fight againsttree parasitechroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn86072041/1909-05... · waterbug...
TRANSCRIPT
WORLD'S BIGGESTPRINT SHOP
UNCLE SAM, PUBLISHER, TURNS
OUT MILLIONS OF WORKS FOR
DISTRIBUTION AMONG PEOPLE
?WASTE PAPER IS VALUABLE
The recent fight in congress as to
whether the census reports should be
printed at the government printing
office or by private contract, to-
gether with the preparations now be-
ing made at the former place for
printing the millions of blanks which
will be required in the great decen-
nial stocktaking of the nation, serveto remind the public that Uncle Sam
is a great publisher.
Not only is he a great publisher,
but he is by far the greatest publish-er in the world. He starts out with
a printing and binding account of
more than $6,000,000.
Then he has such a vast corps of
authors that his manuscripts are con-servatively estimated to cost him
$14,000,000 more. Uncle Sam, pub-
lisher, spends perhaps $20,000,000 ayear.
Carloads to Farmers.
Does he turn out many books as a
result of his activities? If printingfrom 500 to 1000 different kinds ofbooks every year is not a publishingrecord, what it? And then comes thf>
number of each.The Yearbook of the department of
agriculture starts the list with halfa million copies a year. Each book
weighs about three pounds. One anda half million pounds, 750 tons, 25
carloads ?that is what Uncle Sam
gives to his farmer friends as astarter.
As the birthplace of the millions of
public documents, the number of
pieces turned out annually is so great
that even the much-discussed audit
system, kicked out uncermoniously by
President Roosevelt, lost track of the
count. In 1907, however, there were55,000,000 pieces turned out, 555,-
--000 pages of type to set.
Wast«> Paper Brings $31,000
The waste paper sold last year
brought $31,000, and waste paper atthe government printing office is re-duced to the least possible minimum.
Perhaps the $20 gold piece you gave
away last Christmas came from thegovernment printing office as a part
of its $4555 worth of waste gold leafit sold to the mint last year.
Even the leather scraps from thebookbinding department in a year aresold for more than $5000. It takes
about $14,000 worth of printers* ink,
some 35,000 pounds of it in all, to do
the printing.Enough gold leaf is used to pay for
a fine farm, and thread that costs
as much as a good six-room city home
is required for sewing purposes.
Even money spent on the fly andwaterbug exterminator is as much as
CoffeeJust Coffee, but perfect
Coffee.Your grocer will grind it?
better if ground at borne?nottoo fine.
5
would be needed to buy an ordinaryfour-passenger touring car.
Paper Cost Millions.The paper used in Uncle Sam's big
publishing business costs more than$1,000,000 a year, $900,000 of thisbeing used at the government print-ing office proper. A quarter milliondollars' worth of stock is always kept
on hand.The building and equipment where
all these things are done on sucha huge scale is commensurate withthe great work carried on. It is UncleSam's boast that he has the finestprinting office in the world, and hecan reel off figures by the yard toshow that he is ready to make good
against all comers.He points out that in his new
seven-story building he has nine acresof floor space and six acres more inthe old building. He tells you thatthe new building cost $2,500,000 andthat the machinery put into it cost$3,500,000. He values his wholeplant at $16,000,000 and tells you
that he has a pay roll of $14,000 aday.
79 Linotypes in Room.
One room in the print shop has 79linotype machines in it. the largest
number in one office in the world.In another place are the melting pots,
holding 15 tons of metal at a time.In another room he shows presses
whose combined output is more than1,000,000 impressions every eight-
hour day. There are 87 presses andthere is not a pully or a belt in sight.Each machine is operated by its ownindividual motor, which is placed outof sight. They eat up paper at therate of 40 tons a day and ink at the
rate of 350 pounds every eight hours.The card presses turns out 500,000cards printed on both sides every day.
Printer Has Elegant Office.
i The job office is the biggest place jjof its kind in the world. It turns out
more job work every day in the yeai jthan the average plant turns out in ja week. Leaving this place the visitor
lie told that the office of the publicprinted, located on the same floor, isj
I the most elegantly furnished officethe government has. And any onewho has had the opportunity to com-
ipare the public printer's office with
ithat of President Taft's might think
| that Mr. Taft's was a backwoods law| office in comparison.
Uncle Sam, publisher, has finished
some big jobs, but that monumental,
if not highly useful work, the Rebel-lion Records, with its 128 volumesand a 1200-page index, will perhaps
Iremain for generations to come the
greatest single undertaking in theprinting line. Think of it! Over,100,000 pages of history dealing with
one five-year period! Itrequired up-
wards of 80,000 reams of white paper
and more than 3.000.000,000 ems of
type to publish this great work. The
whole edition comprised about 1,500,---000 volumes.
History Is Finest Work.
It is said that the finest piece of
work Uncle Sam ever executed wasthe History of the Capitol. That it is
a fine book may be inferred from the;statement that although nothing ischarged for in its sale but the barecost after the plates were made, it
sells for $10 a volume.A great many valuable works come
from the presses of Uncle Sam's big
printery, btu there is such an abund-ance of chaff with the wheat thateven the libraries designated as de-positories were surfeited with gov-
ernment documents.Perhaps the greatest need that Un-
cle Sam as a published has is a corps
of trained editors, who are masters ofthe art of blue penciling. An exam-ination of the average public docu-
ment reveals the fact that half of itscontents might have been cut outwithout the loss of a single essentialfact, and with the gain of an inesti-
mable degree of interest and service-ableness.
Advertising Pays U. S.
Xot the least uninteresting part ofUncle Sam's big publishing business isthp work of the superintendent of
documents. To be able to sell thatwhich can be had for nothing is anunusual accomplishment. But thepresent incumbent has been able to
do that very thing and to no incon-
siderable extent. His success hashinged on the doctrine that advertis-
ing pays.That there are documents by the
tens of thousands lying in the storage
rooms of the government, which areinvaluable if placed in proper hands,
is a well known fact. But the public
has been unconscious of their ex-istence and of how to get them.
To inform them of the existence
of these documents and of how toget them he secured from congress
a negligible appropriation for adver-tising purposes. He issued a fewmagazines and newspaper advertis-ing statements, and then got out anattractive poster, which the postoffice
department authorized him to havehung in every postoffice. In this heexplained fully the scope of publicdocuments, their value when intelli-
MillerStetsonMallory
CravenetteHats
gently selected, etc., and gave des-criptions of several hundred of themost valuable and useful ones.
Books SeU for $50,000.
The result was that Uncle Sambookseller, was able to do $50,000worth of business last year, in di-rect competition with Uncle Sam,gratuitous distributor of books. Andthe sale are still increasing.
Nearly all of these sales were ofthe cheaper publications, those rela-ting to subjects of interest to thefarmer being in greatest demand.The majority of the business comesfrom the rural districts.| To the average man the most use-ful work done under the superinten-dent of documents is that of indexingall publications issued by the gov-ernment. The superintendent saysthat what is needed to unseal theveritable treasures which are buriedin public documents is a completedistionary catalogue, but that thisis not now possible at any price, ow-ing to the lack of men trained to doit.
Six Years for Indexing.A former incumbent of the office
estimated that he could, in six years,prepare such a catalogue of docu-ments, and a topical index to the de-bates in congress from the beginningof the government down to 1905, ata total cost of $166,000. The pres-ent superintendent frankly says thatit can not be done in six years,neither can it be done at an autlay
of $166,000. He would probablywant 10 years and more than $300,---000.
The indexes that have been pre-pared in the past have been decidedly
amateurish. One index is called a"Bird's Eye Index to the Torry Bank-rupt Bill," yet it is only a singlepage table of contents, no better andno worse than hundreds of indexes ofone kind and another that congresshas bought at big prices.
Harmony in Print Shop,Things are going better in Uncle
Sam's publishing business today thanin olden days. The gold braid andbrass button spirit that permeatedeverything then is entirely done awaywith now, and one feels he is amongordinary, everyday mortals once morewhen he has business theje.
Haskin.)
Nowhere else in Washington isthere such a splendid example efhow the policy, of those higher upwill reflect down to the lowest em-
THE WENATCHEE DAILY WORLD, WENATCHEE, WASHINGTON, MONDAY, MAY 17, 1909.
ploye. The men who wore the goldbraid are still there, but the spirit
they were then called upon to reflectis entirely gone, and Uncle Sam'sprinting business will perhaps run assmoothly hereafter as any otherbranch of the government. Of coursethe people who lost their jobs by theadvent of printing machinery willstill have their grievances, and willfrequently air them, but otherwiseall will go along as smoothly as if itwere pennies instead of dollars thatare being spent.(Copyrighted. 1909, by Frederic J.
FIGHT AGAINSTTREEPARASITE
WHOLE FORESTS DEVASTATED
BY DISEASE ? GOVERNMENT
LENDS AID AND MANY NEWr
REMEDIES ARE TRIED.
New York, May 17.?A strange dis-
ease has broken out among the trees
of the east. Whole forests have been
devastated. More than 20,000 trees
in Forest park, Brooklyn, alone,
have been destroyed since the open-ing of spring by a peculiar parasite.
Of these, 16,000 were chestnut trees.The Brooklyn park commission is
using thousands of gallons of a germ-icide in the hope of pjreventing the
spread of the disease.The attention of the agricultural
department at Washington was calledto the parasite last year when it hadgained only a slight foothold. Thedepartment assigned a number of ex-perts to the matter and they discov-
ered that the parasite had been im-ported, probably from France, and
that in young trees and shrubs it hadbeen disseminated throughout a largeportion of the United States.
Many, thousands of dollars wasspent by the department in caution-
ing foresters, farmers and othersthroughout the east, the middle west,the south and in advising remedies tobe employed.
So far New York, New Jersey andPennsylvania have been the princi-
AUTING clothes ought to be made just as care-V fully as "inning" clothes; the point we make in
regard to our
Hart Schaffner & Marxclothes is that you canwear them anywhereand look as you oughtto look in them. Eventhe thin Summer stuff isjust as certainly all-woolas the heavier goods;you'll find thin, all-woolgoods the coolest clothesyou can wear.
In thin stuff especially thefine tailoring, and the perfecftdesigning in these goods countfor more than usual. Thinstuff, if not properly made up,doesn't keep shape; soon looksstringy. None of that withour goods-
Two-piece suits $18 to $25
This store is the home ofHart Schaffner & Marx clothes
New ofDouglas
andFlorsheim
Shoes
We have one of the finest buys in Wenatchee for 30 days: 14---acres at $14,000; 7 acres bearing Winesaps and Spitzenbergs 10years old, in fine condition; 5 acres alfalfa.
House for rent, furnished. Also house and furniture for sale.City property to exchange for acreage.
NEELY & COMPANYAcross from Neubauer's, corner First St. and Wenatchee Avenue.
pal sufferers, but reports from Indi-ana, Illinois and the transmississippiand the southwestern states indicate
that the plague is in its incipiencythere'and that heroic measures mustbe employed to save the trees."
WaterviUe Wheat Looking Fine.
Waterville, Wash., May 15.?The
warm weather of the last few daysis starting the wheat throughout theWaterville country and a good stand
is everywhere reported. Althoughthere has been no rain since the snowleft, the crops are not suffering. The
cool winds have tended to preserve
rather than dry up the moisture.
The discouragement thathere three weeks ago, when practic-
ally all the winter wheat had to be~resown, owing to the heavy frosts and*light snows of the winter, has dis-appeared.