Iron County register., 1883-07-12
The Public Printer.

Very few of the great mass of hu
manty know who makes the beautiful
public document with its plain. black
binding anu its wealth of statistics.
Few stop to think that hidden away
from the great work-a-day world. with
eyelids heavy and red, and with finger
nails black with antimonv, toiline on at
his case hour after hour, the Public
Printer during the sessions of Congress
is setting ap the thrilling chapters OF the
Congressional Record. and between
times yanking the Washin gton press
backward, and forward with his sus-
spenders hanging down, as he prints this
beautiful seaside library of song
We are too prone to read that which
gives us pleasure without thought of the
labor necessary to its creation. We
glide gaily through the Congressional
Record, pleased with its more attractive
features its ayes and noes-little
recking that Sterling P. Rounds, the
Public Printer, stands in the subdued
ga5lght withs-his stick half full, trying
9 to decipher thefman.isoript ofsone ret
icePt Representative whose speech was
! Yesterday delivered to the janitor as he
polished the porcelain cuspidore Of
Congress.
This is Q day and age of the world
when men take that which comes to
them and do not stop to investigate the
pain and toll it costs They never in
quire into the mystery of manufacture
or try to learn the details of it's con-
struction. Most of our libraries are re-
plete with books which we have received
at the hands of a generous Government,
and yet we treat those volumes with
scorn and contumely. We jeer at the
footsore bugologist who has chased the
large, green worm from tree to tree,
in order that we may be wise. We
speak sneeringly of the man who stuffs
the woodtick and paints the gaudy
wings of the squash bug that we may
know how often she CRATES.
Year after year the entOmoiogist
treads the same weary road with his
bait box tied to his waist, wooing to his
laboratory the army worm and the
sheep scab Larvae in order that we, poor
particles on the surface of the great
earth, may know how these minute
= creatures rise, flourish and decay.
Then the Public Printer throws in his
case, rubs his finger and thumb over
lump of alum, takes q chew of tobacco
and puts in type these words of wisdom
from the lips of gray-bearded savants,
that knowledge may be scattered over
the broad Republic. Patiently he goes
on with the click of type, anon in an
absorbed way, while we, gay. thought
less mortals wear out the long summer
day at a basket picnic, with deft fingers
Iselecting the large red ant from our cold
ham. ~
Thus these books are made which
come to us wrapped in MANILA and
franked by the man we voted for last
fall. Beautiful Autographs, illustrating
sthe, different stages of hog cholera, deck
their pages. Rich oil paintings OF
gaudy tobacco worms chase each other
from preface to errata. Magnificent
chromos of the foot and mouth disease
appeal to us from page after page and
statistics boil out between them, show
ing what per cent. of invalid Or conva-
leScent animals was sent abroad and
what per cent. was worked into oleo-
margarine and pressed corn beef.
And what becomes of all this wealth
of information-this mammoth aggre4
CATION of costly knowledge? - = .
Cast ruthlessly away by a trif1ing,
shallow, frivolous and Predetermined
race! - r. -
1t is no more than right that Sterling
7. Rounds should know this. How it
will gall his proud heart to know that
J his beautiful books and his chatty and
spicy Congressional Record are treated
by a ieering, heartless throng! Do you
suppose that's L WOULD perspire over
then tread job-printing press all the
next day printing books at which the
bloodless, soulless public sneered and
the brOad-browed talent of a cruel gen
Grafton spit upon? Not exactly.
| have a moderate amount of patience
and self-control.s but am free to say
right here before the world that if II
had been in Mr.. Rounds place, and had
at great cost erected scientific work
upon ''The Rise and Fall of, Botts in
America" and a flippant nation of
scotfers had utilized that volume to
press autumn leaves and scraggy ferns
in, l would rise in my proud might and
mash the forms with mal'et. 1 would
jerk the lever of the Washington press
into the middle of the effulgent hence.
would kick over my case, wipe the roller
on the freScoed walls, and feed my sta
tistics to the hungry flames.
No publisher has ever been treated
more shabbily. no compositor has, in
the history of literature. been more
rudely disregarded and derided.
Think of this, dear reader, when you
look carelessly over the brief but won
derful career of the hop louse. Or with
apparent ennui dawdle through the trea-
tise on collie among silk-worms and
/ facial neuralgia among fowls.
This will not only please MIR. Rounds,
the young and struggling compositor.
but it will crafty and encourage all the
friends of American progress and the
lovers of learning throughout our whole
iand.--BiH Nyc, in Detroit Free Press.