The Caldwell tribune. [volume] (Caldwell, Idaho Territory [Idaho]) 1883-1928, 1885-02-20

session. After this, congressional
printers became the most money-mak-
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 5000, 900, 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 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 17,OOO,-
600 copies of pamphlets and docu-
mcnts, 341, 900 blank books, and made
ISL 100000 of blanks and envelopes.
One of the finest works in the past was
its Pacific railroad reports, which cost
the government over S900,000, and it
is now getting out the rebellion
record, which is to comprise 90 vol
umes of 500 pages each.
To go through all the different rooms
of the government printing Office, from
floor to floor, makes one as tired as
three-mile 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, as
big as two of Webster's dictionaries,
containing the patent specifications, is
set up, and where, at times, twenty
tons of type remain standing. 1 went
into the document-room, where hun
dreds of printers, in their shirt-sleeves,
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
trio lamp, and on into room after room
devoted to the storage of paper. Sheet
upon sheet and ton upon ton, there
are here slowed away enough paper to
cover the tracks of all the railroads i'll
the country, and leave enough remain
ing to carpet Ohio and Indiana. l
went into the press-room, and my ears
were almost deafened with the hum of
its many presses, of all shapes and
sizes, from the old Bullock to the i'm
proved Campbell. 1 saw them print
ing all kinds of work in the room. AT
one press seed packages as large as a
visiting-card, and at another blanket
sheets of government document with
thirty-two pages on a sheet. noticed
that all the feeders of these presses
were women, and some of them very
pretty young women, too. They stood
up on a landing at the head of each
press, and with their hands pushed
forward sheet after steet as it went
into the press. On the floor above l
saw the same sheets folded into book
form by wonderful foldIngmachines,
and here again it was a woman who
operated each machine. Still higher
in the binding department more
women were employed at nearly all
of the machines, and the thanksgiving
was done by them. These book
sewing machines put book together
in way that would astonish country
binder. Some of them bind with WIRE,
and others with thread, but they do
the work many times as fast as it can
be done by hand, and, l am told, as
well.
In one room where the folding and
FASTING is going on I noticed that
several colored girls were among the
employees. They were sitting at
table by themselves, but whether this
was matter of their own taste or not
do not know.