Working Them Out.
A trip over the superb establishment of The Ladies' Home Journal at Philadelphia is a bit of genuine education in energy and enterprise. I made it one day, under the courteous guidance of a former member of our own staff.
Perhaps nothing surprised me more than the sixteen enormous presses, all busily at work, turning out Ladies' Home Journals and Saturday Evening Posts, I am afraid to say at what rate of speed. And I was told that it was Mr. Curtis's plan to begin working the presses all night as well as all day.
"But won't that wear them out rapidly?" I inquired; for I had heard that machinery needed to rest, as much as men. I keep two razors, for instance, that each may have its day off. So do most men.
"Yes," was the unexpected reply; "he wants to wear them out as soon as possible."
The explanation given me was this: all kinds of machinery are improved so rapidly nowadays, printing-presses especially, that it is good policy for a wide-awake man to get out of his machine all the work it is capable of doing, as soon as possible. Then he can throw it away, and put in a new machine with the latest improvements.
"Hum!" thought I to myself; "wish I could work my body on that plan."
But I can't, though I confess I sometimes act as if I could. There's no Hoe of the brain-blood-nerve machine, ready to supply a new one on reasonable notice, taking the old, outworn affair as part payment. No; the outfit I have, with that I must manage to get along till I die. Then, perhaps, I'll be the happy possessor of a body that never grows weary or worn.
So I suppose I must look after my sleep and my play and my rest days just the same as usual, in spite of the alluring example of Philadelphia progressiveness.