The Montgomery advertiser., 1903-05-31

| distributed about the establishment as | follows:
 | Executive office ........................... 42 | Main composing room .SS5 binoery .' ......-....-............'. l Main pressroom .. .....................".25S | Job pressroom .. ........................ 93 Job composing room .l22 | Electrotype room ......................s 70 | Specification room ................-.......SS ..SS | Folding room .......................-.. 121 | Congressional Record room ............1O0 | Chief engineers division ............... 59 l Treasury Department branch ......... 62 | Library of Congress branch ........... 70 | Interior Department branch ........... 32 | Navy Department branch .............. 33
 State Department branch .............. 33 | War Department branch ............... 9 l Department of Agriculture branch.... 17 Public document division ............... 40 The Government of the United States | does more printing and publishes more | documents than any other nation in the world. and last year the cost of this
 branch of the service reached $5.S4s,-
 453 .0s. A large proportion of this money
 was wasted by the printing of worthless | and useless documents ordered by Con- gress. One-half of the printing done for.
 the Senate and House of Representatives
 is a pure waste of money, and the ex- travagance of Congress in this respect is | increasing annually. No matter what
 kind of a report is made from a commit | tee, no matter what sort of a petition is presented by a Senator or a member, it goes to the Government printing office, and at least 1900 copies are issued and | divided among the members of both | houses for distribution. This has been I the subject of inquiry and discussion pe- | riod:cally for many years, and repeated | attempts have been made to introduce | measures of economy, but the Congress l readily drops back into its old habits af-
 ter few months of reform.
 | Last fall President Roosevelt made an | effort to cut down the cost of the print
 ing bills of the several executive depart
 ments, particularly in the matter of il- | lLstrations, and doubtless saved several
 thousand dollars by his efforts, but he
 will have to repeat his admonitions an- nually in order to introduce the habit of l economy among his subordtnates
 | The most remarkable job of printing, | the record-breaker of the world, was un- 1 doubtedly the publication of the report
 of the Congressional committee, which in- | quired into the hazing incidents at West 1 Point three years ago. The manuscript l was delivered to Capt Henry T. Brian, | foreman of printing, at the Government printing office at Washington, about 6 o'clock one Saturday evening and on l Monday morning three volumes of 2,000 1 printed pages were delivered upon the l desks of the members of the House oI
 Representatives who wanted to refer to
 the testimony in the debate that was to l come on that day upon the military | academy appropriation bill The edition
 was a sman one so that the press work | been printed stitched and bound at the | same time.
 Another world beater in the printing
 line was the report of the Court of In- l quiry on the Maine disaster. The manu-
 script was received after o'clock one
 evening, and volume of 300 pages with twenty-five illustrations was delivered
 at the Navy Department at the opening | of office hours the next morning Twen-
 ty-four of the illustrations were half
 tones, one was colored, which required | two impressions
 Some years ago the revised statutes Of | the United States, a volume of 1000 quar- | to pages, was put in type, printed and
 bound in sheep between Wednesday night
 and Saturday noon. No other printing office in the world could have done that job in that time. and when I asked Cap | tain Brian, the chief clerk who was | foreman of printing for many years, as
 to the limit of the capacity of his office, he replied:
 Tt has no limit We have more than
 4,O0O skilled people available, we have 10000 pounds of type, we have presses enough to meet any demand, and If if
 were necessary we could st the type.
 print, bind and deliver a book as big as Webster's Dictionary, or a set of four
 volumes of 1000 pages each, in twenty
 four hours Our capacity has never
 been tested. have always been wanting somebody to send for me and ask the | impossible. I have been wishing ever
 since I have been here that Congress
 would dump the manuscript of the big
 gest book that was ever written upon us
 some evening and say, We must have
 this when the House is called to order tomorrow morning." The largest annual publication of the Government is the year book of the Az ricultural Department, a volume of 500
 or goo pages, of which an edition of BOO O0O cpoies Is printed and bound every year, but that is an easy job It is not
 'hurry-up' work, but usually runs for
 three or four weeks
 It Is said that a company at Edinburgh Scotland. Is building a printing estab- | lishment more than twice as large as the Government office at Washington and
 that it will cost $7.00O. 900. while the plant at Washington represents only about | $4000.000 but no one seems to know much about 1t except that 1t is intended for the | publication of books and magazines. The French Government has the next biggest printing establishment in a vil lage near Paris; that of the German Gov ernment is third in size. and that of the l Japanese is fourth. The printing of the British Government Is let by contract to the firm of Spotiswoode & Eyre which has several large establishments for diff ferent kinds of work, but if they were all placed together they would not be half as large the printing office here
 MT. Spotiswoode was in Washington not long ago inspecting the. plant and study
 ing the methods, and one of the chief of
 ficers of the German printing department
 has recently been here also.
 There is no private establishment in the
 world that bears any comparison with the
 Government office; there is none one-haIf
 as large. Twenty-Five or thirty years
 ago the Hampers had the biggest private
 printing office in the world, employing
 4OO people, but now 1t is commonplace.
 As l have already said, there are more
 than 4OOO people on MT. Palmers pay
 roll. While 1t Is impossible to give def-
 nlte information or decide between them
 W. 5. Conkey at Hammond, Ind, and
 Robert J. Collier of New York. both
 claim to have the biggest private estab-
 llshment in this country, and until the
 Iolnourgh materializes theirs are prob
 ably as large as any in the world.