The Savannah morning news., 1903-10-03

ture from the banks of trees. and on
the skins of animals. These heavy
and cumbrous volumes were as diff
cult to handle as the iron money i'm
posed upon the Spartans.
The Assyrian came nearer to the
printing press than did the Egyptians,
for they discovered and practiced a
method of rapidly multiplying their
writings, using engraved seals. con-
sisting of cylinders from which any
number of impressions could be made.
Naturally Intellectual advancement
was rapid with the introduction of cir
culating documents. books, and papers,,
for the reading class was then only the
wealthy, even in the best days of Rom
an civilization. The assembled intellect
heard the news at the Olympian games
and in the Athenian theater.
"Cicero's shorthand reporters were
the beginning of the stenographic art.
without which we could not get along
Ciceros plan called only for the taxi
ing down and copying of the proceed
ings of the Senate by educated slaves,
and these COPIES were sent out. Cicero
worked on the same plan of gaining
popularity as do the statesmen who
send out the Congressional Record,
public documents, and garden seed,
and he was unquestionably a pretty
shrewd politician. 1t is gratifying,
however, to stenographers of the pres
ent daV to know that we are not
slaves as We're the writer's and short
hand reporters of those days. True we
have frequently long hours and labo-
rious work, but one of our profession
will earn more in single day than
did the ancient reporters in a whole
year. 1t was, unquestionably, the
system of slavery which was the bane
of ancient civilization and the priTna-
ry cause of it's ruin. Capital owned
labor; therefore, labor was cheap and
without dignity. Authors dined upon
rarities costing thousands of dollars in
the case of a single meal, while the
slaves who produced their books were
nearly starved. The only cost involved
in the production of a book was the
sustenance of the servile writer's and
embellishers. Publication was carried
on Just as plantation was worked in
the days before the war. The largest
books, with the most beautiful and
expensive bindings, could be produced
at a far less cost in dollars and cents
than they can be made in this day.
And the same reasons which prevented
modern improvements in the old slave
holding states prevented the introduce
ton of the printing press as an organ
of ancient civilization.
"Atticus, Roman bibliophilist,
trained a large number of slaves to
the special duty of merely transcribing.
There were five readers for each 100
trained writer's in different apartments,
and 500 copies of a short poem or small
book could be produced rapidly and at
little cost, less by far than the boast
ed powers of the press with all our
modern appliances in the art of print
ing. These shorthand slaves could
produce in twelve hours 500 copies of
a. poem equal in extent to Tennyson's
'Enoch Arden and it's accompanying
poems, and for this work they received
one pound of a kind of common corn
each, with a small allowance of wine.
This kind of feed would not go with
stenographers of the present day. We
have a fair and healthy scale of prices
for our work, and we receive it or we
don't work"