning April 5 that prevented night shift employees from 

reporting to work. GPO housed elements of Federal troups in Building 3.
102

Record. Curfews remained in effect every night until April 11, so GPO 

adjusted the work hours of night shift employees to arrive and depart from 

work before and after each curfew. During the crisis, Federal troops were 

posted at GPO facilities, including inside Building 3 and outside Building 

4. In the months that followed, GPO—along with all Federal agencies—received policy guidance from the Civil Service Commission and 

the Justice Department to prepare for possible disturbances resulting from 

planned demonstrations, such as the Poor Peoples’ Campaign in June 1968, 

and protests associated with opposition to the Vietnam War, including 

the Moratorium Days in October and November 1969 and the May Day 

protest in May 1971. These preparations helped ensure that GPO’s work 

went on uninterrupted during this difficult period.

By the late 1960s, the area around GPO had grown 

increasingly dangerous as the crime rate rose. In 1969, Harrison 

asked Congress to enact a law creating “special policemen” at 

GPO. These were to be officers selected, trained, and appointed 

by the Public Printer to “protect persons and property” at GPO. 

The policemen replaced the GPO guard force that had been in 

existence for many years, who legally had little more authority 

than any other private citizen to arrest and detain persons for 

violations of the law or GPO’s regulations. The policemen were 

given specific authority to enforce the law, make arrests, and 

bear arms in carrying out these duties on GPO property and 

“adjacent areas.” The House and Senate passed the bill in 1970 

and it was signed into law. Today, GPO’s uniformed police 

officers, supplemented by contract officers, continue to protect 

GPO’s personnel and property.

Public Printer Spence 

Following the election of President 

Richard M. Nixon in 1968, 

Harrison remained in office until 

1970, when he was replaced by 

Adolphus Nichols “Nick” Spence. 

Spence was a career Navy official 

who had managed printing services 

for the Navy and later the Defense 

Department, and had worked with GPO for 

many years in providing for the Department’s 

printing needs, even testifying during the 

McCarthy hearings that to his knowledge there 

was no record of communist activity at GPO. 

Spence was a recognized authority on modern 

printing management and graphic communications techniques. At GPO, 

he introduced a number of management reforms and helped defuse a 

labor sick-out over a wage dispute that threatened to halt production of 

essential congressional work. Unfortunately, his tenure as Public Printer 

was brief; Spence died unexpectedly in January 1972, the only Public 

Printer to do so while in office.

Federal troops stationed outside GPO Building 4 in April 1968. 

Public Printer Spence came to 

GPO in 1970 from the Defense 

Department as President 

Nixon’s appointee.
103

workers benefitted the development of the new photocomposition system. 

The result was that GPO made the transition with the cooperation of labor 

and a minimum of occupational dislocation, unlike in other areas of the 

printing and publishing industry undergoing the same changes.

Building Expansion Plans 

During his brief tenure, Public Printer Spence had advocated constructing 

an annex of 1.3 million square feet connected to the present buildings and 

extending westward toward 1st Street, almost doubling the current size 

of GPO. The new building would have three basement levels for parking 

and six stories above ground. It would face G Street NW, and the proposal 

included a plan to reface existing Buildings 1, 2, and 3 to look like the new 

structure. 

In 1973, however, the National Capital Planning Commission 

recommended relocating GPO to Northeast Washington. Public Printer 

McCormick enthusiastically endorsed the plan. The location, known as the 

Brentwood site, was north of New York Avenue NW, near the presentday Rhode Island Avenue Metro station, with railroad access. The estimated construction cost was $158 million. The old GPO buildings would 

be turned over for other Government use, possibly by the General Services 

Administration (GSA) or the National Archives. Funding was provided 

for site acquisition and design and development of plans, and a detailed 

environmental impact study with community input was completed. 

However, in spite of continued efforts by Public Printer McCormick and 

the JCP, approval from Congress was not forthcoming and the site eventually was occupied by the Postal Service in the early 1980s.

Without expanded space to move into, congestion in the main 

buildings during the 1970s was relieved by leasing space elsewhere. GPO 

continued to lease a paper warehouse from GSA in Franconia, VA, and 

moved this operation to a warehouse and office space in Springfield, VA, 

later in the decade. In 1974, GPO’s depository library functions were 

moved to a warehouse in Alexandria, VA. The following year, the fourth 

and fifth floors of Union Center Plaza—commercial space located a block 

north of GPO on North Capitol Street—were leased and occupied by the 

Superintendent of Documents and GPO’s newly formed Data Systems 

Service. Publications storage and sales fulfillment functions were moved to 

a 180,000 square foot warehouse in Laurel, MD, that same year.

Public Printer McCormick

President Nixon appointed Thomas F. 

McCormick in March 1973. McCormick had 

spent his business career with the General 

Electric Company, eventually rising to be 

General Manager of the Maqua Company, a 

400-employee printing firm owned by GE. 

During his tenure he joined the Printing 

Industry Association of Eastern-Central New 

York and served on its board of directors.

McCormick’s first commitment was to 

continue the transition to computerized typesetting begun under Public Printer Harrison 

and urged on by the JCP. In 1974, GPO began 

upgrading its electronic photocomposition capability to capture keystrokes 

at their source. Agencies submitted data on magnetic tapes that were then 

passed through GPO’s typesetting system to create formatted pages. None 

of this work required any keyboarding or proofreading at GPO; all data 

was captured, coded, and verified by customer agencies. By the mid-1970s, 

GPO was producing nearly half of its typeset pages using data captured at 

its source. The goal of electronic photocomposition then became the automatic composition of all work being performed at that time by hot metal 

composing techniques.

The first publications transferred were the daily Federal Register, 

the Code of Federal Regulations, and the U.S. Code, followed by the 

Congressional Record, all other congressional work, and the U.S. Budget

publications. Coordination with congressional offices, the Office of the 

Federal Register, and other agencies led to the installation of components 

of an electronic compositon system in their offices. Type was set from keystrokes captured at the source rather than re-keyed by GPO. The result 

was a significant amount of work migrating to electronic photocomposition. By 1976, the number of pages photocomposed by GPO exceeded the 

number of pages composed on GPO’s Linotype and Monotype machines.

To make this technology transition possible, GPO worked with the 

employees represented by the Columbia Typographical Union, Local 101, 

to retrain the workforce. The retraining resulted in providing workers 

with the skills to operate the new technology while suggestions from 

Thomas F. McCormick, 

who followed Public Printer 

Spence in 1973.
104

Equal Employment Opportunity at GPO 

In 1969, President Nixon signed an executive order mandating equal 

employment opportunity activities in Federal agencies. An outgrowth 

of this directive was the appointment of GPO’s first Equal Employment 

Opportunity Officer and the beginning of EEO counseling services. In 

1971, GPO’s first Federal Women’s Program Coordinator was appointed, 

and in 1973 Hispanic Program Coordinator also became a part of EEO. 

In 1973, the EEO office sponsored a “Community Children’s Day” for 350 

local children, an event which subsequently became a traditional part of 

GPO’s annual Christmas Program. 

Against this backdrop, the 1970s saw two major court cases that 

opened doors to equal opportunity for GPO employees. Both helped form 

the body of law protecting all Federal employees from discrimination today.

Dorothy Thompson, 58-year-old grandmother who had worked 

in binderies for 33 years, was the lead plantiff in a 1973 class action suit 

brought by more than 300 women 

bindery workers against GPO. 

They alleged that male bookbinders 

received greater pay than female 

bindery workers performing similar 

work and that as women they were 

denied access to bookbinder and 

supervisory positions. GPO argued 

that the difference in pay was based 

on “traditional industry patterns of 

classification and training” and therefore was based on a factor other than 

sex. The U.S. District Court did not 

agree, holding that GPO’s separate 

classification system for bookbinder 

and journeyman bindery worker 

jobs perpetuated the effect of past 

sex discrimination, was not justified 

for business purposes, and violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 

1964. In his decision the District Court judge ordered the Government to 

pay an estimated $16 million to the women involved in the suit, which at 

that time, according to the Washington Post, was “one of the largest awards 

ever made in a bias case brought against an employer, public or private.” 

Thompson said, “For years they told me the big industrial sewing machine 

I operate was women’s work. But I knew all along I was doing a job same 

as men, but not getting paid the same.”

Alfred McKenzie was a GPO offset press operator who was a 

veteran of World War II as part of the famed Tuskegee Airmen unit. 

McKenzie was the lead plantiff in a 1973 class action suit brought by 

black employees of GPO’s Offset Printing Section 

alleging racial discrimination. The plaintiffs 

claimed that GPO failed to hire, train, or promote 

black employees within the section. The case was 

noteworthy for producing the first decision in the 

District of Columbia based almost entirely on the 

use of statistical evidence. In 1977, the Court used 

this evidence to find “a sufficient showing by clear 

and convincing evidence that black employees 

in the Offset Press Section are and have been 

the constant target of racial discrimination and 

have been wrongfully denied equal opportunities in both employment and promotion.” It took 

several more years before a final settlement was 

reached in the case, with a $2.4 million settlement 

in 1987 affecting more than 350 current and former offset press workers. 

McKenzie himself retired in 1973 and never saw a promotion, but he told 

the Washington Post the suit was well worth the effort. “I never had any 

idea it would turn out as large as it did,” he said. “But as things started to 

develop I saw the chance to really help others. What made it worth the 

effort were the changes that have been made at GPO that are helping the 

workers there now.”

Public Printer Boyle 

Public Printer McCormick served through the administration of President 

Gerald R. Ford. Following his election in 1976, President Jimmy Carter 

accepted McCormick’s resignation and appointed John J. Boyle as Public 

Printer in November 1977. Boyle’s GPO career began in 1952 as a proofreader, and his technology and management capabilities, especially in the 

area of computerized typesetting, moved him up through the ranks. In 

Dorothy Thompson, lead plaintiff in a 1973 

class action suit that won pay equity for 

women.

Alfred McKenzie, who 

was lead plantiff in a 

class action suit in 1973 

that addressed race 

discrimination in GPO’s 

promotion and training 

practices.
105

Some “Firsts” For GPO Women

Women have always made their mark at the U. S. 

Government Printing Office. Through the years, 

they have risen to the challenge of being “firsts,” 

whether in craft, administrative, or recreational work. 

An early “first” woman at GPO was Adelaide R. Hasse. In 

1895 she became the Office’s first librarian, serving until 1897 and 

creating the system of documents classification still in use today. 

In 1906 the production area produced another pioneer. Anna 

C. Wilson of the composing division became the first member 

of her International Typographical Union local to be named a 

delegate to the union’s national convention. 

After the First World War, women advanced further at 

GPO. In his 1922 annual report, Public Printer George H. Carter 

said, “Little or no recognition had been accorded the ability and 

industry of women workers in this office during all the past 

years. Accordingly, for the first time in the history of the office, 

several thoroughly competent women were advanced to suitable 

supervisory positions.” Among those promoted were Josephine 

Adams (Assistant Superintendent of Documents), Martha Feehan 

(assistant foreman of the dayside proofroom), and Mary T. 

Spalding (foreman of the bindery sewing machine section). Carter 

also appointed Mary A. Tate as secretary to the Public Printer, 

the first woman ever to hold that post. Later, Tate was named 

Assistant to the Public Printer, specifically charged with overseeing 

all matters relating to women employees. 

Another breakthrough came in 1931, when Blanche 

E. Boisvert and Beulah A. Fairell became the first women to 

participate in GPO’s apprenticeship program. Boisvert went on to 

graduate from the program in 1935, another “first.”

In 1931, Willa B. Dial became instructor of academic subjects 

in the apprentice school. This was not a “first” for women – that 

particular honor went to Pauline K. Dodge several years earlier. 

Dial’s claim to pioneer status rests on being managing editor of 

GPO’s first employee newsletter. 

In 1942, the great wartime increase in plastic platemaking 

led the Superintendent of Platemaking to ask permission from the 

Public Printer to teach a woman the trade, so Gertrude Larson 

moved from the pamphlet bindery to begin her apprenticeship in 

platemaking. 

African-American women faced many obstacles in those 

days. Although a trained soprano, Ethel M. Gray could not 

belong to GPO’s choral group in the late 1930s because, like all 

Government agencies, GPO was racially segregated. She organized 

an African-American choral group – a 35-member organization 

that performed in GPO, over the radio, and at many churches, 

clubs, and wartime Red Cross benefits.

Since World War II women at GPO have continued to set 

and attain new goals for themselves in all areas of the Office. It 

would be an imposing task to list all of those achievements — 

such as Lois Schutte, GPO’s first woman Director of Personnel, 

Judith Russell, first woman Superintendent of Documents, and 

Maria Robinson (Lefevre), first woman Chief of Staff. All of these 

pioneers have paved the way for others in GPO’s increasingly 

diverse workforce. 
106

1973, McCormick named him Deputy Public 

Printer. Boyle was the first Public Printer to 

have risen from within GPO’s own ranks. 

Like McCormick, his chief goal was ensuring 

the continued smooth transition to electronic 

photocomposition.

Boyle’s term closed out the decade of 

the 1970s, a period when revenues rose from 

$259.3 million in 1970 to $701.5 million in 

1979. Sales of publications increased to $44.4 

million from $21.2 million. By the end of the 

decade, GPO procured nearly $426.6 million 

in products and services from the private sector 

printing industry, compared with $125.7 million 

in 1970. Persistent inflation throughout the 

decade, exacerbated by energy crises in 1973 and 1979, was responsible for 

a significant part of the increase in GPO’s financial performance, as the 

purchasing power of the dollar sank by roughly half between 1970 and 

1979. Nevertheless, the number of bookstores increased to 27 nationwide, 

with six in the District of Columbia alone. The number of bookstore customers rose from 379,300 in 1970 to more the 495,000 annually by the end 

of the period. By 1979, there were 14 regional printing procurement offices 

in operation nationwide, and the dollar volume of printing procured by 

GPO from the private sector had risen to more than 70% of all printing 

performed by GPO, compared with 59% a decade earlier. The number of 

Federal depository libraries grew from 1,033 to 1,329 by the decade’s end, 

and the volume of publications distributed to the libraries nearly doubled.

Underneath that record of growth was a profound change in the way 

GPO did its work. As the end of the 1970s approached, the automation of 

printing systems as well as the expanding use of mainframe-based computer systems had begun to affect GPO, and had reduced GPO’s overall 

employment level from its all-time high of 8,572 in 1972. Other changes in 

Government printing and distribution were underway. Paper issued for 

production and blank paper sales to other Federal agencies fell by nearly 

42% during the 1970s, as GPO increased the level of procurement from 

the private sector, ended the practice of furnishing paper to commercial 

contractors, and began the use of microfiche for library distribution. In 

congressional printing, the JCP and the appropriations committees began 

trimming the number of documents produced, eliminating the semiweekly 

edition of the Congressional Record, and cutting the number of daily and 

bound Record copies that were printed daily by nearly a quarter. While the 

dollar volume of publications sales increased, the number of publications 

sold annually fell by nearly a third over the decade as GPO raised prices to 

cover rising postage costs and recover sales program costs. The signs of a 

coming change based on electronic information technologies were beginning to be seen.

In 1978, the JCP undertook a major effort to revise GPO’s authorities under Title 44 because of technological advances that were changing 

the way Government publications were generated, produced, and disseminated. An Advisory Committee on the Revision of Title 44 was set 

up in late 1978. As a result of the Commission’s work, a bill entitled the 

National Publications Act of 1979 was introduced and hearings were 

held. The bill would have repealed several existing sections of Title 44 

covering Government printing, congressional printing and binding, sales 

of publications, depository library program, and abolished the JCP. GPO 

was to be replaced by a National Publications Office under the control of 

a Presidentially-appointed seven-member commission representing the 

printing industry, labor, and the library and information industry communities. The depository library program was to be expanded by providing 

Federal funding for equipment and training for libraries. The definition 

of “Government document” was to be expanded to included machinereadable data files and audio and visual presentations. However, the bill 

drew opposition when the Office of Management and Budget estimated 

the cost of enactment as high as $5 billion annually, and by 1980 the effort 

to move it forward in the legislative process was abandoned. Other Title 44 

reform efforts would follow in the ensuing years.

Public Printer Sawyer and the JCP 

Public Printer Boyle retired in early 1980, and in 1981 President Ronald 

W. Reagan appointed Danford L. Sawyer, Jr., as Public Printer. Sawyer 

had built a career in the advertising publishing business in Florida. He had 

been a long-time supporter of President Reagan, and he arrived at GPO 

committed to carrying out the President’s program of reducing spending 

and increasing efficiency in Government.

John J. Boyle, nominated 

Public Printer by President 

Carter, had been Public 

Printer McCormick’s deputy.
107

Sawyer implemented a number of 

managerial changes, including restoring the 

documents sales program to a positive financial basis by reducing the inventory of unsalable publications, implementing a marketing 

program for Government documents, and 

creating a task force on documents pricing 

with the objective of increasing public access 

to lower-cost Government information while 

permitting GPO to recover all sales program 

costs. He also supported other modernization 

improvements, including upgrading press 

and binding equipment, and presided over 

the completion of the transition to electronic 

phototypesetting when the Congressional Record was completely converted 

from hot metal typesetting in January 1982. He supported a project of the 

Office of Management and Budget to identify excess printing capacity in 

Federal agencies, with the objective of increasing the amount of printing 

processed by GPO for procurement from the private sector. 

Sawyer’s cost-cutting measures, however, led him into a confrontation with the JCP, then headed by Senator Charles McC. Mathias of 

Maryland, that ultimately tested the limits of the Public Printer’s authority 

as a Presidential appointee under the policy direction of the JCP as GPO’s 

board of directors. In early 1982, Sawyer proposed closing GPO’s 24 

bookstores nationwide, stating that the stores were losing money and that 

because the sales program operated predominately by mail order it would 

retain rather than lose the bookstore business. The JCP opted instead 

to refer the proposal to the General Accounting Office for review. The 

GAO’s study was completed in 1983, with the finding that the bookstores 

were profitable. By then the closure proposal had been abandoned.

In March 1982, Sawyer announced a plan to furlough GPO 

employees one day every other week for six weeks to avert a projected 

financial loss in printing and binding operations. He contended he did 

not need the approval of the JCP to take this action and that he was not 

required to negotiate the matter with GPO’s unions. In May 1982, the JCP 

adopted a resolution blocking the furlough pending further study. Sawyer 

announced the furloughs would proceed. The following month, 4,000 

GPO employees held a “Truth March” down North Capitol Street to the 

west steps of the Capitol for a rally preceding a congressional hearing on 

the status of GPO’s finances and the Public Printer’s plans. Subsequently, 

ten unions belonging to GPO’s Joint Council of Unions filed a writ of 

mandamus with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia 

seeking an order to compel the Public Printer to comply with the JCP 

resolution. In July 1982, the court handed down an opinion blocking the 

furlough plan based on the conclusion that the JCP was within its power 

in forbidding the furloughs pending further study. Assisted by the Justice 

Department, GPO filed an appeal before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 

District of Columbia. In February 1983 the appeals court upheld the district court’s decision. Meanwhile, the furlough plan was dropped when the 

projected financial losses did not materialize, but the damage in relations 

between Public Printer Sawyer and the JCP had been done.

The same applied to relations between Sawyer and GPO’s unions. 

While they were able to cooperate on finalizing the first labor-management master agreement in GPO’s history, covering all phases of work and 

working conditions, and also worked together to mount plaques honoring 

the veterans of World War II, the Korean Conflict, and the Vietnam Era 

in the GPO Veterans Landing in Building 1, they were unable to reach an 

agreement on wages. The wage dispute overlapped the furlough fight and 

turned increasingly bitter. 

Between 1979 and 1982, management and labor had been unable 

to agree on wages at GPO, and the JCP had to make final settlements. In 

April 1982, Public Printer Sawyer’s negotiating team proposed converting the GPO craft pay system to conform to pay rates established by the 

Federal wage board system, which was used to pay workers in other 

Federal printing facilities in the executive branch, and to end wage negotiations established by the Kiess Act. Management’s proposal amounted 

to a 22% reduction in pay over the next three years. The proposal was 

submitted to a vote of union members and was rejected. Subsequently, the 

JCP appointed a factfinder to prepare a recommendation for a wage settlement. The fact finder recommended that Congress reject management’s 

proposal and proposed a wage settlement. He found that

...GPO is not remotely comparable to any other Federal printing facility. As long as the GPO has as its primary task the 

Danford L. Sawyer, Jr., 

appointed by President Reagan, 

began his stormy tenure in 1981.
108

George Lord, Chairman, and Cornelius McIntyre, past chair of GPO’s Joint Council of Unions, and GPO General Counsel Garrett Brown watch Public Printer Sawyer sign the first master labor agreement between GPO’s unions and management. The single agreement covering all represented employees came after long and complex negotiations in 1982.
109

printing and publishing of the daily Congressional Record and 

the Federal Register...any attempt to equate its operations or 

its wage structure with that of other existing Federal printing 

facilities must be viewed as either ill-informed or unconcerned 

with the quality of GPO work and with its capacity to continue to furnish the service Congress has heretofore required 

of it.32

In September 1982 the JCP ordered a wage settlement based on the 

current pay system with annual cost of living adjustments. The following 

June, the GAO delivered a report on GPO’s pay and classification system 

that had been requested by Congress. GAO found that GPO employees 

who collectively bargain received higher wages than did printing and 

lithographic employees at other Federal agencies or in private sector firms 

in the Washington, DC, area, and offered recommendations for new pay 

practices at GPO. However, the JCP dismissed the 

report because it failed to reference the work of 

the factfinder. A congressional hearing was held 

on the matter in late 1983 and legislation was introduced to change the GPO wage-setting system, 

but the bill was not passed. In the meantime, in 

various newspaper columns nationwide, a public 

relations campaign was conducted that sought to 

link the JCP with union campaign contributions, 

further contributing to the breakdown in relations 

between management and labor at GPO as well 

as between Sawyer and the JCP. In early 1984, 

Sawyer resigned office to return to the private 

sector.

A key development during the early 1980s 

that would have major implications for the future 

of GPO’s relationship with Federal agencies in the 

executive branch was the Supreme Court’s 1983 

opinion in INS v. Chadha, invalidating the legislative veto. The Justice Department’s Office of Legal 

Counsel deemed the JCP’s powers over executive 

branch printing to be overruled by the decision. 

In subsequent legal memoranda issued in 1984, the Department opined 

that the Department of Defense did not have to get the JCP’s approval to 

establish its own printing facilities, and that the JCP’s Government Printing 

and Binding Regulations were not binding on Federal agencies. For the 

moment the issue was primarily academic, but it was to resurface later in 

the decade as a serious challenge to GPO’s printing authority.

Public Printer Kennickell and the End of Hot Metal Typesetting 

After Public Printer Sawyer resigned in early 1984, President Reagan 

nominated Ralph E. Kennickell, Jr., as Public Printer. A former Army 

officer who had served in Vietnam, Kennickell had worked for his family’s 

printing company and had held other posts in the Reagan Administration. 

Following his nomination he received a recess appointment in December 

1984. He subsequently was confirmed in December 1985, the youngest 

person ever appointed as Public Printer.

Public Printer Sawyer’s plan to furlough the entire workforce roused the ire of employees and the Joint Committee on Printing 

alike. In June 1982 4,000 GPO employees marched down North Capitol Street to the Capitol for a rally.
110

Kennickell restored labor-management 

relations with GPO’s employees. Successful 

wage contract negotiations were concluded in 

1985 that included a straight eight-hour day 

for craft employees (including a paid half-hour 

lunch period), implementation of double-pay 

for emergency work requirements such as 

inclement weather, and a pay raise. In 1988, 

GPO employees represented by the American 

Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) 

were accorded wage bargaining rights by the 

JCP. GPO’s unions began negotiations with 

management on implementing an alcohol- and 

drug-free workplace, which included workplace testing. Beyond labor/management relations, Kennickell reached 

out to GPO’s employees in a number of ways large and small—including 

regular lunches with the Public Printer and GPO-wide events at local 

amusement parks—that echoed the efforts of Public Printer Carter. And 

like Carter, Kennickell broadened contacts with other national government printers around the globe, as well as with State government printers 

and the faculty of printing management colleges and universities.

It was Public Printer Kennickell who oversaw the end of hot metal 

typesetting at GPO in 1985, following the conversion of the Congressional 

Record to electronic text processing and phototypesetting systems in 1982. 

Nearly all of the Linotype and Monotype machines were removed from 

the building and sold off as scrap metal. Along with the General Pershing 

Linotype, GPO retained only two Linotypes for a limited amount of 

specialty typesetting, including setting titles for gold stamping in library 

binding. As Kennickell observed at the time,

Composing has been the backbone of GPO’s operation. In its 

heyday, the Composing Division comprised in excess of 150 

Linotypes and Intertypes, 120 Monotype keyboards, and 125 

casters, and in 1969 hit its high of 1,706 employees. A 1925 

account reported that GPO had the capacity to machine-set 

the entire Bible within only six hours. The real story of hot 

metal composition at GPO is about the people who worked 

there, experts not only in the craft of typesetting but of related 

fields as well. There were linguists, grammarians, and other 

experts to whom the Government turned time and again for 

the last word on language and usage. This versatility of the 

GPO compositor has always been reflected in the GPO Style 

Manual, an in-house product that is an industry standard. 

These were the skills that GPO turned to that ensured the 

successful development of its electronic printing system. 

The decline of hot metal typesetting had an impact on GPO’s 

building plans. By the early 1980s, with the failure to obtain congressional 

approval for a new facility at the Brentwood site, GPO was left with few 

options. In 1982, at the 

request of the JCP, the 

General Accounting 

Office performed a 

study of the need for 

a new building. The 

resulting report identified several alternatives 

that would lessen the 

problems caused by the 

physical characteristics 

of GPO’s buildings, 

and urged cost/benefit 

analyses of these alternatives. Under Public 

Printer Sawyer, GPO 

performed the analyses 

and concluded it was 

less costly to remain in 

place, with a consolidation of operations in 

space that was freed up 

by the downsizing of 

composition functions. 

GPO began efforts 

Ralph E. Kennickell, Jr., 

was the youngest person ever 

appointed Public Printer.

The last issue of the Congressional Record printed from 

stereotype plates struck from lead type, April 10, 1979. 

Hot metal typesetting ended altogether in 1985.
The GPO Style Manual

One of the most popular and widelyused documents produced by GPO is 

the Government Printing Office Style 

Manual, an official guide to the form and style 

of Federal Government printing. The Manual 

is issued under the authority of section 1105 of 

Title 44 of the United States Code, that requires 

the Public Printer to “determine the form 

and style in which the printing...ordered by a 

department is executed...having proper regard 

to economy, workmanship, and the purposes 

for which the work is executed.” The Manual 

is prepared by the GPO Style Boad, composed 

of proofreading, printing, and Government 

documents specialists from within GPO. 

The first GPO Style Manual appeared 

in 1894. It was developed primarily as a 

printers’ stylebook to standardize word and 

type treatment and remains so today. Through 

successive editions, however, the Manual has 

come to be recognized by writers and editors 

both within and outside of the Federal Government as one of the most useful resources 

in the editorial arsenal. The 29th edition of the Manual, issued in 2000, formally 

introduced terms and usage for digital technology, and was the first Manual produced in 

CD-ROM and made available online. The 30th edition, released in 2008, was thoroughly 

redesigned to make it more modern and easier to read, the content was updated 

throughout, and incorporated many suggestions offered by users. 

The 1908 GPO Style Manual The 2008 GPO Style Manual

111
112

Joseph E. Jenifer receives his official appointment as Deputy Public Printer. When he became Acting Public Printer in 1988, he was the highest-ranking African-American official in GPO history.
113

to get out of leased facilities including the procurement and production 

functions located at the Navy Yard, and the library program operations 

located in Alexandria, VA, and move them back to North Capitol Street. 

The pattern of moving from leased to owned space characterized GPO’s 

building plans for the remainder of the 20th century.

GPO continued to experience financial growth through the 1980s, 

with revenues climbing past $1 billion by 1989, the highest ever at that 

time. Under Public Printer Kennickell, regional procurement offices 

were expanded with the addition of six small satellite procurement offices 

serving special agency needs in San Antonio, Oklahoma City, Charleston, 

South Carolina, San Diego, Pittsburgh, and New Orleans, and printing 

procurement remained at 75 percent of total revenues. The number of 

depository libraries grew to nearly 1,400, while the number of publications 

distributed to the libraries increased by more than one-third. GPO was 

responsible for a number of high profile publications during the decade, 

including the Final Report of the President’s Commission on the Challenger 

Space Shuttle Accident, the Iran-Contra Report, and the Report of the 

Attorney General’s Commission on Pornography.

But other signs emerged that GPO’s conventional printing and 

distribution business had begun to decline, including reduced volumes 

of congressional work and postal card production. The amount of 

paper issued to production fell by about 10 percent. There were four 

fewer bookstores by the end of the 1980s, and the number of bookstore 

customers declined by more than one-fourth by 1989 as did the overall 

number of publications sold by the sales program. Overall employment 

fell to 5,080 by 1989 as GPO continued to automate functions, especially 

in the composition area.

The Rise of Electronic Information Services and Products 

The change in GPO’s business was the result of the growing use of 

electronic information technologies government-wide, which by the 

mid-1980s was readily evident. GPO responded by beginning to offer 

electronic products and services such as CD–ROMs: in 1989, for example, 

a requisition for the procurement of the Defense Logistics Agency’s 

Federal Logistics Data on CD–ROM resulted in the largest single 

procurement by GPO of this technology to that time. GPO also expanded 

“dialup” composition services linking its systems with remote computerized input in congressional and agency offices, 

established an electronic 

bulletin board for posting 

printing procurement 

bid information, and 

experimented with FM 

sideband dissemination 

and online dissemination. 

In 1984, GPO requested 

appropriations for the development of a database 

of Federal information 

but the request was 

rejected.

Later in the decade, 

GPO participated in 

a study of Federal 

information technology by the Office of 

Technology Assessment 

(OTA). OTA’s widely read report, Informing the Nation (1987), found that 

the use of electronic information technologies “has outpaced the major 

Government-wide statutes that apply to Federal information dissemination,” and recommended a redefining of “GPO’s role in the dissemination 

of electronic formats,” particularly to depository libraries, and “GPO’s 

roles relative to the growth in agency desktop and high-end electronic 

publishing systems.” GPO subsequently used the report to support efforts 

to expand its electronic information operations, which initially drew opposition from the Office of Management and Budget and elements of the 

private sector information industry.33

During this period, GPO and the Joint Committee on Printing, with 

the support of the library community and GPO’s unions, worked to establish GPO’s role in the emerging electronic era. Following the unsuccessful 

effort to reform Title 44 in the late 1970s, the JCP authorized GPO to sell 

electronic files and databases used in the printing process as Government 

publications, rather than as printed products, as GPO had been doing for 
114

several years. The JCP also took the position that publications on CD–

ROMs were Government publications subject to the requirements of 

Title 44, and urged GPO to expand its efforts to provide electronic 

solutions for congressional and agency publications in response to growing 

demand throughout the Government. GPO and the JCP shared the view 

that GPO’s statutory responsibilities for the production and dissemination 

of Government publications applied to publications in electronic as well 

as print formats. This view was later expressed in a 1990 opinion of 

GPO’s General Counsel that “Congress did not intend to carve a distinction based upon the technology employed to disseminate Government 

publications. ...”

However, these views were not shared by all elements of the 

Government information community. Companies specializing in the electronic reproduction of Government information and publications argued 

that the private sector could provide these services more efficiently than 

Government, and that Government investment in electronic information 

services amounted to unfair competition. Supporters of Government 

provision of electronic information services argued that information dissemination was an inherent governmental function and that use of new 

and emerging technologies to promote broad and equitable public access 

to Government information access was part of that function.

This issue played itself out throughout the 1980s and into the early 

1990s in debates between GPO, the JCP, and the library community, on the 

one hand, and the Office of Management and Budget under the Reagan 

and Bush Administrations on the other, on such matters as the revision of 

the OMB circular on Federal information dissemination and the revision 

of the Paperwork Reduction Act. The disadvantage GPO faced was the 

printing-focused language of Title 44 and the absence of a specific authority to provide electronic information products, such as tangible products 

like CD–ROMs and online services. Also problematic was how the provision of electronic information products and services, in an information 

environment that was increasingly decentralized as the result of electronic 

technology, could be reconciled with the statutory mandate to use GPO for 

print services. By the end of the decade, a scenario suggested by the Office 

of Technology Assessment—retaining the mandate to use GPO for print, 

and authorizing GPO to provide electronic services on a non-mandatory 

basis—seemed to offer a solution.

In the summer of 1989, Representative Jim Bates of California led 

hearings based on the OTA report. The hearings resulted, in early 1990, in 

the introduction of legislation to reform Title 44. GPO testified in support 

of the legislation that, among other things, would clarify its authority to 

produce and procure electronic formats, redefine “publication” to include 

electronic formats, expand the purpose of indexing to include publications 

in electronic formats, and set up a system for providing electronic information services to depository libraries. However, the bill was not reported out 

of committee and the effort to change Title 44 was abandoned.

While the debate over GPO’s future was going on, the impact of 

the Chadha decision was revealed in 1987, when the Federal Acquisition 

Regulation (FAR) Council—composed of the Defense Department, 

the General Services Administration, and the National Aeronautics 

and Space Administration—published a notice in the Federal Register

proposing to amend the FAR—the rules under which executive branch 

agencies purchase goods and services—to allow them to buy their own 

printing instead of using GPO as required by law. The proposal cited 

the Chadha decision and the Justice Department’s opinions. Congress 

reacted by prohibiting the implementation of the FAR revision in a series 

of annual appropriations bills, upholding the principles and economies 

of centralized print production found in Title 44. The proposed revision 

was subsequently withdrawn quietly but the separation of powers issue it 

raised would be revisited again in the coming years.

After three years, Kennickell resigned to return to the private 

sector, leaving GPO under the direction of Acting Public Printer Joseph 

E. Jenifer, a career GPO employee who began his service as a temporary 

worker in GPO’s printing plant in 1954. Jenifer graduated in 1961 from 

GPO’s five-year apprenticeship program as a journeyman linotype operator and later joined GPO’s newly created Electronic Photocomposition 

Section, working his way up through the ranks to become Deputy Public 

Printer in 1985. He was the first African-American employee ever 

appointed to GPO’s second-highest office, and following Public Printer 

Kennickell’s resignation in late 1988, he became the highest ranking 

African-American employee in GPO history, serving in that position until 

his retirement in March 1990. During the time he was in office, Jenifer 

testified on the impact of electronic information technologies, clearly indicating that GPO understood the challenges of the coming digital era. n
1991-2011
116
117

Afundamental product of GPO’s transition to 

electronic typesetting was the creation of electronic databases used for typesetting purposes. 

With the rise of electronic information technologies, 

those databases could be converted for online access by 

those seeking Government information. GPO’s transition to electronic typesetting, begun in the 1960s and 

completed in the 1980s, thus set the stage for passage of 

the GPO Electronic Information Access Enhancement 

Act of 1993, the most important change to Title 44 since 

the Depository Library Act of 1962 and arguably since 

the 1895 Printing Act itself. Now empowered by statute 

to provide online access to the Congressional Record, the 

Federal Register, and other publications from all three 

branches of the Government, GPO created GPO Access, its 

first online information service, which appeared in 1994 

just as Government and public use of the World Wide 

Web exploded. GPO’s creative use of this service, including its policy for permanent public access to Government 

information, was critically important in fending off a 

wave of institutional challenges during the 1990s from a 

Congress and a White House determined to alter the role 

of conventional printing and distribution within Federal 

information policy.

C H A P T E R 5

GPO in the Digital Era

As public use of digital Government information services increased 

in the first decade of the 21st century, some of those conventional services 

began to diminish, especially GPO’s retail publications sales program, 

while others were combined with digital capabilities to create new product 

lines. Most prominent among the new products was the e-passport (an 

electronically-enhanced version of the traditional passport), that in the 

wake of the attacks of September 11, 2001, became an urgent requirement. 

Rapid change in information technologies also created an opportunity to 

re-engineer GPO’s online offerings with the creation of a content management system to acquire, store, organize, and provide search and retrieval 

for the full range of digital documents. As GPO approached its 150th 

anniversary, its mission remained intact but its transformation into a 

digital information facility was well underway.

Public Printer Houk 

President George H. W. Bush nominated Robert 

W. Houk as Public Printer. Houk had spent his 

career in the business forms printing industry. 

He was confirmed in March 1990. During his 

term, GPO issued GPO/2001: Vision for a New 

Millennium, a strategic plan for GPO that embraced the use of electronic information technologies while improving the provision of conventional 

printing and distribution services, including the 

use of 100% recycled paper for regular use. Houk 

testified in support of early legislation to provide 

GPO with electronic dissemination authority.

Robert W. Houk was 

appointed by President 

George H.W. Bush in 1990.
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President Bush’s State of the Union Message

During Public Printer Houk’s term, GPO received a copy of the State of the Union message personally 

inscribed by President George H. W. Bush “to the GPO staff with sincere appreciation.” GPO had 

printed and delivered copies of the address in an exceptionally short timeframe. At 5:20 p.m. on 

January 29, 1991, the evening of the address, manuscript copy and a computer disk were delivered to 

GPO by the White House. The requirements were for 2,500 copies of an eight-page pamphlet with a 

gold-embossed cover, to be typeset, printed, bound, and delivered in three hours. In GPO’s Electronic 

Photocomposition Division, the computer disk was first converted from one computer language 

to another. Composition was completed using GPO’s Microcomp software, with output to a laser 

imagesetter. The imagesetter output was used for proofreading, correcting, and final page makeup. 

The Press Division photographed the camera-ready copy and produced and imposed the negatives. 

Offset plates were produced and the speech was printed on one of GPO’s sheet-fed presses. The job 

then moved to the Binding Division where cutting, folding, inserting, stitching, trimming, and 

packaging were performed. The initial 1,200 copies left GPO for the Capitol with a DC Metropolitan 

Police escort at 7:50 p.m. The remaining copies were delivered at 8:20 p.m. That evening, Americans 

who watched President Bush deliver his State of the Union Address on television at 9 p.m. saw copies 

of the Address in the hands of those seated in the audience of the House chamber, a testimony to the 

dedication and expertise of GPO’s skilled workforce.

Houk was immediately confronted by a highly critical report 

on GPO issued by the General Accounting Office (GAO). Entitled 

Government Printing Office: Monopoly-Like Status Contributes to Inefficiency 

and Ineffectiveness, the report’s five principal findings said that GPO’s 

operations were characterized by “costly, sometimes wasteful in-house 

production that relies on outdated equipment and does not focus on 

efficiency or quality; a procurement system that lacks necessary and readily 

available performance information and continues to award contracts to 

poorly performing contractors; poor communications with customers and 

poor systems for tracking and resolving customer complaints.” It included 

seven recommendations for improvements and a suggestion that GPO 

should convene a group to explore GPO’s “future role and mission” .34 

Although he did not agree with GAO’s reference to GPO’s “monopoly-like” status, Houk said he would use the report’s recommendations 

as the basis for improvements. He intended to reduce costs, improve 

responsiveness to customers, modernize the plant and workforce, establish 

effective management performance plans, and determine GPO’s future 

role in the Government. GPO developed an action plan to address GAO’s 

recommendations and in October 1993 GAO told GPO the requirements 

of the report were fulfilled and no further action was necessary. The 

“monopoly” characterization, however, by that time had been adopted by 

Vice President Al Gore’s Reinventing Government initiative as a rationale 

for proposals to decentralize Government printing, and would be raised 

again over the next several years.
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Public Printer DiMario 

After Houk resigned office in early 1993, 

President Bill Clinton appointed Michael 

F. DiMario as Public Printer. A former 

Air Force intelligence officer and an 

attorney by training, DiMario was a longtime GPO official who had held virtually 

every senior management appointment 

in the agency, including Deputy General 

Counsel, Superintendent of Documents, 

and Administrative Law Judge as well as 

key positions at the head of the Printing 

Procurement Department and Production 

operations. During his term, he oversaw the 

establishment and growth of GPO Access

and the transition of the depository library program to a predominantly 

electronic basis, implemented computer-to-plate and other electronic 

improvements including online bid solicitations, guided GPO in preparing 

its computer systems for the possible effects of the changeover to the Year 

2000, supported environmental reforms, and continued the reduction of 

staffing levels and other costs. DiMario faced some of the most direct challenges to GPO from Congress and the executive branch, and during a time 

of technology transition it fell to him to implement the new GPO Access law 

while articulating the continuing role of printing in Federal information 

policy. Including his service as Acting Public Printer prior to his appointment by the President, DiMario’s term at GPO’s helm from 1993–2002 was 

the third longest in the agency’s history, after Public Printers Giegengack 

and Carter.

Passage of the GPO Access Act 

Congressional efforts in the late 1970s and the late 1980s to address the 

growth of electronic alternatives to the conventional Government printing and distribution system through comprehensive reform of Title 44 

had been unsuccessful. In 1991, a new effort was undertaken, supported 

by the depository library community and public interest groups, to give 

GPO specific authority to provide electronic information services. Public 

Printer Houk supported this concept in hearings in 1991, as did Public 

Michael F. DiMario became 

President Clinton’s appointee 

in 1993.

Satellite trucks of the news media gather outside Building 1 for the annual release of the 

President’s budget.

Printer DiMario in 1993. The effort culminated that year with the passage 

of the GPO Electronic Information Access Enhancement Act, directing 

GPO to establish a system of online access to the Congressional Record

and the Federal Register and such other publications as determined by the 

Superintendent of Documents, an electronic storage facility, and a Federal 

information locator. The system was to be developed using funds from 

savings in the reduction of the distribution of printed information. GPO 

was to provide online access free of charge to depositories and was authorized to charge others for the service.

This landmark legislation gave GPO the necessary authority to 

assume an essential role in the provision of information services and ended 

a decade-long argument over GPO’s involvement in electronic information dissemination. GPO was required to have the system operating in 

one year. Service was begun in June 1994 as GPO Access. With the system, 

GPO adopted a unique policy of providing permanent public access 

to information posted online, based on the system of permanent access 
120

provided through GPO’s partnership with regional depository libraries. 

GPO Access won multiple awards throughout the 1990s. By the end of the 

decade, GPO’s provision of Government documents in both print and 

electronic formats—including the annual Federal budget, the documents 

associated with the impeachment of President Clinton, the judicial 

decisions in the celebrated Microsoft case, and others—had become the 

accustomed norm. GPO initially developed a system of subscriptions 

to GPO Access as authorized by law, but there were relatively few subscribers and in 1995 Public Printer DiMario ordered an end to the practice of 

charging users. Thereafter, use of the service grew exponentially. By the 

end of the decade GPO Access offered more than 225,000 titles and was 

providing 228,000,000 document retrievals annually. Meanwhile, system 

development and operating costs fell far under the original cost estimates 

from the Congressional Budget Office.

“Reinventing Government” and the “Contract with America” 

The enactment of electronic authority for GPO was timely, as the White 

House and Congress began to take up a series of proposals to alter the 

role of conventional printing and distribution within Federal information 

policy. Some of these proposals emerged within the framework of the 

separation of powers, echoing similar arguments advanced during the 

Wilson and Truman administrations, and were given new life by the 1983 

Chadha decision. Others were raised within the context of private/public 

sector provision of printing and information services, a longstanding issue 

that had been tempered by GPO’s partnership with the printing industry under the printing procurement program. The emergence of these 

issues signaled an intent by both Congress and the White House to move 

Government printing and information policy in the direction of digital 

technology and their willingness to consider fundamental institutional 

change for GPO in order to achieve that goal. 

In 1993, under the leadership of Vice President Gore, the 

Clinton Administration released its recommendations for “reinventing 

Government,” an effort to create a Government that “works better and 

costs less.”35 Included in this initiative was the claim that GPO was a 

“monopoly,” along with proposals to end congressional control over 

executive branch printing and make GPO compete with other 

President Clinton signed the GPO Access act (P.L. 103-40) in 1993. Government agencies and the private sector for printing contracts. 
121

Computer tape library, Data Systems Division.
122

The Administration also recommended that information distribution to 

depository libraries be performed instead by the agencies, and that other 

GPO distribution functions be similarly restructured in the executive 

branch.

Public Printer DiMario testified before Congress that the decentralization of Government printing among agencies would increase costs, 

reduce competitiveness in Government print procurement, and reduce 

public access to Government information. While recognizing the usefulness of electronic information dissemination and GPO’s role in providing 

electronic public access, he also provided a clear statement on the continuing utility of printing in Government information policy:

Ink-on-paper today is still the most egalitarian of information formats. It is accessible, transportable, and economical. 

The increased dissemination of Government information in 

electronic formats should indeed be pursued. ...But at this time 

electronic technologies must be utilized in addition to, not in 

place of, proven systems of Government information reproduction and dissemination, and protections must be provided 

for those who do not have access to computers and the other 

technologies necessary to make electronic access meaningful. For if we are not careful about maintaining policies to 

provide for the efficient and equitable access of all citizens 

to Government information, we run the risk of turning into 

a Nation of information-haves and information have-nots: 

a Nation of information elites, equipped with technology, 

and a Nation of the information-dispossessed, shut out by 

technology from access to critical information by and about 

Government that is essential to life in the United States today.

The concerns raised by GPO 

and others were enough to lead to the 

tabling of the legislation proposed by the 

Administration in 1994, but the concept 

of decentralizing Government printing 

by transferring GPO’s functions elsewhere would reappear later. 

The 1994 congressional elections 

brought new leadership to Congress that 

sought to implement its “Contract with 

America” by changing a Government 

that was “too big and spends too much.” 

The Starr Report

In the late summer and fall of 1998, GPO printed one of the highest profile Government documents of the 

decade, the report of the Independent Counsel on the investigation of President Clinton, the Starr Report, 

formally titled Communication from Kenneth W. Starr, Independent Counsel, Transmitting a Referral to the United 

States House of Representatives Filed in Conformity with the Requirements of Title 28, United States Code, Section 

595c. The report, with accompanying appendices totaled more than 8,000 pages, and all were produced under 

short time frames and high security conditions established by the House Judiciary Committee. The materials 

were also posted on GPO Access. The report was used in the impeachment of the President in late 1998 and his 

subsequent trial in early 1999 by the Senate, that acquitted him. The printing and online dissemination of these 

documents drew attention and praise from the Wall Street Journal for GPO’s “Herculean labors.”
123

Terminal for the Atex photocomposition system, Electronic Photocomposition Division.
124

Disk drives, Electronic Photocomposition Division.
125

provide in-house printing services to regional Federal agencies, sought a 

Justice Department opinion on the constitutionality of this provision. The 

Department responded in 1993 that it was permissible because “it does not 

give the GPO the authority to refuse to print any materials, but merely 

requires that printing be procured by or through GPO.”

A year later, Congress amended the 1992 provision to include 

“duplicating” within the definition of printing. President Clinton signed 

it into law, but said the provision raised “serious constitutional concerns,” 

and between 1994 and 1996 there were multiple efforts by the Office 

of Management and Budget and Congress to work out a compromise 

position. These efforts collapsed in May 1996, when the Department of 

Justice issued an opinion finding that the extent of congressional control 

over executive branch printing violated the separation of powers and was 

Among other issues, the 104th Congress took up proposals that sought to 

privatize Government printing and reduce the scope of GPO and its operations. None of the introduced versions advanced beyond hearings and, 

although a comprehensive printing reform bill was introduced in the final 

days of the 104th Congress, there were no hearings. A common feature of 

these bills was the proposal to abolish the Joint Committee on Printing, 

which eventually was taken up by Congress. Subsequent legislative branch 

appropriations acts reduced the JCP’s funding and then eliminated it 

beginning with the 106th Congress. The Committee’s authority was not 

abolished, however, but was exercised thereafter by staff of the House 

Administration and Senate Rules and Administration Committees on an ad 

hoc basis.

The opportunity to generate savings from GPO Access was taken 

up quickly by the new congressional leadership, which required GPO 

to study the transition to a more electronic Federal Depository Library 

Program. The Study to Identify Measures Necessary for a Successful 

Transition to a More Electronic Federal Depository Library Program was 

published in June 1996. The rapid transition period of two years originally 

proposed by the study raised concerns in the library community, which 

in 1996 reported only 38% of depositories could offer the public even one 

up-to-the-minute personal computer with Web browser software and full 

Internet connection. The community advised that a transition plan of five 

to seven years would be more practical, and that period was implemented. 

Thereafter, savings generated by printing less for distribution to depository libraries were used to help fund GPO Access.

Relations with the Executive Branch 

During the Clinton Administration, the dispute between Congress and 

the executive branch over control of Government printing came to a 

head. Although this was a longstanding point of contention dating to 

the Wilson and Truman administrations, the dispute had its immediate 

origins in 1991, when Congress enacted a permanent bar on the 1987 

attempt to revise the Federal Acquisition Regulations—which would 

have allowed given agencies their own printing authority—by requiring 

all printing to be performed by GPO. The following year, the prohibition 

was amended to apply to all executive branch printing paid for by appropriations. The General Services Administration, which was authorized to 

GPO produced and distributed CD–ROM versions of many popular publications throughout the 

1990s.
126

Computer-to-plate processing, Digital Prepress Division.
unconstitutional. The 1996 opinion also said that executive branch officials 

would not be held liable for ordering printing in violation of the law, irrespective of the opposite view held by the General Accounting Office. One 

observer remarked that this development reflected a “serious deterioration 

of interbranch comity.” 36

In response to these developments, Senator John Warner of Virginia, 

Chairman of the Joint Committee on Printing, led an effort with Senator 

Wendell Ford of Kentucky to develop a comprehensive reform bill. 

Hearings were held in 1997, and in 1998 a bill was introduced containing sweeping revisions to Title 44 aimed at addressing the separation of 

powers issue and modernizing the statute to provide GPO with more 

effective authorities in an increasingly electronic era. The bill received 

broad support from Public Printer DiMario, the library community, labor, 

public interest groups, and other stakeholders but fell short of the backing 

it needed in Congress to ensure passage. Though reported to the Senate 

floor late in the closing days of the 105th Congress, it was not passed before 

Congress adjourned.

Service Improvements and Financial Cutbacks

Against the backdrop of Administration and congressional proposals to 

reform GPO were a number of key changes in GPO’s operations. In 1995 

GPO installed three new 64-page web offset presses to replace the four 

letterpresses originally installed in 1953 and 1973 to print the Congressional 

Record and the Federal Register. In 1998, GPO introduced state-of-the-art 

computer-to-plate technology, generating significant cost savings. Fiber 

optic links with Congress were expanded for remote access to GPO’s 

composition system, increasing the volume of congressional copy received 

electronically. The relocation of the Office of the Federal Register across 

H Street NW from GPO facilitated the installation of a laser link for the 

transmission of publishing data. As the new century approached, GPO 

joined with the rest of Government, industry, and technology professionals 

to prepare its computerized business and production systems for the 

possible problems for computers at the beginning of year 2000, known 

as Y2K.

The 1990s also saw the implementation of key environmental 

improvements for recycled paper and vegetable oil-based inks. GPO’s 

initial use of 100% recycled newsprint for the Congressional Record and 

the Federal Register ran from 1991 to 1997, when the company producing 

it ceased production; thereafter, recycled newsprint contracts were for 

paper with the minimum 40% postconsumer waste content until 2009. In 

1993, legislation was introduced to require the use of vegetable oil-based 

inks in Government printing to reduce dependence on foreign oil, rely on 

a domestically produced resource, and result in an environment-friendly 

product. GPO supported the legislation and it was enacted in 1994. 

Since then, with the exception of security inks, all inks used by GPO for 

in-house and procured printing meet the statutory standard for including 

vegetable oil-based inks, made primarily from soybean oil.

At the same time, GPO’s financial position was eroding due to an 

abrupt decline in printing demand in the early 1990s, primarily from the 

Department of Defense. As public use of GPO Access and other Federal 

Web services expanded, those who formerly relied on the publications 

from GPO’s sales program turned increasingly to free Web access, resulting in financial losses as revenue from the sale of publications fell by more 

than one-third. Public Printer DiMario responded to the reduced business 

volume by securing wage concessions affecting work hours and nightwork 

pay, consolidating operations from leased to owned space, and reducing 

the workforce through retirement incentives and attrition by more than 

35%. By the end of the 1990s, GPO employed fewer workers than at any 

other time in the 20th century.

These and other measures were outpaced by falling revenues, 

however, and by 1999 GPO had sustained more than $30 million in 

operating losses throughout the decade, to which were added an additional $17 million in losses from other reporting requirements. GPO used 

money in its revolving fund that was set aside for investment in new plant 

and equipment to absorb the losses and did not ask Congress for supplemental appropriations. It continued to receive favorable audit opinions 

throughout this period, as it had historically. An exhaustive management 

study of GPO by Booz-Allen & Hamilton, Inc., requested by the House 

Appropriations Committee late in the decade, reported broad support 

for GPO’s plant production, printing procurement, and documents 

dissemination programs across the Government, a finding that stood in 

marked contrast to the GAO report issued at the beginning of the 1990s. 

Nevertheless, by decade’s end GPO’s financial resources were significantly 

depleted.

127
128

As part of the effort to reduce costs, GPO shed its regional printing 

plants in New York, San Francisco, Chicago, and at the Washington, DC, 

Navy Yard. The Chicago regional printing plant for many years was the 

producer of the Commerce Business Daily, the Government’s compendium 

of contracting opportunities, which was supplanted by a Web site called 

FedBizOps. For a brief period in the 1990s GPO also took over the management of a field printing plant in Juneau, AK, formerly operated by the 

General Services Administration. During the 1990s, all were closed or, in 

the case of the Navy Yard facility, consolidated with the main GPO printing 

plant. The Denver operation, which was cleared for classfied work, stayed 

open until 2003, when it was finally closed.

GPO’s bookstores also were targeted for closure. During the 1990s, 

the number of publications sold annually fell from 28.5 million to 8.9 

million, and by 2001 the number was down to less than seven million. To 

offset the loss of business, GPO cut sales staffing, reduced its inventory, 

increased prices on the remaining items, and offered improvements including a secure Web-based ordering service and expanded credit card payment 

acceptance. Along with these actions, GPO began closing bookstores in 

2001. Bookstores in San Francisco, McPherson Square in Washington, DC, 

Boston, and Philadelphia were closed that year, and the stores in Chicago, 

Cleveland, Columbus, and Birmingham followed in 2002.

GPO Enters the 21st Century

The GPO that closed out the 1990s—and the twentieth century—was 

smaller, less industrialized, and computerized far beyond the imagination 

of anyone in the “big shop” that began the century. But it remained intact 

and prepared to face the challenges of the future.

No one could have envisioned the first of those challenges, however, 

as GPO—like everyone else in the Nation—watched the terrorist attacks 

of September 11, 2001, unfold in New York and Washington, DC. In the 

aftermath, GPO looked for ways it could help. A secure area was set up on 

GPO’s Web site so that employees of the Equal Employment Opportunity 

Commission’s regional office, which had been destroyed at the World Trade 

Center complex, could continue working from home. Personnel from GPO’s 

Inspector General’s office assisted with rescue and recovery efforts in New 

York and at the Pentagon. Later that autumn, when mailed packages containing anthrax forced the closure of House and Senate office buildings, GPO 

provided space for personnel from the Office of the Clerk of the House and 

the Senate Legislative Counsel, and turned over its loading docks in Building 

4 to the Capitol Police for use in screening deliveries to Capitol Hill. GPO 

also set up an emergency printing facility at its Laurel, MD, warehouse, and 

stepped up security procedures at its main offices, including the installation of 

magnetometers and other screening equipment at building entrances.

A New Logo for GPO

In 2003, GPO unveiled a new logo to take the place of the 1907 logo that had been reintroduced by Public 

Printer Kennickell in 1985. The new logo was adopted by GPO “to symbolize its transformation from an 

ink-on-paper provider to a digital data delivery organization. The new logo reflects GPO’s determination 

to meet the evolving information needs of its client agencies and to serve an increasingly digital-aware 

American public.” The elements of the new logo were purposely selected to demonstrate the historical progression in printing. The “G” 

was modified from a traditional typeface, Times New Roman, which marked a change from type derived from handwritten text to more 

legible type forms used in a mechanical printing press. The “P” alluded to woodblock, hot metal, and Linotype technologies, reflecting a 

modern era in printing and publication in its sans serif typeface. The “O” was a digitally modified form of an oldstyle face, ITC Galliard, 

representing an integration of past, present, and future. Pixel shapes are incorporated to further suggest digital and electronic processes.
129

In the wake of 9/11, Federal agencies began reviewing their information products for security issues. The U.S. Geological Survey asked GPO 

to withdraw from depository libraries and destroy copies of a CD–ROM 

entitled Source Area Characteristics of Large Public Surface-Water Supplies 

in the Coterminous United States: An Information Resource for Source-Water 

Assessment. Unlike other withdrawal requests typically involving superseded 

or outdated information, this was a request to withdraw information based 

on sensitivity determined by other events. The process led GPO to revise its 

document withdrawal guidelines to fully involve the requesting agency and 

the library community in future document withdrawals.

The institutional challenges to GPO of the 1990s were renewed 

early in the administration of President George W. Bush, when the Office 

of Management and Budget issued a new separation of powers challenge 

to GPO’s printing authority. OMB Memorandum M–02–07, “Printing 

and Duplicating Through the Government Printing Office” (May 2002), 

echoed the Justice Department’s opinions on the Chadha decision, the 1987 

FAR revision proposal, and the Clinton Administration’s reinventing 

Government initiative by instructing the heads of executive departments 

and agencies to produce or procure their printing work wherever they 

wished, without regard to the requirement in Title 44 to use GPO. In 

hearings before Congress that summer, Public Printer DiMario testified 

that OMB’s proposal would potentially increase Federal printing costs 

significantly, in addition to limiting public access to Government information. OMB announced it would procure the printing of the Budget of the 

U.S. Government itself, instead of producing it through GPO as it had 

done previously. In response, Congress included language in a continuing 

appropriations resolution later that year blocking OMB from producing 

the Budget other than at GPO. GPO, for its part, revised its cost estimate 

for the publication to offer OMB a savings over the previous year’s cost. 

OMB accepted the new estimate and pledged to work through GPO. Its 

proposal on executive printing remained pending, however.

Public Printer James 

In the midst of this controversy, President Bush nominated Bruce R. James 

as Public Printer. A graduate of Rochester Institute of Technology’s School 

of Printing Management and Sciences, James had spent his career in the 

print and information industry where he developed several companies, 

including a law publishing company. He was 

confirmed by the Senate in November 2002. 

“Throughout my life I have used technology to 

enhance the ability to get information into the 

hands of people, and this was a task I was up 

to taking on,” James said. Promising to uphold 

the printing laws until Congress changed them, 

James proposed to resolve the dispute with 

OMB by creating a printing “compact” that 

would provide agencies with more choice and 

potentially reduce costs while keeping printing 

within the requirements of the law. In June 

2003, OMB and GPO jointly announced this 

agreement, and OMB’s directive was quietly 

withdrawn.

GPO’s nationwide contract with Kinkos (later FedEx Office), known 

as GPO ExpressTM, initially awarded in 2005, was the printing procurement 

solution that included several of the compact’s characteristics. The contract 

covered the production of quick-turnaround printing that previously had 

been provided through multiple regionally located commercial printers. 

The new convenience printing contract offered a standardized package of 

service capabilities via a pricing schedule that provided significant discounts 

off of the vendor’s regular prices. The objective was to capture printing 

and duplicating that previously had escaped from GPO’s procurement and 

dissemination system, resulting in higher costs to agencies and instances of 

eligible documents not being distributed to depositories. Along with this 

contract, GPO increased the dollar limit on simplified purchase agreements, 

expanding the ability of agencies to procure products and services directly 

from lists of prequalified vendors without first going through GPO. 

In December 2004, GPO published its Strategic Vision for the 21st 

Century, the result of a planning initiative that had commenced on James’ 

arrival, and based in part on a GAO review of GPO begun earlier during 

the controversy with OMB. The document articulated the impact of 

digital technology on GPO:

Throughout its history, GPO has been organized to carry 

out its mission in a traditional printing craft setting with its 

President George W. Bush 

appointed Bruce R. James 

in 2002.
Smart Cards 

The success of GPO’s conversion to e-passports 

and the emergence of the need for other secure 

credentials in the post-9/11 period provided an 

opportunity for a new product line for GPO. In 2007, the 

agency established a capability for the production of secure 

Federal credentials, known as smart cards, in Building 3. 

These included the production of secure credentials for law 

enforcement personnel involved with the 2009 Presidential 

inauguration; hundreds of thousands of cards for the 

Department of Homeland 

Security’s Customs 

and Border Protection, 

such as the Trusted 

Traveler Program cards 

NEXUS, SENTRI, and 

FAST cards, which give 

pre-approved travelers 

faster service in crossing 

America’s northern and southern borders; as well as cards 

for Medicaid recipients in Puerto Rico, Federal Inspectors 

General, and other identification programs. In 2010, GPO’s 

smart card production facility was certified by the General 

Services Administration as the only Government facility 

capable of providing Federal agency identification cards 

meeting the standards of Homeland Security Presidential 

Directive (HSPD)–12, issued in 2006. 

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emphasis on extensive capital investments in heavy metal 

equipment operated in a large factory environment. While 

GPO’s mission will remain essentially the same in the future, 

the introduction of digital technology has changed the ways its 

products and services will be created and how they will look 

and function to meet the ever-changing needs of the Federal 

Government and the way public users of Government information now prefer it. ...Therein lies the biggest challenge for 

the Government Printing Office.

The key initiatives established by the Vision were projects to develop 

a flexible digital information content system for Federal documents; leverage the value of GPO’s aging buildings against the cost of building a new 

printing and digital information factory; expand the production of secure 

and intelligent documents, including passports and other documents; 

reorganize GPO around business lines or units; import digital solutions 

to GPO’s ongoing business needs; and expand training opportunities 

for employees. These objectives were to guide GPO operations for the 

remainder of the decade.

The development of a new digital content system was the primary 

outcome of the Strategic Vision document. By the early 2000s, the limitations of GPO Access had become readily apparent. The system relied on a 

dated search and retrieval system called WAIS (Wide Area Information 

System) with limited capabilities, a fact acknowledged in GPO’s 

appropriations requests for fiscal years 2003 and 2004, when funds were 

requested to upgrade the system. GPO Access was also unable to function 

as a platform for other digital ingest, storage, production, and dissemination capabilities proposed by the Strategic Vision.

The purpose of the new digital content system, named the 

Federal Digital System, or FDsys, was to “organize, manage, and output 

authenticated content for any use or purpose and to preserve the content 

independent of specific hardware or software so that it can be migrated 

forward and preserved for the benefit of future generations.” It would 

be designed to house “all known Federal Government documents within 

the scope of the Federal Depository Library Program, whether printed 

or born digital.” These would be “cataloged and authenticated and then 

entered into a system according to GPO metadata and document creation 

standards,” to be available later for “Web searching and Internet viewing, 

downloading and printing, and as document masters for conventional 

and on-demand printing, or other digital requirements.” The system 

was to be developed in three stages, or releases, with Release 1 equivalent 

to a replacement of GPO Access with new search and retrieval capabilities 

and other enhancements. Release 1 of FDsys went live in early 2009, to 

positive reviews from the press and public. Once all of the databases were 

migrated and upgraded from GPO Access to FDsys, GPO Access was slated 

for shut down.

With the release GPO Access

in 1994, GPO had begun providing 

online access to the Congressional 

Record, the Federal Register, and 

other congressional and agency 

publications. No provision was 

made in GPO’s online authorization for providing access to 

documents issued before that date. 

To remedy that situation, GPO’s 

Strategic Vision proposed digitizing all Federal publications issued 

prior to 1994 for inclusion in this 

system. In 2010, GPO developed 

a proposal to work collaboratively 

with the Library of Congress to digitize the 1951–2002 volumes of the 

Statutes at Large as well as all volumes of the Congressional Record, in 

addition to other core legislative, legal, and regulatory documents to be 

named later. The project was approved by the JCP, marking a significant 

new line of work for GPO in carrying out its mission to keep America 

informed.

Another key objective of the Strategic Vision was a plan to offer 

GPO’s buildings and property to a commercial developer in exchange for 

the construction of a new, modern printing and digital production facility. 

Public Printer James argued that GPO’s buildings were aging, costly to 

maintain, and too large for GPO’s future needs. In addition to obtaining 

a new facility, the lease of the main structure, comprising GPO Buildings 

1–3, would generate income that could be used for investment in plant and 

Public Printer James greets President Bush 

during the presentation of the first volume of 

the President’s Public Papers in 2003.
132

Work on the official portrait of President Obama, 2009.
133

equipment, which in turn would decrease GPO’s needs for future appropriations. GPO proposed to sell Building 4 outright to raise the funds to 

finance the move and help furnish and equip the new facility.

In 2005, GPO contracted with the Staubach Company to develop 

its building proposal and design a new facility. The plan would require a 

change to GPO’s financial authority under Title 44 to allow GPO to lease 

property and retain the proceeds without returning them to the Treasury. 

The plan was generally well received on Capitol Hill, as long as Congress 

was permitted right of first refusal for vacated space at GPO, the new 

GPO was located within the Washington, DC, city limits, and the plan 

did not impose a significant financial burden on appropriations. This last 

condition proved to be too difficult to surmount. A draft bill developed 

by the Senate Rules and Administration Committee was “scored” by the 

Congressional Budget Office with a potential impact on appropriations of 

between $300 and $400 million, causing the relocation plan to be set aside.

Restoring GPO’s financial position was another objective of the 

Strategic Vision. In 2003, with an appropriation to the revolving fund of $10 

million, GPO conducted an early retirement incentive program, or buyout, 

that reduced employment rolls by more than 300 positions for a savings of 

an estimated $21.7 million annually. All the remaining bookstores except 

the main store at GPO itself were closed. A second buyout was conducted 

in 2004, reducing employment another 250 positions for an additional 

annual savings of $18.1 million. The combined savings from these efforts in 

fiscal year 2004 resulted in a consolidated financial gain of $11.3 million, the 

first since fiscal year 1998. This financial result was followed by a succession 

of year-end gains in most years throughout the rest of the decade, providing 

funds for increased investment in new equipment and technology.

Public Printer Tapella 

In April 2006, Public Printer James announced he would resign office to 

return to the private sector in January 2007. In May 2007, President Bush 

nominated Robert C. Tapella as Public Printer. He was confirmed in 

October. Before becoming Public Printer, Tapella had served as Deputy 

Chief of Staff and later Chief of Staff to James. He had more than a 

decade of experience as a professional staff member of the House of 

Representatives. He also had a background and degree in graphic communications from California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo. 

An architect of GPO’s Strategic Vision, 

Tapella took office committed to continuing the program begun under James. He 

pursued this through the development of 

FDsys, the ongoing replacement of GPO’s 

legacy computer systems with an integrated 

suite of business systems, expanded digital 

services for Federal agencies, and the establishment of a backup facility for the production of e-passports. Tapella also made 

sustainable environmental stewardship an 

ongoing strategic initiative for GPO and 

continued to call for a new GPO building. 

GPO’s development of electronic or 

e-passports heralded a new generation of 

mixed digital and print products. In the late 

1990s, the United States and other nations agreed to use an electronic chip 

in passports to standardize and enhance the operability of passports at 

borders around the world. The chips were to be compliant with a standard 

established by the International Civil Aviation Organization, a UN-based 

organization. After 9/11, the concept of the chips acquired an additional 

importance for establishing secure identification. In 2004, GPO solicited 

bids for the chip technology, including the chip itself and an antenna assembly, to be incorporated into the passport covers. No U.S.-based offerors 

came forward, and after a round of testing and evaluation involving GPO, 

the State Department, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, 

and other Federal agencies, contracts were awarded to two overseas chip 

manufacturers for the chip and antenna production and insertion into the 

passport covers. In the meantime, GPO developed and installed a new IT 

infrastructure in Building 4 to support the production and administration 

of e-passports and implemented additional protections to ensure the security of the passport production and delivery process, including delivery by 

armored carriers to replace GPO and commercial deliveries.

In 2006, after the installation of additional equipment and testing, 

GPO began producing e-passports, and by 2007 production of conventional print-only passports ended and e-passports became GPO’s sole passport product line. This imposed additional administrative requirements 

Robert C. Tapella was appointed 

Public Printer by President Bush 

in 2007.
The Longest-Serving Employees

I

n 1933, an extraordinary GPO employee reached the milestone of 60 years of 

service. He was W. Andrew (Andy) Smith (1854–1941), who came to work at GPO 

as a messenger in 1873 and spent the next 68 years at GPO, most of them as either 

Congressional Record Clerk or Assistant Clerk. Smith was described as “an efficient, 

faithful, devoted employee of GPO” who worked until the day before his death, at age 87, 

on May 14, 1941.

Five years later, Virginia F. Saunders joined GPO as a typist in the Public 

Documents Division, probably little imagining that she would very nearly equal Andy 

Smith’s remarkable record of service. Smith had devoted his career to the Congressional 

Record. Saunders moved into her place of distinction in 1969, when Superintendent 

of Documents Carper W. Buckley singled her out to take over the compilation of the 

Congressional Serial Set. At first she demurred, saying “I don’t know enough about congressional documents.” Buckley persisted and 

eventually persuaded Saunders to take the job on a trial basis. Over the next 40 years, she became a recognized expert on the history and 

function of the Serial Set and the recognized authority both within and outside GPO on its compilation and 

production. She had friends and admirers throughout GPO, the nationwide library community, and on 

Capitol Hill, not only because of her long service, but for her dedication and concern for the perpetuation 

and improvement of the Serial Set. She was recognized in 1989 by GPO and President George H.W. Bush 

for a modification to the makeup of the Serial Set that saved taxpayers an estimated $600,000 in the cost of 

including the Iran-Contra hearings. She served with distinction on a study group that substantially revised 

and modernized the makeup of the Serial Set in 1994. And four times Members of Congress rose to pay 

tribute to her in the Congressional Record: on her 50th and 60th anniversaries, when she received the James 

Bennett Childs Award from the Government Documents Roundtable of the American Library Association 

in 1999, and at the time of her death.

In early 2009, Virginia Saunders was interviewed by a Washington Post reporter for a feature about 

her long service. He asked her about retirement and she replied, “As long as my health is pretty good, I 

intend to hang in with my boots on.” Despite failing health, she continued to serve in her position, and she 

died, with her boots still on, on June 19, 2009, after 63 years of service. 

134
135

complex at the Stennis Space Center in Mississippi. New press and bindery 

equipment was procured, 47 personnel were hired and trained (helping 

to provide additional employment in an area devastated by Hurricane 

Katrina in 2005), and secure IT and communications systems were 

established to support passport production five days per week, on one shift. 

This was the first remote production facility established by GPO in the 

post-World War II period. In 2010, both the Washington, DC, and Stennis 

passport production facilities achieved certification by the International 

Standards Organization (ISO) as complying with ISO 9001, signaling that 

GPO’s passport production operations meet globally recognized standards 

of excellence for production and quality processes.

on GPO and the State Department, 

including developing accurate pricing 

and the financing of technology and 

equipment upgrades, all covered by 

a formal memorandum of understanding between the two agencies. 

GPO’s production capabilities for the 

e-passport were challenged in 2007 

and in 2008 when public demand for 

passports escalated sharply, largely 

in response to new identification 

requirements for travel in North 

America and the Caribbean. GPO’s production of e-passports jumped to 

23.5 million in FY 2008, compared with 19.3 million in fiscal year 2007 

and 13.1 million in 2006. To meet the demand, GPO expanded production 

to two full shifts and authorized significant overtime, enabling it to meet 

scheduled requirements with no delay in delivery. By fiscal years 2009 and 

2010, annual passport production subsided to 10.5 million and 13.2 million, 

respectively. In 2010, GPO issued a Request for Proposals (RFP) for a new 

chip assembly contract. 

To support the State Department’s need for a backup capability 

to produce passports, and with Joint Committee on Printing approval, 

GPO created a second passport production facility in 2008 in an unused 

A second facility for passport production was opened in Stennis, Mississippi, in 2008.
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and was unable to provide guidance on how to address the issue of the 

budget “score” that had hobbled the previous plan.38

Public Printers James and Tapella emphasized investment in new 

equipment as a means to develop and support new product lines for GPO. 

Along with the production of smart cards, these included presses for printing color documents in-house. A key use of an enhanced in-house color 

printing capability came in 2009, when GPO printed the official portraits 

of President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden. Copies of the 

photos were distributed by the General Services Administration to more 

than 7,000 Federal facilities worldwide and made available by GPO for 

sale to the public.

Another example of expanded product offerings came when GPO’s 

FDsys capabilities were used to support the Obama Administration’s 

Open Government Initiative. In 2009, in cooperation with the Office of 

the Federal Register, GPO provided Federal Register data in extensible 

markup language (XML) format to a new Web site, data.gov. The 

following year, GPO assisted the Office of the Federal Register in the 

development of Federal Register 2.0, a state-of-the-art application for 

providing access to Federal Register information, featuring a new layout 

that organizes the content by topics, similar to the organization of a newspaper Web site.

The ongoing transition to accessing Government information 

electronically had a significant impact on GPO’s Superintendent of 

Documents operations in the 2000s. In GPO’s sales program, the number 

of publications sold dropped from 7.4 million in 2000 to 1.1 million by 

decade’s end, reflecting the end of brick-and-mortar retail sales by 2003. 

Online sales began to grow, however, and with the modernization of the 

main bookstore in 2010 and the introduction of new products, including a partnership with Google for e-Books, the business seemed to have 

stabilized. The number of copies of tangible publications distributed to 

depository libraries continued to fall during the decade, from 12.2 million 

in 2000 to 3.2 million in 2009, and program operations continued to shift 

to an expanded range of electronic collection management responsibilities. 

By the end of the decade the number of depository libraries had declined 

to 1,239, and calls were growing for changes to the Depository Library Act 

to adapt it to current technology and the ways Government information 

can be made accessible to the public today.

 Public Printer Tapella made sustainable environmental stewardship 

a key initiative for GPO, building on GPO’s conversion to recycled paper 

and vegetable oil-based inks in the 1990s, and arguing that it made good 

business sense: 

In the past, environmental issues for our industry were a 

matter of compliance with laws and regulations. But now 

we’re looking ahead to the future. And the future is sustainable environmental stewardship, which is more than just 

going green: it is being proactive and making changes so that 

we are a more efficient operation. ... Sustainable environmental stewardship is not a partisan issue. It’s good business, and 

it’s good government.

To carry out this initiative, GPO began developing plans to move 

from web offset presses to digital equipment to reduce paper consumption; 

accelerated the re-engineering of business processes to take advantage of the 

efficiencies of digital technology; conducted energy audits to reduce energy 

demand throughout GPO; evaluated paper that goes beyond the minimum 

standards for recycled content; reduced the waste generated by GPO’s 

production processes; and installed “green” roofs on GPO’s buildings 

that feature an energy-efficient, bio-based roofing system. In 2009, GPO 

increased the postconsumer waste content of the recycled newsprint used 

in the production of the Congressional Record and Federal Register to 100% 

from the previous level of 40% at no additional cost, earning the recognition 

of Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi. In other actions, 

the agency upgraded GPO’s vehicle fleet with more fuel efficient and 

environmentally friendly vehicles using funds appropriated to the General 

Services Administration by the 2009 economic stimulus bill, and adopted 

technologies to reduce emissions and cut GPO’s waste stream.37 

Tapella also amended his predecessor’s building plan to focus 

on development of a new structure on unimproved GPO property 

immediately west of the buildings, on land currently used for parking. 

A new structure would include space for House and Senate offices as 

well as GPO, while GPO’s older buildings would be turned over for 

commercial development. However, a report on the plan issued by the 

GAO in early 2009 recommended a review of other building alternatives, 
138

Public Printer Boarman

In April 2010, President Obama nominated William J. Boarman as Public Printer.  

Boarman had worked at GPO as a printer/

proofreader in the 1970s before leaving to 

serve in various elected posts within the 

International Typographical Union, which 

later merged with the Communications 

Workers of America, where he rose to become 

Senior Vice President and President of the 

Printing, Publishing, and Media Workers 

Sector.  Hearings were held before the Senate 

Rules and Administration Committee in May 

2010 and in July the nomination was reported 

favorably to the full Senate, where it remained 

pending on the Senate executive calendar until 

the close of the session. President Obama made a recess appointment on 

December 29, 2010. Boarman was sworn in as the 26th Public Printer 

on January 3, 2011. The President resubmitted the nomination in the 

112th Congress, where it was reported favorably by the Senate Rules and 

Administration Committee on May 11, 2011.

With Federal spending and efforts to control the Federal deficit 

dominating the agenda in the early months of the 112th Congress, Public 

Printer Boarman imposed 

changes to cut costs and rein in 

GPO’s spending, particularly in 

overhead areas. He cut GPO’s 

annual spending plan for FY 

2011, reduced GPO’s appropriations request for fiscal year 2012, 

realigned management to have 

the Chief Financial Officer 

reporting directly to him, and 

implemented a task force to 

recover outstanding payments, 

William J. Boarman was 

appointed by President Obama 

as the 26th Public Printer in 

December 2010.

known as “chargebacks,” from Federal agencies.  He began a series of 

meetings with Senators and Representatives on GPO’s oversight and appropriations committees to discuss Congress’s information product needs 

and issued an online survey of congressional offices on their continued 

need for print copies of the Congressional Record, the Federal Register, and 

other publications. GPO launched its page on Facebook, implemented 

a project to make Federal court opinions publicly available online, and 

worked with the General Services Administration to make 100 consumeroriented publications available to the public via GPO’s partnership with 

Google Books. In February 2011, Public Printer Boarman and GPO’s 

Chief of Staff Davita Vance-Cooks visited President Obama in the 

Oval Office to join in the presentation of the first bound volume of the 

President’s Public Papers.

At his public swearing-in ceremony held in January, Public Printer 

Boarman said, “Keeping America informed is a function rooted in the 

Constitution, and it’s one of the great national purposes served by this 

agency.” In his closing words, he also remarked on Beatrice Warde’s 

poem, observing:

For us at the GPO, Beatrice Ward’s poem is about a valued 

and special place where the official, authenticated word of 

our Congress and our constitutional government is reproduced 

and disseminated for the people of our great Nation. We still 

print—using processes that are thoroughly computerized— 

but we also use digital technology in new and exciting ways. 

The forms and capabilities of that technology continue to 

grow, and we embrace them to carry out our job. ... 

But we never forget that the principles of our work are 

enshrined in Warde’s poem, and whether what we do is in 

print or in bits and bytes, and whether in the long run we 

call it a printing office or an information office, we never 

forget that we stand on sacred ground, and that we are here 

to serve. n

Public Printer Boarman, Archivist David 

Ferriero, GPO Chief of Staff Vance-Cooks, and 

officials of the Office of the Federal Register 

present President Barack Obama with the first 

volume of his Public Papers in early 2011.
139

The GPO story is one of men and women using changing technologies to 

compose, print, bind, index, catalog, and distribute. Technological development and advance have been constant themes from that first March day 

in 1861. A history of GPO is a record not only of what GPO did over years 

and the people who performed that work, but the technology they used to 

do the job.

In 1861, lead type was set by hand by skilled compositors. Forms of 

made-up pages were placed directly on the presses. GPO was probably still 

using hand presses in 1861, but was certainly using steam-driven cylinder 

presses that moved the paper mechanically, which had been perfected 

a decade or so earlier. Paper in large sheets was dampened and fed into 

the press by pressmen (and women) who in turn took finished sheets off. 

Printing on the second side required that the paper be turned and fed 

again, until the introduction of the perfecting press, which printed on both 

sides of the sheet. Printed sheets were dried under great weight, then cut, 

collated, and bound.

By 1875, type was still set by hand, but rather than being always 

mounted directly on the press, stereotype plates were cast from it and 

mounted on the press. Some presses used a continuous roll (or web) of 

paper, although sheet feeding was still common. Paper was no longer 

dampened, and a wide variety of sophisticated machines cut, collated, and 

bound sheets into books, pamphlets, and other products. This period saw 

the development of machines that stitched or sewed along the folded edge 

of the sheets to create multileaf pamphlets.

Throughout these early years, there were continuing improvements 

in press capability and speed, but the slowness of hand-set type meant 

that GPO could not take full advantage of their efficiency. That changed 

in 1904, when the agency began to use Monotype and Linotype machines 

to set type. Within a few years GPO had the largest battery in the world 

of both common kinds of machines. Pages composed on Monotype or 

Linotype were cast into plates for use on ever-larger and faster presses. 

Typesetting machines were capable of setting lines of type per minute, 

A F T E R W O R D

compared with minutes per line of hand-set type, and in this period composition was finally able to keep pace with fast, efficient presses. Coupled 

with improvements in paper-making, these new production efficiencies 

rippled throughout the printing industry and GPO, driving down the cost 

of printing and leading to an explosion of printed matter. These developments resulted in higher literacy rates nationwide and—where GPO was 

concerned—in a new ability of the Government and the public to interact 

through the printed word.

In the years immediately after 1925, GPO began to supplement its 

letterpress production, in which type or plates directly touched each sheet, 

with offset printing, a lithographic process invented in 1901 by Ira W. 

Rubel, in which printing plates are created from photographic negatives. 

Offset plates transfer an image from the plate to a rubber blanket which, 

in turn, transfers it to the paper. The offset process was designed to yield 

longer print runs more economically, with the “offset” transfer of the 

image to the blanket to the paper lasting longer than raised type, which 

would eventually wear down. Type was set with Monotype and Linotype 

machines and negatives were created by photographing made-up pages. 

After World War II, offset printing superseded letterpress at GPO except 

in the production of the daily Congressional Record and Federal Register, 

which continued to use a modified letterpress process utilizing photopolymer plates until the acquisition of new offset presses in 1995.

In the 1950s, building on the capabilities introduced with offset 

printing, GPO began using typesetting machines that produced photographic images or negatives rather than metal type. Although these 

machines never superseded hot metal typesetting, they were the 

precursor of the technology that would. In 1967, CBS Laboratories, the 

Mergenthaler Co., and GPO introduced the Linotron, a machine to 

produce page negatives from magnetic tape input. The Linotron was 

GPO’s entrance into the age of computerized typsetting.

By 1975, the descendants of the Linotron had begun to close out the 

use of hot metal composition at GPO with the transition to the electronic 
140

photocomposition process, and by 1985 the era of hot metal typesetting 

was over. GPO’s electronic composition systems, including an automated 

composition system developed at the agency specifically for the production of congressional and Federal Register work, called Microcomp, still 

produced a photographic negative that was used to create an offset plate. 

In the 1990s, systems came into use that produced printing plates directly 

from digital files. This direct-to-plate technology rapidly replaced earlier 

photographic methods and coincided with the move, inside GPO and 

among the users it serves, to disseminate and use information online as 

well as in print. GPO launched GPO Access in 1994 to make a variety of 

congressional and other agency publications available over the Internet.

The digital transformation of GPO over the past generation has 

yielded significant savings to the taxpayers. Since GPO first began computerizing its prepress functions in the 1970s, the agency’s use of digital 

information technology has generated productivity improvements that 

have reduced the cost of congressional information products by more than 

two-thirds in real economic terms, resulting in cumulative savings in the 

hundreds of millions of dollars. GPO has had similar success in reducing 

the cost of information dissemination to the public while expanding the 

availability of Government information products and public access. 

The opening of the 112th Congress was dominated by the issue of 

reducing Federal spending to bring the growing deficit under control. 

GPO was not immune from this effort, along with other agencies sustaining a significant funding cut in the final funding bill for fiscal year 2011 

and facing potential additional cuts in fiscal year 2012. At this writing, 

legislation has been introduced to reduce the print production of the congressional bills and the Congressional Record and to achieve other savings 

through the reduction of Federal printing overall. At the same time, 

GPO’s digital work continues to grow, with new calls for online support 

for the Constitutional Authority Statements now required of all legislation 

in the House of Representatives, growing demand by Federal agencies 

for secure identification credentials featuring computer chips, digitization 

of previously printed documents such as all issues of the Congressional 

Record dating to 1873 in collaboration with the Library of Congress, a new 

partnership with the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts to publish 

selected court information online, and continued development of GPO’s 

Web presence in FDsys. 

On GPO’s 150th anniversary, Representative Robert A. Brady (PA) 

delivered remarks in the Congressional Record offering congratulations 

and best wishes to the agency. Noting that he represented Philadelphia, 

the home of Benjamin Franklin and the seat of the Constitutional 

Convention at which the Founding Fathers enshrined the requirement 

that Congress publish its proceedings, Rep. Brady said:

In a day when we are working hard to cut costs and improve 

services, the GPO provides a model of how an agency with a 

history of taking advantage of technological change has used 

that capability to generate lasting savings while expanding 

services to Congress, Federal agencies, and the public. The 

dedicated men and women of GPO have resorted continually 

to technology improvements to perform their work more efficiently, at one time using ink on paper to set the text for the 

Emancipation Proclamation, and today—as another President 

from Illinois leads the Nation—using e-Books, digital databases, and other new and emerging applications to achieve its 

founding mission of Keeping America Informed. n
141

Almon W. Clapp , August 1, 1876 – May 30, 1877

John D. Defrees , June 1, 1877 – April 14, 1882

Sterling P. Rounds , April 15, 1882 – September 12, 1886

Thomas Benedict , September 13, 1886 – May 6, 1889

Fran k W. Palmer , May 7, 1889 – May 2, 1894

Thomas Benedict , May 3, 1894 – March 30, 1897

Fran k W. Palmer , March 31, 1897 – September 8, 1905

O. J. Ric ketts (Acting), September 9, 1905 – November 27, 1905

Charles A. Stillings , November 28, 1905 – February 5, 1908

William S. Rossiter (Acting), February 6, 1908 – June 7, 1908

Capt . Henr y T. Brian (Acting), June 8, 1908

John S. Leech , June 9, 1908 – November 30, 1908

Samuel B. Donne Lly, December 1, 1908 – June 20, 1913

Cornelius Ford , June 20, 1913 – April 4, 1921

George H. Carter , April 5, 1921 – July 1, 1934

Augustus E. Giegengac k, July 2, 1934 – March 15, 1948

John J. Devin y (Acting), March 16, 1948 – May 5, 1948

John J. Devin y, May 6, 1948 – February 28, 1953

Philip L. Cole (Acting), March 1, 1953 – April 27, 1953

Raymond Blattenberger , April 28, 1953 – January 31, 1961

John M. Wilson (Acting), February 1, 1961 – March 4, 1961

Feli x M. Cristofane (Acting), March 7, 1961 – March 17, 1961

James L. Harrison , March 17, 1961 – March 31, 1970

Adolphus Nichols Spence II, April 1, 1970 – January 11, 1972

Harr y L. Humphre y (Acting), January 11, 1972 – January 31, 1973

LEONARD GOLDEN (Acting), February 1, 1973 – February 28, 1973

Thomas F. McCormic k, March 1, 1973 – November 1, 1977

John J. Boyle , November 1, 1977 – February 29, 1980

Samuel L. Saylor (Acting), March 3, 1980 – August 4, 1981

Danford L. Saw yer , Jr., August 5, 1981 – January 27, 1984

William J. Barrett (Acting), January 28, 1984 – December 11, 1984

Ralph E. Kennic kell , Jr., December 11, 1984 – November 18, 1988

Joseph E. Jenifer (Acting), November 19, 1988 – March 7, 1990

Robert W. Hou k, March 8, 1990 – February 19, 1993

Michael F. DiMario (Acting), February 19, 1993 – November 8, 1993

Michael F. DiMario , November 9, 1993 – November 20, 2002

Bruce R. James , November 20, 2002 – December 31, 2006

William H. Turri (Acting), January 1, 2007 – October 10, 2007

Robert C. Tapella , October 10, 2007 – December 28, 2010

Paul Eric kson (Acting) December 29, 2010 – January 3, 2011

William J. Boarman , January 3, 2011 –

H E A D S O F P U B L I C P R I N T I N G | 1 8 6 1 – 2 0 1 1

GPO Superintendents of Public Printing

John D. Defrees , March 23, 1861 – August 31, 1866

Cornelius Wendell , September 1, 1866 – February 28, 1867

John D. Defrees , March 1, 1867 – April 14, 1869

Congressional Printer

Almon W. Clapp , April 15, 1869 – July 31, 1876

Public Printers
142

N O T E S

1 Beatrice L. Warde, Bombed But Unbeaten (New York: The Typophiles, 1941).

2 Ibid. 

3 Harold C. Relyea, Title 44, Public Printing and Documents, A Brief Historical 

Overview, Congressional Research Service Issue Brief 79–36 GOV (Washington: 

Congressional Research Service, 1979). 

4 The original Government Document No. 1 is housed in the Library Company of 

Philadelphia. See the exhibition catalog, A Rising People: The Founding of the United 

States 1765 to 1789 (Philadelphia: The American Philosophical Society, 1976), p. 47.

5 David Mitchell Ivester, “The Constitutional Right to Know,” Hastings Constitutional 

Law Quarterly 4 (Winter, 1977), pp. 109–163.

6 Ibid.

7 Quoted in Report of the Serial Set Study Group (Washington, DC: Government 

Printing Office, 1994), p. 4.

8 George Barnum and August M. Imholtz, “ ‘Hidden Gem’ In Senate Report,” 

Unum: Newsletter of the Office of the Secretary of the Senate 8/4 (Winter 2004), p. 2.

9 Relyea, 1979, p. 8.

10 Laurence Schmeckebeier, The Government Printing Office, Its History, Activities, and 

Organization (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1925), pp. 3–4.

11 Article in an issue of The Printer (unknown place of publication, ca. 1859), of which 

GPO has proof sheets in its collection.

12 John B. Ellis, Sights and Secrets of the National Capital: A Work Descriptive of 

Washington City (NewYork: United States Publishing Company, 1869).

13 Kathleen McKirchy, America’s Oldest Union: The Columbia Typographical Union 101 

(Washington, DC: Columbia Typographical Union, 1990).

14 John Hope Franklin, The Emancipation Proclamation (New York: Doubleday, 

1963), p. 58.

15 Library of Congress Web site, http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/alhtml/alrb/

step/09221862/001.html, accessed 11/10/2010.

16 John D. Defrees to John G. Nicolay, Wednesday, December 17, 1862 (Emancipation 

Proclamation), Library of Congress Web site, http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/

query/r?ammem/mal:@field(DOCID+@lit(d4243200)), 

accessed 11/18/09. 

17 Robert E. Kling, Jr., The Government Printing Office (New York: Praeger Publishers, 

1970), pp.110–111.

18 Relyea, 1979, pp. 11–12.

19 J. A. Huston. Historical Sketch of the Government Printing Office, 1861–1916 

(Washington: The Fortson Press, 1916), p. 51.

20 Michael E. Grass, “Jefferson’s Bible Returns, Controversial as Ever,” Roll Call, 

January 20, 2005; Richard N. Ostling, “Patchwork Bible Provides Look as 

Jefferson’s World,” AP, printed in the Washington Post, August 21, 2001.

21 Willard B. Gatewood, Jr., Theodore Roosevelt and the Art of Controversy: Episodes of 

the White House Years (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1970), pp. 

169–172.

22 Rossiter Commission report (1908), summarized in 100 GPO Years (Washington, 

DC: GPO, 1961), p. 90.

23 See John Walters, “Politics as Usual: the Joint Committee on Printing and 

Executive Agency Publishing, 1919–1921,” Government Publications Review 20 

(1993), pp. 41-59; also, “Wilson Rebukes Congress in Veto as Trying to Muzzle,” 

New York Times, May 14, 1920.

24 Kling, 1970, p. 41.

25 Geoffrey T. Hellman, “Profiles—Mr. Public Printer-II,” The New Yorker, June 19, 

1943, p. 30.

26 James M. Goode, Outdoor Sculpture of Washington D.C.: A Comprehensive Historical 

Guide (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Press, 1974).

27 For a history of the Federal Register, see Relyea, 1979, pp. 29–35, and “The Federal 

Register: Origins, Formulation, Realization, and Heritage, prepared remarks delivered at the National Archives and Records Administration for the 75th Anniversary 

of the Federal Register, September 15, 2010, Washington, DC.

28 Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States, President Harry S. Truman, v. 5, 

1949 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1960), pp. 346–347.

29 See Executive Sessions of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the 

Committee on Government Operations, 83rd Congress, Second Session, 1953. Made 

public January, 2003. Senate Print 107–84 (Washington, DC: GPO, 2003). See also 

newspaper articles appearing daily between August 11, 1953, and August 30, 1953, 

in The Washington Post, The Washington Star, The Washington Daily News, and the 

Washington Times-Herald.

30 Kling, 1970, pp. 116–117, 151–153.

31 Kling, 1970, pp. 187–197.

32 Congress of the United States, Joint Committee on Printing, Fact Finding Hearing 

In Re: Joint Bargaining Committee on Unions, GPO, and the International 

Association of Machinists Franklin Lodge 2135 and GPO, Hearings Held Before 

Frederick U. Reel, July and August 1982, pp. 11–12.

33 Office of Technology Assessment, Informing the Nation: Federal Information 

Dissemination in the Electronic Era (Washington, DC: GPO, 1987).

34 Government Printing Office: Monopoly-like Status Contributes to Inefficiency and 

Ineffectiveness, GGD–90–107 (Washington, DC: General Accounting Office, 1990).

35 Vice President Al Gore, From Red Tape to Results, Creating a Government The Works 

Better and Costs Less: Report of the National Performance Review (Washington: GPO, 

1993). 

36 Harold C. Relyea, Public Printing Reform: Issues and Actions, CRS Issue Brief 98–687 

GOV (Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, 2003), p. 10.

37 “GPO Touts the Good Business of Green Efforts,” Roll Call, November 17, 2010.

38 Government Printing Office: Issues Faced in Obtaining a New Facility, GAO–09–392R, 

February 20, 2009 (Washington, DC: Government Accountability Office, 2009).
143

S O U R C E S

Along with the annual reports of the Public Printers, for the pre-1960 

period the best known history, recently reissued with an index, is 100 GPO 

Years 1861–1961 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1961), prepared under the direction of Public Printer James L. Harrison. 100 GPO Years followed R.W. 

Kerr’s History of the Government Printing Office (at Washington, D.C.), with 

a brief record of the Public Printing for a Century, 1789–1881 (Lancaster, 

PA: Inquirer Printing and Publishing Co., 1881); J. A. Huston’s Historical 

Sketch of the Government Printing Office 1861–1916 (Washington, DC: The 

Fortson Press, 1916); and Laurence F. Schmeckebier’s The Government 

Printing Office: Its History, Activities, and Organization (Baltimore: The 

Johns Hopkins Press, 1925). Robert L. Kling, a GPO official, published 

The Government Printing Office (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1970), as 

part of the Praeger Library of U.S. Government Departments and Agencies, 

which provided a comprehensive review of Federal printing and GPO 

from the colonial period to 1970, drawing on most of the earlier GPO 

histories. A noteworthy article on Public Printer Giegengack was a threepart profile by Geoffrey T. Hellman which appeared in The New Yorker

June 12, 19, and 26, 1943, under the title “Mr. Public Printer.” The account 

of the post-1960 period relies on a variety of sources. There have been articles written by GPO historians Daniel MacGilvray and James Cameron 

published in GPO’s newsletter, Typeline. The McGilvray articles appeared 

during the observance of GPO’s 125th anniversary in 1986 and are available today on GPO’s Web site, while several of the Cameron articles have 

been edited for inclusion in this book. 

In 1979, Title 44, United States Code—Public Printing and Documents: 

A Brief Historical Overview was prepared as a Congressional Research 

Service issue brief by Harold C. Relyea (CRS Report No. 79–36 GOV, 

February 23, 1979). In more recent years, Relyea also prepared updates 

on GPO in, for example, Public Printing Reform: Issues and Actions (CRS 

Report for Congress, Order Code 98–687 GOV, June 17, 2003), and he 

recently wrote a history of the Federal Register, which will appear as “The 

Federal Register: Origins, Formulation, Realization, and Heritage” in an 

upcoming issue of Government Information Quarterly. 

Unreported in 100 GPO Years was the extensive investigation 

of GPO conducted in the summer of 1953 by the Senate Permanent 

Subcommittee on Investigations of the Committee on Government 

Operations, led by Senator Joseph McCarthy. Though described in press 

accounts of the time in the Washington Star and the Washington Post, 

among other newspapers, the full extent of the investigation, major parts 

of which were conducted in executive session, were not made public until 

January 2003, when the full hearings were published in Senate Committee 

on Governmental Affairs, Executive Sessions of the Senate Permanent 

Subcommittee on Investigations of the Committee on Government Operations, 

Eighty-third Congress, First Session, 1953, Made Public January 2003 

(Washington, DC: GPO, 2003; vol. 2). Other key Government reports 

include Joint Committee on Printing, “Federal Government Printing and 

Publishing: Policy Issues,” Report of the Ad Hoc Advisory Committee 

on Revision of Title 44 to the Joint Committee on Printing, Committee 

Print (Washington, DC: GPO, 1979); and several by the former Office 

of Technology Assessment, particularly the OTA’s singular Informing 

the Nation: Federal Information Dissemination in an Electronic Age 

(Washington, DC: GPO, 1988). 

In addition to various audit reports on GPO issued over the years 

by the Government Accountability Office, as it is now known, at least 

two substantial management reviews of GPO have been performed 

in recent decades, including Joint Committee on Printing, “Analysis 

and Evaluation of Selected Government Printing Office Operations, 

Prepared by Coopers and Lybrand, an Independent Consulting Firm, 

Washington, D.C.” (Washington, DC: GPO, 1979), and Booz-Allen & 

Hamilton, “Management Audit of the Government Printing Office, Final 

Report May 21, 1998” Submitted to General Accounting Office, General 

Accounting Division (Washington, DC: GAO, 1998).

A number of legislative histories are available for the substantive 

legislation affecting GPO. Through the early 1980s, these actions are 

collected in the multi-volume set GPO, Office of the General Counsel, 

Legislative Histories of the Laws Affecting the U.S. Government Printing 
144

Office, as Codified in Title 44 of the U.S. Code (Washington, DC: GPO, 

1983). Many of these documents can also be found in various issues of the 

U.S. Code Congressional and Administrative News. In 1979–80, 1989–90, 

and again in 1997–98, GPO was involved in major proposals to overhaul 

Title 44, during hearings and subsequent legislative consideration of H.R. 

5424—the National Publications Act—in the 96th Congress, H.R. 3890, 

in the 101st Congress, and S. 2288—the Wendell H. Ford Government 

Publications Act—in the 105th Congress.

Documents related to the Supreme Court’s decision in INS v. Chadha, 

462 U.S. 919 (1983), include memoranda issued by the Justice Department’s 

Office of Legal Counsel (Memorandum for William H. Taft, IV, Deputy 

Secretary of Defense, Department of Defense, from Theodore B. Olson, 

Assistant Attorney General, Office of Legal Counsel, Re: Effect of INS 

v. Chadha on 44 U.S.C. 501, Public Printing and Documents, March 2, 

1984; Memorandum for Michael J. Horowitz, Counsel to the Director, 

Office of Management and Budget (OMB), from Theodore B. Olson, 

Assistant Attorney General, Office of Legal Counsel, Re: Constitutionality 

of Proposed Regulations of Joint Committee on Printing under Buckley 

v. Valeo and INS v. Chadha, April 11, 1984; Memorandum for Michael 

J. Horowitz, Counsel to the Director, OMB, from Theodore B. Olson, 

Assistant Attorney General, Office of Legal Counsel, Re: Government 

Printing, Binding, and Distribution Policies and Guidelines of the Joint 

Committee on Printing, August 21, 1984; and Memorandum for Emily 

C. Hewitt, General Counsel, General Services Administration, from 

Walter Dellinger, Assistant Attorney General, Office of Legal Counsel, 

Re: Government Printing Office Involvement in Executive Branch 

Printing, May 31, 1996). Associated documents include Federal Acquisition 

Circular (FAC) 84–25, published in the Federal Register on March 20, 

1987; and Office of Management and Budget, Procurement of Printing 

and Duplicating through the Government Printing Office, Memorandum 

M–02–07, from Mitchell E. Daniels, Jr., Director, OMB, to Heads of 

Executive Departments and Agencies (May 3, 2002). 

Two court cases with major implications for GPO and its employees 

were the Thompson and McKenzie cases, decided in the U.S. District 

Court for the District of Columbia. Another prominent case was Lewis v. 

Sawyer, U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, and upheld on 

appeal (1983), which held the Public Printer is accountable to the direction of the Joint Committee on Printing as the GPO’s Board of Directors. 

Another case left undiscussed in this book was Doe v. McMillan, 412 U.S. 

306, in which the Supreme Court held, among other things, that the 

Public Printer and the Superintendent of Documents are protected by 

the doctrine of official immunity for information printed in congressional 

documents.

There is a wealth of discussion of the Depository Library Program 

in journals such as Government Publications Review and Government 

Information Quarterly. Clare Beck discusses the early days of the Public 

Documents Division in her biography of GPO’s first librarian The 

New Woman as Librarian: The Career of Adelaide Hasse (Lanham, MD: 

Scarecrow Press, 2006) 

Other key sources used for this volume were GPO’s congressional 

appropriations hearings; GPO annual reports and related data, including 

supplemental data published annually as “United States Government 

Printing Office Statistics” (GPO Publication 410.2); various GPO strategic 

plans, including the 1990 issue of GPO/2001: Vision for a New Millenium

and the 2004 Strategic Vision for the 21st Century; issues of GPO’s internal 

employee newsletter, the Typeline, dating to the 1960s; various press 

accounts of GPO; as well as scholarly articles about GPO in such publications as the Journal of Government Information, Government Information 

Quarterly, Documents To The People, Printing History, and other journals. 

All photographs are from GPO’s collection, unless noted in the caption.

As important as any of these sources have been the memories of 

GPO employees who have contributed to the production of this volume, 

and their willingness to share them. n
145

A C K N O W L E D G E M E N T S

The writing of Keeping America Informed began in 2010, based initially on 

a series of articles prepared by former GPO historian Daniel MacGilvray 

for GPO’s 125th anniversary in 1986. Most of them first appeared in 

GPO’s in-house newsletter Typeline. The present authors have used that 

short history as a foundation and guide throughout. Another former 

GPO historian, James T. Cameron, authored a series of features on GPO’s 

history in past issues of Typeline that have become many of the sidebar 

features in this book. Jim has been a source of wise advice and skillful 

editing for this new volume.

Several individuals have read and commented on the text with great 

thoughtfulness and candor. Former Public Printers Michael F. DiMario 

and Robert C. Tapella each made suggestions that improved the book.  

GPO was extremely fortunate to have Senate Historian Donald Ritchie, 

Congressional Research Service (CRS) Specialist in American National 

Government R. Eric Peterson, and retired CRS Specialist in American 

National Government Harold C. Relyea all review and comment on the 

draft.  Retired GPO Library Programs Service Director Gil Baldwin and 

Bonnie Baldwin, both professional librarians, reviewed the text, as did 

retired GPO Congressional Relations Officer C. Michael Bright. The draft 

was also reviewed by Fred Jordan, freelance writer and editor.

The Honorable David S. Ferriero, Archivist of the United States, 

provided a digitized text of the original resolution establishing GPO, and 

Christina R. Smith of the National Archives and Records Administration 

gave useful advice. Thanks go to the staff of the Joint Committee on 

Printing of the 111th Congress, the U.S. Senate Library, the U.S. Senate 

Historical Office, and the U.S. Senate Curator’s Office for their support 

and guidance.  

Ten Federal depository libraries and librarians have generously 

lent materials for the preparation of the 2011 exhibit at GPO that 

complements this book: Denison University, Granville, OH, Mary Webb 

Prophet; Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, Lou Malcomb; Ohio 

University, Athens, OH, Doreen Hockenberry; University of Maryland 

College of Law, Baltimore, MD, William Sleeman; University of North 

Texas, Denton, TX, Starr Hoffman; Louisville Free Public Library, 

Louisville, KY , Claudia Fitch; Jackson District Library, Jackson, MI, 

Nadia ElAnanni; Wyoming State Law Library, Cheyenne, WY, Kathy 

Carlson; Southeastern Louisiana University, Hammond, LA, Lori Smith; 

and Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, OK, John Phillips.  Suzanne 

Campbell, GPO’s law librarian, also provided documents, assistance, and 

support.  

Nora A. Bailey, Esq., and Roderic V.O. Boggs, Esq., provided 

information on plaintiffs in race- and gender-discrimination suits against 

GPO.  Clare Beck, author of an authoritative biography of Adelaide 

Hasse, provided invaluable information about GPO’s first librarian and 

her co-workers.

Finally, GPO’s proofreading section and foreperson M. Michael 

Abramson, deserve special recognition for their skill, diligence, and 

expertise. GPO’s Brand Manager, Dean A. Gardei, created a design for the 

book that balances the written word with the photographs. 

The Photographs

Most of the photographs in this history are from GPO’s own photo 

collection and many are published here for the first time. In the 

few cases in which a photo or image has come from another source, 

acknowledgement is given in the caption.
146

i n d e x

100 GPO Years (1961) 93, 95

100th anniversary of GPO 93

Allen, Thomas 6

American Legion 77, 79

anthrax 128

apprentice training 21, 68, 71, 72

Arthur, Chester A. 20

automobiles introduced 42

Benedict, Thomas E. 21

Blair & Rives 6, 15

Blair, Francis Preston 15

Blattenberger, Raymond 89, 90

Boarman, William J. 138

bookstore, GPO 62, 65, 128

bookstore, online 128, 137

bookstores, nationwide closed 128

Bowman, Gen. George W. 7

Boyle, John 128

Bradford, William and Thomas 3, 4

Brady, Rep. Robert A. (PA) 140

Budget of the United States Government 129

Building 1 (1903) 63

Building 2 (1930) 63

Building 3 (1940) 80, 81

Building 4 (1938) 89

building expansion proposals 99

Burns, William 23

Bush, George H.W. 117, 118

Bush, George W. 129, 131, 133

cafeteria 62, 60

Carter, George H. 52-76

Carter, Jimmy, 104

Chadha decision 129

Christmas celebrations 66–67

Civil Service 21, 43 see also competitive service

Civil War 12, 16

Clapp, Almon M. 12, 14

Clarke, Edith 23

classified service see Civil Service 

Cleveland, Grover 21

Clinton, William J. 119, 120

collective bargaining 71

colonial printing 3

Columbia Typographical Society see Columbia 

Typographical Union

Columbia Typographical Union 10, 38

Commerce Business Daily 128

Community Day 67

competitive service 20, 21

composing, hand 139

computer typesetting 99

Congress, early 4

Congressional Globe 15

Congressional Record 15, 20

Congressional Record presses 127

Congressional Serial Set 5, 134

Consumer Information Center 94

Contract With America 122

Crandall, Francis Asbury 23, 24

credentials, secure 130

Credit Union, GPO 77

databases, electronic 117

Defrees, John Dougherty 10, 12, 13, 19

depository libraries 21, 76, 99, 119, 129, 137

Depository Library Act of 1962 101

Deviny, John J. 84, 88

digital printing 137

DiMario, Michael F. 119, 122, 127, 129

direct-to-plate composition 140

dissemination of information, electronic 117, 

119

Donnelly, Samuel 39

duplicating vs. printing 89

Eisenhower, Dwight D. 89

electricity introduced 20

Emancipation Proclamation 13

employee newsletter 95

Federal Digital System (FDsys) 131

Federal Register 2.0 137

Federal Register 81

Federal Register Office 127

field offices 95

Ford, Sen.Wendell (KY) 127

Ford, Cornelius 47, 52

Ford, Gerald R. 104

Franklin, Benjamin 3

Gales & Seaton 6

Garfield, James A. 20

General Accounting Office 110

General Pershing Linotype 50

General Printing Act see Printing Act of 1895

Giegengack, Augustus E. 77–84

Google Books 138

Gore, Al 118, 120

Government document no. 1 4

Government Printing Office established 7

GPO Access 117, 119, 125, 127, 131, 140

GPO Bookstores 101

GPO Electronic Information Access 

Enhancement Act 117, 119

GPO Style Manual 111

Grant, Ulysses S. 14

Green, Duff 6

Gurley, Rep. John Addison (OH) 7

Harding Hall 56, 58, 63

Harding, Warren G. 52, 56

Harrison, Benjamin 25

Harrison, James L. 93, 95

Hasse, Adelaide R. 23, 24

Heart, John 7

Henry, Patrick 4

Hickox, J.H. 23

holiday open house 67

Homeland Security Presidential Directive—12 

130

hot metal typesetting 139

Houk, Robert W. 117

House Administration Committee 125

information dissemination, digital 140

information policy, Federal 120

ink, vegetable oil-based 127

insurance for employees 77

Interior Department Regiments (Civil War) 12

Jackson, Andrew 15

Jacobs, Charles Addison Rhett 49

James, Bruce R. 129, 131

Jefferson, Thomas 33

Jefferson’s Bible 33

Jenifer, Joseph E. 112, 114

Johnson, Andrew 14

Johnson, Lady Bird 94

Johnson, Lyndon B. 96

Joint Committee on Printing 6, 14, 21, 52, 82, 

87, 93, 106–109, 113–114, 125 

Joint Resolution 25 (36th Congress) 7

Justice Department 125

Keiss Act (1924) 71

Kennedy assassination 96

Kennedy, John F. 93

Kennickell, Ralph E., Jr. 109, 113

Korean Conflict 88

Kreiter, James M. 50

Lacey, Rep. John (IA) 33

Leech, John S. 38

letterpress printing 139

Lincoln, Abraham 10, 12, 13

Linotron 97

Linotype 32, 139

logos and seals, GPO 128

Malta Citation 83

McCarthy, Sen. Joseph (WI) 90

McCormick, Thomas F. 103

McKenzie, Alfred 104

McKinley, William 25

Microcomp 140

Miller, William A. 32

Milton, John 3

Model trains 66

monopoly 118

Monotype 32, 139

National Intelligencer (newspaper) 6

National Performance Review see Reinventing 

Government initiative

New Yorker profile of A.E. Giegengack 77

Nixon, Richard M. 102, 103, 104

Obama, Barack 132, 137–138

Office of Management and Budget 129

Office of Technology Assessment 113

Official Records of the War of the Rebellion 16

offset printing 48, 139

orchestra, employee 61, 62

Palmer, Frank W. 25

paper standards 21

paper, recycled 117, 127, 137

passport printing 71, 76

passports, electronic 117, 133, 135

Pendleton Act 20

Peterson, Esther 94

photocomposition 139

Planning Division 63, 64

police force, GPO 102

Post, William Leander 23

postal card printing 39

presses, printing 139

Printing Act of 1895 21

prisoner-of-war stationery 86

procurement of printing from commercial 

printers 82, 95

public access, permanent 119

Public Documents Library 23, 25

Public Printing in Peace and War 82

Publick printing (pre-GPO) 3

Randolph, Rep. John (VA) 6

regional printing plants 127

Regional Printing Procurement Offices see 

field offices
147

Reinventing Government initiative 118, 120, 

129 

revolving fund 62, 89

riots, Washington, DC, 1968 100

Ritchie & Heiss 6

Rives & Bailey 15

Rives, John C. 15

roof terrace (Building 1) 55, 58

Roosevelt, Franklin D. 77, 83, 84

Roosevelt, Theodore 32–35, 38, 47

Rossiter, William S. 47

Rothschild, Edward 90

Rounds, Sterling P. 20

sales program 99

Saunders, Virginia F. 134

Sawyer, Danford L., Jr. 106–109

Schecter, Harry 95

Seaman, A. G. 7

Senate Permanent Subcommittee on 

Investigations 90

Senate Rules and Administration Committee 

125

September 11, 2001, attacks 128

Serial Set, see Congressional Serial Set

Smith, W. Andrew 134

spelling reform controversy 35

Spence, Adolphus N. 102

stables 42

Starr Report 122

State of the Union message, President Bush 118

Stennis, MS, facility 135

Stillings, Charles 34 - 38

Strategic Vision for the 21st Century (2004) 

129, 131

Superintendent of Documents established 21

Superintendent of Public Printing established 7 Taft, William Howard 39

Tapella, Robert C. 133

tax form printing 89

Testing Section 63

Thompson, Dorthy 104

Truman, Harry S. 84

type 139

Typeline (employee newsletter) 95

typesetting 139

typesetting, electronic 117

typesetting, machine 20, 32

Typography and Design Division 77

United Nations Conference (1945) 87

van Benthuysen, Charles 7 Veteran’s coordinator 84 Veterans of Foreign Wars 77

Warde, Beatrice 138

Warner, Sen. John (VA) 127

Warren Commission 96

Wendell building (1854) and additions 78

Wendell, Cornelius 7, 8, 9, 14

Whistler, James Abbott McNeill 5

Wilson, James 4

Wilson, Woodrow 47, 52

withdrawal from depository libraries 128

women in the workforce 9, 37, 105

World War I 48, 49

World War II 82, 85, 86

World Wide Web 117

World’s Fair, New 

York, 1964 99

Year 2000 (Y2K) preparations 127

Zenger, John Peter 3
148
149

The text for Keeping America Informed is set in Granjon, a typeface designed in 1924 for the 

Linotype & Machinery Co., Ltd., by George William Jones. It is based on a font designed by 

Jean Jannon (c. 1615) derived from designs by Claude Garamond (c. 1480-1561). Revivals based 

on what type scholar Beatrice Warde terms “one special Roman and italic owned by the Imprimerie 

Nationale, Paris” became popular in the early 20th century. Granjon is referred to by Warde as 

“...the first and immeasurably the best of the modern revivals.” Granjon was first used by GPO on 

The Writings of George Washington (1931) and the type’s designer commented that “such beautiful 

work...will exert a big influence on American printing.” Granjon was among GPO’s standard fonts 

throughout the era of hot metal composition.

The text is set in Adobe (r) Granjon, a digital font based on the Linotype original, with headings 

in Adobe (r) Trajan, a modern all-capitals display font designed by Carol Twombly, and printed 

using vegetable oil-based inks. The text is printed on coated offset book paper containing 

10% postconsumer recycled fiber, produced utilizing a chlorine-free process for enhanced 

permanence. The cover is printed on uncoated cover stock containing 30% postconsumer recycled 

fiber. Both papers carry nationally and internationally-recognized chain-of-custody certifications.

C O L O P H O N

YEARS

1861-2 011

U. S . G O V E R N M E N T P R I N T I N G O F F I C E

www.gpo.gov | Keeping America Informed | www.fdsys.gov