The Birmingham age-herald., 1921-04-26

| Ii M Inc old pupnShlng mousse oI S Harper & Bros. down on Pearl street is a quaint place. Il was the first fireproof building erected in New York, but the fire department claims it hardly meets the require ments now.
 It may be a rusty, dusty looking old building, but it has every reason to be proud of the printing it has turned out and is still turning out. saw them printing, assembling and binding the May number of Harper Magazine to- day and was also shown some volumes of books being published which are to retail at $50 a volume.
 It is a great pleasure to visit a place where they take such an interest in you. The superintendent of the Harper plant spent more than an hour takin g me from top to bottom and explaining everything.
 Do you know how they make the rough edges on volume? I had often wondered. They do it with a saw. The assembled pages of three volumes at a time are fed into an affair just like a small sawmill and the saws teeth do the work. The book paper dust is car ried off by suction just as yellow pine sawdust is carried off in an Alabama sawmil1.
 Do you know how they give books gold tops? A three foot row of un- bound volumes is put in wise. A workman then scrapes and planes down the tops until the surface is perfectly smooth. Then he lays on pure agold leaf down until 1t is absolutely smooth nisher and rubs and polishes the gold leaf down until it is absolutely smooth and glistening. That's all there is to it man l saw at work today has been scraping and furnishing and polishing the gold top books coming from the house of Harper for the past 35 years and he has muscles like steel.
 At one point we came to a little woman working at a table and her fingers moved like lightning as she deftly pasted llustrations into the pages of a book being prepared. She was proud of her work and showed it was something that could not be learned in day. The superintendent turned to me and said: You must overlook her work; she is a newcomer and hasn't much speed yet The won- ans face was a study as she caught, the significance of the joke.
 One of the most interesting things was the way tue pages and illustra- tions of Harper's Magazine were as- mechanically. A long horse shoe shaped conveyors moves continuously and as it moves, automa tically picks up the next sheets or illustrations piled along the route. so that when the end is reached, all the pages are in place.
 Here every tenth copy is inspected to see that all inserts are correct. Next machine takes the pages and runs wire clips through them and they pass to another machine which automati- cally glues them and puts on the cover pages. Then they are ready for the cutting machines which tim the edges and Harpers for May is ready for the reader. Next week they will start on the June number.
 Everyone knows what fine press work. is done by Harper's. and the color printing processes are very att tractive.
 In printing a book only few thou sand volumes are bound--sometimes less than this. Many more are printed and stored, however. and then they can be quickly put through the bindery as demand instifies.
 The printed pages of book before hinding are compressed in a machine just like one of our cotton com presses This is in order that the plume may be the exact thickness to Git the cover.
 saw books Icing printed on flat bed presses with as IT any as 64 pages to the hgsi lost books are printed. 1 howe>r As yagos to the sheet In %fer shipping rooms today ---as a@s thousanads of volumes were sving boxed and sent to all pafts 1 of the world.
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