White Pine news weekly mining review. [volume] (East Ely, Nev.) 1910-1920, 1911-05-07

Brooklyn Standardization. the next
in the Office of the New Orleans
Times-Democrat. The Brooklyn
Standardization also was the first
newspaper to use the linotype with
union labor. The Typographical
union at first was inclinec TO oppose
the introduction of the machine, but
its men soon bowed to the Inevitable
and hustled out of the dusy alleys of
the old hand-set composing rooms
to learn to operate the machines.
With the introduction of the limo
type and the transfer of the news
paper print-shop from the realms of
the handcrafts to the dominion of
machinery, it was said that romance
would die out of the printers trade.
OF course 1t wasn't the death of
romance that the printers union
objected to; it was the substitution
of one machine with one mar for
eight men. But as the newspapers,
being assisted by the discovery of
cheap processes for making spruce
wood pulp paper, at once expanded
so that the composing now
employees nearly as many men as in
the old hand set days, and at bet
ter wages and the unions fears were
soon at rest.
The printers know. and the edi-
tors who work with them know, that
the Mergenthaler has added to rath-
er than detracted from the glory of
their jobs. The man who sits at the
keyboard of a linotype is by com
pulsion of necessity more steadfast,
more sober and more industrious
than his prototype at the case in the
hand-set days. 1t takes a man to run
a linotype. There is a joy in the
rattle and click of the composing
room, a delight in the odor of the
hot metal. a thrill in the whir of the
motors that never had its counter
part in the good old days. No man
who has once known the spell of the
linotype ever can escape its influence.
The PROJECTIONS of the Mergen-
thaler have been lauded in a dozen
tongues, its shortcomings have been
apologized for in a thousand edi-
t~orials, but none but the men who
work with this machine have any
notion of how godlike are its vir-
tues, how human its faults. In the
old days a tramp printer occasional
ly would fall from the water wagon
just when he was most needed. but
never was there nan so peryerse as
a linotype on a spree. All over the
country there are hundreds of we'll
behaved linotypes that never strayed
from the narrow path of virtue. that
are model machines, that never have
stayed out nights and that don't
know the first rules of Doker-but
there isn't a n of them that isn't
waiting quietly and patiently for the
time when the whole shop depends
upon it to get out the paper and the
machinist is out TO lunch. When
that time m even the best and
noblest linotype will go on a spree.
They are machines. but they are
printers.
The man in whose brain this
wonderful machine was conceived
was Ottmar Mergenthaler. He was
born in Wurtemburg in 1854, was
brought up in the clock making
trade and came to the United States
in 1872. His idea for the linotype
was originated in 1888, the first ma
chine was built and patented in 1885
and the perfected principle was APP
piled, as has been said. In the ma
chine patented twenty-one years ago
today. Mr.. M~ergenthaler died at his
home in Baltimore In 1899.
The linotype has revolutionized
the business of printing. and there
by has made a new trade in journal
ism. Without this machine the huge
newspapers of today. with their wide
variety of matter designed 10 please
the fancy of a wide variety of read
ers. would be utterly impossible
Union.