Life of a Printer

In the early 1900s, a print shop would have been an important part of a community. The job was very dangerous, after all they were working with lead all day. This usually resulted in a mental defect or even death. The printer also had to work at very fast speeds with machines that were quite large and quite unsafe. Many printers often got hands and finger stuck in between the ink filled type set and the paper feeder. There were also other risks such as; flying metal from casts and characters that had not been properly set in the machine. They also did not have the sort of safety equipment that we do today, and safety standards were not nearly as high.
It was found that women actually made better typesetters. This was due to the fact that you had to work with very small little characters and women had smaller fingers which meant that they could set the machine quicker and more efficiently. Because they were women, they were also paid less, which made it even better for the people running the shop. When women started demanding higher and equal wages, they were simply fired and men were hired instead.

The print shop master would usually have an apprentice. An appentice is a younger person who would have been interested in pursuing a career in printing, but first needed some experience. They would have been very helpful to the print shop master, doing many of the smaller, important jobs and running errands for the shop. Hopefully this could then result in a real job as a print master himself.

Cumberland, being a rural area, would not have had a very large print shop. However, the print master would have been an important person in the community.