increase in wages and a decrease in working hours. In 1850 a compositor in New York received $9 per week; ordinary job compositors now receive $19.50 per week, and operators on machines from $24 to $27, depending on the time of day or night they take their shift. In the opinion of many large operators, the number of wage carners has actually increased rather than diminished. The introduction of machine composition has been of decided benefit to the employee, offering a new field for endeavor. There are few unemployed men in the printing trade, as is shown by the fact that when in 1900 the Typographical Union was Out of the 18,226 publications, 2,226 are dailies, with a circulation of 15,102,156; 62 are tri-weekly, with a circulation of 228,610; 637 are semiweekly, with a circulation of 2,832,868; 12,979 papers are issued weekly, with a circulation of 39,852,052. There are 1,817 monthly publications, whose circulation is 39,519,897. The quarterly publications are mostly devoted to special subjects, and only number 237, but their circulation is very respectable, as they issue 11,217422 per number. Semi-monthly, semiannual and yearly publications number 268, and have a circulation of 5,541,329. Out of 18,226 publications, 17,194 were printed in English. LIBRARIES OF THE WORLD. The following is a list of the principal Libraries of the world: Publicnyj i Rumjancovskij musej. Moscow. 800,000 Public Library-Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundation.. New York City. 787,700 Biblioteca nacional. Madrid. 600,000 THE RAPID EXTENSION IN THE GATHERING OF NEWS. In 1886 the New York World reported the battle of Majuba Hill in six lines, but so rapid was the extension of news gathering that, fourteen years later, events in the same quarter of the globe were reported to the great American dailies by cable as fully as though close at hand. The destruction of St. Pierre, Martinique, in 1902, by an eruption of Mont Pelée, may be mentioned as an illustration of this tendency. The cablegrams which detailed that great disaster reached American newspapers by way of Brazil, the Azores and Great Britain, costing the recipients from $2 to $4 per word, with fees for precedence. CHAPTER VIII. TELEGRAPHS, TELEPHONES, SUBMARINE CABLES, WIRELESS TELEGRAPHY, AND SIGNALING. LAND LINES OF THE WORLD. Below are given such particulars as we have been able to obtain of the land lines of telegraphs throughout the world, corrected up to December 31, 1903: 1 Exclusive of 20.148 nautical miles of river cables and 39.031 miles of conductors. 1 Inclusive of 535 miles of lines and 569 miles of conductors belonging to the Peruvian Corporation. 2 Exclusive of 811 miles of miscellaneous subaqueous cables and 2,320 miles of conductors. 3 Exclusive of 404.6 nautical miles of cable in Gulf of Mexico. -Electrical Trades Directory. MILEAGE OF LINES AND WIRES, NUMBER OF OFFICES, AND TRAFFIC OF THE WESTERN UNION TELEGRAPH COMPANY. 1868. 50,183 97,594 3,219 1878. 81,002 206,202 1888. 171,375 6,404,595 23,918,894 Dollars. Dollars. Dollars. Cents. Cents. 7,004,560 4,362,849 2,641,711 104.7 63.4 8,014 9,861,355 6,309,813 3,551,543 38.9 25.0 616,248 17,241 51,463,955 19,711,164 14,640,592 5,070,572 31.2 23.2 1898. 189,847 874,420 22,210 62,173,749 23,915,733 17,825,582 6,090,151 30.1 24.7 1903. 196,517 1,089,212 23,120*69,790,866 29,167,687 20,953,215 8,214,472 31.4 25.6 *Not including messages (probably 10,000,000) sent over leased wires or under railroad contracts. |