Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 40.djvu/200

188 {|
 * width=390 |Rent of machines
 * width=40|$1,500
 * Three operators at $14
 * 2,184
 * Foremen, etc
 * 1,664
 * Gas for machines, say
 * 500
 * Rent, heat, light, etc
 * 500
 * Total
 * $6,348
 * }
 * Rent, heat, light, etc
 * 500
 * Total
 * $6,348
 * }
 * }
 * }

The saving would apparently be some $856, or over twelve per cent, while less room would be required, cleaner and better work would be done, the labor better paid, and a higher class of operators employed. Later I will touch on some reasons why it might not be safe to depend on type-casting machines in so small a business. In a larger business there is little doubt in my mind that the use of the machines is preferable to hand composition.

Finally, it is much easier to learn to operate the type-casting machine than to learn to set type. To set type at the rate of a thousand ems an hour requires two or three years of constant practice. To set a thousand ems on the type-casting machine in an hour requires no previous practice. It can be done the first time a person touches a key-board. This seems a strong statement to make, but I have the best of reasons for knowing it to be true. I did it, as already described. Previous to making the attempt I had never touched a key-board but once, and that was a dummy-board. I had never touched a type-writer or any other instrument the use of which might qualify one for operating the type-casting machine. Being in the rooms of the Linotype Company in New York recently, I asked and received permission to try the machine; and picking up a printed clipping from which the operator had been setting, I went to work and in six minutes set one hundred and fourteen ems, equal to one thousand one hundred and forty ems per hour, stopping because the clipping then ended. I repeated similar experiments on other machines subsequently, with much the same average result. In short, I was able to do with the machine at sight and without practice what it would take me years to learn to do by hand. As to becoming expert on the machines, a number of operators whom I have questioned agree that from three to six months' practice enables one to attain a speed of three thousand to four thousand ems from ordinary copy.

In fact, as I have stated, the only limit of speed on the Linotype is the rate at which the operator can move his fingers. He can not work quite so rapidly as a type-writer, because at the end of each line of matrices he must stop to touch the lever which sends the line off to receive a cast. Supposing we allow twenty-five per cent of his time for this, which is surely a large proportion, we can get an idea of the possible practical rate of the machine by comparing it with the possibilities of a type-writer.