THE FIRST CYLINDER PRINTING PRESS
“In the life and writings of Grant Thornton,
published in the city of New York in 1861, we find a brief sketch of Robert
Hoe, a young English carpenter, less than twenty years of age, who was the
inventor of the first cylinder press. The young carpenter arrived in New York
in the year 1805, when the yellow fever raged in that city. A stranger in a
strange land, and without money, Robert Hoe was fortunate in falling into the
hands of Grant Thorburn, and was nursed through a severe attack of the fever by
the Thorburn family. Young Hoe introduced himself to Grant Thorburn by telling
him that he had just arrived from England, was 18 years old, was a carpenter by
trade, having learned it from his father, and was without money. The heart of
Thorburn went out to the stranger, for only a few years before had he emigrated
from his native Scotland, and had about a similar experience – penniless and a
stranger in a strange land. Says Thorburn : ‘I knew the heart of a stranger
myself, and there was so much h simplicity in his speech and deportment, my
heart warmed towards him. I gave him a chair, and ran upstairs, Says I : ‘Guid
wife, a stranger standeth at our door, shall we take him in?’ “if thee
pleases,’ she replied, ‘if he takes the fever will thee help me to nurse him?’
‘I will,’ she answered, ‘Thank you dear for this: God will bless you..’ ‘Now,’
says I, ‘Come and look on his honest English face.’ This impression was
favorable. Says I Robert, this neighbourhood is accounted the most healthful in
the city, you will lodge here; if you take the fever, my wife and I will nurse
you; you shan’t go to a strange hospital.’ ” His eyes spoke thanks more
eloquent than words. The fever seized him, however, in less than a week, and
Grant THoburn and his wife nursed him back to health and life. Shortly after
this, the fever disappeared from New York City. Robert Hoe became a master
builder, and died in 1843, aged fifty-six years. ‘But his name will never die,’
wrote Grant Thorburn, ‘while all types are set, and printers breathe. Hoe’s
printing press is probably the most useful discovery that has blessed the world
since the first sheet was struck from the press. Formerly we paid one hundred
and fifty cents for a Bible; now we buy one as good for twenty-five cents. It
may be said of his sons that they are better men than their fathers, inasmuch
as they have added many improvements to their father’s plans. Robert Hoe dwelt
in New York for thirty-eight years.
“Inclosing his brief story of the invention
of the hoe cylinder press, Grant Thorburn writes: ‘And nothing in my past life
affords such pleasing recollections as to this act of duty and humanity to a
stranger. When his aching head lay on my breast, as I held the cooling draught
to his parched lips, I little thought that in his head lay the germ of a
machine destined to revolutionize the world of literature, and shed light on
the dark places of the earth, whose habitations are full of cruelty.’
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“Before the invention of the cylinder
printing press, there were presses of various styles, but as this article has
only to do with the printing craft from its first introduction in Hamilton, we
can only refer to what was known as the Ramage press. Eighty-seven years ago,
Geo. Perkins Bull, an Irish printer, came into Canada from New York, and
settled upon Hamilton as his future home, the outlook seeming good for the
publication of a Tory newspaper. Part of his outfit was an old-style Ramage
press, which printed only one page of a newspaper at an impression. It made
slow work doing the press work, for instead of two impressions for a four page
paper, it required four impressions for each sheet. Printers were not then
getting seventy-five cents and a dollar an hour, and the circulation of the
paper not being extensive, the old Ramage was equal to the demands of the
average Canadian weekly one hundred years ago. When the Spectator absorbed the
Gazette many years ago, the Ramage was turned over with the plant, but
unfortunately it was looked upon as a bit of rubbage, and one day the woodwork
was chopped up for kindling wood.
“When the Spectator was first started by
Robert Smiley, his first press was a second-hand Washington, for which he paid
about $150. A few years later his increasing circulation required something
faster than a press that would print only a ‘token’ an hour, and one day
Hamilton was aroused from its slumbers by the whirr of a fast cylinder that
could run off a thousand impressions an hour. The other day, there was a
greater surprise in store for the old Spectator, by the installation of a new
Hoe press that was equal to the task of printing 72,000 an hour, folded and
counted. There are only three presses of the Spectator’s capacity in Canada.
Only three or four of the old Spectator boys who began their apprenticeship
fifty years ago have seen all these changes, almost from the days of the
Washington hand press. We might safely name James R. Allan, superintendent of
the mechanical department, and John O’Neil, now retired, superintendent of the
late job department. There may be others, but it is not safe to risk giving
names.
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“Do the managers of the Toronto Globe know
that the first hand press on which that paper was printed, when it was first
started about a hundred years ago by George Brown, is now stored away in cold
storage in a warehouse in Hamilton, having drifted into this town in the old
hand press days? That press did service in the Acton Free Press office when it
was first started. It is now owned by Griffin & Richmond, job printers, and
did duty for printing handbills till it got too slow for even that work, then
as a proof press, till finally it has gone into retirement. It came to Hamilton
when Griffin & Kidner were in partnership in the job printing.
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A FEW THOUGHTS ON PERTINENT TOPICS
“An old song, Where is My Boy Tonight? Comes
ringing in the ears of the writer of these musings when some poor, heartbroken
mother bewails the diverging from the paths she would lead him in of the son
upon whom the affections of her loving her are centered. It may be only an idea
we old fellows have that the boys of our youthful days were more careful in
their daily acts lest they should wound their mother who had watched them from
infancy, and up through the years of childhood, till the time when they became
old enough to discern between right and wrong. How much of love there is in
that dear old word, mother; and it is a pleasure now if we can look back and
feel that never by word or did we cause that loving heart to ache because of
some act committed by her boy that might have brought a blush of shame to her
cheek. Don’t fancy that the boys of fifty years ago were angels by any means;
but, to their credit, be it said, the love they bore their mothers make them
respectful of womankind because they loved and respected their mothers. And the
same may be said of the girls, for they were second editions of the virtues and
modesty of their mothers.
“Now and then a cog slips in the machinery of
life and the old devil himself seems to take possession of the young people,
and everything runs riot for a time till the climax is reached, and then a halt
is called. Read the daily reports of our Hamilton police court, or ask
Magistrate for his views. The mother’s heart wails not only for her boy, but
the question often comes to her, ‘Where is my girl tonight?’ for the daughter
is not in her accustomed place in the house. To begin with, there are too many
allurements to take boys and girls from their home and out into the streets at
night. One has to be mighty well-balanced to resist the evils of a street
education. Our weak human natures cannot always resist temptation; therefore,
it is not safe to make the strain too great. Don’t think for a moment that
young people should be so hemmed about as to make them chafe vat restraint; but
neither is it safe to make the going and coming so easy that the fathers and mothers
lose all control and can’t tell the whereabouts of their boys and girls.
“Mothers living in the country towns thank
God that their children are not exposed.to the allurements and temptations to
which they would be exposed in a large city like Hamilton, and so satisfied are
they that such safeguards surround their boys and girls that too often they
become lax in government and give a wider range than is always safe. Human
nature is the same in the rural village or on the farm as it is in the crowded
cities, and as Bunyan, in Pilgrim’s
Progress says, were it not for the grace of God, he might have been as vile as
his more unfortunate brother man. One of the old poets tells us that vice is a
monster of so frightful mien to be hated needs but to be seen; as; but seen too
oft we become familiar, that we first pity then embrace. A street education at
night is not good for the morals of boys and girls, and it requires the firm
hand of father or mother to check it before the first lessons are taken. Many a
girl and boy brought grief to father and mother because the first misstep was
taken in disobedience. Every boy and girl should spend their evenings under the
watchful direction of mother rather than be street wanderers. All young people
do not do wrong because they are not subject to restraint, but it is always
well to keep the red light swinging to warn of the dangers ahead.
“To make the application and bring the
question home to the fathers and mothers of Hamilton. Are your boys and girls
receiving a street education at night that will mar their young lives and place
a blot on their hearts that can never be wiped out? We should read lif as we
study the Word of God, to learn lessons that will be profitable for us to
consider. Now and then the suspicion starts the tongue of scandal, and before
one is aware of it dear mother’s heart receives a stab because of the
indiscretion of son or daughter. Parents should be plain and candid with their
children, and not let a spirit of mock modesty keep them from warning of the
dangers to which they are exposed. There be pitfalls all the way through the
journey of life into which even the most careful may fall. Point those out to
your children, and while you pray that they may not be led into temptation, do
your part to steer them in the right path. Teach your children to be candid,
and above all keep them from the streets at night and from associating with
questionable company. The boy is as liable to be led into temptation as the
girl, and the safest place for either is under the watchful eye of father and
mother till such time as their characters are strongly formed.
“Think not these
thoughts on pertinent topics are written to fill up so much space in the
columns of the Spectator. There is lesson in them for the fathers and mothers
of Hamilton to prayerfully consider. The old saying that ‘a stich in time’
might be profitably applied.
THE HAMILTON OF THE PAST
“The old stagers of sixty or seventy years
ago, when a bunch of them get together, have serious doubts if conditions have
much improved on what they were in Hamilton when they were young fellows. Hamilton
had no railway service then, but they look back with pride and tell us of the
days when the wharves along the bay were lined with steamboats and
sailing vessels, and recall the names of those fresh water sailors who plowed
old Ontario’s main from the Head of the Lakes down to the jumping off place
where the St. Lawrence river joins Quebec to the briny deep. How many of the
present generation ever heard of Captains Sutherland, Mason, Young, the
Zealands, Malcomson, who sailed the piratical little craft the Banshee, and the
other Malcomson who proudly strutted the deck as the mate of the steamer
Canada. Then there was old Captain Peace, Dan Peace’s father, whose proud boast
that his trim vessel could carry more sail than any other that ever past out
through the canal. This recalls to mind that it was one of the Captain Zealands
who first entered the bay with his sailing vessel long before the canal opened
the way. The old Hamilton directories are full of the names of the ancient
mariners. There were the regular line of steamboats sailing between Hamilton
and Montreal, stopping at all the intermediate ports. Then there was a daily
steamboat service to Niagara-on-the-Lake and Lewiston, and to Toronto, with
extra steamboats always obtainable for excursions during the summer months, for
every society would take its day off and have its excursion, either to Niagara
Falls or to Toronto. Those were pleasant days, and while the population of the
Ambitious city was away below fifteen thousand, there was a social spirit among
the people that gradually disappeared as the population grew larger, and the
strife for existence and subsistence became sharper. The young people became
acquainted with each other, and the excursion seasons generally ended in a
harvest of marriage fees for the preachers.
“When the building of the Great Western railway
began, things changed somewhat. A new element came to the front in civic
matters, and the Arcdian simplicity of other days gradually disappeared. When
Hamilton was Head of the Lakes, it had large wholesale establishments to supply
the merchants in western Canada with everything
from a needle to the demands of
the village home or the farmhouses out in the backwoods settlements. From the
wharves at the Bayfront to the warehouses uptown, the streets were lined with
drays and wagons hauling the valuable freights that were eventually to find
their way to the country customers. How many even of the old-timers will
remember when the great wholesome house of Buchanan, Harris & Co, occupied
the building on the corner of King and Catharine streets? Next to Montreal,
Hamilton was then the great wholesale
market of Canada; indeed it was the principal wholesale city in Upper Canada.
The wagons from the west, the northwest and over the mountains came from the
villages and the towns loaded with the products of the farms and took back home with them the stocks of goods
for the country mercantile houses. Hamilton was a busy city, and many of the
comfortable fortunes that have been handed down to the present generation had
their foundations laid in those days.
“The construction of the Great Western railway
opened up new ideas of civilization, and for years business prospered, for the
large payrolls in the shops sent thousands of dollars every payday into general
circulation; but the railroad put an end to the lake shipping, and Hamilton gradually
dropped out of sight as the head of navigation. Probably the wholesale and
retail business were responsible for this, as they transferred their freight business from the ships to the
railroads; and the western merchants, instead of making Hamilton their
wholesale market, went trundling by on the cars to New York or to Montreal.
Hamilton made the Great Western railway and lost in the final outcome for its
extensive wholesale trade vanished, and the railroad shops, on which so much was
counted, vanished with it. The Great Western company began by paying dividends
to its stockholders; the road in which Hamilton men took so much pride in its
infancy has become a burden on the treasury of the Dominion of Canada.
“But the point we are drifting toward is that
increased population does not always bring real prosperity. It has the same
effect on a city that wealth brings to individuals; it adds to its cares and its
responsibilities without bringing commensurate happiness. Hamilton, probably,
was more homelike and the people were in better circumstances as a whole in the
old days of steamboats and wagon transportation than it is today. There was
work for everybody, even though the pay was small. The old timers had not the extravagant
desires, nor could they indulge them, when $9 a week was the prevailing rate of
wages for sixty hours’ work.
“When Hamilton built its splendid system of
waterworks in the year 1858, labor was so cheap that skilled mechanics were
glad to get work digging the trenches and laying the pipe for a week’s wages
that scarce kept the family soul and body together. The panic of 1857 was felt
everywhere. While the cost of construction was kept down to the lowest penny by
the careful board of water commissioners, the people got no benefit from it,
for they have kept paying extravagant prices for water from that to this; and
every time the assessor adds to the value
of your home, the water rates get another boost.
“It is profitable to take a look backward
once in a while and compare the past with the present. Hamilton is now in the giving
spirit, and every enterprise that can get a pull has only to say what it wants.
The result is that the man who has been thrifty and made a home for his family
has to pay an extravagant rental in the form of taxes to pay for the privilege of
owning his own home. Mayor Coppley is having the time of his life in an effort
to keep down expenses.
