The Russellville Democrat., 1885-11-05
Printers, Errors.

As class, the manipulators of type may truthfully 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 faint conception of the skill, care and patience required. Absolute correctness is prime essential to se- cure public appreciation, and how very litt,e is done in the way of assistance "Copy" properly prepared is great desideratum and rarely received. That which is called good" is often the very reverse. 1t may be fair to the eye and yet blind to the sense. The patron does not know 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 fits" when an error is found. Why six line pica and nonpareil can not be made to chime like notes of music is beyond his ideas of eternal fitness of inanimate 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 un- reasonably short space of time.
 Before pouring out the vials of their wrath upon the head of the printer, it might be well for men to pause and con- S der 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. It re- quired patience, no doubt, probably taste and study, but (carrying out the drift of the article read) 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 m example It contains some 27,000 .ems, or about Sl,000 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, chair or picture.
 Taking this as basis. calculationis easy as to the amount of type com positor handles during his hours of dai- ly labor in distribution and setting. Easy it is also to cor eive how such little fragments of metal will slip out of place. how a letter or space may be dropped, word spelled incorrectly, q point be wrong. how errors will creep 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, but they are fabulously uncommon when 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 yigi- lance.
 We write not thus for the craft. They practically know the truth of our words. But we do write for the multi tude of outsiders, and with the hope that the simple illustration we have given may open their eyes to the great injustice done to those who. ''with their noses in the space box" toll away their lives for the beuefit of the world at large. -- Rounds Printers Cabinet.