Bismarck daily tribune. [volume] (Bismarck, Dakota [N.D.]) 1881-1916, 1914-01-18
The Modem Printer

1t was only a little news item, less than a stick
full" but the printer who set it on the machine, the
proofreader who read it for errors, the galley boy
who put in the corrected lines and the makeup man
who put it in the form, must all have felt a little
lift of pride as they handled it. 1t was from Joliet,
III. the scene of the states largest penitentiary,
where 1900 men are confined, and it said that in all
that body not a single printer could be found, and so
the first number Of the new paper, the Prison Post,
had to be set by an outside printer. The printing
craft is one of the largest in numbers of the skilled
trades, yet it is not supplying it's quota to the peni.
tentiaries of the country. And the reason for this is
the very fact that it is a trade requiring high skill
of the most intelligent sort, including a high sense
of responsibility, holding a standard up to which the
shinless, incompetent, irresponsible and vicious can.
not measure. A process of elimination has been
going on which has retained in it the sober, indus.
trious and the reliable almost to the exclusion OF
those who are not, and it is not the sober, indus
trous and reliable who get into penitentiaries.
But it was not always thus in the printing trade,
particularly in the newspaper portion of it. Before
typesetting machines were invented. when type was
set by hand, and lack Of individual speed could be
easily compensated for by putting on more ceases"
and when there was a substitute ready to take the
case of any man who was alcoholically indisposed, it
did not so much matter whether a typesetter was
either or reliable. Those were the days when tramp
printers abounded, men who went from town to
town and worked as substitutes for a few days and
then passed on. With the coming OF machines cost.
ing $4,000 each, ~sobriety and reliability on the part
of printers became an economic necessity. Also the
need to work the plant at top speed and highest
capacity to get out the various editions of the modern
paper left no room for the tramp, the alcoholic or
the shiftless. The printer had to make good as an
individual.
In q generation this has SO completely changed
TIC personnel and the spirit of the printing office,
this, combined With the high intelligence and good
education necessary for effective work, not alone the
comrasitcrs, but the craftsmen in all branches Of the
rrintiGg=business have reached such a general high
average of character as is indicated by this absence
0! a single orc of them from the 1900 men in Joliet.
1t is pleasant to say this about them. because there
still fingers in the public mind some of the impress.
sion put there by the bibulous printer of former days,
the days of printers milk that looked dark under
the foam. and was not carried in sanitary bottles as
it is now, when at lunch time a printing Office has
much the aspect of a dairy counter. 1t is. not alone
the printing trade that has been elevated by modern
industrial conditions requiring %sobriety, intelligence
and reliability on the part of workers, but it is the
hghestsand most conspicuous example,;