king them. From the time the designer begins his work to the moment
the plates are made, tried out, and accepted, many, many hours of toil
are consumed. You know, of course, that our government runs a very
extensive printing plant where it uses tons of paper every year. There
is no end to the government printing. The Congressional Records must be
printed and filed, as must also thousands of reports from various boards
and committees. Then there is stationery for official use; official
documents of all sorts; catalogues; cards for government business."

"I never thought of that."

"Yes, indeed. Uncle Sam runs quite a jobbing office, all the details of
which must be carefully systematized, too. Great care is taken that the
spelling abbreviations and such details shall be uniform on all
government documents. You can readily see how necessary it is that they
should be. Therefore the government issues a manual for the use of its
employees, a list of punctuation and capitalization marks and rules, as
well as printers' marks which shall serve as a standard and must be
conformed to for all government purposes."

"That is interesting, isn't it?" murmured Paul.

"You can readily understand that in preparing government reports and
such things for the press a uniform abbreviation for the States, for
example, must be used. It would be out of the question to have one
person abbreviating Alabama one way and another person another. It would
not only result in a slipshod lot of documents but the variation might
mislead those who read it. In all such documents every detail must be
the same. Moreover, often employees are far from being expert in such
matters and a book to which they can refer is a great help to them. In
addition, it settles all disputes arising between the clerks who make up
the reports and the printers who print them; and it saves the time and
labor of correcting errors."

"I see."

"Not only does the government printing office do a vast amount of
printing for the use of the Washington authorities but it does a great
deal of work for the country at large. Think, for instance, of the care
and accuracy that goes into making out the United States census."

"Not only care but paper and ink," laughed Paul.

"All such tabulated documents consume quantities of paper," answered his
father. "Directories, telephone books, circulars, and advertising
matter in general demand tons and tons of paper every year, and the
printi