Excerpt from The Printers' Price List: A Manual for the Use of Clerks and Book-Keepers in Job Printing Offices

Printing has been the theme of many books. A recent catalogue contains the titles of more than eight hundred works, embracing appar ently every branch of Typography. The history, the bibliography, the miscellany, the biography, and the theory and practice of Printing, have been fully, if not exhaustively treated. At first sight, it would seem quite unnecessary to add to the number. But there is one noticeable omission.

The subject of Prices has hitherto received no proper attention. In earlier days, it was the avowed purpose of the trade to keep prices secret. In our own day, this is the general practice. There are more than six thousand printing offices in the United States; there are at least twice that number of boys now learning the trade, and a still larger number who are practising the trade as journeymen. Probably not one-tenth of these workmen have even superficial information concerning the com monest current prices of the trade. It is a subject that is rarely taught. The boy or man who sets type or works press does not keep the books or take in orders, and has no opportunity to learn prices, even in an indirect way. His chance of learning them in the largest establishment is really less than in the smallest ofiice. He may be taught everything connected with the practice of Printing, but, as the trade is now organized, he will seldom be taught the market value of his own work.

Unlike other trades, in Printing the cost of labor is but a fraction of the cost of the work. The rapid and unavoidable depreciation in the value of the type, the expense of fragile or of partially-employed machinery and material, the wages of non-producers like foremen and readers, and other contingencies, are as truly a part of the total cost as that of labor. But they are seldom adequately considered by young employers, who assess a profit on labor only.

To this indefinite knowledge concerning the actual cost Of work is often added a greater ignorance concerning the value of the material upon which Printing is done. Paper is made in infinite variety of qualities, and is now sold at all prices from 12 to 75 cents per pound. But the sizes of paper are arbitrary, the descriptive names are sometimes misleading, and the computation of its value for irregular numbers is troublesome, and liable to lead to error. Nor does the difficulty of making prices stop here.

About the Publisher

Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com

This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.