Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 40.djvu/202

190 parts, and if they get out of order in a town in which expert mechanics are not at once available, their usefulness is gone for that day at least. 5. They can set only straight reading matter, so that advertisements, display headings, cross lines, italics, etc., must be set by compositors. 6. If a mistake of a letter is made in setting by the machine, the whole line must be recast, unless (which is not likely) the mistake is noticed the moment it is made and the operator stops to rectify it by changing the matrix. However, a whole line can be reset and recast almost as quickly as a compositor can correct by hand a mistake in a type letter. 7. It is a more serious drawback that if, in correcting proofs, it is desired to insert additional words, a number of lines may have to be recast. 8. The matrices in which the casts are made are possibly liable to wear a little, and so to soon make bad casts. Of course this can be remedied by getting new matrices, which are not expensive. 9. In a small office where two or three machines might be employed, there would probably be only two or three expert operators; if one took ill, the machine would become almost useless for the time being.

—A small printing-office is hampered in many ways with regard to the use of machines, nor can it safely, at present, take the chances of break-downs. Where only three or four machines can be used, the stoppage of one means a loss of twenty thousand ems of setting per day. That is serious enough; but if the cause of stoppage should affect all the machines, there must be a business dead-lock, because small concerns, or rather concerns in the smaller centers of population, can not at slight notice secure a staff of compositors to replace the machines, or arrange for publication elsewhere. Even, therefore, were the machines being manufactured as fast as desired, it is questionable whether they would find a market at present outside the large cities where expert mechanics can be had to attend them at a moment's notice, and where arrangements for special help or special publication can be made in an hour, if necessary. But I think that in any office setting one hundred thousand ems a day, or over, it would pay the proprietors to at once procure machines sufficient to do at least half their setting, retaining a certain number of compositors with them. I can see no reason why this should not be a fairly safe experiment and a financial success.

The machines are available on a very liberal basis. Either company leases them at a moderate rental, agrees to take them back if not satisfactory, to keep them in repair while used, and to replace them with new machines in case of improvement of the patent.

The typographical unions admit that the machines must be