Paul and the Printing Press Part 20

"Who prints United States money, Dad?" he asked quite irrelevantly of his father, when next he saw him.

"Our United States greenbacks? Those are engraved and printed, my son, at the United States Bureau of Engraving and Printing at Washington.

They are made from very fine and exquisitely prepared plates and printed on a special sort of paper. This paper has numberless little silk threads running through it which not only toughen it and prevent it from tearing but also make it almost impossible to duplicate. A counterfeiter would have to go to a deal of trouble to imitate such material."

Paul nodded. He had noticed the blue threads in his fifty-dollar bill.

In fact, there was not much about it that he had not noticed while twisting and turning it in his fingers.

"Yes," continued his father, "our paper money and government notes are fine examples of accurate and perfect workmanship. I suppose, as they pa.s.s through our hands, we seldom consider the labor that goes into making them. From the time the designer begins his work to the moment the plates are made, tried out, and accepted, many, many hours of toil are consumed. You know, of course, that our government runs a very extensive printing plant where it uses tons of paper every year. There is no end to the government printing. The Congressional Records must be printed and filed, as must also thousands of reports from various boards and committees. Then there is stationery for official use; official doc.u.ments of all sorts; catalogues; cards for government business."

"I never thought of that."

"Yes, indeed. Uncle Sam runs quite a jobbing office, all the details of which must be carefully systematized, too. Great care is taken that the spelling abbreviations and such details shall be uniform on all government doc.u.ments. You can readily see how necessary it is that they should be. Therefore the government issues a manual for the use of its employees, a list of punctuation and capitalization marks and rules, as well as printers' marks which shall serve as a standard and must be conformed to for all government purposes."

"That is interesting, isn't it?" murmured Paul.

"You can readily understand that in preparing government reports and such things for the press a uniform abbreviation for the States, for example, must be used. It would be out of the question to have one person abbreviating Alabama one way and another person another. It would not only result in a slipshod lot of doc.u.ments but the variation might mislead those who read it. In all such doc.u.ments every detail must be the same. Moreover, often employees are far from being expert in such matters and a book to which they can refer is a great help to them. In addition, it settles all disputes arising between the clerks who make up the reports and the printers who print them; and it saves the time and labor of correcting errors."

"I see."

"Not only does the government printing office do a vast amount of printing for the use of the Washington authorities but it does a great deal of work for the country at large. Think, for instance, of the care and accuracy that goes into making out the United States census."

"Not only care but paper and ink," laughed Paul.

"All such tabulated doc.u.ments consume quant.i.ties of paper," answered his father. "Directories, telephone books, circulars, and advertising matter in general demand tons and tons of paper every year, and the printing of them provides employment for hundreds of printers. As time goes on, more and more business is annually transacted by mail. The country is so tremendous and the expense of sending out salesmen to cover it so great that merchants now do much of their selling from mail-order catalogues. Many of these books are very attractive, too. A careful reproduction of the object for sale is made and the photograph sent broadcast to speak for itself. Jewelry firms issue tempting lists of their wares; china and gla.s.s dealers try to secure buyers by offering alluring pages of pictures, many of them in color; dry goods houses send out photographs of suits, hats, and clothing of all sorts. You have seen scores of such books and know how they are indexed and priced. In fact, there are commercial firms whose mail-order department is a business in itself, catalogues entirely supplanting salesmen. It is a much cheaper, wider-reaching means of selling, and often the results are quite as good as are the more old-fashioned methods. Now that artistic cuts can be reproduced with comparatively little expense this means of advertising is becoming more and more popular. Many charities annually make their appeal for funds by leaflet or card; stocks are offered to customers; your patronage to theaters, entertainments, and hotels is thus solicited. The combination of low postage rates and wide mail distribution is accountable for an almost overwhelming amount of printed business being transacted. Then, too, the mail is a great time-saver, or should be, an advantage to be considered in our busy, work-a-day world."

"But people don't read half the stuff they get through the mails," said Paul.

"No, of course not. If they did, they would do little else," smiled his father. "Nevertheless, they glance at it and now and then, as their eye travels over it, an item on the page catches their fancy. Any artistic advertis.e.m.e.nt will usually command attention; so will the receipt of some trifling article that is pretty or novel. Besides, it is chiefly the rushed city person who tosses the advertis.e.m.e.nt away unread. Those with more leisure, country people, perhaps, who receive little mail, usually read every word of the printed matter that reaches them. They do not have so many diversions as we do, and this printed stuff entertains them and keeps them in touch with the cities. Therefore they generally go over what is sent them quite carefully. Frequently they are miles from large shops and are forced to do much of their purchasing by mail, so such catalogues are a great convenience to them."

"I can see that," Paul admitted.

"Yes, indeed. Catalogues to those living in spa.r.s.ely settled districts are a profound blessing. I should not be surprised to see the paper, ink, and printing business one of our largest industries. We cannot do without any of these commodities. Have you thought, for example, of the amount of material and labor that goes into producing the millions of thick telephone directories annually circulated among the subscribers?

All these have to be printed somewhere."

"It must be an awful piece of work to get them out, Dad."

"It is. They must be printed absolutely correctly too, for an error will cause both the exchange and the subscriber no end of trouble. So it is with residence directories and many similar lists. If you consider, you can readily see that as a nation we consume an unbelievable amount of paper and ink in a year. That is why the shortage of these materials during the war caused such universal inconvenience. And not only do we demand a great deal of paper, and ink, and printer's skill in every department of our business, but being a country alert for education, we annually use a tremendous number of schoolbooks. Hundreds, thousands, millions of schoolbooks are printed each year for the purpose of educating and democratizing our growing citizens."

Paul stirred in his chair uneasily. The talk had drifted back into the familiar channels of the present. Again the school, Mr. Carter, the fifty-dollar bill, and the thoughts that for the instant had taken flight now returned to his mind, bringing a cloud to his face.

His father, noticing the shadow, looked kindly into the boy's eyes.

"You are tired to-night, son," he said.

"A little."

"Not working too hard?"

"No, sir. I don't think so."

"Everything going all right at school?"

"Yes."

"Paper still booming?"

"Yes, Dad. Going finely."

"I am glad to hear that."

Mr. Cameron waited a second. A wild impulse to take his father into his confidence seized Paul. He hesitated. Then it was too late. His father rose and with a friendly touch on his shoulder strode across the hall and into his den.

"You must not overwork at your editorial desk, my boy," he called jocosely from the distant threshold. "It doesn't pay."

Paul heard the door slam. The moment for confession had pa.s.sed. His father had gone and he was alone with his conscience and Mr. Carter's fifty-dollar bill.

CHAPTER XIII

THE CAMERONS HAVE A VISITOR

During the next week Paul was obliged to go several times to the _Echo_ offices and each time he went with the secret hope that he would see Mr.

Carter and have the opportunity to hand back to him the hateful money that burned in his breast pocket. The chance, however, never came. The door of the great man's private room was continually closed and when the boy suggested to the clerk that he wait and talk with the publisher, he was told that Mr. Carter was engaged and could see no one that day. The thought of mailing the money occurred to Paul, but as this method of returning it seemed precarious and uncertain, he promptly abandoned the idea. For the same reason he was unwilling to leave the bill in a sealed envelope to be delivered to the editor-in-chief by one of the employees.

Should a sum so immense, at least so immense in the lad's estimation, be lost, he never could replace it. Certainly he was in trouble enough already without chancing another dilemma.

In the meantime he carried the bill around with him, trying in the interval to decide what to do with it. Gradually he became accustomed to having the money in his possession. It did not seem so strange a thing now as it had in the beginning. After all, fifty dollars was not such a vast sum. To a person of Mr. Carter's wealth it probably was nothing at all, an amount too trifling to cause a second thought. Besides, he had not really bound himself to Mr. Carter. He had not actually guaranteed to do anything. It was Mr. Carter who had insisted that he take the money.

Unquestionably in exchange for it Paul was expected to use his influence to persuade the boys of 1920 to sell their paper; still, using one's influence did not necessarily mean that one must succeed. If he suggested the deal and it failed to go through, would he not have done all that was required of him? Mr. Carter had stipulated nothing more than that he use his influence. If the _Echo_ owner had over-estimated the power of that influence, was not that his lookout? No doubt such an understanding was quite customary in business circles and was not so important a matter as he took it to be.

The more the lad thought the matter over the more plausible the retention of the money seemed. To use one's influence was surely a legitimate arrangement. It was done in politics every day of the week.

Weren't individuals in high positions constantly accepting tips to put through business measures of one sort or another, regardless of whether they personally approved of them or not? To be sure, he had heard his father call such money _bribe money_, _dirty money_, and refer to the men who took it as being _bought up_.

Paul knew his father scorned such proceedings. That was the reason he had lost the campaign when running for mayor against Mr. Carter in 1915.

It had been an underhanded fight and almost everyone in Burmingham, regardless of party, had thought so. Mr. Carter had won the election, it is true, but it had been at the expense of the respect of the entire community.

And now he, Paul Cameron, was deserting the principles for which his father stood and was accepting those of his opponent. Plainly speaking, that was what the thing amounted to. He was taking money for something he disapproved of doing; he was being a traitor to his cla.s.s, to his friends, to the school. The boys on the staff of the paper respected and trusted him. They would never suspect him of treachery. Should he stand up and advocate the sale of the _March Hare_ he knew his word would have weight. If, on the other hand, he manfully presented Mr. Carter's offer as it honestly should be presented, he was practically sure that the measure would be voted down.

Yet if he returned the money to Mr. Carter and refused to have anything further to do with the affair, he must forfeit his typewriter, the thing on which he had set his heart.

What an unlucky snarl it was! How unfortunate that the _March Hare's_ bank account should have been muddled and its editor driven to repair an error that was not his! Had not this occurred, all would have gone smoothly and he could have thrust the odious money back in Mr. Carter's face and left his office a free man. He hated Mr. Carter, the _March Hare_, the school, and all the web of circ.u.mstances in which he was entangled! He wanted that typewriter. It seemed as if he must have it.

In the meantime, the May issue of the school paper came out and preparations for the June number, the last that 1920 would publish, began. The swift pa.s.sing of the days forced Paul's hand. Whichever way he was to act he must act soon now, and he found himself no nearer a decision than he had been two weeks ago. He still had Mr. Carter's money in his pocket, and he was still eyeing the Corona he longed for and which he could neither bring himself to purchase nor give up; he was, too, quite as unreconciled to doing his Alma Mater an injury as he had been before. Round and round in a circle he went, the same old arguments bringing him to the same old conclusions. There seemed to be no way out.

While he was still pondering what he would do, an interesting visitor arrived at the Cameron home. This was Mr. Percy Wright, a college cla.s.smate of Paul's father and the owner of one of the largest paper mills in the State. He was a man of magnetic personality and wide business experience and Paul instantly conceived that warm admiration for him which a younger boy will often feel for an older man.

A fund of amusing anecdotes rippled from Mr. Wright's tongue. It seemed as if there was no subject on which he could not converse. He had an entertaining story about almost every topic suggested and kept the entire Cameron family laughing heartily through each meal. Paul watched the stranger with fascinated eyes. How charming he was, how witty, how clever! And yet Mr. Wright was not always jesting. On the contrary, he could be very serious when his hobby of paper-making, with its many interdependent industries, was mentioned.