PHILADELPHIA -- I stand on the cobblestone street in Franklin Court and imagine Ben Franklin walking into his print shop in 1729, the year he and a partner purchased The Pennsylvania Gazette. The one-time apprentice who learned the printing business through the sweat of his brow smiles as he glances at the young men following in his footsteps.
One hovers over a table typesetting the next edition -- reading a hand-written document and then placing tiny metal blocks with letters on them in what looks like a tray with wooden strips forming the borders of what will become printed pages. The physical dexterity required is just part of the man's challenge. He also has to lay in the tiny blocks upside down and backward so that the documents read left to right and right side up when stamped on to a page.
Another man is covered in the black, sticky ink he's applying to a block of type with padded leather
balls. Once properly coated, he inserts into the press a damp piece of cloth that's wet enough to absorb the ink, slides the block in position, and uses his labor-born pectorals and arms to force the block onto the page. He releases the lever, grabs what looks like a brick oven pizza remover, pulls the paper off the press and hangs it on an overhead wrack to dry. Then he steps back to the press to start all over again.
It is grueling, repetitive, and dingy work. It's made worse by the overpowering odor that clings to their hands and attacks their nostril hair ... chamberlye. That's the polite term for the urine-based cleaning solution that had to be applied to the equipment.
Yes, trace the roots of our democracy and you find they pass through chamber pots and come out like Andy Dufresne clean on the other side. You find the un-sung workday heroes who cranked out the newspapers, pamphlets and books that enlightened the colonists and made possible the American Revolution.
Franklin had tremendous admiration and respect for the power the printing press. He also advanced the profession. He was the first to insert cartoons and maps in a newspaper. The May 9, 1754 edition of the Pennsylvania Gazette contained America's first political cartoon -- the serpentine "Join, or Die" illustration that called for colonial unity.
I too am awed by what the pressmen of the 18th century achieved.
"Reading's the means by which the lowest man can lift himself up from a state of ignorance," a press owner told a newly arrived colonist in volume one of John Jakes' epic historical fiction series about the Revolution, The Kent Family Chronicles.
My emotional connection to the printing press runs deep. I joined my school newspaper in eighth grade and stayed with it through junior high and high school.
A bright-eyed University of Georgia student back in the long-time-agos, I had the fortune to be the founding managing editor of The Campus Times. The upstart paper sought to compete with the long-standing student paper. I remember the day our first issue thundered through the two-story press bringing our ideas to life: "That's a powerful tool you got there," the old man running the facility said. He implored us to use it wisely.
I have treated the mass-produced word with sacrosanct respect ever since. The reverence has followed me through my careers in journalism and public relations and is in my heart every time I turn on my computer to write on this new-fangled treasure we call the Internet.
I have also had the divine pleasure to hold in my hands numerous, original Revolutionary publications that paved the way for independence and democracy. I've read books owned and inscribed by Thomas Jefferson, other books Franklin himself wrote in, and a first edition of Common Sense.
Through the fortune of knowing the right person, I have also held in my hands a copy of the Declaration of Independence that was among the first to roll off John Dunlap's Philadelphia press on the very afternoon the fellas in the Pennsylvania State House stuck it to 'ol King George. Tears filled my eyes the moment the document was placed in my hands because I recognized immediately that I had reached the zenith of what a patriot and a student of history can experience.
My head was spinning from the thrill.
I poured over the words so familiar to me now and graciously returned the document to its proprietor.
I sat there, stunned, for what seemed like a long time. Then I gave thanks not just to the famous 56 men but to the countless unheralded souls who fought black, sticky ink and pots full of piss to educate our people and give us a nation.
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