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care and attention at the expense of the Home, with the exception of a small bill for feed shown the committee-one of them being kept in the stable most of the time.

As a member of the visiting committee I was surprised to learn during my visit in August that Mr. Schuman had a herd of cattle at the Home, and I believe the other members of the committee were also. My only conclusion then was that the trustees had given their consent to this matter, and, consequently, the committee had nothing to say. I certainly signed the committee's report, but deny that I have at any time expressed myself as favoring the action of Mr. Schuman in this regard.

I wish also to call attention to one other statement, i. e., regarding the "housekeeper," whose name appears on the pay-roll as "seamstress, etc." The recommendation of the committee was made on the evidence, and also from the fact that during our stay at the Home this person was never seen performing any other duty than caring for the Schuman baby. Does Mr. Schuman deny this? If so I would like to hear from Messrs. Donnelly and Colby.

Now, a few words in regard to the secret investigation, commented upon both by Superintendent Schuman and the trustees. The committee was governed in their action in this respect by the circumstances. Mr. Schuman made the following statement both to me personally and the committee: "I want to get at the instigators." Upon hearing this, the committee decided that as they were powerless to protect the inmates from persecution and perhaps dismissal, a secret hearing should be held. The committee was unanimous in all its actions, and I do not believe there is a division at this time on the question of whether the inmates would have been persecuted in case testimony was given against Mr. Schuman. All he wished was "to get at the instigators."

For

what purpose, I ask? Have they not a right to be heard without fear of consequences? Is the superintendent of the Home a paid servant, or has he become a dictator? It seems that the latter title would hold good.

As stated above, there are many other matters which might be given attention, but I am not desirous of newspaper notoriety, and have no time to waste in carrying on a useless discussion.

The only thing to be regretted is that a stenographic report was not taken by our committee, as I am positive, had such been the case, no further investigation would have been necessary.

This reply would have been made. sooner had it not been for my absence at the Federation convention in New York, from which I have just returned.

JOHN W. BRAMWOOD.

Denver, Colo., Dec. 23.

THE ARENA'S RAT PRINTER-NOTES.

It

If a detective were employed to uncover the unscrupulous acts of the firm where the Arena is printed, his discoveries would fill a book. The writer has recently learned that for four years a competent female proofreader was employed at Pinkham's at fifteen dollars a week. A former employer desired to secure her services and sent for her, but on informing Pinkham of the situation he magnanimously offered her sixteen dollars a week to remain at his slop work shop. She accepted the increase. was in January. In the summer the lady went on what proved to be an indefinite vacation. While absent her work was performed by an assistant, who received but twelve dollars a week. Pinkham discovered in a few weeks that the assistant was doing the work in a satisfactory manner, to him, at least. Instead of then informing the lady on a vacation, as an honorable employer would have done, that her services were no longer required, it was necessary for the lady to write the firm at the end of six

weeks inquiring when she should go back to work. Imagine her feelings when she received a letter informing her that as they were getting along very well without her in the rat shop they would not need her any more. For this shabby treatment it is presumed that Pinkham felt as though he had "got even" with the proofreader for the few dollars he had paid her at sixteen-dollarsa-week rate. He felt satisfied with himself when he was able to leave her to seek another job, which might not be procured for weeks, and then, perhaps, at less wages than she had been receiving. What has B. O. Flower to say about this matter? As he is president of the Boston Union for Practical Progress, and as its object is to "strive to unite all the moral forces of society in a continuous effort to make this world a better place to live in," I would suggest concentrating efforts on Pinkham at once. By establishing union conditions in that shop it will at least make better the condition of a few persons in this world. If Pinkham prefers to continue to run a cheap shop, Mr. Flower, have your work done where union men and women are employed and where union wages are paid. Use the union label on your publications, and in this way show to the world that you are a consistent reformer. Donahoe's Magazine has been recently taken away from Pinkham's, I am informed, on account of the bad conditions existing there.

James R. Carmichael died at his home in the neighboring city of Somerville, on December 15, after a brief illness of pneumonia. Mr. Carmichael was sixty-four years old, and was born in Inniskillen, Ireland. At an early age he went to London, where he learned the printing business. Coming to this country he found employment on the New York Tribune, where he remained until the early stages of the war of the rebellion, when he entered the navy.

Secretary Aug. McCraith paid Boston a

flying visit after the adjournment of the American Federation of Labor in New York last week. He arrived here Thursday morning, and in the evening twentyfive of his friends participated in a dinner at the American House. After a few hours of good cheer Gus left on the midnight train for Indianapolis. Had it been known sooner when he would be here a much larger gathering would have been the result.

At the meeting yesterday of No. 13, a percentage dues plan was adopted, which requires the payment of one per cent. on wages earned. If this plan is defeated when it goes to the referendum it will be necessary to again levy a weekly assessment.

The committee on the Thanksgiving day party made a progressive report, showing the receipts to have been larger than the expenditures.

When the now defunct Telegram was published here two years ago the secretary of No. 13 caused an attachment to be levied on the plant for wages due the compositors. The constable having the matter in charge in some way exceeded his authority, and was sued by one of the owners for $3,000 damages. The case was tried and the jury awarded that amount. The case was appealed and was tried again this month, when the jury brought in a verdict for $1,000. The matter came up at the union meeting yesterday, and as it was shown that the union could not be held responsible or that we did not desire the case to be reopened on flimsy exceptions at a great cost, it was voted to drop the matter.

The members of the union who proved themselves traitors to the cause of organized labor in the recent city election, by openly supporting a candidate for mayor who had shown that he was not a friend of trade organizations, were severely condemned by a number of speakers at our regular meeting. The offenders remained away. S. T. C.

Boston, Mass.

YESTERDAY, TODAY, TOMORROW.

HE proper thing to do at this season of the year would be to wish the readers of THE TYPOGRAPHICAL JOURNAL a happy new year. To do that would be to mock them. Few of us are and can be happy with our "iron colleague," the typesetting device, supplanting us by the score, and compelling those of us who have grown up in a quoin box to fall in with the rest of the wornout font and wait for "melting day."

Looking back over the score of years just elapsed, I long to be back to the little country town where I learned to print, run the engine or the press, at odd times mind the editor's children when the parents went visiting, write an editorial or a sermon with perfect ease, but now find that publishing a long primer weekly was more of a snap than writing copy by the yard with the shears in a boiler plate institution or engineering a Merganthaler.

A printing office of today is not what it was years ago. Take the towel for instance. It was a beautiful towel when it was fresh and clean on Monday morning, and as sweet as a lily. By Monday evening it had the devil's finger-marks on it, and they were more plainly impressed than any footsteps that were ever made on the sands of time. On Tuesday it was a hand towel-that is, it would clean a printer's hands, and soil any one else's. On Wednesday it would put a patent leather shine on a pair of tan shoes. And then it got thin, too, and kept getting thinner, until it almost looked like a shoestring. On Thursday a tourist with delirium tremens took it for a black snake, and, rushing for the open air, fell down a flight of stairs over the devil, who was coming up with an armful of pie wrapped in an old newspaper, and a pail

of beer hanging on each finger. By Friday the towel was so black that you could run it over a galley and pull a proof. On Saturday it was wrung out into the editor's ink bottle and then sent to the press room for belting. Saturday afternoon a pressman had the headache and tied it around his head. Oxalic acid would not take the black off, and he had to dye his red hair black to escape ridiOne day a farmer used it in lieu of a tug, and later had a splendid crop of flax-seed and hickory shirts-he having used the old towel for fertilizing purposes.

In those days, to be one of the art preservative of all arts was in itself a glory and the envy of the small boy, whom curiosity always took to a printing office to watch the printers work, and it mattered not whether the compositor had a motion like a man picking weeds or would throw in a case as if with a rake. To me then the tramp printer was a curiosity. Well do I remember the first traveling typographical epoch that blew into the office some eighteen years ago. He struck us while the annual tax-list was being set, and was invited to set a row. He told the editor that "he could not set nonpareil worth a d-, but was h on wood type," and wanted to set a poster. Since those days I met Nicholas Busby, who always carried a bible and could quote any part of it; "Shanty" House, who for twelve years made annual tours from the Atlantic to the Pacific; "Tom" Platt, whose favorite pastime was hunting for obsolete words in a pocket. edition of Webster and springing them, with accompanying explanations, on the rural population; "Rosy" Whitehead and "Dug" Blackburn, southern gentlemen; "One-Eyed" Matchet, who has been over every state and territory in the Union and all the provinces of Canada, never rode on a railroad, and who died a few years ago at the ripe age of sixty-eight; Ulrich, or better known as "Boozy Dooley," our

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German friend, who was always croaking; and last, but not least, "Rain-in-theface," whose name nobody knows, but does know he will never work, and is the most successful "panhandler" that ever carried a card.

A printer, for all his sometimes dissipated and reckless habits, is a worker at all times, day and night, setting type in a close and unwholesome office, when gay crowds are hurrying to the theater-later still when the night revelers are gone and the city sleeps; in the fresh air in the morning, or in the broad sunlight, some human printing machine is at his case with his eternal and unvarying click! click! click! And, oh, how different the new day seems from the reverse side.

Click! click! click! the type falls into the stick; the mute integers of expression are marshaled into line and march forth as immortal print. Click! and the latest becomes old, the thought a principle, the idea a living sentiment. Click! click! click! from grave to gay-an item, a robbery, a murder, a scandal, a graceful and glowing thought is in turn closed by the mute and impressive fingers of the human machine and set adrift on the sea of thought. A printer is not altogether indifferent to the gem of which he is the setter; a subtle ray may penetrate the recess of his brain; of the flowers he gathers some may leave their fragrance upon his toil-worn fingers.

For all that, the average printer is the prince of chaos. Be his copy an illegible Be his copy an illegible scrawl, as it generally is, or type-written on superfine linen paper, he will find some way to show his contempt for Webster and his superiority to all grammatical laws, and such words as anthropometamorphosis, antisupernaturalism, anticonstitutionalist, anhydrophepsiterion, iatromathematician are as natural to him as it is to throw a broken slug into the hell-box.

When the great roll is called and the drones are driven into their appropriate

retreat, there will be mighty few hand compositors among them. Look over the entire field of mechanical pursuits and point out one in which success has been achieved by greater persistence and sturdier industry, and in which adverse conditions have been combatted more bravely by the unsuccessful than printing. Success has come to many, and some have been crowned by fame; of those who have been illtreated by fate-forced by circumstances to lay down their aspirations -peace be with them, here and hereafter. They have built for posterity, and upon the foundations laid by the toil of not a few have been reared the proudest monuments to journalistic enterprise of which our country boasts.

The subdivision of labor in a printing office in a large city has reduced the differences between the several departments by reducing the distinct branches of compositor-straight matter-and ad man, make-up, etc., to a minimum. The printer of a decade or two ago could do any and all the work in an office, and a competent man was in no danger of competition from any but those who, like himself, had served the needed apprenticeship. The vocation of printer in its full sense no longer exists. In its place a dozen subdivisions have occurred, and today, not one printer in a hundred who may run up a long "string," either by hand or a typesetting machine, can properly make-up or lay out a book form. or even a four-page newspaper. Many of them, having set type for years, have even never seen a form on a stone or the bed of a press. Though the calling now demands far less of personal superiority developed greater specialized dexterity. than was formerly necessary, yet it has In fact, has gone to the "demnition bow

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REFUTATION OF SLANDER. JACKSONVILLE, FLA., Dec. 10.-Inclosed find a communication from Jacksonville Union No. 162 (a copy of the committee's report), that it was the sense and resolution of our meeting that it be published in the JOURNAL, in justice and right to our president and ourselves.

Yours fraternally,

W. F. JIBB,
Recording Secretary.

JACKSONVILLE, FLA., Dec. 6, 1895.

To the Officers and Members of Jacksonville Typographical Union No. 162:

GENTLEMEN-We, your committee appointed to investigate the charges against President Hugh T. Fisher, an officer of this union, which appeared in the newspaper called the Union Printer and American Craftsman, dated November 23, 1895, beg to submit the following report, after a careful and thorough investigation:

First. We find that the charges are wholly without foundation, and a batch of falsehoods prompted by vindictive and malicious motives, which were purely personal matters between the authors-Donald Monroe and Jim Rice, and President Fisher, over which the union has no control.

Second. The charge that Mr. Fisher will not allow the hobo element inside the office is a matter on which the proprietor of the Citizen must be consulted, as Mr. Fisher, as foreman of said office, is only carrying out the instructions of the manager-Mr. Metcalf.

Third. The charge that the present dormant condition of the union is the direct result of Mr. Fisher's administration is hardly worth noticing, it being such a ridiculous assertion, and all members of this union know it to be false. We find that the members themselves are responsible for this, and that the secretary has made repeated efforts to collect outstanding dues, with poor success.

Fourth. The charge relating to the frequent blackballing of applicants to this union from the Times-Union office is also laid at Mr. Fisher's door. This charge we also find not sustained. Every member knows that he has never been known to solicit votes or any other support to any measure relating to affairs of this union, and that he has been impartial in all his rulings. We also find that, at a recent meeting, when a certain member of the Times-Union force was blackballed, Mr. Fisher was not in the hall when the ballot was cast.

Fifth. We find that the charge of his alleged "czar-like, dirty, contemptible methods" is not sustained in any particular by the Citizen's chapel, and that no member of the same has ever been discharged without good and sufficient cause, and that given in writing, which could and can be had for the asking.

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H. J. WENZEL, Investigating Committee. To the Officers and Members of Jacksonville Typographical Union No. 162:

GENTLEMEN -Your investigating committee, after having impartially investigated the charges against our president, Mr. Hugh T. Fisher, which recently appeared in the Union Printer and American Craftsman, and found them, according to the best evidence we could procure, a set of malicious falsehoods, beg to submit the following resolutions in connection therewith:

Resolved, first, That it is the opinion of each one of us, and as a committee, that Mr. Fisher has made the best executive officer this union has ever had, and has executed every trust and principle with fairness and justness to all concerned. That he has done more to uphold the scale of prices and in various ways upheld this union and its principles whenever it has been in his power to do so.

Second. That he has been kind and considerate to all under his authority, requiring nothing more than a strict observance of duty, which is a fundamental law of all business and good government, not only in a printing office but in

all business houses.

Third. That we deplore the state of affairs that exists in our craft caused by unprincipled men, calling themselves hobos, which has caused more dissension and hardship to honorable union men than the depressed financial condition of our country and typesetting machines combined.

Fourth. That we do not wish it understood that because a gentleman has to walk in or out of a town from necessity, that he is what is called a hobo, or what we term one.

Fifth. That we deplore, sadly, that the president of this union (a union that has held her charter unceasingly for years, despite the efforts of this gang and its sympathizers to thwart her officers in more ways than one), who is a gentleman and good citizen, should be stabbed in the back by this class of people, like an assassin in the dark, and trust that when t'' gets publicity our fellow-crafts: aside any venom that these poison. referred to might have influenced them to have. MATT. G. JOHNSON,

W. S. LINTON,

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H. J. WENZEL, Committee.

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