A TEAKETTLE FOR A TYPESETTER

New Zealand Listener, Volume 14, Issue 355, 12 April 1946, Page 10

A TEAKETTLE FOR A TYPESETTER

HIS is the story of an editor who swapped a teakettle for a typesetter-and got plenty to boot. It came about this way. Last spring, John Gould, whose "Dispatches From the Farm" are a regular feature of The Christian Science Monitor, became owner and editor of what is, perhaps, the most archaic newspaper in the State of Maine, the Lisbon Enterprise. He took into partnership with him a printer friend, Jesse Goud, to run the shop. They needed a typesetter. Miss Selma Ey, who had served in that capacity under the paper’s previous owner for more than 25 years, had hired out to do housework. "When we decided we wanted Miss Ey to share our fate," said Editor Gould, "Miss Ey’s new employer didn’t altogether like the idea, hired help being what it is lately. But Miss Ey’s new employer had just burned the bottom out of her teakettle, and teakettles were even harder to get than help. Back-shop Genius "We had a teakettle. We thought we’d rather have Miss Ey than the teakettle. ‘We made the swap, and ever-since she

has been our back-shop expert, setting all our news by hand. "Selma’s a genius in her own right," Editor Gould continued. "She is one of the few compositors, if not the only one, of the atomic age who can set logotypes. She has a font of these curios — scarcely known even to veteran printers to-day-with words and parts of words on separate slugs. If she sets ‘Mr. and Mrs. Jones spent Sunday in town,’ the only letters she really sets are those in ‘Jones.’ The rest of the sentence is made up of logotypes, and she knows where to find Mr. and Mrs., spent, Sun, day, in town. ‘Sunday’ is made in two moves instead of six. Selma has logotypes for many of the more common words, and for most of the prefixes and suffixes." However, while the swapping, of the teakettle for Selma is regarded by the Enterprise editor as one of his most advantageous transactions, he also acquired many other odd chattels when he took over the paper. Besides the several old presses and heaps of miscellaneous _print-shop equipment of the post-Civil War days, there are fonts upon fonts of outdated type faces, and old-fashioned ornaments and cuts by the pailful, More than this,

Editor Gould came across such non-print-shop items as a trunkful of gavels, a bucket of clay marbles, and a closet full of Indian suits, to mention only a few. Y Ba * * UT, first of all, there’s the Enterprise itself, a weekly paper founded in 1890 by Charles Mann, and published by him for 54 years. In it he recorded local happenings, wrote editorials on pertinent subjects, and offered tradesmen of the town space in which to advertise their wares. While Editor Gould has made no effort to revolutionise the Enterprise with big-city practices and methods, he does have his own original ideas of what his readers want in a weekly news-sheet. His theory is that everybody likes to read about himself and his neighbour. And if there can be a speck of humour in the items, no one objects. So one finds thoroughly readable notes as: "Stacy Pillsbury’s truck is still stuck in his favourite mud-puddle," or "Charles Hall is starting his haying this week. So is Elmer Keith." Just below that we find: "The Bards had clams for supper Sunday night." At another time one learns that "Dot Keith has been picking strawberries for Ray Skelton. Ray sure

can raise the strawberries. And Dot sure can pick ’em." Later: "Eddie Belanger has a new screen door, swings both ways," and "Ev French gota haircut Tuesday afternoon." When Editor Gould took over, the Enterprise had some 268 subscribers. Immediately the paper started to grow, and not a few subscriptions found their way from distant points. Commenting on this in midsummer, he said: "Every week we print more and more papers, and we are beginning to wonder just how far we can go without taxing the weekly production figure of our press. Time is a factor, and when you have a press that will only print so fast, you have a natural allowance you must make between issues. "We find as we look over our mailing list that our new subscribers run pretty evenly between locals and foreigners, Anybody outside a radius of about five miles is a foreigner to us, although they may be good enough people otherwise. "From now on, people who are foreigners have to pay $2 a year. We don’t think we'll lose on this, because people who live in other places can’t be very bright anyway, and they must be at least a little stupid or they wouldn’t want our paper. So we figure we might

as well put the bite on them for an extra dollar, and if this helps us meet expenses we'll be pleased." | Truth in Advertising On the theory, too, that advertisements are meant to be read, many of them are most readable. When Fred Heisterman, one of the locai marketmen, had little or nothing in the way of meats to offer his customers, he didn’t cease advertising. Instead he ran a series‘ of "apt and appetising" quotations which were immediately picked up and flashed across the country bythe Associated Press. There was the soap shortage, too, which brought out what is perhaps the zenith in "truth in advertising" in the copy run by Jofinnie Beddell, manager of the Booker Coal and Lumber Company. "Oh Boy! Did We Get Stung!" was the way he headed his final soap advertisement after having boosted householders’ hopes for weeks regarding a shipment on the way. "Our man sent us a barrel of soap powder," the ad. continued, "It was warranted, guaranteed, and attested. We tried it out, and it... filled the shop with blue smoke, killed all the flies, and short-circuited the electricity.

"We don’t know what it is, but it’s soap powder all right, and we will sell it so cheap you wouldn’t believe it. "But," the ad. continued, "we also got plenty. of real good, A-number-one washing powder, and we're selling it to those people who aren’t silly enough to take the first kind. It lathers, it foams, it cleans-it is good stuff!" No less truthful in its advertising copy is Bauer’s Bakery, which specialised one week on turnovers, "good with a glass of cold milk to stay you until supper time." "We're making three kinds now," the ad. announced, "Apple, Pineapple, and Jelly. The raspberry stuff we get now doesn’t bake up so well." Enterprise advertising brings results, too. This is attested by the small classified ad. which ran for two or three weeks telling of a "Pump for sale. Hand or power. 11-ins. fittings." Then came the answer in old-time 48point Antique Condensed: Sold the Pump! Jesse and John have lots of fun with these old-fashioned type faces and the archaic cuts, one or two of which are used each week. Recently, when clean(continued on next page)

(continued from previous page) ing out some old type, they boxed a conglomeration in two-column style. It wasn’t good for anything until sorted, but Editor Gould had an idea. "Let’s run it as it is," he said. They did-right in the middle of the back page, with an introduction to the effect that it could be easily rearranged into advertising copy. Was it noticed? It certainly was. Fill-ups Many metropolitan dailies make a practice to-day of filling out odd lines at the end of news items with short squibs giving the population of Brazil, the length of the Nile River, or the chief exports of Australia, The Enterprise goes one better and fills out its blank spaces with such highly informative lines as: Perambulating is done on foot. Twelve things make one dozen. Many a mickle makes a muckle., "Hooray," shouted Oscar in glee. Five times five is twenty-five. Once, when there was a two-column blank space below one of the ads, some 12-points caps just filled the line: ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ&CODFISH. While the more serious problems of the location of the new post office, the forthcoming carrier service, the textile strike at the local mills, doings at the high school, town meetings, and affairs generally about town, receive generous and studied editorial comment aimed at what’s best for the public’s good, the less-

exciting events also evoke editorials of a lighter nature. "Our sunflower has survived the weather thus far," such an editorial announced recently. It went on to say that: "We skin a paper bag over it every night in case it frosts. If you go to the post office via the Air Line, coming out by the telephone pole, you won’t see it, but if you swing up the Post Road past Phil Allen’s pigeons and the back end of Craig’s old farrier shop, you'll see our sunflower in the window box on the back end of the composing room. Don’t get too close, because we sometimes throw wrong-font letters out of that window." Postal Inspectors Count 1,500 Miss Ey, according to Editor Gould, has become quite adept at this, "with skill we greatly envy. A score card on the wall grades the town’s citizenry," he continued. "Bankers count 10, and professional men 15. Mill agents rate 100, and Miss Ey has a tin can full of 48point wrong-font W’s which she’s saving for postal inspectors, who count 1,500. "We've got a cricket now," the editorial continued. "Jesse found him on a; stone reading a galley of ads, and every time he came across a good ad. he’d lay back and fiddle his wings and carry on something fine. He fiddled for 10 minutes when we showed him that editorial about the post office. "Jesse feeds him cake, and he lives in a case of 10-point condensed bold Locust type. He likes cake. When he hasn’t had any for a while, he fiddles like a good one, and when we looked in to see what was the matter he had a line set up like this: "I NEED SOME CAKE OR I WON’T SING."