Heavy Metal Madness: Will Grape-Nuts Make You a Better Typesetter?

2

Note: Prior to the 1960s, the term “printer” referred to the men and women who set type and composed pages, not to the operators of presses who were called pressmen. Printers were the highest paid members of a shop because they had to be skilled in language, composition, and machine operation. In this dispatch, “printer” is referred to in its historical context.

When it comes to channeling stress, I’ve always been a stomach person, not a headache person. And though these columns are about a hobby (which are suppose to relieve stress, not cause it), I’ve begun to appreciate the pressure printers were under in the era of hot metal and hand composing. So I was not surprised, when doing research on the men of the early printing industry, to find out that they typically suffered from a number of physical and mental ailments, many of them centered on the digestive tract.

Take, for example, Charles H. Eckhard, of 177 Chambers Street in Galesburg, Illinois whose passionate letter to the Postum Cereal Company appeared in a 1902 advertisement in “Good Housekeeping Magazine” (see Figure 1).

Figure 1: When Grape-Nuts was looking for an example of a stressful occupation, they chose typesetters because “such workers fed on ordinary food give up because of nervous prostration.”

“I have been at the Linotype three years,” said Mr. Eckhard. “It has made a great change in my once robust health. About three months ago, after long expecting it, I completely collapsed, from indigestion and extreme nervousness. The daily physic I had not dared to omit for years, now and then, refused relief and a physician was consulted.”

I admit I had to look up what a “physic” was, though I suspected from the tone of Mr. Eckhard’s letter and the nature of Grape-Nuts cereal that it had something to do with the bowels. Needless to say, his physician immediately recommended “change of diet,” and the prescription of “eating Grape-Nuts food twice daily.”

Thankfully, this keen advice did the trick. Reports Mr. Eckhard: “Since then have used Grape-Nuts, both at breakfast and supper, daily. The results are truly remarkable. The first appreciable change was in the matter of digestion. It has been six weeks since I have had to swallow an aperient of any kind. My nerves, which were completely shattered three months ago are now strong and steady, and I do not tire easily.”

An “aperient,” by the way, is a potion that aids in making sure you have your daily physic.

The addition of Grape-Nuts to his diet was not just a boon to Mr. Eckhard, but to his employer as well. “I have increased my capacity at the machine fully two columns of type a day,” he reports. “I am convinced that Grape-Nuts food is the food for persons of sedentary occupation, especially for those who work with brain in lieu of brawn.”

I will admit to a sedentary lifestyle, and there was a period in my young adult life when I ate Grape-Nuts for dinner, so I can relate to Mr. Eckhard. But in my case the Grape-Nuts were a result of poverty or laziness, not digestive problems. And I’ve never felt the need for an aperient of any kind.

If Indigestion Didn’t Get You, Tuberculosis Would
The printing trade, like many during the industrial revolution, was not big on worker safety. According to the Union Printers Home in Colorado Springs (see Figure 2) “the average life expectancy of printers in the early 19th century was 28 years. This was caused by filthy working conditions and long work hours, often 11 hours per day, seven days a week” (see Figure 3).

Figure 2: The Union Printers Home in Colorado Springs took care of both retired and tubercular typesetters. It is still in business but is now open to all retirees as many of the old printers are dead.

Figure 3: The composing room at the International Correspondence School in Scranton, PA, looks clean enough, but imagine if everyone smoked and you added a bank of gas-powered Linotype machines.

And in his 1963 book “Modern Newspaper Production,” Allan Woods describes turn-of-the-century print shops as “dingy, smoke-filled rooms of indescribable confusion and clutter…and the printer’s devil (new kid learning the trade) who survived the indignities of his first year in the business could look forward to a fifty-fifty chance of getting tuberculosis.”

In the late ’70s the EPA had to revise down the levels of lead in a workers bloodstream that triggered reporting to authorities, because every Linotype operator in America was showing up as above the limit.

This pre-disposition to ailment is well documented in a souvenir program I came across from the International Typographic Union (ITU) Convention of 1918 held in Scranton, Pennsylvania. In addition to the pained look on many printers faces that says “I haven’t had my physic today” (see Figure 4), there are a number of ads for popular remedies and tonics of the time (see Figure 5).

Figure 4: These four representatives at the International Typographers Union Convention of 1918 could all use a bowl of Grape-Nuts. They look like they need a good physic.


Figure 5: Typesetters were susceptible to questionable medical remedies as demonstrated by these ads in their convention program.

But despite the risks, many men (and a few women) took up the trade.

Hard-Working, Well-Organized White Men
According to Woods, “the good operator is a man with a peculiar combination of talents. He must be enough of a mechanic and compositor to know the problems of making up an ad, and he must be a scholar who can spell perfectly and divide words without error. He probably knows more about current prices than his wife….and he will not set anything that is obscene or suggestive.”

From what I could discover, he was also a snappy dresser (see Figure 6).

Figure 6: The Convention Committee was well dressed — most early typesetters wore suit and tie to work and conducted themselves in a purely gentlemanly fashion.

But I have a feeling the indigestion, liver problems, nervous breakdowns, and other problems stemmed as much from the rigid organization and rules these men worked under as it did from the actual labor.

Thanks to the ITU (now defunct), which has been described by many labor historians as the strongest and best-organized union of the 20th century, printers and their employers followed very rigid protocols. These included the “ringing of the bell,” which signaled the beginning of the workday, breaks for lunch, and the end of the workday. Stories abound of men stopping work in mid sentence or mid conversation when the bell rang, and it was a shop foreman’s prerogative to sound the bell and cease the work at any time an editor, publisher, or other non-union member entered the composing area and packed an attitude.

Any grade-school child can tell you of the indigestion and stress caused by a life ruled with bell ringing.

And while jobs were virtually guaranteed to union members during good times, when things got tough, there were often more men than jobs. Men would put their union cards in for a position and automatically get next-up status for any openings. But a shop foreman had some discretion for who got hired, and during your first few hours of work, depending on your productivity, he would either let you continue working, or silently walk up to your machine and turn off the work light. This was your signal to go home. Talk about stress.

Labor and Technology Go Hand in Hand
There is probably no better example of how technology changed labor practices than in the composing industry. The men who spent their entire careers at the keyboard or in the composing room (see Figure 7) lived just long enough to see their usefulness decline. Many of these laborers were discarded along with the machines they operated, and they watched as cheaper, less-skilled labor took over.

Figure 7: After 50 years as a union typesetter, this is the pin you got. And in most cases, a pink slip soon after as jobs were phased out and replaced by cold-type operators.

But of course that’s the way of progress, and in America we are expected to adapt and seize new opportunities, learn new skills, and be thankful that free enterprise takes priority over employee commitment and job longevity.

The stress of job and career security, then as now, is usually the biggest factor in health and well-being. It’s possible that strong unions ended up doing more harm than good — had workers been more flexible, employers may not have been so anxious to replace them when automation allowed it.

Or perhaps there is just something about page composition that taxes the body past the point of reason. I know many a current art department where Excedrin and Rolaids are regular staples of the workforce.

And while designers and production workers can no longer find Dr. Kilmer’s Swamp-Root Medicine, I would suggest it could be time to pick up a box of Grape-Nuts and give them a try. After all, they worked for Charles H. Eckhard.

Read more by Gene Gable.

Gene Gable has spent a lifetime in publishing, editing and the graphic arts and is currently a technology consultant and writer. He has spoken at events around the world and has written extensively on graphic design, intellectual-property rights, and publishing production in books and for magazines such as Print, U&lc, ID, Macworld, Graphic Exchange, AGI, and The Seybold Report. Gene's interest in graphic design history and letterpress printing resulted in his popular columns "Heavy Metal Madness" and "Scanning Around with Gene" here on CreativePro.com.
  • anonymous says:

    I’m usually wolfing down my lunch when I’m reading creativepro.com,so this article is particulary appropriate today. I mostly wanted to compliment Mr. Gable on his series about the history of our trade. I usually email these articles off to my boss who was working in the trailing days of hot type, and he gets a big kick out of them, too. Personally, I think that every person in the Graphic Arts should be exposed to the history of the trade, so they understand why some things are done the way they are. I’ve been a guest lecturer at a local art school, and many of the students have no idea of what working life was like before 1990, for example. It’s good for these folks to find out how things were done, and how much easier the job is now.

  • anonymous says:

    This has been – and I hope will continue to be – wonderful reading. I came into the trade during the transition from cold type to computer design, and was fortunate to work for a company that encouraged the “typies & pasties” to follow their work through camera, stripping and plate-making. It was invaluable experience. (And I learned to detest a favorite red sweater that shed onto my mechanicals!)

    I disagree with your remarks about unions – after all, that was a union retirement facility pictured, right? In my experience business owners (I’m one, now) are rarely willing to concede benefits without some pressure being applied.

    And yes, I work long hours and suffer every stress-related ailment known to humans. I think it’s the nature of the business – and the knowledge that your errors will be permanently recorded for all time. Certainly web designers don’t seem to have the same need for the companionship of dictionaries, atlases and biographical name lists!

    Warm regards!
    Peggy Coquet

  • >