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Typo: A Monthly Newspaper and Literary Review, Volume 1

An Indignation Meeting. (Inland Printer.)

page 29

An Indignation Meeting. (Inland Printer.)

One evening, in the hush and quiet following a busy day in a well-regulated printing office, the « hell-box » became the scene of an unusual commotion. The inmates of this asylum for typographic unfortunates, whose careers of usefulness have reached an untimely and unmerited end, were holding an indignation meeting, to lay their grievances before the attentive ear of the Printing world. Mr Pica Quad, whose ragged battered edges and chunks of dry paste proclaimed his disastrous habit of too intimate association with gauge-pins, was chosen president, and after some remarks about his not being proud though often « stuck up, » he called for individual experiences and suggestions.

As is often the case, the biggest chap got the floor first, and proceeded to air his grievance as follows:—« Gentlemen, all of you, from Four Pica W down to the Scrap of an Agate Period, can see this horrible gash in my side. The lock-up was not careful to try every piece in the form before he sent it to press, and I happened to be loose. As a consequence I slipped part way out, the press caught me in his cruel jaws, and left me a wreck. For no fault of my own I must go to the hot place. I came near breaking the press, too. I demand a law com—— »

« Oh, that's all right, of course, » spoke up Cap H, « but very few suffer that way compared with the numbers who are abused as I was. Everyone can see that I am bran new and never even tasted ink; yet here I am, thrown away before having a chance to do any good in the world. I was dropped on the floor, as so many of us have been, but instead of being picked up I was trampled under foot all day, and at night rolled over and over by a great rough broom. I tried hard to preserve my fine lines and nice sharp corners, but, alas! I was fatally crippled and doomed to fiery dissolutions. »

« It was a careless trick that brought me here, » said Lower Case J. « After the Printer got the form I was in locked up, he dropped his shooting-stick and mallet right on top of us, and at one fell swoop my pretty little tail was gone. It was such a beauty of a tail, with a curl— »

« Oh, who cares about your insignificant tail? Listen to my tale, » interrupted rudely, Shaded Text B. « It is a shame I am obliged to stay here with you vulgar common types. I was high-born, and have been delicate all my life. The fool pressman knew I ought to be carefully handled, but he thoughtlessly ran a single line of us through on a heavy tympan left on the press from another job. Like the immortal J. N., we 'assumed the pressure,' but as a result we were thrown in here for fear we would get mixed with the Black Gothic. Drat careless pressmen, anyhow! »

« Amen! » swelled the chorus from all over the box.

« Say! » piped Thin Space's squeaky voice, « give us little fellows a chance, won't you? It's a disgrace that so many of us are here. Some of us Thin Spaces were bent out of shape by a lazy comp to fill a line tighter; some of our tender bodies were broken right in two by being jammed into a tight line, and lots of us are here in disgrace, though perfectly sound, because we were not considered worth putting back into the case. Now the foreman wonders what has become of all of us. Oh, I could tell him a thing or two about those lazy blacksmiths who bend us, and break us, and throw us away! Down with blacksmiths! »

Uproarious yells of « Death to the blacksmiths! » convulsed the box for the next few minutes.

As soon as he could be heard, Small Cap L spoke up: « If anything is more fatal to us than a planer with an idiot who claims to be a Printer pounding it as if beating a tattoo on a cast-iron anvil, I'd like to know what it is. [Applause, and cries of « So would we! »] A piece of dirt got under my feet and raised me a little high to paper. The pressman got me down level all right enough, Oh, yes! but you wouldn't know me from a shingle nail now. »

« The typefounder made me wrong in the start, » spoke the gruff voice of 36-Point Lower Case P; « he had no business to put such a large kern on me—might know I couldn't hold my tail when it stuck out unsupported a rod beyond my body. I tell you the Printer swore when my tail broke, for I was the last whole one in the case. »

« Here, too, » chimed in a silvery voice; « the founders made my lines so very light and razor-like that my face wore down on the first job. It was a shame, too, for I belong to an expensive script fount, which is now utterly worthless. I blush to think how little I returned for the money I cost, but it wasn't my fault. The founder ought to cut such type differently, or use harder metal, that's all. »

« Why doesn't some one say a word for us? » quavered the cracked voice of Thin Lead. « We are the most abused material in the office. Carelessly thrown about, bent or broken, our best labor-saving pieces ruthlessly clipped when the foreman's back is turned, pounded into spaces too small for us and broken to bits, our corners stuck into loose lines and broken off there to justify them, battered and banged about in all sorts of ways—it is a wonder that any of us escape an early retirement to the « hell-box. » If they'd only treat us better, there would not be such a drain on the proprietor's pocket for leads and slugs. »

« Nippers ruined me, » said Bijou K. « A careless chap tried to pull me out of a tight form, nippers slipped, usual result, face looks as if it had been monkeyed with a buzz-saw! No wonder founders sell nippers cheap; they could well afford to give them away, and throw in a chromo or comic valentine, adorned, as usual, with a picture of a red-nosed long primer comp with great primer feet, at work with his stick in the wrong hand. Banish the nippers! say I. »

« So say we all of us, » rang out from a hundred metal throats.

« Half of us don't belong here at all, » said Gothic Z. « Now, I am not injured at all—just carelessly thrown in here with a handful of pie by a lazy boy, simply because that was an easier way to dispose of us than to put us where we belong. One comp spent two hours looking for me this morning, and finally had to use a wrong-fount in my place. If the foreman or boss [unclear: would] only look this box over once in a [unclear: while it] would pay well. There must be hundreds of perfectly good—— »

Just then footsteps were heard approaching, so they precipitately adjourned and lay down quietly in the box. Soon the proprietor came along, and they felt him poke over the contents of the box, as he said to the foreman with him: « Say Jim, suppose you trade this box of worthless stuff for the leads you want. I don't see what becomes of all the material—I am buying all the time. I suppose, though, it is only the natural waste, and can't be helped. »

Next day, the box, containing several dollars' worth of good material, if only it were properly sorted out, was traded for eighty cents' worth of leads; and soon found its way back to the melting-pot, to begin once again the same old round it had so often gone through before.