Britain at Work
A Pictorial Description of Our National Industries

210 BRITAIN AT WORK. at a rate of many miles an hour, white one moment and the next a complete paper printed on both sides, folded, and accurately cut, it is almost impossible to believe that only some thirty years ago even the Times was pro- duced at a rate of little more than a thousand sheets from each press in an hour, and that every paper had to be folded by hand. To-day the machine rooms of the finest newspapers are equipped with presses work- ing from two and four reels of paper at the same time, and delivering newspapers cut, folded and counted at the rate of from 24,000 to 48^000 eight-page sheets an hour. Each roll of paper is five miles in length and of different widths, from about thirty inches to as much as eight or nine feet. In the largest of all the machines paper feeds into the cylinders at a rate that can be made to exceed thirty miles an hour. Even with this vast capacity for production the offices of our great newspapers are furnished with many of these machines, editions which are counted by the hundred thousand, and even by the million, being produced in the course of little more than an hour. The production of a newspaper is carried through from beginning to end at tremendous pressure. In a few hours the news must be gathered, selected, cut clown, and ex- panded. Leading articles have to be written, frequently being sent sheet by sheet to the printers. A statesman makes an important speech in Parliament or in some remote quarter of the country; a great play is produced at the theatre, the curtain falling at midnight; news comes of the death of a Sovereign—all these things must be dealt with at once, frequently while the printers wait to close the last page. Every device is utilised by which a minute can be saved in any department, and no expense is too great that will enable one newspaper to beat its rivals. Special trains are run every day to carry the papers to remote districts. In fact the production of a news- paper brings into play, as perhaps nothing else does, all those means of quickening communication which have so reduced the size of our globe, and have brought the nations of the world into closer association with one another. Alfred H. Watson,. LOADING A NEWSPAPER TRAIN.