City in Sound; Excello Press

I was Harry Belafonte having a little trouble getting across the river. The next song is called One More Day by the Norman Lubov Choir. A song that was originally thought to be a Negro channy but now it's believed to be because of the harmonic structure sounds of Irish origin. In today's L &M, fine tobaccos can be blended. Not to suit a filter but to suit your taste.

This is Jack Angel with City in Sound. These are stories out of Chicago, city of all things and people, among them the printers. The West Side Excello Press is neither large nor small, it's neither unusually famous nor at all obscure. It is a sound progressive job printer. Very special here primarily because it tells the story of another great city industry, printing. We begin it here. Mr.

Joe Mitchell is Vice President of Excello Press. This is a job house in Chicago, Mr. Mitchell, what is a job house? A job house turns out most everything and anything. Not tremendous runs such as the Sierra's Robocad log or the telephone books but the average sales helps that are needed by basic manufacturers of consumer products. There are a lot more job houses in these big industrial houses aren't there in town? Very much more so there are over 700 printing establishments in Chicago and there's only three or four of what you might call the great big giants of industry. I would say Excello ranks up a third but not among the top four or five. Yeah but still a job house is necessarily pretty small isn't it compared to the big industrial fellows? Yes we have about 150 employees here. We started as a small what you might call basement printer, oh about 23 -24 years ago

and no actually 25 years ago, took over a little store and one little old job hand fed press and we've grown steadily ever since. Well certainly Mr. Mitchell you can say that you're one firm that literally came off the street can't you? I remember back in 1943 or hearing about 1943, you recall that too I'm sure. Well if I may make a pun that's a day that will live in it in Flummy that was the day of our fire. I got back from downtown to find a roof just caving in. Fire started in the other half of the building and it was almost a complete disaster. We salvaged a few records and a couple of presses some of our customers were so insistent on getting delivery of some of the work that was in process that we set up a couple of presses in the lot next door, extended wiring out to them, put a tarpaulin over them and had the men running these presses to get the work out on time because our reputation is built on always delivering the goods and we delivered. They seemed to object to that at all. Well

Ferdinand Bunty, President of Bunty Candy Company across the street walked over and told me he had already called a phone company and all our calls we routed to his office and had an office set up there for our girls to work out of. For as long as we need them, this is a very nice thing and a nice neighbor's a nice neighbor whether it's in business or at home. Those are the kind of things you remember. Never forget. Well let's remember some other things here about printing is a craft. You've stressed this here that printing is more than just a large volume industrial operation and actually involves not just one craft but several crafts, historical ones. Yes it does. I don't know whether we've mentioned this or not but plate making, artwork, photography, pressmen, binary men. These are all very specialized phases of the business and these men are not in the changeable

because it's very specialized craft and a man that does one doesn't do the other. He can't. Take a man very long to learn how? A matter of years we like to start with young men break them in ourselves. These young men are very hard to get the men that type the caliber that we want. And you say that good young men are hard to find? Yes we're working on that. We're trying to do something about it. I am on the board of directors at the Chicago Boys Club and in the branch nearest our plant we have several young men part of me that attend Marshall High School. They have a print shop there and we are working on means of establishing scholarships for some of the most promising of these young men so they can go on further their education. They come to us with a deeper basic knowledge of the graphic arts business. Well I'm sure that you'd say this is an attractive business, don't these young people like to get their hands in ink or something? What is the cause of their reluctance to come forward here? I find it a fascinating and interesting business. I think the only reason we don't get more is perhaps it

hasn't been glamorized such as aircraft or electronics or taking a rocket to the moon. But this is a fascinating business. Every job that goes through is different and must be handled individually. Have there been many changes in printing in the last generation or is a printer always a printer and are the basic ingredients the same or just how does that work out? Well we here specialize in letterpress and offset lithography. Now letterpress is basically pretty much the same as it has been for many years. Of course we have new equipment, modern equipment but basically a man that ran a press 30 years ago can run one of our new presses with maybe a morning's instruction how to operate it because the process is basically the same. But offset lithography has changed considerably. Oh 65, 75 years ago this was done from plates that were engraved in stone used to take weeks to make a plate. Today with our modern equipment we make a plate no matter how is

photographically on zinc and it's ready for the press in two to three hours if necessary. Mr. Mitchell how does this industry rank in Chicago? In Chicago I believe we rank six in dollar importance behind basic steel, machinery, electronics. In the country it's I believe eighth. Getting back to Chicago I think the latest figures showed that we accounted for nine and six tenths percent of the dollar volume of business done in the Chicago area. Just one more thing Mr. Mitchell you don't do any of this slogan printing do you like? Do it now or think ahead or plan ahead and all that sort of thing. No we haven't I think they're cute nice but we don't specialize in that. Oh okay. Well I'm Mr. Harry Wildman it's nice to meet you sir they tell me that you're a cost engineer and you're a man that a fellow could use. How did they use you around here? Well they used me largely for planning and estimating sales conferences.

Often produce a budget for a advertising outfit. All sorts of work that has to do with the planning of printing. I should imagine there's a lot of estimating work involved isn't there? You bid on a job? Well practically every large job that comes in has to be estimated and a plan of production made. And it requires analysis of the printing industry that's fairly thorough. Well I'm Mr. Wildman is there much competitive bidding in the printing industry or do people just come in and say print me up a couple hundred of those? I'd say the printing industry is very competitive in your large operation. And you have to be pretty sharp in order to get the work in. Have to know the cost of paper printing. That's right.

The printing cost risen much in the last ten years or so. Well along with other costs of living about the same. I think by and large that our printing costs per unit have gone down. Our costs have gone down but with the increase in the know how of doing things we've been able to bring down the cost of printing. How many customers a day do you see that one impossible thing's done? Or maybe once a week, once a week. But we do the impossible. It takes a little longer but we do it. You probably even printed this logo. I don't know about that. Proofreader here at the printers is Mr. Al Bass. We're at Mr. Bass's desk where Mr. Bass has a number of things to read. What is that before you know sir? Well this is a plate that I'm reading. This is only in Curtis Plate. And it's the

tweaked soft fragrance sample directions. What is it? A label or something? It's a label. That's right. It's sixteen up. It's unusually small. I would say it's about four point types. That is very small type and that is correct. Well did you ever figure out how many words or lines or paragraphs you read a day? Or have you ever dared to do so? Well that would be very difficult to say just how many paragraphs or lines I read a day. But I do know that I need quite a good number of jobs through the course of day. And those are positives, artwork, it's proofs, and various kinds of places that are being made here at the Excel press. Are there any special tricks to proofreading already? You just have to make darn sure basically that all the words are there and that they're spelled right. You have to make sure that the words are there and you have to make sure that the half tones are there, that the spelling is correct, that the color break down is correct, or a job that's to be printed

at all times. Interesting. I'll let you do it where it glasses. Well you have perfect vision. You have had perfect vision and I hope that vision stays with me as long as it's possible. Well I suppose baseball lost a good umpire when you came here to excel over. I don't know, I wasn't much of a baseball player, but I've loved the sport. I've played my younger days baseball, little football and volleyball and a little bit of tennis and golf. Let me just ask you this, does this job get dull? No, because for the simple reason there seems to be a variation all the time with different things to read and to watch for and to study. How long have you been a proofreader? Oh for 20 years I would say. And in that time it's never affected your eyes. Well I've had them checked several times and the doctors say that they're still holding up pretty well. Wonderful. And in that time I'll bet you certainly read a million or so words at least. You brush up on your

spelling though again. Well I do, yes sir. But don't tell me spousa now. Oh okay. All right dude, it's where we came in. Thank you sir. Thank you, it was nice. Well it looks like we're in the paint shop here except this isn't a paint shop. I know, what is it? It's our offset ink department. And you have all the different kinds of colors here I can see. Do you make that ink yourself? Yes, we do make our ink here. Most of it is already wetted though. We don't work from dry pigments themselves. What was your name sir? Ed Priggie. And you're the supervisor here? Yes that's right. Head of the ink room. That's right. You ever go home with muddy fingers? Oh just about every night. Yeah let's move in here and talk about some of this ink here because it's a muddy, interesting phase of printing. I know. Are you saying you make a lot of your ink here? Well most of our ink as I say does come in

in a wetted form and then we simply take it and match our various colors from various standards as we have. And we always keep these standards stocked and from then we can get just about any color you want. Yeah I notice you have a lot of good solid black ink around here. That's still more or less the basic ink of the trade. Yes I think we probably use this as much black as anything else. Well you know it's getting tough to get a white refrigerator anymore so I just wondered about inks. You do use a lot of color I can see judging from what you have in stock. You use a lot of reds and blues and greens. What are some of the other colors you have here? Well we have various shades of purples and also our more or less tin colors you might say, which are our reds and our blues and all the various colors reduced with a tin base or a white. Well some perfume clients say comes in and wants a very special and exotic color, a mixture, a blend. Can you give it to them? Very often we

can and if it gets too hard we can send it out to the income companies around the city which we do their part to get the color to. I just picked up this little sales flyer here on your desk and it has kind of a perfumey smell to it. Now do you have perfumed inks? We don't make perfumed inks ourselves but if the case arises we can send out to various companies that do make them and they'll ship them in to us and we'll put them on. In any event the perfumery is in the ink? Yes it is. You haven't sprinkled talcum powder on here yet? No it's not talking about that. Well how about some of the other ingredients that are going into inks these days? I understand that there are special packaging and special inks for the food trade. Well there is a special link we have to use for, like I say, working around food and it has to be a non -toxic ink which means it contains no lead. And so therefore we have to, we usually get that as a special link also.

And into that we can only use our cobalt dryer and no paste dryer because the paste dryer contains lead again. Do these print as well as efficiently and effectively as to the regular orthodox inks? Yes I believe so. We use them quite a bit and it doesn't seem to be too much difference. Well with the printing moving ever more in the color work it looks like you're a thick stuff for a long time in this field. That could well be. Or here in the large spacious air condition plate department and I wonder if Harry Lundberg here at Supervisor could tell us just what a plate is in printing. Well a plate is used to print the job. Actually what does it consist of? Well in this department we start all jobs. The production of the job starts here. We photograph the job and assemble the negatives to make up the final negatives of positives are made for the press plates

they made from. How do you do this? You get the artwork in here? Yes the artwork is sent back here and scaled for size and photograph. And then the type is set? Well the type is set before the artwork is made. But in any event you get this material in here and photograph it. Yes and then the negatives are assembled here on these illuminated glass tables that you see here. And then you make a plate? Yes. Well how do you make a plate? Well first a zinc plate is coated in a whirler with this light sensitive emulsion. And then it's exposed to a positive in the photo composing machine. Photo composing machine is a machine that enables us to repeat the job at various distances over on the plate so that we can print a number of them on from the same plate. What the plate itself consists of? What? Zinc. Zinc. And in a color

job you have several plates each with a different color? Yes one for each color. One impressed over another is that the way that's correct. Well it's certainly a very interesting operation. Do you have any special problems here Harry? Oh we have all problems or more or less special problems. Well we'll look around and see some of this plate work. All right. Thank you. Well it's quite a bit of background sound here because we're in the printing plant itself and here with a plant superintendent Leon Platte. Is this considered a large plant for a job house Leon? Yes we're considered one of the larger of the medium sized plants in Chicago. Well the presses that you'd have here are these are these unusually large presses on the same job level or? Well in this particular type of offset printing these are

probably the largest presses that are being used at the present time. Well now you speak of offset printing that's a type of printing isn't it? It's a process of printing yes it's one particular process there are many ways of printing. And we here at Excel print via the offset method and also letter press methods. Now what are the basic differences between the two methods that the two main methods are printing I'm told? Yes. What are the basic differences between them? Well actually the basic differences in letter press printing the presses set up so that you are printing directly from the printing plate. In other words the ink is put onto the printing plate the paper hits the plate picks up the ink and you have your impression. Whereas in offset printing your plate is never in contact with your paper. The image that you are trying that you are printing is transferred from the actual plate to a rubber blanket and the image is transferred

from that rubber blanket to your sheet of paper. And that's where the term offset printing comes in because it's actually offset from the blanket to the paper and not in direct contact with the plate. Let's see. Leon and looking through your stock here this of course is a large room filled with the paraphernalia printing. Stacks of paper of all sizes. Much of which is inscribed and I notice just a great deal of colors. As a matter of fact it's difficult to look around here and find any black and white. Does this represent the ratio of color to black and white work that you do? Yes. We do more color work than actual black and white work. Is most of the color work done in the offset process or the letter press process? Well both. Both. We do some single color printing but most of our work in both letter press and offset is in multiple colors. Anywhere from two to six to eight colors.

Well thank you. It's been a pleasure talking to you Leon and certainly have an impressive plan here to work in. Thank you very much. Well I suppose the heart of any printing shop is its letter press part or department or corner depending on the size of it. It's a good size when here at Excel and Walter Lepescu is its supervisor. Do you still print here in Walter as you did many years ago? Well this is probably one of the older forms of printing. I mean lithography is one of the new ones but we're more or less the beginning of the cell of press. I suppose it's still a heart and soul of the operation. Well I think so. I might be partial. I understand you were the lad who ran that printing apparatus out on the street many years ago and the place burned out. That's right. We had a fire and I think it was about two weeks later while we were running out in the street in the rainstorm with our in our bare feet I believe. What does that do to the ink? Well it made it a little

bit rough but we managed. I wouldn't say it was the best printing we ever did but it was at least it was done. Well about this letter press work doesn't this involve a kind of a knowledge of the new types of type. Let's put it that way. Aren't there a great many changes in all types of casings? There are always changes. I mean we're constantly changing. Printing is about one of the oldest things but it's just constantly going forward. And I think we're one of the most progressive shots in the city. Well this is where the craftsmanship of printing really is quite market. That's where I think the actual craftsman belongs. There's a lot of mechanical work but there's a very lot of it's the men that do the work that make the job. It's not the people that in other words the machines can only do so much. It takes the people to really do the work. What are how long does it take to train a printer? All his life. You never learn everything. You just constantly go.

You have an apprenticeship of about six years but that just gets you started. The Excelopress is one of the city's two and a half thousand job printing firms which make Chicago the nation's printer. The world's three largest plants are here. Others are one man shops. Most in the great middle ground. 65 ,000 skilled craftsmen work in the trade here producing some 830 ,000 tons of printed matter each year. It is significant that from the beginning of its growth Chicago has been a printer's town. Strong with the greatest prize of all the printed word. This is Jack Angel with George Wilson an engineer whose recordings here have imprinted city in sound.