Chapter VI: Busy Days

Next morning Harry was at the printing office by half-past seven, and at about eight o’clock Tommy Warner appeared, as he had promised to do.

“What did your father say?” asked Harry. “Is he willing for you to work for me here in the printing office and learn the printers’ trade?”

“Yes,” was the reply. “He said he guessed it would be as good a trade as I could learn.”

“What wages did he say you might work for?”

“He said for me to tell you that if you can afford to pay me three dollars a week, that would be satisfactory, and that he supposes I can earn that much.”

“Certainly you can, Tommy. That will be all right, and I’m glad your father is willing for you to work here. I need someone to help me. I could hardly do all the work myself.”

“So I would suppose.”

“You can set some type, right from the very first, and all that you set will be that much help. I have some items here that you can work on while I go down and look for more news. I want to get all the news I can, each day, and keep it set up in type form; then we will have quite a newsy paper when publishing day comes.”

Tommy hung up his hat and coat, and went to the cases where the type was.

“You’ll have to have a box to stand on,” said Harry. “You aren’t tall enough to reach the type in the cases. Run down into the store and ask Mr. Gebhart if you can have a carton. Tell him it’s for the printing office and to charge it to Harry Weston.”

Tommy nodded and hurried downstairs, returning a few minutes later with a wooden box about eighteen inches high, which he placed on the floor in front of the rack holding the type-cases, and stepping onto it, he found that he could see and pick up the type nicely.

Harry took the composing-stick in his hand, put the composing-rule in it, and then set a line of the news item, the copy for which he had placed on the case. He set the type slowly, so Tommy could see how it was done, and made such explanations as were necessary. He explained the use of the spaces, one of which is placed between each word, so they would not be all strung along together, in which form they could hardly be read. After he had set the line, he showed Tommy how to read the line, beginning at the left-hand side and reading across, the same as in the printed page, with this difference, that the type is bottom-side up, this making it somewhat harder to read, but quite easy after one has had a little practice.

“If you get a wrong letter in a line,” explained Harry, “correct it before setting the next line. Some compositors, in fact most of them, never correct the type they have set until after it has been put on the galley and a proof taken. Then it is hard work and takes more time, and they are liable even then to ‘pi’ some of it. That means that the type is liable to fall down and become mixed up, and sometimes has to be set over again. By correcting each line as soon as it is set, you make hardly any errors and don’t have to do any correcting on the galleys, and the type doesn’t ‘pi’. I always correct each line as soon as I set it, and I never have to do any correcting on the galleys. You had better do that way, too, Tommy.”

“Very well,” said the boy, and then he took the stick in his hand when Harry handed it to him and began setting type. He had seen how Harry did it. Tommy did the same, though of course he was much slower. But he did quite well and his instructor could see that Tommy would soon become quite a good typesetter.

“That’s all there is to it,” said Harry with a smile, as he was putting on his coat and hat. “Just keep picking up the type and putting them in the stick. I’ll be back before you will get the stick set and will show you how to ‘dump’ it, as taking the type out of the stick and putting it on the galley is called.”

“All right,” was the reply, and Harry took his notebook and pencil and went downstairs and onto the street and began his rounds of the stores and city offices in his search for news items.

He returned to the office in about an hour with a new lot of items, and found that Tommy had set almost a stickful. Taking it from the boy’s hand, Harry pushed the composing-rule down behind the first line of type that had been set. There were leads between each line, and the one in front of the last line that had been set held the type in place, and Harry lifted the type--there were sixteen lines--out of the stick and placed it on a galley.

“You can do that after a little practice with a few lines at a time,” he said to Tommy. “From now on you can dump your own type, and during the first week at any rate, I wouldn’t try to lift more than seven or eight lines at a time, out of the stick.”

“Very well,” said Tommy. He seemed pretty well pleased with his new work, and taking the stick when Harry handed it to him, went ahead setting type.

Harry had had forethought enough to purchase two small composing-sticks and two composing-rules, so he took the other stick and rule and went to work setting type at the other case. When he had set the bulk of the news items he had secured, he put on his hat and coat and went out to complete the rounds of the places where he secured news. He had only gone about halfway around the first time.

He was back again in about an hour, and in addition to the news items, he had secured a job of printing from one of the merchants, Mr. Holman, who owned a dry goods store. He wanted five hundred letterheads and five hundred envelopes, with his business advertisement on each.

Harry hung the news items on the “live copy” hook, and then went to work setting the two jobs. This he accomplished in about an hour and a half, and by this time it was noon.

“We’ll go to dinner now, Tommy,” he said. “We’ve done enough work for one morning.”

Tommy nodded and smiled and put the stick up on the case, donning his hat and coat at the same time Harry did, and they left the office together, Harry locking the door. “Come back at one o’clock, Tommy,” he said. “From eight till twelve are the morning hours, and from one till five in the afternoon, with one hour for dinner. That is eight hours of working time, and we ought to be able to get out the paper each week and do what job printing there will be to do, working eight hours per day. If we ever do happen to get behind and have to work later, I will pay you for the extra time you work.”

“That is all right,” said Tommy, and parting at the foot of the stairs, they went their ways, Tommy to his home and Harry to his boarding-house.

That afternoon Harry printed the five hundred letter-heads and the five hundred envelopes. The different kinds of stock for the job printing department--letter-heads, envelopes, statements, etc.--had arrived Saturday afternoon, and Harry had stacked the packages up in one corner of the room without opening them.

Then he helped Tommy set the rest of the news items, and they were finished by five o’clock.

“We’ve done a good day’s work, Tommy,” said Harry, as they were leaving the office. “I believe we’re two pretty good printers,” and he smiled. “There’s nothing like believing in one’s own abilities,” he added, “and if anybody doesn’t brag about us, we can do it ourselves.”

“Yes,” said Tommy, and he went on down the street toward his father’s store, while Harry made his way up the street in the other direction. Elsie Merwin was standing in the door of her father’s carpenter shop when he reached there.

“You’re just the person I wish to see, Harry,” she said. “Here are some local news items I secured for you. I wrote them down and intended to bring them to your office, but was busy and could not do so.”

“Thanks very much, Elsie,” said Harry, as she handed him the news items. “We just finished setting all that I had gotten in the stores and offices, and these will do to begin work on in the morning. Thank you very much indeed.”

“I’m glad to be of help to you, and will get all the news I can, regularly. It’s a pleasure to me.”

Her father called to her at that moment, and with a nod and a smile she went back into the shop, while Harry went on to his boarding-house.

The next day’s work at the printing office was about the same as the day before.

“We’ll have enough type set to fill the paper by Thursday,” Harry said. “Then we can go to press Friday morning, and that will give us all day to get the papers printed. I expect we will need that much time, for we have two forms to print from, and can only print one at a time, and there will be four hundred and eighty papers to print. As we will have to run them through twice, that will be the same as if we had nine hundred and sixty papers to print, and only have to run them through once.”

Next day they set all the news there was, and Harry did a job of printing for Mr. Gebhart, the groceryman--five hundred statements; he also made up the two forms, as putting the type in between the column-rules is called. He didn’t have type enough to fill all the space as yet. There was about a column and a half of space still to fill, but he was sure they would have enough news items for it. If not, he could write an article about the town, something complimentary that would please the people, and this could be set and put in to fill up with.

But he didn’t have to write that kind of an article after all, for an event took place that furnished something far more interesting to write about.

It was Mr. Tompkins who gave him the information. He was a miner, working in the smaller of the two mines that were being operated in Coalville. The manager of this mine was a somewhat hard-headed, stingy man--so Mr. Tompkins declared--by the name of Morgan. He had had a number of foreigners shipped from New York--and was going to give them work in the mine, as they would work for smaller wages than the American miners already working there. There were seventy-five in all, and while Morgan would probably not discharge that many of the men already working for him, he would discharge some of them.

“I may lose my job for all I know,” said the miner, with a sober look on his face. “Morgan and I don’t exactly agree, but I’m a good, strong man and able to do my full share of the day’s work, so he may not discharge me. Some of the men’ll have to go, though, unless Morgan can be induced not to give the foreigners work after all. I wish it could be done, but I don’t know whether it can or not, for he’s hard-headed and set in his ways.”

“That is a pretty bad state of affairs for you home men,” said Harry, sympathetically. “As a citizen of Coalville, and naturally with my sympathies on the side of the home miners, both for their sakes and mine, I am willing to do what I can to try to prevent the foreigners from going to work more cheaply than the home miners, thus throwing some of them out of employment.” He paused and looked thoughtful for a few moments and then said:

“I am going to publish a newspaper here, and as newspapers are influential, I don’t know but that I will inquire into this affair as thoroughly as I can, then publish an article protesting against the home miners being thrown out of employment. Don’t you think that would be a good idea, Mr. Tompkins?”

“Yes, sir. Do it, young man!” said the miner. “I’ll stand by you, and so will all the other miners. Print a protest. When does your paper come out?”

“Friday.”

“And to-day’s only Wednesday. I’m afraid the paper will be out too late and the protest not be of much avail. However, look into the matter, and if you do print it, even though it’s a day late, we may be able to oust the foreigners, even after they’ve begun work.”

“All right, I’ll see to it and will investigate the matter in the morning.”

Harry made the rounds of the business houses next morning, beginning at half-past seven, and asked the merchants what they thought of the matter, telling them how Morgan, the manager of the mine--the Annex as it was called, as it was small compared to the main mine and subsidiary to it--was putting in a lot of foreigners and discharging some of the home men working there. The merchants, almost to a man, said they thought it was not right and very unfair; they deplored it and wished that it might be prevented.

“The home miners all have families and patronize our stores, spending all their earnings here, while the foreigners are single men and would not spend much money with us,” one merchant said, and when Harry mentioned this to the others they all agreed. “We don’t like the foreigners to be given work and our own men deprived of their situations,” another merchant said. That was the general verdict among all the business men of the place.

Having learned this, Harry told them that he would write and print the next day in the forthcoming issue of the new paper a protest against the foreigners being given work at the expense of a number of the home miners who would be thrown out of employment. Somebody must have told Morgan about this, for just as Harry had gotten through interviewing the merchants and was about to go upstairs to his office, he was confronted by a dark-visaged, dangerous-looking man, who asked abruptly:

“Are you Weston, who is going to print a newspaper here?”

Harry nodded. “I am,” he replied.

“I hear you are going to print a protest against my putting some foreigners to work in my mine--seventy-five of them there are, that I ordered sent here from New York.”

“You are Mr. Morgan?” queried Harry.

“I am.”

“Do you own the mine?”

The man hesitated. Then he said: “Not totally. I own it partly and am its manager.”

Harry thought a few moments and then asked: “In case those foreigners work in your mine, how many of the home men will be thrown out of employment?”

“The foreigners are already at work. I just started them in, in the mine. I have already discharged forty of the men who have been working there, and may discharge more.”

“The foreigners work more cheaply, I hear. That’s the point, as you look at the matter.”

“That’s the point.”

“But think of the families of the forty miners whom you have discharged. They might starve.”

“The men can get work in the other mine, likely.”

Harry shook his head. “I inquired about that. They have all the men they need already working there.”

The man shrugged his shoulders. “They can move away to some other mining region, and get work.”

Harry shook his head. “They own their homes here,” he said, seriously, “and don’t want to move away, and it is costly moving from place to place.”

Again the man shrugged his shoulders. “That’s their own affair,” he said. “And discharging them is my own affair.”

Harry shook his head. “I’m not a lawyer,” he said, “but my common sense tells me that it is somewhat the affair of nearly everybody in this place, both of the men that have been discharged and especially of the merchants. The men, having lost their situations, will not be earning anything. They cannot patronize the merchants, as they wouldn’t have any money to pay for the merchandise. The merchants will lose the profits they would have made off the goods sold while the men were working and earning their usual wages. Thus the merchants are injured financially, while the miners are indeed in serious circumstances. I wouldn’t keep the foreigners working, Mr. Morgan, if I were you, and I would give back their situations to those forty home miners.”

The man shook his head. “I am going to keep the foreigners working, and of course won’t give the old men their situations back, as I won’t need them,” he said.

“Then I am going to write and print a protest in my newspaper that will be out to-morrow,” said Harry.

Morgan uttered an impatient exclamation. “Don’t do it!” he said.

“I will!” said Harry.

“Then--look out for yourself, young man, that’s all!” said Morgan, and he turned and strode away down the street.