James Parton, The life of Horace Greeley

[395] their accounts. Below the “bogus-hook,” there appears this “Particular notice:” “This copy must be set, and the Takes emptied, with the same care as the rest.” From which we may infer, that a man is inclined to slight work that he knows to be useless, even though it be paid for at the usual price per thousand.

Another printed paper lets us into another secret. It is a list of the compositors employed in the office, divided into four ‘Phalanxes’ of about ten men each, a highly advantageous arrangement, devised by Mr. Rooker. At night, when the copy begins to ‘slack up,’ i. e. when the work of the night approaches completion, one phalanx is dismissed; then another; then another; then the last; and the phalanx which leaves first at night comes first in the morning, and so on. The men who left work at eleven o'clock at night must be again in the office at nine, to distribute type and set up news for the evening edition of the paper. The second phalanx begins work at two, the third at five; and at seven the whole company must be at their posts; for, at seven, the business of the night begins in earnest. Printers will have their joke—as appears from this list. It is set in double columns, and as the number of men happened to be an uneven one, one name was obliged to occupy a line by itself, and it appears thus—‘Baker, (the teat-pig.)’

The following notice deserves attention from the word with which it begins: ‘Gentlemen desiring to wash and soak their distributing matter will please use hereafter the metal galleys I had cast for the purpose, as it is ruinous to galleys having wooden sides to keep wet type in them locked up. Thos. N. Rooker.’ It took the world an unknown number of thousand years to arrive at that word “Gen-Tlemen.” Indeed, the world has not arrived at it; but there it is, in the composing-room of the New York Tribune, legible to all visitors.

Passing by other notices, such as ‘Attend to the gas-meter on Wednesdays and Saturdays, and to the clock on Monday morning,’ we may spend a minute or two in looking over a long printed catalogue, posted on the door, entitled, ‘Tribune Directory. Corrected May 10, 1854. A list of Editors, Reporters, Publishers, Clerks, Compositors, Proof-Readers, Pressmen, &c., employed on the New York Tribune.’

From this Directory one may learn that the Editor of the Tribune is Horace Greeley, the Managing-Editor Charles A. Dana, the Associate-Editors,