cular 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
cy