l^ 833 lSlf?85t The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924027500796 OfnrttcU Httitieraitg ffiibrarg 3tl;ara, STem Qnth THE GIFT OF St". Lou-is Post DispatcL THE POST- DISPATCH PLATFORM I KNOW THAT MY RETIREMENT WILL MAKE NO DIFFERENCE IN ITS CARDINAL PRINCIPLES, THAT IT WILL ALWAYS FIGHT FOR PROGRESS AND REFORM, NEVER TOLERATE INJUSTICE OR CORRUPTION, ALWAYS FIGHT DEMAGOGUES OFALL PARTIES, NEVER BELONG TO ANY PARTY, ALWAYS OPPOSE PRIVILEGED CLASSES AND PUBLIC PLUNDERERS, NEVER LACK SYMPATHY WITH THE POOR.ALWAYS REMAIN DEVOTED TO THE PUBLIC WELFARE, NEVER BE SATISFIED WITH MERELY PRINTING NEWS ALWAYS BE DRASTICALLY INDEPENDENT NEVER BE AFRAID TO ATTACK WRONG, WHETHER BY PREDATORY PLUTOCRACY OR PREDATORY POVERTY APRIL 10,1907 JOSEPH PULITZER !\. inrAA, f--': 1 11 11 ij 11 11 J Hf fff! r .-'^J THE NEW POST-DISPATCH BUILDING, TWELFTH AND OLIVE STREETS, ST. LOUIS FIRST HOME III North Broadway — 1878-1882. SECOND HOME 513-IS Market Street— 1882-18 Foreword FOR A OBEATEB FOST-OISPATCH. The PoBt-Dlspatch presents today a special four-page supplement describing the new Post- Dispatch Building and plant. We are proud ol the structure and we believe St. Louis may well be proud of It. For we are in b position to say that St. Louis now has the greatest newspaper building in the world. The underlying motive that prompted the in- vestment of a million and a quarter dollars in a new Post-Dispatch Building was our desire to improve the Post-Dispatch as an instrument of public service — to make it a greater newspaper. To do this, more space and more mechanical equipment were necessary. We now have the space and the equipment and we are confident that St. Loulsans will not be slow to realize that out of the new building Is already coming a larger and a better Post-Dispatch. This new, beautiful and perfectljr equipped home of the Post-Dispatch is the first built by the newspaper for its own use and the fifth it has occupied. It is a symbol of the institution which It houses — its growth, progress, increasing power and influence. It is the physical and visi- ble instrumentality of a finer spiritual structure, the great journal with heart and soul, wielding for civilization the force of publicity— the most potent moral force in the world. The meaning and purpose of the building are to expand the field and enhance the beneficent moral power ol the newspaper. And so we start on a new era in the life of the Post-Dispatch fully armed and equipped. Whether or not we have succeeded is for the people of St. Louis to say. That their answer will again, as so often in the past, be a hearty "Tea," we have every -confidence. And we shall then re- joice that in building a "great plant" we have accomplished its purpose — that of making "your Post-Dispatch a greater newspaper." (Editorial in the Post-Dispatch, Aug. 19, 1917.) THIRD HOME 513 Olive Street— 1888-1902. FOURTH HOME 210-212 North Broadway — 1902-] N the six months that have elapsed since this editorial appeared, the confidence we then expressed that St. Louis would recog- nize and appreciate the new Post-Dispatch Building and its im- proved creation, a bigger and a better Post-Dispatch, has been more than vindicated. For in that time the circulation of this newspaper — and it is by circulation that a newspaper's usefulness to its public can best be measured — has increased at a greater rate than ever before at this season. The sales of the daily Post-Dispatch have increased more than 20,ocx) since last August. This is recorded here, not in a spirit of bombast, but with pride, for it proves public appreciation of this great structure and of the institu- tion it houses as nothing else proves it. It is the people of St, Louis who built the Post-Dispatch Building. It is the people of St. Louis whom the Post-Dispatch will continue to serve, to infojm, to THE PUBLICATION OFFICE protect, and to lead. Dedicated to their service on the day of its foundation, December 12, 1878, the Post-Dispatch will stand or fall on the platform of its founder, Joseph Pulitzer, as a newspaper that "shall always remain devoted to the public welfare". February loth, 191 8 /rz.A^^^"^A From President Wilson At the time of the Post-Dispatch cornerstone laying in October, 1916, a telegram was received from the President of the United States, This message was: 71/y warmest congratulations and best wishes to a great independent journal on the occasion of the laying of the cornerstone of its new home. WOODROW WILSON OFFICE OF W. C. STEIGERS, SECOND VICE-PRESIDENT AND BUSINESS MANAGER T is the pride of the makers of the Post-Dispatch that for hun- dreds of thousands of friends the name denotes more than a great and flourishing property. Very impressive, to be sure, is such an achievement as its growth from the 987 copies of its first issue in 1878 to the present circulation of the Daily and Sunday Post- Dispatch. But successes of the kind are, after all, merely the outward trophies of an inner spirit. ' That a genuine ethical significance has come to be borne by the name, through the stress and travail of nearly forty years — this is the crowning distinction of the Post-Dispatch. The trust of legions of readers, as well as its own conscience, dedicates this newspaper to the uses of righteousness; general consent attests that its energies are devoted, with uncom- promising courage, to faithful service of the public. But only the agency of an adequate body can enable spirit, however lofty its intent, to enforce its message potently upon the world. So, when the season came for the Post-Dispatch to build itself a stateher mansion, the controlling idea in planning the new house was that of making possible a completer self-expression, a maximum capacity for service, through the creation of a consummate organism for the function of newspaper publication. To others was willingly abandoned the parade of skyscraper homes, which most frequently are office buildings pri- marily and only in the second instance newspaper plants. This structure was to be first of all a factory for the production of newspapers; an apparatus, as efficient IF. E. Taylor, Classified Adveriisinz Manager OFFICE OF B. E. BRADLEY, ASSISTANT GENERAL MANAGER / take this means of expressing my appreciation of the work of the man on the Post-Dispatch staf who virtually built the Post- Dispatch Building. The structure stands as he planned it. The credit for its mechanical efficiency, for its healthfulness and cheerfulness, and for its success in general, rests with the Assistant General Manager of the Post-Dispatch, Mr. B. E. Bradley. JOSEPH PULITZER, JR., President as science, invention and expenditure could make it, for supplying to the public a greater Post-Dispatch. Greater in quality, attractiveness and size — but these are conditioned, by the realities of newspaper manufacture, upon speed of production. Speed, again speed and always speed became a watchword in designing the establishment. Enhanced velocity was clearly attainable by installing the swiftest machinery, the best time-saving devices. Scarcely less essential, it was recognized, would be the elimination of waste motion throughout the plant, which must therefore be so systematized in all its parts that each individual process could not fail to march directly onwards, without a backward or sideways step, to its final goal. But there was another consideration to which paramount importance was accorded. The determination was reached to provide for the employes in every department the most wholesome, comfortable and congenial surroundings. How conscientiously these varied problems were attacked may be judged from the fact that before architect set pencil to paper a year was devoted to studies of all the considerable newspaper offices in America and those of London, Paris and Berlin. The acknowledged result is that the Post-Dispatch has been able to achieve the last word in modern, scientifically equipped newspaper plants. DISPLAY ADVERTISING DEPARTMENT, GEORGE M. BURBACH, ADVERTISING MANAGER Upon the Post-Dispatch reader the new building and its facilities have con- ferred two advantages so conspicuous that they could not fail of instant appreciation. In the first place he receives a newspaper which, including as it does the new Daily Magazine section, is in every way more valuable, as well as larger and better printed, than the old Post-Dispatch. Moreover, save for remote parts of the city, the Night Edition has taken over most of the circulation formerly purveyed by the Home Edition. The subscriber, this means, now obtains the Night Edition, with news two hours later than that of the Home Edition, at the same time the latter was previously delivered. Popular gratification with these innovations is reflected in an increase of nearly 20,CXD0 copies in average daily circulation since the building was opened in August last. The improvements in quality and speed are effected by so many fascinating mechanical appliances, so many ingenious feats of system, that it would be a dull imagination which, on a tour of the Post-Dispatch plant, would not be kindled to some sense of the romance of machinery and organization. If beauty, as some define it, consists in the perfect adaptation of means to end, then the visitor will derive aesthetic emotion not only from the building's majestic pile and the sumptuously veined marbles of the elevator lobby and business office. He will also discern an unmistakable art in this vast and manifold apparatus, so harmonized and coordinated in all its parts that like the motives of a skilfully constructed drama, they work unanimously together towards a common denouement. Nor AUDITING DEPARTMENT, J. T. KELLER, AUDITOR can he escape being impressed at every turn by the elaborate measures taken for the protection, health and contentment of the workers. As a site for the building was chosen the northeast corner of Twelfth and Olive streets, a situation happily strategic in that it is coming more and more to be re- garded as a center from which radiate St. Louis' multiple activities — of business, as represented by the downtown retail and wholesale districts; of municipal gov- ernment, with its seats at the nearby City Hall and Municipal Courts Building; of transportation, focused at the Union Station; and of home life, grouped to the north, west and south. Had more spacious ground been available, along with these advantages of position, the building would perhaps have taken on the form of a long, low-lying structure, by passing from end to end of which an observer could have beheld the entire process of newspaper making spread out before him on a single level, as in a panorama, with the steps of manufacture succeeding one another in sequential order. But the frontage of 126 feet 9 inches on Twelfth street and 100 feet 3 inches on Olive street imposed a perpendicular instead of a horizontal scheme. Hence the eight-story edifice of steel, concrete and stone, the height of which, 140 feet from sidewalk to roof balustrade, is nearly that of most eleven-story buildings; hence the basement and sub-basement, respectively 20 and 38 feet be- low the street, the latter the deepest in the city; and hence the provisions incor- porated for adding four more stories whenever the growth of the newpaper requires. CLASSIFIED ADVERTISING DEPARTMENT True to its central purpose, the building contributes no less than two-thirds of its total space — 89,100 out of 129,175 square feet of floor area — to occupancy by the different departments of the Post-Dispatch, whose needs require the sub-basement, the basement and the first five floors, excepting a certain reservation of first and second floor space. But utility as a newspaper factory by no means handicaps the building's eminence as a public ornament, as a notable acquisition to the city's architectural show places. The exterior design (by George D. Barnett, of Barnett, Haynes & Barnett, Architects) is, in the lower part, Ionic, following the style of the Erechtheum at Athens. The two upper stories and the surmounting balustrade are Corinthian. The material is lustrous Bedford limestone, cut at the quarry after specifications, from a selected ledge. The entire weight is supported by forty-eight caissons, penetrating to bedrock 50 to 70 feet below the surface. The cost of construction and equipment — the latter new throughout save for the linotype machines and color press — was, exclusive of ground value, $1,400,000. This is the fifth abode of the Post-Dispatch, which from 1878 to 1882 was housed at III North Broadway; from 1882 to 1888, at 515 Market street; from 1888 to 1902, at 513 Olive street; from 1902 to 1917, at 210 North Broadway. Through- out these nearly forty years, it should be recorded, the present Business Manager and Second Vice-President, Mr. W. C. Steigers, has been a member of the Post- Dispatch staff. At one moment after midnight on the morning of January i. EDITORTAL DEPARTMENT, JOSEPH PULITZER, JR., PRESIDENT GEORGE S. JOHNS, EDITOR OF THE EDITORIAL PAGE 1916, wreckers began razing the two-story brick Culver Building which occupied the present site. The ceremonial laying of the cornerstone was performed on October 9, 1916, by Joseph Pulitzer III, then 3^^ years old, grandson and second namesake of the founder of the Post-Dispatch. He used, under the guidance of his father and of Mayor Henry W. Kiel, the same silver trowel with which, twenty- seven years before, Joseph Pulitzer, Jr., editor of the Post-Dispatch, then three years old, had laid the cornerstone of the Pulitzer Building, home of the New York World. The new building was occupied by the Post-Dispatch forces on August 13, 1917. Experts have pronounced the structure to be as immune from fire hazard as human foresight and resourcefulness could insure. "It would seem impossible that the building could be destroyed by fire," asserts A. S. Johnston, Missouri State Factory Inspector; and George A. Madison, Chief Inspector of the St. Louis Fire Prevention Bureau, testifies that " the best of all known methods have been employed throughout to guard against fire." From sub-basement to roof the building is of the latest fireproof construction. Its twelve-inch floors of steel and concrete, the firedoors at the front and back separating every story from the others, and the concrete inclosure of stairways and elevator shafts, are calculated to abolish any possibility of flames spreading from one floor to another. The en- trances to the passenger and freight elevator shafts are guarded by automatic fireproof doors. EDITORIAL COUNCIL ROOM The entire building is equipped with an automatic sprinkler system, supplied by an underground water main six inches in diameter, and also connected with a 4,C)00-gallon emergency tank on the roof. There are 1485 sprinkler heads placed ten feet apart under the ceilings on every floor; each will discharge 40 gallons of water a minute at high pressure. They begin operating automatically at 160 de- grees of heat, although it requires only about 600 degrees to ignite wood. The operation of any one sprinkler turns in an alarm to the Fire Department and the Underwriters' Salvage Corps. There is also an outfit of inside standpipes, with hose attachments on every floor, besides chemical extinguishers distributed through the building. An absolutely safe inside fire escape, in the form of an inclosed fire- proof and smokeproof staircase, adequate in size to afford a safe exit for all em- ployes, occupies the northeast corner of the building. It is entered by outside steel balconies at each story. As a precaution against panic, the doors open only from the outside, so that having once entered, one must descend to the bottom to get out. Quite as striking are the building's hygienic provisions, based upon a lavish impressment of nature's most effective sanitary forces, sunlight and fresh air. Each floor receives light from windows on four sides; when artificial illumination is required it is supplied by the indirect system of lighting, from ceiling globes which afford the brightest radiance with the least strain upon the eyes. The unusual height of the rooms and the liberal floor areas permit an allowance of air NEWS DEPARTMENT, O. K. BOVARD, MANAGING EDITOR space, in proportion to the number of employes, which, says Health Commissioner Max C. StarkloiF of St. Louis, "is greater than in any building I know of in the city." The air circulating in the building is washed clean of impurities in a water- curtain bath, which also serves to lower it about 20 degrees from the outside temperature. Thermostats automatically regulate the mixture of washed and cold air with other washed air passed over a coil of steam pipes, so that in any season a steady and comfortable temperature may be secured. Fresh air is con- tinuously forced in and used air exhausted.. This system was devised by Mr. H. H. Humphrey, of St. Louis, who was the consulting engineer in charge of the building. Having disposed of these preliminaries, the visitor is ready to begin a detailed survey of the building and its equipment. The first floor, as being much more than the remainder of the plant a place of public resort, received at the hands of Designer George D. Barnett, Jr., an elaborate artistic treatment which has been generally admired. The elevator lobby, entered from the Olive street side, is thirteenth century Italian Renaissance in style, as exemplified in the palace of the Doges at Venice. The decorative scheme consists chiefly in the inlaying of rare colored marbles, of which thirteen varieties, from the three continents of Europe, Africa and America, are utilized. The walls begin on a base of African black and gold marble; the pilasters have an inlay of red Levanto, Formosa and Violetta Brescia marbles, and the main body of the walls, up to the cornice, is Botticini. ART DEPARTMENT The floor is inlaid with red Tennessee, Alps green and campon rouge marble, and the plaster ceiling is finished in gold. At the center of the lobby stands a bronze bust of Joseph Pulitzer, on the pedestal of which, as well as upon a tablet affixed above the heavy bronze elevator doors, is lettered the valedictory written by him in 1907, on the occasion of his relinquishing active control of the Post-Dispatch. In these words the moral and militant principles which are the soul of the Post- Dispatch found their ultimate utterance. For the business and advertising departments, to the west, was adopted a com- bination of Georgian and French Empire styles. Blue and white are the prevailing colors, with a liberal use of green antique bronze. The walls are in tan Travenelle marble, on a base of jet black marble with flashes of white veining. The counters, also of Travenelle marble, are surmounted by illuminated heavy cast bronze screens of the Georgian period. The entrance from Twelfth street is a massive work of bronze artificery. The ceiling is in bas-relief, the tan background being studded with French blue medallions festooned in white. Eight pendent lamps, each four feet in diameter, and the smaller bracket lamps, are of bluish terra cotta, harmonizing with the general color scheme. Even the furniture, of silver gray oak, was designed to accord with the architectural effect of the room. There is a mezzanine floor at the north end, with an ornate bronze screen; and hospitality for women callers is provided by a special compartment, with com- fortable chairs and a table for writing. LINOTYPE SECTION, NEWS SETTING DEPARTMENT Only a few steps, and one has left the realm of ornamental beauty for that of the beauty of utility. Easily accessible from the first floor is a visitors' gallery overlooking the spacious basement with its gleaming walls of white tile. Here is the focus at which converge all the activities of the plant, for in the last analysis the business of a newspaper is that of transforming white paper, by the applica- tion of ink, into a vehicle of public information. The daily perfotmance of this miracle is entrusted to five new Hoe octuple presses, leviathans of their species, each weighing more than 80 tons. When all are running simultaneously at top speed, their combined capacity is no less than the staggering total of 6000 com- plete 16-page newspapers every minute, or 360,000 every hour — as against 144,000 copies of the same size which formed the maximum hourly capacity of the battery of presses abandoned at the old Post-Dispatch building on Broadway. Each press is driven by two electric motors, one of ten and the other of eighty horse- power, the one to start the great mechanism and the other to propel it under high power. When the press attains a certain speed, the small motor is automa- tically cut out and the big one cut in. The presses rest upon separate foundations of steel-reinforced concrete, so that their terrific vibration may not be communi- cated to the building. Devices only recently adapted to the printing press make possible the publica- tion of the Daily Magazine section. With the sextuple presses formerly employed, the limit on each machine was a paper whose number of pages could be any mul- LINOTYPE SECTION, "AD" DEPARTMENT— COMPOSING ROOM tiple of two, up to twenty-four, and which could be divided into two sections only. With the octuple presses, it is easily practicable to print, cut, fold and assemble the paper in from one to four sections, up to a total of thirty-two pages, the num- ber increasing by multiples of two. Thus, with six pages allotted to the Daily Magazine, the news section can be readily made as large or small as desired, from two up to twenty-six pages. Or else the news section itself may be divided at will into two or three smaller sections. This is the only newspaper office in the world equipped with so flexible a press plant. Nearby stands that ever absorbing masterpiece of machinery, the color press. It was dismantled and reconstructed on being removed from the Broadway plant. Printing in seven colors, it can turn out sixteen-page Sunday Magazines and four- page Sunday Comic Supplements simultaneously at the rate of 17,500 copies each per hour. Its starting and operating motors are of 10 and 65 horsepower. The fountains for colored ink are fed by hand, but the one for black ink on the color press and those for the octuple presses are all supplied by pumps, which begin operating automatically whenever an ink valve is opened on any of the presses. There are three sets of pumps, each connected with its individual ink tank under the basement floor. One supplies ink for news printing, another black ink of a different quality for the color press, and the third will serve the Rotagravure presses to be installed on the fifth floor. The black ink pumps are so cross-con- nected that, by the proper manipulation of valves, either pump may be made to PUBLIC IN OFFICE MAKE-UP DEPARTMENT-COMPOSING ROOM supply ink from either of the black ink tanks to either set of presses, news or magazine. For the protection of workmen, the gears on the presses are inclosed in cast-iron guards, rendering it difficult for the hands or clothes to be caught in the cogs. Each press is also equipped with nine safety buttons, an up-to-date device for preventing accidents. Pushing in any one of the nine buttons throws on a red light in the switchboard above and cuts off the current at the starting controller, making it impossible to start the press without releasing the button. The work- man may thus delve at his ease among the great rollers, in the certainty that no one can come along and start the press, in ignorance of his presence. All of the counting of the Post-Dispatch editions is performed automatically by the presses, which kick the twenty-fifth or fiftieth paper out several inches beyond its fellows, and enable the pressmen swiftly to gather up the copies into lots of one hundred. The press room is brilliantly lighted, and enjoys an abundance of fresh, cool air, constantly entering and passing out under the propulsion of intake and ex- haust fans. A washroom worthy of a high-class hotel, ice water drinking fountains, shower baths and individual metal lockers are among the conveniences provided here and throughout the building. Scarcely yielding rank even to the presses in the aristocracy of machinery is the stereotype foundry, situated on the east side of the basement. Here, from papier mache matrixes, each the size of a page of the Post-Dispatch, which are struck PROOF-READING DEPARTMENT-COMPOSING ROOM off from forms of type in the composing room, are cast the semi-circular plates which are clamped to the cylinders of the presses, and from which the newspaper is printed. In many shops of the kind the air is rank with the fumes of molten metal and the temperature ranges from 105 to 120 degrees. In this foundry the air is completely changed every five minutes, and is so tempered that even in summer it will not rise higher than 80 degrees. Instead of the old-style open hoods hanging over the metal pots, inclosed covers prevent the escape of gases, and swinging gates protect the bare arms of the workmen from splashing metal. Two double autocaster machines have a capacity of twelve plates per minute, whereas the four casting boxes at the Broadway plant could mould only one-third as many. These machines on each Saturday and Saturday night manufacture nearly 1000 plates, weighing 50,000 pounds, and on other days about half as many. Never less than eight and sometimes as many as twenty plates are cast from every matrix. Each autocaster has its autoshaver, a new device for rapid handling, and the plates, in the old days dipped by hand into a tub, are automatically cooled by sprays of water. The pride of the foundry is an outfit for casting double-page plates, the first of its kind ever made, which was constructed especially for the Post-Dispatch. It is equipped with its individual tail-cutter, shaver, finishing block and casting-box, the latter fed by an automatic pump from a four-ton melting pot. In other plants the metal for double-pages must be poured by hand, with a ladle. MONOTYPES-COMPOSING ROOM On a balcony are steel chemical cabinets, copper vats for boiling paste and a laundry for washing the heavy blankets used in the stereotyping process. The motor-driven washing machine, the extractor, or centrifugal wringer, and the steam drying cabinet can launder in half an hour a month's accumulation of blankets. Formerly one man did nothing else all day long, every day in the week, but wash blankets by hand. The operations of the stereotype foundry may be watched from the visitors' gallery, and here is to be studied an instance of how all processes are drilled to proceed along straight lines. The matrixes descend through a gravity chute from the composing room; without the workmen's retracing a step they are passed through trimming and scorching machines and thence to the casting apparatus. Then the metal plates take up the relay and travel on without devia- tion to the presses, there encountering the paper, which has also journeyed straight from the opposite direction to meet them. The course of the paper is always from west to east, from the time it enters the building by a hydraulic elevator on Twelfth street, in the form of 1400-pound rolls, until it emerges, made into completed newspapers, at the alley back of the shipping room. From the elevator or the storeroom, which has a capacity of 1500 full-size rolls, the paper advances to the presses; when their part is done the printed copies are sent upstairs to the shipping room by means of three Ferriss-wheel conveyors which handle 3600 papers a minute; they are'rushed under the hands of weighing and CAMERA ROOM— PHOTO ENGRAVING DEPARTMENT addressing clerks across the shipping tables, and are delivered at the east exit of the building to newsboys and automobile trucks, which dash away to catch trains or to supply city circulation. The interjection may be made at this point that the trucks are enabled to make a quicker leave through the abandonment of the old system of counting and tying in the shipping room the bundles of papers for each individual dealer. Now, re- lying on the count of the presses, the papers are delivered to the automobiles in lots of 200, and a helper in the back of the machine counts and ties the bundles as the vehicle speeds on its way. The automobile delivery equipment has been exactly doubled since the new building was opened, and horsedrawn vehicles have been completely eliminated save in the traffic district east of Twelfth street, where motor power would confer no gain in speed. The doubling of the number of automobiles, making possible two routes where one had to serve before, has enabled the circulation department to save much time by straightening out the runs, which formerly were lengthened by many zigzags, with the result that all parts of the city are now served from fifteen to thirty minutes earlier than when publication was on Broadway. The machines get back more quickly to the office, and are available for delivering later editions to districts which formerly had to be omitted. Increased facilities also make it practicable for the first time to discontinue the practice of carriers in going to the office for their papers, which are now ETCHING ROOM— PHOTO ENGRAVING DEPARTMENT delivered to them by automobile at the starting points of their routes. They thus begin the runs with fresh horses, unfatigued by a long preliminary drive downtown and back. Under the old arrangement most of the carrier circulation was supplied by the Home Edition, which is published at 12:30 p. m.; today only remote routes get the Home Edition, and nearly all of the important territory west of Grand avenue is served with the Night Edition, issued at 2:30 p. m. Before leaving the nether regions of the building, the visitor may wish to inspect some of the numerous appliances not yet noted, in the two basements. The boiler and pump room in the sub-basement, he will be amazed to discover, is not the usual sweltering stokehole. Despite its two 350-horsepower boilers for heating the building and its 60-horsepower high pressure boiler for the stereotyping plant, the room is flooded with pure air, tempered to a refreshing coolness, thanks to a constant inflow of fresh air and to a 48-inch exhaust fan. In the array of machines are pumps for serving the building's general supply of water and for carrying off its refuse and sewage to the city mains; a pump for the sprinkler system; air com- pressors to serve the pneumatic tube system and the blowing-out hoses used in cleaning; an electric motor which supplies the ice water drinking fountains through- out the building; a five-horsepower agitator to stir the Rotagravure ink, which has a tendency to settle; and an 8ogallon-a-minute pump attached to an artesian well 876 feet deep, drilled for more than 800 feet through solid rock, which yields a flow of water sufficient to fill all the requirements of the building and plant and MOULDING ROOM— STEREOTYPE DEPARTMENT SO pure, according to an analysis made by the City Chemist, that it requires no filtering before it is used for drinking. The electric current used in the building for power, lighting and other purposes, is suppHed by the Union Electric Light & Power Co., and is controlled by a main switchboard above the press room. For emergencies, there is a storage plant able to operate the plant for three days at full capacity. An adventure not without its thrills is that of entering, on a platform in the upper basement, a veritable cave of winds, where a heavy gale is forever blowing. This is the ventilating plant. A fan 60 inches in diameter, revolving 200 times a minute, sucks in air from the street at the rate of 20,000 cubic feet a minute and forces it through a curtain of spraying water, in which dust, soot, smoke and germs are washed away. One current of the cleansed air passes over a series of steam coils set at 120 degrees; the other, cooled by the water bath, is automati- cally combined with the heated air by means of mixing dampers, controlled by thermostats so adjusted as to insure a temperature congenial to any season. The air, thus cleaned and tempered, is sent forth over the building through conduits. The Post-Dispatch claims the distinction of being the first newspaper plant to in- stall this system. It will be recalled that in the stereotype foundry was mentioned a chute through which the matrixes are delivered. A device of red lights and signal buttons makes it impossible to insert a matrix at the top of the chute on the fourth floor STEREOTYPE DEPARTMENT— JOB WORK until its predecessor is taken out at the bottom, with the result that the papier mache sheets cannot jam or damage one another. Following the chute to its upper terminus, we arrive in the composing room on the fourth floor, by authoritative agreement the best equipped and most comfortably arranged print- ing office in the country. The first impression is one of brilliant light, pouring in from windows on four sides and sparkling from snowy walls of tile, as is fitting in a department where the eyes are used more intensely and constantly than in any other. Artificial lighting is supplied by shadowless ceiling illuminators of 300 candlepower; with the exception — and here is a characteristic touch of thought- fulness — that the want advertisement linotype machines, using a very small type, are lighted by globes of 500 candlepower. On this floor system is carried to a fine point. The department as a whole is organized in two grand diviisions, corresponding to the two kinds of typesetting to be done, news and advertising. The news division is on the east side of the room, and the advertising section on the west. Each has its separate desk for receiving and distributing copy; the former has nineteen linotype machines at its service, the latter twelve. Both divisions are so systematized that all type, once started on its way, proceeds straight to its destination — the make-up forms — where the two streams of labor finally unite into one. On the news side the progress is from copy cutter's desk to linotype, to proof-bank, to proof-press, to correction STEREOTYPE DEPARTMENT— JUNIOR AUTOPLATE MACHINES bank and to make-up table, all without retracing a step. The course is similar on the advertising side. Copy for display advertisements is sent up from the advertising department by means of an automatic electric elevator, operated by push buttons; news copy from the editorial department on the third floor is delivered in cartridges propelled by compressed air in metal tubes. Want advertising copy is also received through pneumatic tubes, and is delivered at the news desk instead of at the advertising desk. Here occurs a trait of efficiency worth glancing at. Clerks have marked each want advertisement with a number indicating its classification, and for each number there is a pigeonhole in the desk. The linotype operator, receiving his "take" from one pigeonhole, gets only "ads" of the same class. Thus are obviated, by a system used in no other St. Louis plant, the time and pains formerly required by classifying the want advertisements in type. In the advertising division are fourteen combination make-up stands and type cabinets, of a type designed particularly for the Post-Dispatch. At each two men can set and assemble advertisements without getting in each other's way. Instead of the old-fashioned single bank for slugs and leads, around which several men were usually milling at once, each stand is provided with its own rack for slugs of all lengths, within easy reach of the hand. Formerly the handset type used in advertisements was in more or less distant cases, to reach which the compositor HOE OCTUPLE PRESS— ONE OF SIX PRESSES had either to leave his work or carry it along with him. In addition to the time and energy lost in this promenade, he had often to await his turn upon others using the cases. Under the new arrangement the compositor has in the cabinet at his own stand all the kinds of type he is likely to need. The singularly clean-cut, open and inviting appearance which characterizes the Post-Dispatch pages is due to the fact that all of the type, not only in reading matter and headlines but in the advertisements, is never used twice, but is made new every day and then thrown into the melting pot to be recast. The single exception is the small quantity of type used of a larger size than 36 point. The extension of this improvement, banishing worn and blurred type, to the adver- tising columns, was made possible by the Monotype, a machine for casting quanti- ties of type rapidly at a small expense. Three of these appliances, in the Post-Dispatch plant, run 16 hours a day with two shifts of workmen, casting 130 different fonts of type. As there are 72 characters in each font, more than 9000 steel type boxes are required to contain the output. These form a big cabinet at the northwest corner of the composing room, and in them always repose about thirty tons of type. The compositors waste no time in repairing to the cabinet for type which happens to be running low at their stands; they merely make a written note of their needs; and one man spends his time in replenishing the cases according to these requisitions. Even the rules used in the paper, including the column rules, are cast new every day by the Monotype machines. SECTION OF PRESS ROOM In the southwest corner is one of the best planned proof rooms as yet devised. Proof-reading demands incessant attentiveness of vision, and the workers here receive sunlight from two sides. The desks are of such a height that the readers may stand or sit at their work with equal convenience. The sloping stands for copy may be raised or lowered or set at any angle, as best suits the individual's eyes. There is a revolving table with eleven compartments for proofs of various classifications, instead of the rack of hooks on which they used to be hung, drawn and quartered. The former rush and confusion of boys run- ning to and fro with proofs is superseded by a system of wire carriers, Hke those used in department stores. Remembering that the Post-Dispatch composing room gives employment to more printers^— 120 in the day and sometimes 50 in the night shift — than any other printing plant in the city, the devices for comfort and safety become all the more a matter of interest. Shortly before the linotype machines were removed from the Broadway shop, they were all equipped with electric melting pots, closely covered, which do away with the fumes formerly emanating from the old gas furnaces. A sensation of roominess and freedom of movement is contributed by the 12,600 square feet of floor space, as against 6700 square feet at the Broadway plant. There is not a piece of wood equipment in the composing room, all of the desks, stands, type cases and tables being of steel; nor is there anywhere a single flame, save under the big metal furnace at the rear. But the ^•"•- -'^■'^ CIRCULATION DEPARTMENT, A. G. LINCOLN, CIRCULATION MANAGER provisions for fire protection are none the less strict. Besides the automatic sprinklers, there are two stands of hose and numerous chemical extinguishers, A powerful motor exhausts the used air, and a fresh supply, at an equable temper- ature, continually pours from the ventilation conduits. There are individual steel lockers, shower baths and a washroom, one fixture of which is a complete first-aid cabinet. From the make-up tables, where the news and advertising type are assembled into Post-Dispatch pages, the forms, pursuing the scheme of direct motion, proceed to the stereotyping steam tables at the east side of the composing room, of which there are six. They are equipped to handle one form a minute, and customarily turn out about i6o matrixes a day, as compared with the maximum of around lOO possible at the old plant. There are two rolling machines of up-to- date make, for high or low speed, wet or dry matrixes; a combination wet and dry humidor, for preserving matrixes indefinitely at the proper degree of moisture and temperature; an apparatus for manufacturing the matrix sheets; and a brand- new job stereotyping plant, with its various saws, drills, casting-boxes and appliances for flat work. On the fifth floor are the quarters of the photographic and photo-engraving departments; and also the press room, with special ventilating apparatus and hermetically sealed doors, which is to be occupied in due time by the Rotagravure presses, printing the picture supplement first introduced and exclusively used in MAIL ROOM this city by the Post-Dispatch. Features of interest in the photo-engraving department are the steel tables and acid-proof earthenware sinks, a modern vacuum frame for printing negatives upon zinc plates of any thickness, an etching machine, the only one in St. Louis, which accomplishes its tasks in one-third the time usually required, the acid-proof floor and drain in the etching room, a fire- proof storeroom, and dark rooms so admirably ventilated that one may work in them all day among pungent chemicals without a moment's discomfort. In the photographic gallery the flash-light has been supplanted by a rack of five Cooper-Hewitt lamps, of the sort used in moving picture photography. The three dark rooms, using orange lights as being less wearing on the eyes than red, are not the customary stuffy and malodorous dens, but enjoy such a vigorous flow of pure air that when a charge of flash-light powder was set off in one of them for experiment, the smoke was entirely cleared away in five minutes. With the various speed appliances provided, a photograph may be taken, developed, printed, dried and glazed in from 15 to 20 minutes. A ferrotype oven, through which a fan blows a current of air heated by a gas flame, makes it possible to dry and glaze a print in 10 minutes instead of an hour, as was required by the natural process. The second floor of the building houses the clerical forces of the circulation and auditing departments, and also the want advertising department's telephone division, which can take icxx) want "ads" an hour over 52 telephones. On this floor is the office of the superintendent of machinery, above whose desk are five tachometers, one for each octuple press. These are instruments both for indicat- ing and recording, and tell at a glance the time of starting, speed, and production, the latter two not only for the present moment but for the entire day. There are also an office supply room and a rest room for women employes of the Post-Dispatch. Up to this point the visitor has been chiefly concerned with the wonders of the appliances which have their reason for being in the expression of the brain and soul of the Post-Dispatch. In the editorial department on the third floor are formulated its policies on public questions; its incomparable news service is assembled and written, its feature pages are organized, and its art work is drawn and painted. The quarters are unexcelled in roominess, light, attractiveness and comfort. Sunlight from four sides is reinforced by ceiling lamps with indirect radiation, and the Hght green of the walls and the cream of the ceilings — also found on the second and fifth floors — are colors chosen by optical experts as being most propitious to the eye. The editorial staff is ranged along the south windows, and near those at the west sit the executive and features editors, reporters and news writers. The art department is at the north end of the room, and adjacent are the Sunday Magazine and Sport departments. All of the desks are of flat-top construction. In fact, there is not a roll-top desk in the entire plant, the theory being that pigeonholes are a snare, while a flat desk has the psychological effect of iiripelling one to clean up his work before leaving for the day. At the center of the room are the tele- graph, financial and society editors; and likewise the copy desk, where a staff of readers corrects and writes head lines for all matter before it goes to the printer. The office of the Associated Press, whose service the Post-Dispatch is the only afternoon newspaper in St. Louis to receive, is at the east side of the third floor, with a room for its telegraph operators. Smaller rooms are occupied by the operators of the Western Union and Postal Telegraph companies, and of the Post- Dispatch leased wire to New York. Near at hand is a room for the telephone switchboard, comprising seventeen Bell and fourteen Kinloch trunk lines, with lOO Bell and 60 Kinloch house connections. A large separate room houses the " Morgue," with its hundreds of thousands of clippings and thousands of photo- graphs. They are kept in steel files and cases, and are so arranged, alphabetically and by classes, that hand may be laid upon the one desired in a moment. There is also a library of reference books. k^..-.- MAIN LOBBY— BUST OF JOSEPH PULITZER LIBRARY AND MORGUE i i IT •. First in Everything^'' FLEET OF POST-DISPATCH DELIVERY TRUCKS Designed, Engnved and Printed by the Triangle Service Department of the Fisher-Ruebel-Brown Advertising Agency* Rapid Engraving Co. Garrison-Wagner Printing Co, PLQUli POiT-DfSB«rCH PN 4899.si4P85""'""' "'"'^ I uifii hVi'iiiii rEl?i?'~'"®P3*ch 1918. 3 1924 027 500 796 1,„