In World War I, a truck carrying this Model 5 linotype followed U.S. General John Pershing through battlefield action in France. It printed maps, charts, reports, and orders. It was part of the 29’th Engineers mobile printing battalion. The battalion consisted of nine printers and one pressman. I’d guess that a general’s communications technical staff is much larger today.
Month: October 2011
Henry Mayhew described human mating market failure
Writing in London about 1856, Henry Mayhew observed:
The majority of the habitual female criminals are connected with some low brute of a man who is either a prize-fighter, or cab-driver, or private soldier, or pickpocket, or coiner, or costermonger, or, indeed, some such character. And for this lazy and ruffian fellow, there is no indignity nor cruelty they will not suffer, no atrocity that they are not ready to commit, and no infamy that they will hesitate to perform, in order that he may continue to live half-luxuriously with them in their shame. A virtuous woman’s love is never of the same intensely passionate and self-denying character as marks the affection of her most abject sister. …
We once troubled our head with endeavouring to discover what qualities in man partake of the admirable in the eyes of such women as these. Do they love the half brutes with whom they cohabit, and from whose hands they bear blow after blow without a murmur, giving indeed only kisses in return; and for whose gross comforts they are daily ready to pollute both their body and soul?—do they love these fellows, we asked ourselves, for any personal beauty they fancy them to possess; or what strange quality is it that makes them prize them beyond any other being in the world?
We soon, however, discovered that they care little about the looks of their paramours, for not only are the majority of such men coarse and satyr-like in feature, but these women, generally speaking, have even a latent contempt for the class of public performers who are wont to trick their persons out to the best possible advantage. Again, it is not honour, nor dignity of character, nor chivalry of nature, nor energy of disposition, nor generosity of temperament that they think the highest attributes of man; for the fellows with whom they cohabit are mean and base to the last degree, selfish as swine, idle as lazzaroni, and ruffianly even as savages in their treatment of females.
In a word, it is power and courage that make up the admirable with woman in her shame; and hence the great proportion of what are termed “fancy men” {prostitutes’ lovers} are either, as we have said, prize-fighters, or private soldiers, or cab-drivers, or thieves, or coiners, or indeed fellows who are distinguished either for their strength, or “pluck,” or their adventurous form of life.[*]
Mayhew, a son of a wealthy London solicitor, was a writer. He was one of the founders in 1841 of the popular magazine Punch. Mayhew’s friend Douglas Jerrold was a successful, well-connected London author and a contributor to Punch. In 1844, Mayhew, then 31 years old, married Douglas Jerrold’s 19-year-old daughter, Jane. They were a match made within the norms of the elite Victorian mating market.
Shortly after Henry Mayhew and Jane Jerrold married, Henry suffered acute financial troubles and had to declare bankruptcy. Upset with Henry’s apparent financial mismanagement, his father disinherited him. Henry and Jane had their first child, a girl, about this time. They subsequently had another child, a son named Athol. Henry Mayhew never regained financial security. Henry and Jane’s marriage failed and they separated sometime after 1850.
Mayhew’s description of female criminals’ lovers seems to be painted with envy. Mayhew did pioneering social research. He wrote important articles on London’s poor and outcasts. Mayhew’s work displayed intellectual power and personal courage far beyond that of most upper-middle-class English gentlemen of his time. Yet Mayhew apparently perceived himself to be lacking the mating-market attractiveness of other, much less publicly valued men.
The mating market is fundamental to human evolution and human civilization. The human mating market has worked well enough thus far to generate relatively high human population, material wealth, and personal freedom. Yet sufficiently bad incentives in the human mating market surely could destroy civilization.
* * * * *
[*] Mayhew, Henry (1856), The Great World of London (London: David Bogue) pp. 466-7.
Wednesday's flowers
early history of the codex
The shift from scroll to codex in the Roman Empire seems to have been more a matter of perceptions of fashion and authority than of economic and technological advantages. About 85 GC, the Latin poet Martial boasted that his epigrams were available in a convenient parchment codex:
You who long for my little books to be with you everywhere and want to have companions for a long journey, buy these ones which parchment confines within small pages: give your scroll-cases to the great authors – one hand can hold me.[1]
Despite the advantages Martial described, codices amount to less than 20% of surviving literary and scientific books from his and the next two centuries.[2] The great authors existed on scrolls. The prestige they gave to scrolls seems to have outweighed the advantages of codices for centuries after codices were produced and promoted.[3]
An authoritative forerunner of the codex was Roman legal documents written on wooden tabulae. Codex is a Latin term that meant “block of wood.” Roman legal documents written on wooden tabulae made written contracts and themselves served as artifacts of those contracts. These codices were “prestigious documents, carefully preserved by their rightful possessors and familiar by sight to others any place that Roman citizens or those granted Roman legal privileges lived.”[4] Unlike Homer’s epics, Roman legal documents did not offer a memorable story along with moral instruction. Roman legal documents depended on Roman administrative machinery and ultimately, the rule of the Roman emperor. They had legal authority, but not literary prestige.
Early Christians early and uniformly used the codex for high-value copies of scripture. Christian New or Old Testament scripture from the early centuries of Christianity does not exist in a new (non-recycled / recto side) roll form. Yet in the first three centuries after the birth of Jesus, pieces from more than fifty Christian New or Old Testament codices have survived in Egypt, including fragments of an estimated 130-page codex of the Gospel of John probably from early in the second century.[5] Christians didn’t invent the codex. Christians, however, apparently used exclusively the codex for recording their scripture.
Roman codices, meaning legal documents written on wooden tabulae, plausibly were the prototypes for Christian papyrus codices. The Jewish Revolt against Rome, 115-117 GC, resulted in carnage in Alexandria, a leading center of closely intertwined Jewish and Christian life. Perhaps political fallout from the Jewish Revolt prompted Christians to differentiate themselves from Jews and signal affiliation with Rome through the use of the codex for Christian scripture.[6] But another possibility is more in keeping with the upside-down Christian vision. Christians rejected the elite status competition centered on Greek literature. With codices, Christians set themselves apart from that type of literature and life. Moreover, while Christians did not seek the violent overthrow of the Roman Empire, they envisioned a higher kingdom and a greater savior than the Roman emperor:
the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.[7]
Christians putting such scripture into a papyrus codex may have been a silent, but successful, revolt against Roman authority.
* * * * *
Notes:
[1] From Nick’s translation of Martial’s epigram, I.2. A codex book consists of uniformly shaped rectangular writing material bound in an order along one edge. Writing is typically present on both sides of the writing material, usually the writing is parallel to the shorter dimension of the (rectangular) material, and typically the codex book has a cover.
[2] Kraft (2008), p. 37. The share of codices are for Greek literature. The number of surviving Latin books (text artifacts) from the first three centuries is relatively small.
[3] As a text storage technology, the codex has important advantages over the scroll. Because the rolling of a scroll is not easily reversed, a scroll typically has writing on only one side of the writing material. Hence for the same text, a book requires only roughly half as much writing material as does a scroll. In addition, the scroll is a sequential access technology. Just as for a magnetic tape, you have to scroll through to access a point in the middle. The codex, in contrasts is a random-access technology like a disk drive. You can access the text from any book page by seeking to open the book at that page. The main technological disadvantage of the codex relative to the scroll is that the codex requires slightly more skill to produce (the skills to cut uniform writing material and to make a binding and a cover).
[4] Meyer (2008) p. 311. For her path-breaking work on Roman legal documents, see Meyer (2004).
[5] Bagnall (2009) pp. 72-79. The Gospel of John instance is P52 = P.Ryl.3.457.
[6] Meyer (2008) pp. 325-8.
[7] Philippians 2:9-11 (RSV translation). This text is replete with imperial terms enlarged in application to Jesus. Matthew 22:15-21, with reference to a Roman coin, undermines the divine pretensions of the Roman emperor.
References:
Bagnall, Roger S. 2009. Early Christian books in Egypt. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.
Kraft, Robert A. 2008. The Gestation of the Codex, stage one adaptation of Colin H. Roberts and T. C. Skeat, The Birth of the Codex London: Oxford University Press, 1983.
Meyer, Elizabeth A. 2004. Legitimacy and law in the Roman world: tabulae in Roman belief and practice. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Meyer, Elizabeth A. 2007. “Roman Tabulae, Egyptian Christians, and the Adoption of the Codex”. Chiron. 37: 295-347.
pragmatic organization of government printing
Government printing has encompassed a wide range of institutional forms through U.S. history. The U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO), established in 1861, became by the beginning of the twentieth century the world’s largest printshop. GPO has been a highly successful government venture. U.S. government printing history, not surprisingly, tends to be divided into Before GPO and Anno GPO. GPO, however, has been largely a pragmatic, results-oriented agency. GPO over its history has encompassed procurement of commercial printing and co-existed with independent government printing.
The establishment of GPO did not end commercial printing of government documents, nor even commercial printing of U.S. congressional documents. The U.S. executive branch, U.S. courts, and other U.S. agencies continued to make commercial arrangements for printing after the establishment of GPO. So too did state and local governments. GPO was established as the printer for the U.S. Congress. Nonetheless, printing of U.S. congressional proceedings remained in the hands of commercial printers until 1873. In competitive bidding against commercial printers, GPO was chosen to begin then its still-existing publication, the Congressional Record.[1] GPO received nominal responsibility for all federal printing only under the Printing Act of 1895.
Federal government agencies continued to do their own printing even after the Printing Act of 1895. A study of federal printing in 1955 found that GPO accounted for only 19% of federal expenditure on printing. Executive-branch departments, which accounted for 77% of federal printing expenditure, ran 327 departmental printing and duplicating plants. Military services operated 60% of those printing and duplicating plants.[2] Non-GPO printing was not cataloged as government publications, was not distributed to depository libraries, and did not get free carriage through the U.S. Postal Service. Non-GPO printing was probably largely informal and ephemeral printed matter. Such printed matter is important in the day-to-day functioning of organizations. Centralized printing and management of informal and ephemeral printed matter would be rather impractical.[3]
In response to high wartime demand for printing, GPO pragmatically procured commercial printing. During World War I, GPO worked three 8-hour shifts a day. In addition, government departments directly procured commercial printing. The head of GPO, recognizing the use of commercial printers, declared:
Without making any reflection whatever, it is evident that * * * bureaus of the Government have paid excessive prices for printing. * * * all printing and binding * * * should be handled by the Public Printer, who is in reality the official printer for the Government and who should be responsible for all of that work.
He recommended:
immediate legislation that will require all printing and binding orders * * * to be placed direct with the Public Printer and to be done in the GPO, with proviso that such work as cannot at any time be handled in the GPO may be let out by the Public Printer on contract to commercial printing offices.[4]
In 1929, Congress formally authorized GPO to procure commercial printing.[5] During World War II, GPO rapidly expanded its commercial procurement. In 1945, GPO’s procurement of commercial printing amounted to 138% of the value of its own printing.[6]
After World War II, GPO continued to procure commercial printing. Commercial procurement amounted to 42% of the value of GPO-directed printing in 1961, and then rose to 57% in 1970 and 70% in 1979.[7] At GPO’s 150 anniversary exhibit in 2011, a large poster declares:
Except for congressional work, secure documents such as passports, and publications like the Federal Register and the President’s budget, GPO produces virtually all work on contracts in partnership with the private sector printing industry. Our procurement staff handles about 75% of all work sent to GPO for production, amounting to over $450 million annually.
The system is one of the Government’s longest running and most successful partnerships with the private sector. More than 16,600 firms nationwide are registered to do business with GPO; the majority are small businesses averaging 20 workers per firm.
Contracts are awarded on a purely competitive basis. This partnership creates jobs across the nation and saves a significant amount of taxpayer money.
Over the course of the twentieth century, GPO transformed itself from the world’s largest printshop to a very large procurement agency for commercial printing.
GPO historians have described patronage, corruption, and inefficiency in competitive, commercial printing as the motivation for the formation of GPO. Those were historically specific problems at the federal level, not general features of competitive, commercial printing. Inflammatory print material played a major role in causing the U.S. Civil War. Printing hand-written manuscripts required considerable printer engagement with the content, and significant typographic errors were a possibility.[8] Perhaps greater control over the printing of government documents in the tense circumstances of the incipient Civil War was also a historically specific motivation for establishing GPO in 1861.
The establishment of the GPO was much different than the U.S. nationalization of telephone and telegraph networks in 1918. GPO was a new, government-controlled organization established to serve specific government needs. GPO’s history reflects that pragmatic, results-oriented founding.
* * * * *
Notes:
[1] GPO (1961) pp. 48-50.
[2] Id. p. 149.
[3] U.S. Code Title 44, Chapter 19, concerns the Depository Library Program. Under § 1901:
“Government publication” as used in this chapter, means informational matter which is published as an individual document at Government expense, or as required by law.
Government publication was probably defined in practice even more narrowly across Executive Branch agencies. Non-GPO federal printing was a matter of some formal controversy. The Executive Branch and Congress disagreed on whether requiring Executive-Branch agencies to use GPO for printing was constitutionally permissible. In 2005, GPO and the Executive Branch’s Office of Management and Budget established a compact to give Executive Branch agencies more printing choices. See GPO (2011) p. 129.
[4] GPO (1961) p. 99. The “* * *” in the source text may indicate elided text.
[5] Id. p. 117.
[6] Calculated as $50 million commercial procurement divided by $36,035,211 GPO in-shop printing. See id. pp. 130, 134.
[7] Kling (1970) p. 46 (share in 1961 and 1970); GPO (2011) p. 106 (share in 1979).
[8] Kerr (1881), p. 8, observes:
It not infrequently happens that the document has been kicked from pillar to post at the committee-rooms of the Capitol for days, or pulled to pieces by a dozen different correspondents in their eager hunt for news; and, nine times out of ten, when it reaches the Public Printer, it is in the reverse order of its original production, or so badly “mixed up” by the displacement of pages, that it would be a mass of nonsense if printed as received at the office. But here it falls into the hands of careful and conscientious workmen, to whom the authors of Government literature owe a debt of gratitude of great magnitude, who exert a “rectifying” influence over this rumpled monstrosity that smooths its future career, and places the author in the first ranks of modern writers. When the order of its being has thus been determined by these experts, it is carefully read over, page after page, by the same individuals, who seek to harmonize the many inconsistencies found, and by a series of hieroglyphic pencil-marks, only intelligible to printers, indicate the particular type in which each headline or portion of the text is to appear. Each page of the manuscript is then numbered, from the first to the last, to prevent any confusion in its subsequent career.
References:
GPO, United States. 1961. 100 GPO years, 1861-1961: a history of United States public printing. Washington, D.C.: U.S. G.P.O.
GPO, United States. 2011. Keeping America informed: the U.S. Government Printing Office : 150 years of service to the nation. [Washington, D.C.]: U.S. G.P.O.
Kerr, Robert Washington. 1970. History of the Government Printing Office (at Washington, D.C.); with a brief record of the public printing for a century, 1789-1881. New York: B. Franklin.
Kling, Robert E. 1970. The Government Printing Office. New York: Praeger.