K EEPING A MERICA I NFORMED THE U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 150 Years of SERVice TO THE NATION K eeping AmericA i nformed T h e U. S . g o v e r n m e n T p r i n T i n g o f f i c e 15 0 Y e A r S of Service T o T h e nAT i o n JOINT COMMITTEE ON PRINTING 111th Congress Charles e. sChumer, senator from New York, Chairman robert a. bradY, representative from Pennsylvania, Vice Chairman PattY murraY, senator from Washington thomas s. udall, senator from New mexico robert F. beNNett, senator from utah saxbY Chambliss, senator from Georgia miChael e. CaPuaNo, representative from massachusetts susaN a. davis, representative from California daNiel e. luNGreN, representative from California KeviN mcCarthY, representative from California PUBLISHED UNDER THE AUTHORITY OF THE PUBLIC PRINTER OF THE UNITED STATES William J. boarmaN UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 150TH ANNIVERSARY COMMITTEE Geor Ge d. barNum, GPO Historian m . miChael abramsoN KatheriNe d. ClarKe-radiCaN JeFFreY s. brooKe aNdreW m. shermaN James CameroN GarY G. somerset deaN a. Gardei bethaNN telFord YalaNda JohNsoN JeFFreY turNer GeorGe e. lord Pamela s. Williams oKsaNa Pozda emma WoJtoWiCz For sale by the superintendent of documents, u.s. Government Printing office, 732 N. Capitol street, NW, idCC mail stop, Washington, dC 20401 http://bookstore.gpo.gov | toll free 888.512.1800 | dC area 202.512.1800 | fax 202.512.2250 ISB N 978-0-16-088704-8 iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Foreword ......................................................................................................... vii introduction ..................................................................................................... ix CAPTERH 1 “publick printing” and the founding of gpo ............................. 3 CAPTERH 2 industrialization and the gilded Age ......................................... 19 CAPTERH 3 The p rogressive era, the d epression, and World War ......... 47 CAPTERH 4 e xpansion and compterization ...................................................... 93 CAPTERH 5 gpo in the d igital era .......................................................................... 117 a fterword ....................................................................................................... 139 heads of Public Printing, 1861 – 2011 .......................................................... 141 Notes ............................................................................................................... 142 sources ............................................................................................................ 143 acknowledgements ....................................................................................... 145 index ............................................................................................................... 146 v The press that became known as “Press No. 1,” bought off the floor of the St. Louis Exposition in 1897. Much of its career was spent printing postal cards, and it remained in service until 1974. vi FOREWORD t he u.s. Government Printing office published its last official history 50 years ago, marking its centennial anniversary. 100 GPO Years 1861–1961 has proven to be a remarkably valuable resource and deserves to stand alone as an enduring contribution to the historical record of this great agency. instead of trying to improve on it, with the approach of our 150th anniversary we decided to recreate the telling of GPo’s story. Keeping America Informed: The U.S. Government Printing Office: 150 Years of Service to the Nation recasts our history in a fresh light, with new contributions and emphases, and provides the reader with a greater exposure to GPo’s rich photographic record, with many of the images in this book published for the first time. most important of all, Keeping America Informed describes how the agency has transformed itself through the years by continually adapting to the most efficient technologies available to get its work done.i n the ink-on-paper era, this meant moving from handset to machine-set type, from slower to high-speed presses, and from hand to automated bookbinding. these changes enabled GPo to keep up with the demands of a growing Nation and helped keep costs down, and they were significant for their time. Yet they pale by comparison with the transformation that accompanied GPo’s incorporation of electronic information technologies, the single most dominant trend at the agency of the past 50 years, and the generator of unprecedented improvements in productivity and hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer savings that continue into the present. today, GPo is fundamentally different from what it was as recently as a generation ago: smaller, leaner, and equipped with digital production capabilities that are the bedrock of the information systems relied upon daily by Congress, Federal agencies, and the public to ensure open and transparent Government in the digital era. Keeping America Informed is a portrait of the generations of men and women who have worked here as compositors, proofreaders, platemakers, press operators, bookbinders, printing plant workers, librarians, engineering and maintenance staff, accountants, information technology technicians, personnel specialists, police officers, and all the other functions required by GPo. Few Federal agencies can count as their heritage the scope of the work GPo has performed, ranging from the first printing of thee mancipation Proclamation to providing digital access to the Government’s publications today. the men and women of GPo are responsible for that heritage. Keeping America Informed is a new telling of their story and their enduring achievements. William J. boarman, Public Printer vii Beatrice L. Warde (center) visits GPO in the years immediately after World War II. viii INTRODUCTION crossroads, refuge, Armory: This is a printing office t he u.s. Government Printing office has occupied the same corner of b ack in Washington, probably at the urging of GPo director of North Capitol street in Washington, dC, since its founding in 1861. in typography Frank mortimer, the 1940 apprentice Class had her words 1940, after decades of appeals to Congress for more space, GPo opened a cast in bronze, as a sort of blessing and manifesto for the newest building of new, modern building on the site, replacing a collection of firetrap buildings what had become affectionately known as “the big shop.” to Warde, living that had been accumulating for 80 years. in the marble and brass lobby, in britain as the darkening storm of World War ii approached, “…came prominent beside the main elevators, a plaque was placed by the apprentice news from a remote planet (as it then was), the usa, that the inscription Class of 1940, which has been seen by all entering the building ever since: was to be cast in bronze and affixed to the wall of the GPo in Washington. there is Crossroads of civilization. something about the very words,” she con- Refuge of all the arts against the ravages of time. tinued, “…that sends joyful shivers down Armory of fearless truth against whispering rumor. any writer’s back. …”2 Incessant trumpet of trade. s eventy years later, at the same From this place words may fly abroad, location but in the midst of a digital era in Not to perish on waves of sound, which GPo carries out its work using the Not to vary with the writer’s hand latest in electronic information technolo- But fixed in time, gies, Warde’s benedictory words continue Having been verified by proof. to ring true, because they express what Friend, you stand on sacred ground, we know to be the timeless importance of This is a Printing Office. reproducing and transmitting the written word in our society. setting down the t he words had been written in 1932 by beatrice l. Warde, an written word for all to see—whether by The plaque that “sent shivers” down Beatrice Warde’s back, and has greeted american scholar, writer, and typographer who was publicist for the applying ink to paper or locking it digitally everyone entering GPO’s Building 3 monotype Company in england. she is known among designers and via public key infrastructure—preserves it, since its opening in 1940. typographers for a line of thinking which maintained that type should be a authenticates it, and makes it official, the largely transparent medium for the communication of information. Warde real thing. this act in turn makes it possible to replicate and disseminate designed a broadside for monotype’s introduction of a new typeface called the written word unchanged, providing a common foundation for literacy, Perpetua, designed by her associate eric Gill, featuring the “Crossroads of education, commerce, the arts, and—perhaps most important of all—the civilization…” text, expressing her beliefs about printing and free societies. conduct of government in a free society. it was the elemental importance the broadside, in the end, proved more popular than the typeface, and a of an informed public to the effective conduct of self-government that decade later Warde wrote that, “i can say with deep pride that i’ve seen it prompted James madison’s well-known dictum in an august 4, 1822, framed on the walls of nearly every printing officei have visited. …”1 letter to W. t. barry: ix a popular Government without popular information, or the captured in Government computer databases. their initial efforts culmi- means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a tragedy, nated in 1967 with the installation of the linotron, a