Digital Extra: The Journal's 175th Anniversary

07.21.2004

1820. An indentured printer: No rest for the weary

Robert M. Pearse was an indentured apprentice printer in the office of Miller & Hutchens on Jan. 3, 1820, when the company debuted the Manufacturers' & Farmers' Journal, the twice-weekly forerunner of The Providence Journal.

In the June 24, 1886 issue of The Journal, Pearse, a native of Rehoboth, described life at The Journal when it began.

In the summer, printers worked from sunrise to sunset. In the winter, they started as soon as they could see by natural light and worked by candlelight until the 9 p.m. bell on the First Baptist Church.

Apprentices were paid $2 a week, journeymen $8. (That's about $25 and $100 in 2004 dollars.)

Because only half a sheet of paper would fit in the press at a time, the printers had to pull the impression lever four times to print each copy of the four-page paper. Working fast, they could produce 100 papers an hour.

The Journal's original press had a stone bed that held the type and a wooden platen that pressed the paper onto the type. After securing a contract to print the state laws, The Journal bought an iron-bedded press.

Four compositors assembled the type for The Journal, which was printed beginning at midnight on Sundays and Wednesdays. After the paper was printed, Pearse helped deliver it to subscribers.

The first issue of the twice-weekly Journal was 250 copies.

The newspaper had no reporters, except a man who gathered news about ships arriving and departing Providence's harbor. Out-of-town news came by stagecoach or by boat from New York.

Pearse was with The Journal until 1824, when his apprenticeship ended. After a career in Massachusetts, he returned to The Journal, setting type from 1863 to 1876.