The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1917-01-13
OLD TIMERS GOING
Not Many More Printers of
"Kan" Whitfield Type.
G. A. Cain, Formerly of Topeka,
Writes of Late Foreman.
HE KNEW ALL KANSAS HISTORY
No Affair Was Beyond His
Range of knowledge.
"reminiscences of Days When
Two Men Worked Together.

Cullen A. Cain who was managing
editor of the State Journal for elgh-
teen months after L. L. Kiene went 10
the court house as sheriff, has written
to Kiene a letter which is in substance
a tribute to the late kan" Whltted'
for years foreman in the State journal
composing rooms. Cain knew Whitfield
we'll and loved him-loved him be-
cause of the man he was, but loved
him too, because of his association
with the old type rule and shooting
stick.
Years before Cain came to Topeka
as political reporter and later man
aging editor of the State Journal, he
learned the printing trade in little
country newspaper office in southern
Missouri He worked in the days
when every country office set its type
by hand and before the point system
came into style and when the wooden
Dutchmen were used to justify type
form and the paper was dampened
over night to insure a good print and
cover the imperfections of the type
that came from the patent medicine
houses in exchange for advertising
space. And Kan Whitfield knew the
story of the old-time printing offlce
even better than Cain-because Whit
ted ratified the slugs in his stick years
before Cain entered the game.
Now Cain is employed by giant,
soulless, heartless corporation with Of
fees in a twenty-story building in st.
Louis. Whitfield has gone to his re-
ward. And this is the story that Cain
wrote to Kiene concerning Whitfield
and the yesterdays of the print shop
Gains Letter.
Dear Kiene:
Your message that Kan" Whitfield
I
knew this old printer well and held
for him both affection and respect
He was one of that body of craftsmen
that is fast disappearing from the
earth. There never was and there
never will be again in any line of the
worlds work such a lot of men as the
old-time printers who fiourished in the
newspaper offices of this country in
the days from 1870 to 1890.
They set type by hand. weighing
each letter as they placed it in the
stick. /" Their work required both
skilled hand and an intelligent mind.
They accumulated much learning and
not little philosophy. The average
man skins rapidly thru the sentences
of newspaper or a book and misses
half of the meaning of the printed
word But the old-time printer set
up these sentences letter by letter and
word by word and the VISIONS of the
writer fingered long with him.
Since the first twelve working years
of my life were spent at the printers
trade l have been given to know a
little of the men of that calling. Such
men! They worked hard and played
hard and scoffed at most things Your
deep reader is a cynic. He knows the
lttleness as well as the greatness of
man. He knows that pride and van
ity and outward display are only cloaks
used to hide corruption inside.
The linotype machine came along
in the late eighties and early ninetieS
with it's almost human mechanism and
took the old hand printers trade away
The men whose warm and florid
boast was that they had worked in
every newspaper shop from Maine to
Oregon are silent now and only the
hard click of the typesettins machines
is heard in the land. But Horace
Greeley knew them and loved them;
and so did Charles A. Dana and Henry
Watterson and Eugene Field, that
prince of poets.
Greatest Roman of Them AL.
Kan Whitfield. the old time
printer, was one of the greatest Ro-
mans of them all. For forty years his
cunning hands and we'll stored mind
had labored in the print shops of
Kansas. The men who set type along
side him on the case in other days
have all gone. Old and withered and
gray, these printers pasted up their
taxes ana shuf1led off to attend final
chapel meeting in the Master
Printers hall, but Whitfield stayed at
his post to defy time. age and infirmi-
ties. Year after year he held his re-
sponsible and trying position as fore
man of great Kansas daily while
younger men who had neglected their
habits of temperance and careful Iiv-
ing fell by the wayside, wondering as
they fell how it was this printer of a
past generation could hold out so long.
Few men living today are better