Scientific American Supplement, No. 795, March 28, 1891 written by Various
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Various >> Scientific American Supplement, No. 795, March 28, 1891
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SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN SUPPLEMENT NO. 795
NEW YORK, March 28, 1891.
Scientific American Supplement. Vol. XXXI., No. 795.
Scientific American established 1845
Scientific American Supplement, $5 a year.
Scientific American and Supplement, $7 a year.
* * * * *
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
I. AVICULTURE.--The Effect on Fowls of Nitrogenous and Carbonaceous
Rations.--A very valuable report upon the effects of different
diet on chickens, with tables of data.--1 illustration
II. BIOGRAPHY.--N.F. Burnham and his Life Work.--By W.H. BURNHAM.
--The life of one of the earliest turbine wheel manufacturers,
an inventor of turbine wheels and auxiliary machinery.
--1 illustration
III. BOTANY.--The Source of Chinese Ginger.--An identification of
a long unknown plant
IV. CIVIL ENGINEERING.--A Railway through the Andes.--An
interesting enterprise now in progress in South America, with
maps.--2 illustrations
Chicago as a Seaport.--Proposed connection of Chicago with the
waters of the Mississippi River, thereby placing it in water
communication with the sea.--2 illustrations
Floating Elevator and Spoil Distributor.--A machine for removing
dredged material from barges, as employed on the Baltic Sea
Canal Works.--10 illustrations
V. ELECTRICITY.--Alternate Current Condensers.--A valuable review
of the difficulties of constructing these condensers.--An important
contribution to the subject.--1 illustration
Electricity in Transitu.--From Plenum to Vacuum.--By Prof.
WILLIAM CROOKES.--Continuation of this important lecture with
profuse illustrations of experiments.--14 illustrations
The Telegraphic Communication between Great Britain,
Europe, America, and the East.--By GEORGE WALTER NIVEN.--
The engineering aspects of electricity.--The world's cables and
connections.--2 illustrations
VI. HORTICULTURE.--Herbaceous Grafting.--A hitherto little practiced
and successful method of treating herbs, with curious results
VII. MECHANICAL ENGINEERING.--Improved Cold Iron Saw.--The
"Demon" cold saw for cutting Iron.--Its capacity and general
principles.--1 illustration
VIII. MEDICINE AND HYGIENE.--How to Prevent Hay Fever.--By
ALEXANDER RIXA.--A systematic treatment of this very troublesome
complaint, with a special prescription and other treatment.
IX. MISCELLANEOUS.--The Business End of the American Newspaper.--By
A.H. SIEGFRIED.--A graphic presentation of the
technique of the newspaper office, circulation of the American
papers, methods of printing, etc.
The New Labor Exchange at Paris.--A new establishment, long
demanded by the laboring population of Paris.--Its scope and
prospects.--2 illustrations
X. NAVAL ENGINEERING.--The Empress of India.--The pioneer
of a fast mail service to ply in connection with the Canadian
Pacific Railway between Vancouver, China, and Japan.--1 illustration
XI. PHYSICS.--Stereoscopic Projections.--A most curious method
of securing stereoscopic effects with the magic lantern upon the
screen, involving the use of colored spectacles by the spectators.
--1 illustration
XII. TECHNOLOGY.--Gaseous Illuminants.--By Prof. VIVIAN B.
LEWES.--The fifth and last of Prof. Lewes' Society of Arts lectures,
concluding his review of the subject of gas manufacture
* * * * *
THE NEW LABOR EXCHANGE AT PARIS.
There will soon be inaugurated (probably about the 14th of July) a new
establishment that has long been demanded by the laboring population,
that is to say, a new labor exchange, the buildings of which, situated
on Chateau d'Eau Street, are to succeed the provisional exchange
installed in the vicinity of Le Louvre Street. The new structures have
been erected from plans by Mr. Bouvard, and occupy an area of
seventeen hundred meters.
The main work is now entirely terminated, but the interior decorations
are not yet completely finished. The distribution comprises a vast
meeting room, committee rooms for the various syndicates, offices in
which the workmen of the various bodies of trades will find
information and advice, and will be enabled to be put in relation with
employers without passing through the more or less recommendable
agencies to which they have hitherto been obliged to have recourse.
[Illustration: NEW LABOR EXCHANGE, PARIS.]
Upon the whole, the institution, if wisely conducted, is capable of
bearing fruit and ought to do so, and the laboring population of Paris
should be grateful to the municipal council for the six million francs
that our ediles have so generously voted for making this interesting
work a success. On seeing the precautions, perhaps necessary, that the
laborer now takes against the capitalist, we cannot help instituting a
comparison with the antique and solid organization of labor that
formerly governed the trades unions. Each corporation possessed a
syndic charged with watching over the management of affairs, and over
the receipts and the use of the common resources. These syndics were
appointed for two years, and had to make annually, at least, four
visits to all the masters, in order to learn how the laborers were
treated and paid, and how loyally the regulations of the corporation
were observed. They rendered an account of this to the first assembly
of the community and cited all the masters in fault.
Evidently, the new Labor Exchange will not cause a revival of these
old ways of doing things (which perhaps may have had something of
good in them), but we may hope that laborers will find in it
protection against those who would require of them an excess of work,
as well as against those who would preach idleness and revolt to
them.--_Le Monde Illustre_.
[Illustration: NEW LABOR EXCHANGE--HALL FOR MEETINGS.]
* * * * *
THE BUSINESS END OF THE AMERICAN NEWSPAPER.[1]
[Footnote 1: A recent address before the Outlook Club,
of Montclair, N.J.]
By A.H. SIEGFRIED.
The controlling motive and direct purpose of the average newspaper are
financial profit. One is now and then founded, and conducted even at a
loss, to serve party, social, religious or other ends, but where the
primary intent is unselfish there remains hope for monetary gain.
The first newspapers never dreamed of teaching or influencing men, but
were made to collect news and entertainment and deal in them as in any
other commodity. But because this was the work of intelligence upon
intelligence, and because of conditions inherent in this kind of
business, it soon took higher form and service, and came into
responsibilities of which, in its origin, it had taken no thought.
Wingate's "Views and Interviews on Journalism" gives the opinions of
the leading editors and publishers of fifteen years ago upon this
point of newspaper motive and work. The first notable utterance was by
Mr. Whitelaw Reid, who said the idea and object of the modern daily
newspaper are to collect and give news, with the promptest and best
elucidation and discussion thereof, that is, the selling of these in
the open market; primarily a "merchant of news." Substantially and
distinctly the same ideas were given by William Cullen Bryant, Henry
Watterson, Samuel Bowles, Charles A. Dana, Henry J. Raymond, Horace
White, David G. Croly, Murat Halstead, Frederick Hudson, George
William Curtis, E.L. Godkin, Manton Marble, Parke Godwin, George W.
Smalley, James Gordon Bennett and Horace Greeley. The book is fat with
discussion by these and other eminent newspaper men, as to the
motives, methods and ethics of their profession, disclosing high
ideals and genuine seeking of good for all the world, but the whole of
it at last rests upon primary motives and controlling principles in
nowise different or better or worse than those of the Produce Exchange
and the dry goods district, of Wall Street and Broadway, so that,
taking publications in the lump, it is neither untrue nor ungenerous,
nor, when fully considered, is it surprising, to say that the world's
doing, fact and fancy are collected, reported, discussed, scandalized,
condemned, commended, supported and turned back upon the world as the
publisher's merchandise.
The force and reach of this controlling motive elude the reckoning of
the closest observation and ripest experience, but as somewhat
measuring its strength and pervasiveness hear, and for a moment think,
of these facts and figures.
The American Newspaper Directory for 1890, accepted as the standard
compiler and analyst of newspaper statistics, gives as the number of
regularly issued publications in the United States and territories,
17,760. Then when we know that these have an aggregate circulation for
each separate issue--not for each week, or month, or for a year, but
for each separate issue of each individual publication, a total of
41,524,000 copies--many of them repeating themselves each day, some
each alternate day, some each third day and the remainder each week,
month or quarter, and that in a single year they produce 3,481,610,000
copies, knowing, though dimly realizing, this tremendous output, we
have some faint impression of the numerical strength of this mighty
force which holds close relation to and bears strong influence upon
life, thought and work, and which, measured by its units, is as the
June leaves on the trees--in its vast aggregate almost inconceivable;
a force expansive, aggressive, pervasive; going everywhere; stopping
nowhere; ceasing never.
I am to speak to you of "The Business End" of the American newspaper;
that is of the work of the publisher's department--not the editor's.
At the outset I am confronted with divisions and subdivisions of the
subject so many and so far reaching that right regard for time compels
the merest generalization; but, as best I can, and as briefly as I
can, I shall speak upon the topic under three general divisions:
First.--The personal and material forces which make the newspaper.
Second.--The sources of revenue from the joint working of these
forces.
Third.--The direct office, bearing and influence of these forces.
It is but natural that the general public has limited idea of the
personality and mechanism of the publication business, for much of its
movement is at night, and there is separation and isolation of
departments, as well as complicated relation of the several parts to
the whole. Not many years ago a very few men and boys could edit,
print and distribute the most important of newspapers, where now
hundreds are necessary parts in a tremendous complexity. But even
to-day, of the nearly 18,000 publications in the United States, more
than 11,000 are of that class which, in all their departments, are
operated by from two to four or five persons, and which furnish scant
remuneration even for these. Among the thin populations and in the
remote regions are thousands of weekly papers--and you may spell the
weekly either with a double _e_ or an _ea_--where there are two men
and a boy, one of whom does a little writing and much scissoring,
loafing among the corner groceries and worse, begging for
subscribers, button-holing for advertisements, and occasionally and
indiscriminatingly thrashing or being thrashed by the "esteemed
contemporary" or the "outraged citizen;" the second of whom sets the
type, reads the proofs, corrects them more or less, makes the rollers,
works the old hand press, and curses the editor and the boy
impartially; and the third of whom sweeps the office weekly, bi-weekly
or monthly, inks the forms and sometimes pis them, carries the papers,
and does generally the humble and diversified works of the "printer's
devil," while between the three the whole thing periodically goes to
the ---- level pretty sure to be reached now and then by papers of
this class. Yet there are many of these country papers that Mr.
Watterson once styled the "Rural Roosters" which are useful and
honored, and which actively employ as editors and publishers men of
fair culture and good common sense, with typographical and mechanical
assistants who are worthy of their craft.
But the personal workers upon the great magazines and the daily
newspapers are for each a battalion or a regiment, and in the
aggregate a vast army. The _Century Magazine_ regularly employs in its
editorial department three editors and eight editorial assistants, of
whom five are women; in the art department two artists in charge and
four assistants, of whom three are women; in the business department
fifty-eight persons, men and women--a total of seventy six persons
employed on the magazine regularly and wholly, while the printers and
binders engaged in preparing a monthly edition of 200,000 magazines
are at least a duplicate of the number engaged in the editorial, art
and business divisions.
The actual working force upon the average large daily newspaper, as
well as an outline idea of the work done in each department, and of
its unified result in the printed sheet, as such newspapers are
operated in New York, Chicago and Boston, may be realized from an
exhibit of the exact current status in the establishment of a well
known Chicago paper.
In its editorial department there are the editor-in-chief, managing
editors, city editors, telegraph editors, exchange editors, editorial
writers, special writers and about thirty reporters--56 in all.
Working in direct connection with this department, and as part of it,
are three telegraph operators and nine artists, etchers, photographers
and engravers; in the Washington office three staff correspondents,
and in the Milwaukee office one such correspondent--making for what
Mr. Bennett calls the intellectual end a force of 72 men, who are
usually regarded by the business end as a necessary evil, to be fed
and clothed, but on the whole as hardly worth the counting.
In the business and mechanical departments the men and women and their
work are these:
The business office, for general clerical work, receiving and caring
for advertisements, receiving and disbursing cash, and for the general
bookkeeping, employs 24 men and women.
On the city circulation, stimulating and managing it within the city
and the immediate vicinity, 10 persons.
On the country circulation, for handling all out-of-town subscriptions
and orders of wholesale news agents, 30 persons.
On mailing and delivery, for sending out by mail and express of the
outside circulation, and for distribution to city agents and newsboys,
31 persons.
In the New York office, caring for the paper's business throughout the
East, the Canadas, Great Britain and Europe, two persons.
In the composing room, where the copy is put into type, and in the
linotype room, where a part of the type-setting is done by machinery,
95 persons.
In the stereotype foundry, where the plates are cast (for the type
itself never is put on the press), 11 persons.
In the press room, where the printing, folding, cutting, pasting and
counting of the papers is done, 30 persons.
In the engine and dynamo room, 8 persons.
In the care of the building, 3 persons.
These numbers include only the minimum and always necessary force, and
make an aggregate of 316 persons daily and nightly engaged for their
entire working time, and borne on a pay roll of six thousand dollars a
week for salaries and wages alone.
But this takes no account of special correspondents subject to instant
call in several hundred places throughout the country; of European
correspondents; of 1,900 news agents throughout the West; of 200 city
carriers; of 42 wholesale city dealers, with their horses and wagons;
of 200 branch advertisement offices throughout the city, all connected
with the main office by telephone; and of more than 3 000 news
boys--all making their living, in whole or in part, from work upon or
business relations with this one paper--a little army of 6,300 men,
women, and children, producing and distributing but one of the 1,626
daily newspapers in the United States.
The leading material forces in newspaper production are type, paper,
and presses.
Printing types are cast from a composition which is made one-half of
lead, one-fourth of tin, and one-fourth of antimony, though these
proportions are slightly reduced, so as to admit what the chemist
calls of copper "a trace," the sum of these parts aiming at a metal
which "shall be hard, yet not brittle; ductile, yet tough; flowing
freely, yet hardening quickly." Body type, that is, those classes ever
seen in ordinary print, aside from display and fancy styles, is in
thirteen classes, the smallest technically called brilliant and the
largest great primer.
In the reading columns of newspapers but four classes are ordinarily
used--agate for the small advertisements; agate, nonpareil, and minion
for news, miscellany, etc., and minion and brevier for editorials--the
minion being used for what are called minor editorials, and the
brevier for leading articles, as to which it may be said that young
editorial writers consider life very real and very earnest until they
are promoted from minion to brevier.
A complete assortment of any one of these classes is called a font,
the average weight of which is about 800 pounds. Whereas our alphabet
has 26 letters, the compositor must really use of letters, spaces,
accent marks, and other characters in an English font 152 distinct
types, and in each font there are 195,000 individual pieces. The
largest number of letters in a font belongs to small _e_--12,000; and
the least number to the _z_--200. The letters, characters, spaces,
etc., are distributed by the printer in a pair of cases, the upper one
for capitals, small capitals, and various characters, having 98 boxes,
and the lower one, for the small letters, punctuation marks, etc.,
having 54 boxes.
A few newspapers are using typesetting machines for all or part of
their composition. The New York _Tribune_ is using the Linotype
machine for all its typesetting except the displayed advertisements,
and other papers are using it for a portion of their work, while still
others are using the Rogers and various machines, of which there are
already six or more. It seems probable that within the early future
newspaper composition will very generally be done by machinery.
It has been suggested to me that many of my hearers this evening know
little or nothing of the processes of the printer's art, and that some
exposition of it may interest a considerable portion of this audience.
The vast number of these little "messengers of thought" which are
required in a single modern daily newspaper is little known to
newspaper readers. Set in the manner of ordinary reading, a column of
the New York _Tribune_ contains 12,200 pieces, counting head lines,
leads, and so on; while, if set solidly in its medium-sized type,
there are 18,800 pieces in one column, or about 113,000 in a page, or
about 1,354,000 in one of its ordinary 12-page issues. A 32-page
Sunday issue of the New York _Herald_ contains nearly, if not quite,
2,500,000 distinct types and other pieces of metal, each of which must
be separately handled between thumb and finger twice--once put into
the case and once taken out of it--each issue of the paper. No one
inexperienced in this delicate work has the slightest conception of
the intensity of attention, fixity of eye, deftness of touch,
readiness of intelligence, exhaustion of vitality, and destruction of
brain and nerve which enters into the daily newspaper from
type-setters alone.
Each type is marked upon one side by slight nicks, by sight and touch
of which the compositor is guided in rapidly placing them right side
up in the line. They are taken, one by one, between thumb and
forefinger, while the mind not only spells out each word, but is
always carrying phrases and whole sentences ahead of the fingers, and
each letter, syllable and word is set in its order in lines in the
composing stick, each line being spaced out in the stick so as to
exactly fit the column width, this process being repeated until the
stick is full. Then the stickful is emptied upon a galley. Then, when
the page or the paper is "up," as the printers phrase it, the galleys
are collected, and the foreman makes up the pages, article by article,
as they come to us in the printed paper--the preliminary processes of
printing proofs from the galleys, reading them by the proof readers,
who mark the errors, and making the corrections by the compositors
(each one correcting his own work), having been quietly and swiftly
going on all the while. The page is made up on a portable slab of
iron, upon which it is sent to the stereotyping room. There wet
stereotyping paper, several sheets in thickness, is laid over the
page, and this almost pulpy paper is rapidly and dexterously beaten
evenly all over with stiff hair brushes until the soft paper is
pressed down into all the interstices between the type; then this is
covered with blankets and the whole is placed upon a steam chest,
where it is subjected to heat and pressure until the wet paper becomes
perfectly dry. Then, this dried and hardened paper, called a matrix,
is placed in a circular mould, and melted stereotype metal is poured
in and cooled, resulting in the circular plate, which is rapidly
carried to the press room, clamped upon its cylinder, and when all the
cylinders are filled, page by page in proper sequence, the pressman
gives the signal, the burr and whirr begin, and men and scarcely less
sentient machines enter upon their swift race for the early trains. As
a matter of general interest it may be remarked that this whole
process of stereotyping a page, from the time the type leaves the
composing room until the plate is clamped upon the press, averages
fifteen minutes, and that cases are upon record when the complex task
has been accomplished in eleven minutes.
The paper is brought from the mill tightly rolled upon wooden or iron
cores. Some presses take paper the narrow way of the paper, rolls for
which average between 600 and 700 pounds. Others work upon paper of
double the width of two pages, that is, four pages wide, and then the
rolls are sometimes as wide as six feet, and have an average weight of
1,350 pounds. Each roll from which the New York _Tribune_ is printed
contains an unbroken sheet 23,000 feet (4-1/3 miles) long. A few hours
before the paper is to be printed, an iron shaft having journal ends
is passed through the core, the roll is placed in a frame where it may
revolve, the end of the sheet is grasped by steel fingers and the roll
is unwound at a speed of from 13 to 15 miles an hour, while a fan-like
spray of water plays evenly across its width, so that the entire sheet
is unrolled, dampened, for the better taking of the impression to be
made upon it, and firmly rewound, all in twenty minutes. Each of these
rolls will make about 7,600 copies of the _Tribune_.
When all is ready, paper and stereotyped pages in place, and all
adjustments carefully attended to, the almost thinking machine starts
at the pressman's touch, and with well nigh incredible speed prints,
places sheet within sheet, pastes the parts together, cuts, folds and
counts out the completed papers with an accuracy and constancy beyond
the power of human eye and hand.
The printing press has held its own in the rapid advance of that
wonderful evolution which, within the last half century, in every
phase of thought and in every movement of material forces placed under
the dominion of men, has almost made one of our years the equivalent
of one of the old centuries. Within average recollection the single
cylinder printing machine, run by hand or steam, and able under best
conditions to print one side of a thousand sheets in one hour, was the
marvel of mankind. In 1850, one such, that we started in an eastern
Ohio town, drew such crowds of wondering on-lookers that we were
obliged to bar the open doorway to keep them at a distance which would
allow the astonishing thing to work at all.
To-day, in the United States alone, five millions of dollars are
invested in the building of printing presses, many of which, by
slightest violence to figure of speech, do think and speak.
Inspiration was not wholly a thing of long-gone ages, for if ever men
received into brain and worked out through hand the divine touch, then
were Hoe, and Scott, and Campbell taught of God.
Under existing conditions newspapers of any importance, in the smaller
cities, use one and sometimes two presses, capable of producing from
7,000 to 9,000 complete eight page papers each hour, each machine
costing from $10,000 to $15,000. Papers of the second class in the
large cities use treble or quadruple this press capacity, while the
great papers, in the four or five leading cities, have machinery
plants of from four to ten presses of greatest capacity, costing from
$32,000 to $50,000 each, and able to produce papers of the different
numbers of pages required, at a speed of from 24,000 to 90,000 four
page sheets, or of from 24,000 to 48,000 eight, ten, or twelve page
sheets per hour, each paper complete as you receive it at your
breakfast table--printed, pasted, cut and folded, and the entire
product for the day accurately counted in lots of tens, fifties,
hundreds or thousands, as may be required for instantaneous delivery,
while, as if to illustrate and emphasize the ever upward trend of
public demand for the day's news, quick and inclusive, Hoe & Co. are
now building machines capable of producing in all completeness 150,000
four page papers each hour.
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