Bismarck weekly tribune. [volume] (Bismarck, Dakota [N.D.]) 1884-1943, 1890-10-31

The Record may leave it out of the next
mornings edition and insert instead: "Mr.
Blank addressed the house. His remarks
are withheld for revision and will appear
hereafter"
At I O'Clock in the evening, which is
generally about an hour after the adjourn
ment of congress, the real work of getting
out The Record" begins in the great print
ing Office. In The Record room, which is
a department distinct from the remainder
of the office, a hundred men have their
coats Off. Foreman Pearson, one of the
best printers in the world, and his assist
ant arc cutting up great wads of copy. AS
the clock strikes e%ighty-two compositors
step forward one after another and get
their "takes." Soon e~ighty-two nimble
fingers are picking up the bright BREWER
types and rattling them into eighty-two
sticks. 1t costs money to set the type for
The Record. The eighty-two men earn
from $50 to S25 a week each. They are paid
fifty cents per thousand ems, and are en-
titled to seven hours composition per
night. In each page of The Record there
are, in BREWER, 5000 ems, and the average
throughout, extracts and roll calls being
set in n%onrareil, about 5000 ems. This
makes the cost of each page for compost
ton alone 81, and during the session just
ended The Record reached the unprece-
dented number of 11,771 pages. The first
session of the Fiftieth congress, the longest
session on ~record-331 days-illed 1O,63S
pages of The Record. This session was
twenty days shorter, but filled a thousand
pages more of the daily journal.
Setting the type is only one part of the
expense. Five 1irst-class readers, each with
y boy copy holder" first go over the
proofs for typographical errors. After this
is done the proofs are passed over to five
second readers, who read silently, on the
alert for mistakes of any sort, particularly
those of grammar, punctuation or style,
which may have escaped the first readers.
Typographical errors are very rare indeed
in The Record. In addition to these ten
proofreaders and their boy copy holders
there are two r%evisers, whose duty it is to
see chat all mistakes marked in the proofs
are properly corrected. Reading proof on
The Record costs Uncle Sam about $3.50 a
week.
Publishing The Record would be II pref
! ty and satisfactory task if it were not for
the vanity and timidity of congressman
There is a. old story (Which Foreman
Pearson says is true several times over) of
the new member Of congress who had
made his maiden speech, and who not
only wanted to read the proofs but went
down to the printing office and watched
his speech go to press, and with great pride
picked up the damp sheets to read his own
eloquent words in print,
The statesmen not only revise the copy
furnished them by the stenographers-'re-
vision" often meaning an entirely new
~speech-but they want proofs sent them
from the printing Office. How they do
struggle with these proofs! How timid
they arel They change a word or a sen
tence again and again, evidently with fear
of their constituents before their eyes.
Late at night they send the proofs back to
the office, and the sheets which went out
nice and clean are dirty enough Oh their