Evening star., 1912-09-01

| me01Um OF termed1ary which
Communication. ', WORKS * -..ax sssse,s1y =. s,i
times. day and night, to send forth the
words Of the government to the multi
tude. to give them proof OF what is be-
| ing done at Washington or at other
point where some federal office throbs
| like the pulse Of gigantic monster. That
Intermediary is the government printing
Office which every year sends out al
most a billion documents. ranging from
| single-sheet announcements to thousand
page books. all dealing with the govern
ment and Its work.
Commercially speaking. the govern
| ment printing off1ce Is not a money-mak-
ing enterprise. 1t is. in fact far from
that Each year Congress makes an
appropriation for its maintenance. In
addition each department has so much
appropriated each year for the print
ing Of public documents. That money
eventually gets to the printing Office, but
is only enough in each case to defray
other words. Uncle Sam gives each Of the
departments a credit slip for so much
at the printing Office. its equivalent to
be received in printing.
=.
Each prdncn OF the government has
more or less printed matter. from
merely an annual re-
Four Thousand port up to the output
Er~o~.a Of the Department Of
Agriculture. which
annually sends out hundreds Of thou
sands Of leaflets and books on a multi
tude of subjects. And these are all
printed at the government printing
office, where approximately 1000 peo-
pie constitute this we'll regulated ma
chine
Aside from printing the Congressional
Record. the bills. resolutions and other
congressional material. the chief work
of this Office is the production of de-
partment publications. This phase of
the work Is, in fact. the one most ap-
parent, as 1t is only in the wee sma'
hours of the morning that the Con-
gressional Record is printed.
When material is received at the
office from a department 1t Is first
progress may be noted. The nature of
the work determines the next step.
Two classes OF typesetting machines
are used. the linotype and the mono
type. The former. applied almost en-
tirely to congressional work. is used
in all cases where the matter is what
might be termed straight" compost
ton. The monotype is used for tabu-
lar work or other intricate matter
Eighty-four linotype machines are In
stalled at the printing office and 126
casting machines, that section of the
monotype which produces the finished
type. The other part Of this machine
is called the keyboard and is similar
to a typewriter, with the exception
that, instead of writing the words by
letters, perfOrations are employed. The
perforated paper Is then fed into the
casting machine. where. in somewhat
the same manner as pianola works.
the type is made. One hundred and
sixty of these machines are used. The
average days work on the linotype
machines is about 1000 pages of the
usual government publication size. The
nature of the work done on the mono
type machines makes the output vary.
X
In both the linotype and monotype ma
chimes hot metal Is used in forming the
type, and this is one Of the
Melting most important items used
rr.A., in the printing office. On
A~es"A' the seventh floor is a small
room in which metal is melted and re-
cast into the small cakes used in both
machines. The capacity Of the two melt
ing pots IS fifteen tons. Each day this
room is kept busy melting and casting,
as an average of 5000 pounds Of metal is
recast for the monotype machines and
1900 pounds for the linotype. Some idea
of the enormous amount OF work done
can be gained when 1t is realized that in
a single year 1881, 721 900 ems Of type
were set.
The type set. proofs are then taken.
When this point has been reached there
is probably some delay in the progress
of the work at the printing office. as the
proofs have to be sent to the department
from which the matter came, to be cor
rected. Returned to the printing office.
any necessary corrections are made in
the type and the work proceeds. Proof Is,
however. also read at the printing office
a large force Of proofreaders being kept
constantly busy.
The type set and corrected, the forms
are then made up and sent to the found
ry. where either stereotypes or electro
types are made. Each month about So
600 square inches Of stereotypes and cleo
trotypes are produced. while the material
required to do this reaches 100000 pounds
metal are used in a year, while 5000
pounds of wax are necessary during the
same length Of time in the electroty ping
process. Almost 1.50O reams of paper,
each ream containing $50 sheets 10 by "a
are used in making the matrices.
the matrixes or electrotypes is done on
the seventh floor, while
Press the presses are on the
Work. M n. iooi me presses
printing Office number 1885, and cover as
wide range as is possible, there being
one small hand press and several presses
which are hand fed. besides the large
presses which turn out 10000 sheets an
hour and on up to the gigantic monster
press used exclusively in printing the
Congressional Record. These presses
consume about 100 tons Of paper every
day. as from forty to fifty tons are used
during each eight-hour shift. The
presses represent the highest point yet
reached by invention. For instance,
there is one press which in single hour
prints 1000 documents of thirty-tWo
pages each, folds and cuts them. and
finally drives the staples through which
hold each together. Another press
prints $1,000 cards an hour on both sides.
and cuts them. The capacity OF some
presses is 600. 600 pages an hour.
Following the actual printing OF.
publication there are still several stages
to be passed through before it comes out
a finished document In some instances
the process is longer than In others, as
some are to be merely paper-coVered
bound books, perhaps OF several hundred
pages.
The first step after the printed sigma
lures" come off the presses is to assemble
them in their proper order Each sig
nature represents eight pages. The ma
chimes which do this work look like
miniature trolleys: a series OF com.