Cheyenne transporter. [volume] (Darlington, Indian Terr.) 1879-1886, 1885-02-28


1t requires about eighty printers to put
The Record in type, and all night long
they are busy at their cases under the
electric light. The room where the
type is set is large enough for market
garden. 1t is made up of three long
halls, separated from one another by
pillars and brick arches. The central
hall contains marble tables, where
the forms are made up, and in the
others are the type cases, ranged in
double rows from one end of the hall
to the other, and over each case n
bright, soft electric light with china
shade over it. These men are paid in
proportion to the amount of work they
do, and the rate established by law is
50 cents per thousand ems.
The Record must go to press at 20
minutes to s., in order to be ready for
the o'clock mails, and when it is un-
usually large this necessity makes the
government printing Office the busiest
place in the city in the early morning.
Each congressman gets twenty one
copies of The Record, and he may have
these from day to day or take them in
the bound volumes as he prefers. The
congressman give their extra copies to
libraries and friends, and not few of
them find their way into secondhand
book stores of Washington, where they
can be bought of almost any dates at
from 80 cents to 81 per volume
But the printing of The Record is by
no means the largest part of the work
of this mammoth printing office. Its
$3,0O0,O00 worth includes all of the
government publications, and this sum
seems large, indeed, when it is remem-
bered that in 1894, just ninety years
ago, the government printing, "to-
gether with the iirewood and station
cry" of congress, cost only $4,000. In
1903 the presidents message was the
first document printed, and in 1919,
when Monroe was president, each
house elected its own printer for the
session. After this, congressional
printers became the most money max
ing men in Washington. Gales and
Seaton each made fortunes, and Blair,
and Rives followed them, entertaining
handsomely at the capital and owning
property. The printing of the twenty
seventh congress cost S200,000 and
shortly after this the contract system
was adopted. In 1852 the Office of
superintendent of public printing was
created, and in 1876 it became an
executive instead of q congressional
office.
1t is impossible to conceive the
amount of work this department does
now. 1t employs four hundred more
hands at present than it did in 1880,
and during that year it printed II, ,000,-
nf al Lotto
mcnts, 341 900 blank books, and made
131 900, 900 of blanks and envelopes.
One of the finest works in the past was
its Pacific railroad reports, which cost
the government over SS00,000, and it
is now getting out the rebellion
record, which is to comprise 96 vol
umes of 800 pages each.
To 90 through all the different rooms
of the government printing Office, from
tloOr TO floor, makes one as tired as
three walk. 1t is like going all
around one immense dancing hall, and
then trOtting into another, and SO on,
with continuous panorama of paper,
type, printers and machinery before
you, until your legs are worn out with
walking and your eyes tired with see
ing new things. walked through the
rooms where the monthly volume, rs
big as two of Webster's dictionaries,
containing the patent specifications, is
set uD, and where, at times, twenty
tons of type remain standing. went
into the dOcumcnt-roOm, where hun
drcdS of printers, in their shirt-slecvcS,
surrounded by walls of glaring white
ness, were setting up government re-
ports by the light of hundreds of little
golden snakes, each known as an cleo
tric lamp, and on into room after room
devoted to the storage of paper. Sheet