Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 56.djvu/207

Rh of the press was in reality the force of character of the individual exerted through the instrument within his control.

From 1830 to 1860 the progress made in the mechanical department of the business was slow and unimportant in comparison with recent inventions. Cylinder presses came into general use for the printing of daily papers, but the weekly and monthly publications continued to use the primitive hand machines. The speed of press-work was still limited to a few hundred copies per hour, so that an extensive circulation could not be supplied even if there had been a demand for it. The white paper used was still made entirely of rags, and most of the material was imported from Austria and Italy. The cost of production was high, and few newspapers in the United States were published at a fair profit. The uncertainty of the financial returns from the business greatly retarded its development. Inventors found that their ingenuity would receive more substantial rewards in other fields, and editors and publishers were rarely practical men who could discover imperfections in mechanism and suggest improvements in their own. shops. Throughout the first half of the century most of the