Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1896-01-10
MAINE PRESS ASSOCIATION
Continues It's Meeting at Portland. Thursday
A Most Enjoyable Time.

| Portland, Jan. 9.-The Maine Press As
ISOLATION met at o'clock. this morning.
The various standing committees were
| appointed The matter Of time and route
Of the annual excursion was left in the
| hands OF q committee. consisting of Alhro
Robbins Of Old Town.
committee was appointed to revise
he advertising rates. A committee was
| CHOSEN 10 report at the next meeting on
| any desired changes in the law of libel
Gfo, ". Norton aud Rev. j. 6. Neral oi
Portland, were elected members
At noon, the association. 10y invitation
IF Superintendent Mcleod, took an Flee
trio car for Simonton's Cove. where an
excellent clam dinner was served ct vii
lard S restaurant. Superintendent Mcleod
did everything in his power to make the
trip pleasant. The beauties of the Cove
were obscnred by snow storm but the
dinner was good ana the car ride very en-
joyable
This afternoon, the literary exercises
were he'd. S. L. Boardman OF Augusta.
read an essay on The Equipment of the
Sanctum, Of which the following is the
substance:
We get our word plant as applied t.
large establishment, from the Germans
| believe; aud its use has been quite gener-
ally only during the last ten or II dozen
years. Before then we had factories and
mills operated by water and steam turn
ing out different products. and fit q with
good equipment for the work required.
Scople then said a corporation or COMPANY
had "a good factory. Now they say
drm or a man doing business at a place
where such works are needed as fine
plant, . and so the word has come tc
mean a laundry, railroad cracker
bakery, or n newspaper
But any one of these or a dozen other
plants arc useless and imperative with
put something TO manufacture ard with
out the best force of trained and expert
operatives TO produce the manufactured
article. A railroad may be a splendid
oiece OK property, extending through o
country abundant in the materials of bust
ness, but without large equipment, and
still farther without expert men to guid.
its trains, open its switches and put on it,
brakes, be as valueless as a sardinc factory
without fish.
In this modern use of the word plant
has come to mean a newspaper establish
ment with as much appropriateness as il
means saw mill, or a foundry which in
fact some Of them now are. But in the
Early days of our American newspapers.
say 40 or 80 years ago, they We're very
small and Indifferent affairs compared
with what they are today.
A narrow upstairs room containing a
for aaC of +Y-yaa ha,, ~ i
some mean looking chairs and stools:
Rammaga press weighing few hundred
pounds, which two men could take in
pieces and carry up at half a dozen loads,
With desk or table in one corner, com
prised about the entire outfit of the print
ing offices of those days. The very fact
that all newspaper establishments were
called printing Offices that this term
describing them has become woven into
the very fabric of our common language
shows just what limited affairs they We're
-'Oflices, not plants "a place where
the intellectual and mechanical forces
we're united; where man was in turn
editor, compoSitor, book keeper, prcssman
and mailing clerk; and where only the
most primitive ideas and methods were
employed.
In the Offices with which | was early |
acquainted, the propretors. who were |
also editors, set up thcr own articles at
the case, did regular composition as |
regularly as a journeymau, ard pulled the |
press to work off the edition: while the |
second man linked the forms and took off |
the Sheets of which they were able to print |
III u day, one SIDE at time, 500 COPIES !
That was about the extent OF their circula- |
ton and il they had that number of sub !
scribers large proportion of whom paid |
in cord wood, beans shoes and butter. they |
thought they were doing good business |
When we bring these little Offices and
their old Rammage presses into contrast |
with the great newspaper plants of today |
and the stupendous modern machines |
which have been created by the demands |
of the public ana BY the genius of IA few
great men who have invented this wonder
fnl machinery, one may well be astonished |
at the change
Following Mr. Boardman described the
old -time offices and Primitive editorial I
Continued on page 81