Corvallis gazette. [volume] (Corvallis, Benton County, Or.) 1900-1909, 1902-08-22
NATIONAL PRINTERY.
GIGANTIC BUILDING is NEARING
COMPLETION.
Will Have a Floor Space of Over Four
teen Acres and Nearly 1000 Persons
Will Find Em Presses
Will Be Running.


teen Acres and Nearly 1000 Persons
Will Find Em Presses
Will Be Running.
The new government printing Office
is approaching completion and will be
a gigantic affair, writes Rene Bache,
the weH-known Washington CORE
spondent. 1t will cost $2,OOOO00, and
will provide total floor space of over
fourteen acreS-more than two and
half times the floor area available IN
the present establishment. AS yet the
building is entirely covered with scaf-
folding, but it is substantially finished,
except for the interior woodwork and
painting. 1t will be the greatest print
ing shop in the world, employing the
services of nearly 1000 people. Accu-
rately speaking. $3.50 persons will toll
under it's mighty roof, nearly 1,o0o OF
them being women and girls. Each
year it will expend the enormous sum
of $4,000,000, nearly three-fourths OF II
for labor, and in it's main composing
room S24 printers will be engaged IN
sticking type. Eight hundred ana
eighty-fve employees will be occupied
in binding the books and documents
produced, and an additional 665 will
do nothing but fold the printed sheets.
Figures like these give notion OF
the gigantic scale on which the shop
will be conducted. Each twelyemonth
il will consume for bindings the skins
of 10000 sheep and 11,000 goats, in ad-
dition to $4,000 square feet of Russia
leather made from cowhide. 1t will
use up in like period 5000 tons OF
white paper, 10000 pounds of printing
ink and $1,000 pounds of glue, together
with 1000 pounds of thread for sewing
books and pamphlets, and 1000 packs
of GOLD leaf for the titles of volumes
de luxe.
One hundred and twenty-seven
presses will be constantly in opera
ton in the great building, their total
output in working day of eight hours
being just about 100000 impressions.
These presses are of every conceivable
kind, one of them being capable OF
printing cards on both sides from a
web of bristol-board at the rate of Co.
600 cards per hour, while four other
machines turn out 10000 printed en-
yelopes every sixty minutes. The guam
tity of type actually employed will be
approximately 100000 pounds, or $50
tons.
- No other government spends any
of
public printing that is squandered by
Uncle Sam. In this particular Congress
is always disposed to a reckless ex-
travagance, and hence the huge size
of the plant required. Public documents
are an important perquisite of Sena-
tors and Representatives, who scatter
them broadcast among their constitu-
ents One hundred tons of single re-
port now in press will be issued and
distributed in this manner, and the
total number of volumes of various
kinds of literature turned out by the
office in a twelvemonth is about l.00O.-
600, representing a total cost OF some
what more than $1,O00,000.
Nowadays government books, like
other kinds of publications, require il
lustrations, and the cost of these ran
up to about 100000 last year. 1t is
safe to say that ten years from now
Uncle Sans printing shop will spend
pretty nearly half million dollars for
pictures. The most costly illus ira t1ons
are for the reports for the Department
Of Agriculture and the bulletins of the
Bureau of Ethnology, many of these
being in colors. Each bureau furnishes
it's own pictures, but the printing office
has them reproduced by firms in Bos-
ton, New York and elsewhere These
them to Washington, ready to be
bound with the text.
The most important job the big shop
has to execute is the printing of the
Congressional Record. This daily news
paper, which records nothing but the
doings of the National legislature, is
written from beginning to end by the
official reporters of the House and Sen
ate, who take down in shorthand every
word that is said at either end of the
Capitol. They dictate from their notes
to typewriters, and the material thus
reduced to typescript is sent over to
the printing offices in patches by mes
sengers. The Record is ready for d s.
tribution early next morning. One hun
dred compositors are employed exclu-
sively in the business of setting type
for it, one department of the printing
office being devoted exclusively to this
publication, which is ''set up and sent
to press just like any newspaper, being
delivered every day to about 5000 sub
scribers. Each representative in Con-
gress gets % copies daily, while Sen
ator is entitled to AZ. Anybody may
subscribe, the price being $1.5O a
month; but the paper is not directly
profitable to Uncle Sam, inasmuch as it
costs $125,OOO year.
The printing of bills is another i'm
portant feature of the work of the es-
tablishment. Though only few hun
dred of the measures submitted to Con-
gress in year become laws, millions
Of copies of them have to be printed
A bill must go through a great many
phases before it can become a law, and
during the process of its evolution it
has to be printed again and again-per-
haps dozens of times. If finally passed,
single copy of it Is printed on the
finest parchment, and this goes to Pres
sdo-4 Doocor.oIt for ;S q; t11ro