Dodge City times. [volume] (Dodge City, Kan.) 1876-1892, 1883-11-29
Printers Errors.

As class, the manipulators of type
may truthful!y be called the best (and
worst) abused men in the world, and
without sufficient reason. Very few
outside of the trade know the difficult
ties under which they labor or have
even a faint conception of the skill,
care and patience required. Absolute
correctness is prime essential to Sc
cure public appreciation, and how very
little is done in the way of assistance
Copy properly prepared is a great
desideratun and rarely received. That
which is called good is often the very
reverse. 1t may be fair to the eye and
vet blind to the sense. The patron does
not knoy exactly what he needs. If he
has any ideas upon the subject they
may be perverted ones, and the little
smattering he has of the art tends to
lead him astray and demand impossi-
bilities. His Judgment has not been
trained in the matter of letters. He
knows nothing of justification except
that he believes he has it in the largest
sense to give the printer particular
its'' when an error is found. Why six
line plea and nonpareil can not be made
to chime like notes of music IS beyond
his ideas of eternal fitness OF inanlmate
matter. According to his views it IS
the most simple of undertakings to set,
make up and work off one hundred
pages, more or less, in the most I'M
reasonably short space of time
Before pouring out the walls OF their
wrath upon the head of the printer, it
might be we'll for men to pause and con-
sder how much he is to blame. Some
where in our desultory reading we have
met with the statement that any old
piece of Mosaic work containing few
hundred pieces is exalted to the skies
and pronounced wonderful. 1t re-
quired patience, no doubt, probably
taste and study, but carrying out the
drift of the article ready how very little
in comparison to the tens and hundreds
of thousands of still more slender and
minute particles the printer is required
to handle to make up paper or book.
Take solid page of the Cabinet as an
example. 1t contains some 1900
''ems," or about 81, 600 letters. This
is greatly more than any Mosaic known.
And they had to be placed without any
chiseling or sand-papering, as could be
done in the delicate work of table, chail
or picture.
Taking this as basis, calculation is
easy as to the amount of type com
positor handles during his hours OF dai-
iy labor in distribution and setting
Easy it is also to conceive how sucf
little fragments of metal will slip out O.
place, how letter or space may b
dropped, word spelled incorrectly,
point be wrong, how errors will creel
in despite all care-and the generous
public be outraged at the ''gross care
iessness and stupidity of the printer!
Errors do occur, we must admit, blu
they are fabulously uncommon whel
compared to chances of their being
made, and books and papers are monu
ments to the correctness of the craft
their swiftness and certainty of touch
education and never-ceasing vigl
lance.
We write not thus for the craft
They practically know the truth of GU
words. But we do write for the multi
tude of outsiders, and with the hop
that the simple illustration we hav
given may open their eyes to the grea
Injustice done to those who, with thei
noses in the space box, toll away thei
lives for the benefit of the world 9
large.-Rounds' Printers Cabinet.