Montrose Mercury marks modern millennium milestone

Newsboy on Main Street, Montrose, Colorado, Rothstein photo.
 

Quicksilver before the digital age

By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com

A little more than 600 years ago, in 1418 to be exact, the little-known, and often disputed date of the earliest piece of printing was offered in the form of a wood-cut of the Blessed Virgin in Brussels. About 30 years later, Johannes Gensfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg, a German inventor, printer, publisher, and goldsmith; introduced a mechanical movable-type printing press and printed the first book, known to most as the Gutenberg Bible. His work started a revolution in Europe and is commonly thought of as the most significant milestone of the second millennium, as it marks the beginning of modern human history. 

By 1622, the first newspaper in England, The Weekly Press, was off the press and on the streets telling folks that could read at the time about the German wars. Forty years later, give or take, and you could advertise product or services, if you could strike an agreement with a publisher or printer. By the end of that millennium, you might read the first women's newspaper Ladies Mercury, of London, or the first example of a truly free press, when the powers that be, stopped requiring licensing, and even read the first comic newspaper in the form of the Merrie Mercury. or the first political info in Daniel Defoe's Mercure Scandals.

Benjamin Franklin was penning his "Busy Body" articles and they appeared in the American Weekly Mercury by 1719. Early newspaper publishers seemed to have a thing for 'quick silver,' as a publication title.

A hundred years later, lithographic printing had developed, machine-made paper was available, and a person could use a hand press to get the paper out. We were working hard on type-casting and composing machines to speed up the process.

Flash forward to 1920, and three main departments of a newspaper have developed, according to Newspaper Editing: a manual for editors, copy readers, and students of newspaper desk work, by Grant Milner Hyde, Instructor of Journalism at the University of Wisconsin.

1, The business office: Duty is primarily responsible to make the enterprise financially successful.

2. The mechanical plant: At the time, this department included typesetters, printers, linotype operators, copy cutters, bank men, proof readers in the composing room. In the Stereotype room, where all responsible for getting to plate were located. And in the pressroom, you had printers, mailroom workers, etc...

3. The Editorial department: "The third and most important division of the newspaper's plant is the editorial department which prepares all the reading matter, except advertisements, that goes into the printed paper," Hyde swears.

But once printed, the paper has to be distributed. Maybe by mail, carriers, or others – using planes, trains and animals, and autos. Or, as in the case of the modern product, digital distribution. But let us explore the paper of the last century photographically, with these photos by Russell Lee and Arthur Rostein  taken in 1939 and 1940, in Montrose, Colorado, for the Farm Security Administration, and Office of War Information.

Distributing newspapers to newsboys at the railroad station. Montrose, Colorado. Lee photo.

Taking the newspapers off the morning train, Montrose, Colorado. Lee photo.

Montrose, Colorado, is junction point for standard gauge and narrow gauge railroads and bus lines. Papers and mail are being loaded into bus for transporting to towns along the route, Lee photo.

Newsboys getting the papers just after the arrival of the morning train, Montrose, Colorado. While there is a daily paper in this town here as in most towns of this size, the papers from the larger cities are popular] Lee photo.

Click on photos to view more closely.