Page:A history of booksellers, the old and the new.djvu/496

454 454 PROVINCIAL BOOKSELLERS. booksellers. At present these branches of industry are only surpassed in Edinburgh, and one Glasgow establishment at least is without a parallel in London. Messrs. Collins, Son, and Co., actually give employ- ment to about seven hundred hands. The ground- floor of their immense building is devoted to the warehousing of paper, account-books, copy-books and general stationery. On the main floor of the estab- lishment one hundred binders are constantly at work, and on the floor above the folding and sewing of the sheets is executed by two hundred girls and women. In the rear stands the engine-house and printing office where sixteen platten and cylinder typographic machines are kept working at full steam, upon dictionaries, school-books, Bibles, prayer-books, de- votional, and other publications. Seven lithographic machines are constantly employed upon atlases and their celebrated copy-books, and it has been found that the finest lithographic work can be better executed by the machine than, as till very recently, at press. Everything is done on the premises, which extend from Stirling's Road to Heriot Hill, except making the paper and casting the type.* As further proof of the magnitude of the business, we may quote a recent statement of Mr. Henderson, one of the partners. In 1869 there were " issued from the letter-press section of the establishment, no fewer than 1,352,421 printed and bound works equal to about 4500 per day, or 450 passing through the hands of the workers every working hour." Little more than a hundred years ago the great seaport town of Liverpool was a little fishing village, 1869.
 * The above account is abridged from the Bookseller of November,