A Lady Type Setter

At the end of this blog post is a beginning: “the first poem published in Nebraska; Nebraska Palladium, Bellevieu City…1854, Vo.1, No. 1” according to the Spring 1959 issue of Prairie Schooner (which reprinted the poem in its “Nebraska issue”). Called “A Lady Type Setter,” the poem appeared in the first issue of the front page of Nebraska’s first newspaper. Though it ends on an abstract note of sentimentalism, it otherwise provides a portrait of a woman excelling in the workplace—she’s a “swift” as speedy typesetters were known. And swifts not only inspired poetry, but could achieve fame, as well.

 

In the 19^th century, typesetters became part of a vaudeville circuit. Dime museums—cheap carnival houses offering quirky entertainment—featured typesetting races; spectators marveled as swifts nimble-fingeredly positioned metal letters into sentences. By shifting the value of typesetting from the artful and deliberate composition of a page to one of speed, these celebrities paved the way for the very machinery that would replace them. Good typesetters were quick ones; soon enough, the quickest ones were mechanical.

 

In the punchy and entertaining The Swifts: Printers in the Age of Typesetting Races, author Walker Rumble quotes an old newspaperman, speaking in 1923: “We had our share of tramp printers, erratic, uncertain, capable chaps, born spellers most of them, men who had been everywhere and seen everything, and generally men who had read a lot and remembered what they had read; so that, from reading and travel and observation, they were walking mines of information on all manner of subjects—a strangely attractive type who died out as a class when the linotype machines came in.” Strangely attractive, indeed. Has there ever been uttered a sexier description of a brainy laborer?

 

In 2009, Oat City Press published Rumble’s broadside tributes to some of these typesetting demons, including Clinton “The Kid” DeJarnatt who competed in the 1886 Chicago National Championship of fast typesetting, and George “the Velocipede” Arensberg who once set 5,000 letters in an hour. Rumble’s book The Swifts not only calls our attention to the Dime Museum in the changing of typesetting culture, but also to the entry of women into the workplace following the Civil War—these women “feminized” the industry but brought their own swing of swagger to the endeavor, forming unions and proceeding with a savvy sense of competition (offering their lady-fingered dexterity for lower wages, for example). As Rumble punchily indicates, the young male printers viewed adult women like apprenticed boys who “lacked the credential that defined a working person’s virtue. They were ‘other’ than men, categorically and contingently different.”

 

The value of women typesetters is particularly apparent in Nebraska’s first published poem—the territorial newspapers of the day courted manly distinction, and were criticized as “rough and pugnacious.” That such a burly enterprise would feature on its first front page a tribute to a career gal seems quite gentlemanly. The poem’s referencing of bitterness and tears in its last stanza may be intended to give a working woman pause—the lady typesetter’s skill may be attributed to her determination to avoid pondering a long and dreary night—but any vague moral implication is overshadowed by the spirited and celebratory description that precedes it. 

A Lady Type Setter

(by T.D. Curtis)

 

See her standing at the “case”

Looking sweet and bland;

Gracefully she moves her head,

Rapidly goes her hand.

Picking up the slender types,

Putting them in the stick—

Hear them rattle against the steel;

Click—click—click!

 

When the tottering line is “set,”

She “spaces” it even and nice;

Nimbly the “lead” goes into its place,

The “rule” is drawn in a trice;

Then her eyes the copy devours,

And firm she holds her “stick”—

From box to box her fingers fly,

Pick—pick—pick!

 

When “distribution” time has come,

She handles well the “matter;”

The types fall in the empty “case,”

Scatter—scatter—scatter!

And steadily and dreamily

She flings the letter round,

With visions dancing thro’ her brain

To the music of the sound

 

And thus is growing in her mind

Sweet fruit for coming years,

That she in bitterness so long

Has watered with her tears;

For thought is bursting into bloom

Beneath the rays of Right,

And love is waking from the chill

Of long and dreary night.

 

[image of typesetter above is from History of Composing Machines: A Complete Record of the Art of Composing Type By Machinery; Fully Illustrated; Also Lists of Patents on Composing Machines, American and British, Chronologically Arranged by John S. Thompson (1904).]

Comments

[Mary K. Stillwell]

Any idea who T.D. Curtis, the author of "A Lady Type Setter," is?

[Prairie Schooner]

We don't know anything about the author of the poem... find out for us, Mary K!

[Shelley]

That young woman looks like Penelope at the loom.

[Angela]

As a woman doing typesetting today (admittedly on a keyboard and with no lead) I am very pleased to see that women go so far back in this "strangely attractive" occupation. And we are always looking for ways to become ever swifter..

[Ralph Lauren Outlet]

But some times they are both needed.

[moncler jackets]

Very, very nicely done!