, 1888-04-11
BIG SHOW BILLS.
A CHAT WITH THE FATHER Of
PINE WOOD ENGRAVING.

nave W w engraving to the
wall, ~ said an old show printer the other
day, 'lithOgraphy is steadily s"upplanting
pine wood engraving. Already the best
theatrical and circus orders are for litho-
graphs, and wood work has come TO be
looked upon as cheap, second rate, and
consequently undesirable. OF course l,
not being n photographer, and having a
good deal invested in the old fashion, de-
plore the change, but / cannot shut my
eyes to It, and do not try to do SO as do
some of my friends among the old engrav-
ers and printers. In fact, pine wood work
has reached a lower position relatively
than lockwood work has,"
Mr.. james W. Morse, the father of pine
wood engraving, now "a. years of age, is
doing little work any longer, though he
still retains his old time skill. He does
not, however, attribute the lack of de-
mand for his work to a decline in the
business, but to other cause that, upon
analyzation, in themselves demonstrate
that decline. He says: 81 was the first
man to use the pine board for show cuts,
and began doing so about thirty-five years
ago. Before that time these large pictures
were all cut on mahogany, using the end
of the wood, as lockwood is used, and only
printing in black was done. 1 first intro
duced the use of c%olors, and cut the tint
blocks for them on fiat, smooth pine
boards. Very soon l found that 1 could
use the pine for the black print also, and
that being a softer wood, it was much
more easily worked, with proper tools,
than the hard mahogany, which soon
went out of use altogether. l do not
recognize that there is any less pine wood
engraving now than there used to be; but
it is no longer the business it used to be.
That is because the printers, greedy to
~monopolize the whole work, got to con
trarting to furnish pictures by artists and
engraverAin their employ, and then, by
competition with each other, ran prices
down so that the compensation of artists
and engravers was reduced to the lowest
possible point. The demand no longer is
for men of exceptional ability, but for
cheap mediocrity.n
1t is a somewhat curious fact that the
American makers of fine large litho-
graphic pictures, after importing the
artists to do their drawing, and the stones
to print from, and the inks to print
with, and the pulp for the paper to print
upon, still are able to compete with Eu-
ropean photographers on their own ground
and to fill extensive orders in Europe,
Australia and India. They cannot do 50
in the production of small photographic
work, such rs one, two and three sheet
bills, for the c%heapness of skilled labor
gives the European lt~hographer the ad-
vantage; but when it comes to the making
Of huge bills, of say twenty, thirty or
forty sheets, then the field is practically
monopolized by American enterprise.
Tn largest show bill made prior to 1872
consisted of no more than eighteen sheets.
In that year, however, James Torrey, the
old pine wood engraver and printer, got
out for Barnum's show, in its second
year., n thirty-two sheet bill that made a
sensation throughout the country. Wher-
ever it appeared the small shows infesting
the land fled before it in dismay. Suisse
quently many larger posters, printed
from wood, made their appearance, but
none had such a startling effect as that.
Coles circus was the first to employ
Autographed posters, in 1881, and in 1889
got out its famous ''hundred sheet bill, "
which covered a space twelve feet high by
nincty-siX feet long, the largest poster of
this kind ever produced. There were
only 900 of those huge posters produced,
and their cost was SO each, although the
StrObridge company, their makers, arr
said to have made them without profit
for the sake of demonstrating what they
could achieve. Nobody has since at
tempted to rival that mammoth produc-
ton. Very probably n Autographed poster
OF equal size could be made now Mt less
cost, for since then the expense of this
work has been greatly reduced, but when
1t is remembered that for each individual
one of the hundred sheets composing il
an average of say four separate color
printings would be required, making 400
in all, it will readily be understood that
IL would still be a very expensive show
bill.
Barnum & Bailey, who are the largest
customers for photographic printing in the
world, are now using no posters of more
than twenty-eight sheets, and nobody
else has any so large. But their orders
, for the season of 1888 amount to 800, 900
for /, 4S0, 900 sheets.
The expense of autographed show bills
hhs been vastly reduced since they first
were introduced. Then the Strobridge
firm charged sixty cents q sheet worked
in five colors) for 5000 sheet lots, tool
five months to fill one such order, and lost
money on it. Now such have been the
improvements in production that, notwith-
standing large augmentation in wages and
other expenses, the same sort of work is
done for eight cents a sheet, in forty eight
hours, and money is, presumably at least,
made on it. Pine wood pictures cost only
six cents n sheet, and are still chung to by
Forepaugh, most of the small c%ircuses,
and the class of theatrical troupes known
us barn stormers" and ely by nights"
but showmen generally affirm that the
llAIlbEl hlhlNu BboNNAot w " nv
superior beauty and effectiveness, are more
economical, mainly because of the weather
resisting ability of the much better sort Of
paper upon which they are printed. The
paper for Autograph posters is made of q
wood pulp imported from Sweden-bi
sulphide hemlock pulp, as it is technically
called. The wood pulp made here is from
the grinding of the timber into small
particles, but Ia Sweden a process is EN-
ployed that tears the wood into fragments,
preserving a longer fiber and yielding n
much stronger paper. Aside from the
question of economy, there can be no
question of the superiority of the litho-
graph over the pine wood picture. The
former preserves the artists work to an
infinitely greater degree, and its %colors,
while more brilliant and-through the
blending of primary into secondary tints
far more varied, are at the same time
softer, more natural, and vastly more
effective thar could be attained by the old
process.-New York Sun.
What n miserable time we should have
in this life If we were obliged to mind our
own business and let our neighbors mind
theirs. Uncle Eek.
H