Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper — Dec. 15, 1860 — p. 53
(From the Home Journal)
FRANK LESLIE A LIFE-LENGTHENER.
By N.P. Willis
There are men who lengthen human life—those who shorten its industrial processes, or remove its hindrances or accelerate its compelled purposes and movements—enabling us to take ease and enjoy, where, before, we only lost life by toiling and suffering. It is for more time to live worthily, in fact, that we thank all great inventors—Morse for relieving us of suspense and dependence on mail-bags; Fulton for faster conveyance than by sails and stage-coaches; Whitney for a machine by which one man can do the work of three hundred; Hahnemann for enabling us to omit emetics and purges; Daguerre and Brady for superseding expensive portrait-sitting and difficult friend-remembering. And to this list of public benefactors we now think should be added Frank Leslie, who has rendered comparatively needless two of life's most laborious proceses, viz., the travelling and fancy-picturing which have been hitherto necessary to get "a realizing sense" of what is going on in the world.
But look for a moment at this Leslie-wonder of substitution and acceleration.
You buy for sixpence, at any corner in Broadway, or in any railroad car, a Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper. Two days previous there has been a stirring scene of public excitement, five hundred miles away—and here is a picture of it! In one second (after paying your sixpence) as complete a knowledge of the affair as you would get by travelling to the spot is conveyed to your brain, and this without the reading of an elaborate description and without any effort of the imagination to locate the actors and their surroundings. The affair took place only twenty-four or forty-eight hours ago, and here is an exact copy of the scene, printed from an engraving on wood—a job of itself that used to take a month to execute. Think of all the other hindrances which there used to be—the tediousness of getting the artist to the spot, of his taking the view, and of long waiting for its return from the engraver—and now how is this miracle acheived?
It is by skilful conbination of the new facilities of the day, aided by ingenious contrivances and bold enterprise. In every part of the country there are now photographers and artists with nearly all of whom Leslie is in correspondence. On the occurence of any noteworthy event some one of these is immediately on the spot, as is also one of his equally numerous literary agents—the view and the written description being thus done at the moment, and transmitted by special messenger onto an express train. The telegraph has meantime informed the office at New York, and the engravers are ready for the arrival of the drawings. A picture is made by skilful artists on a block of wood, which (a new invention) consists of many pieces, held together by bolts and nuts, so that the whole can be put into the hands of twenty engravers instead of one. By skilful arrangements of light and other conveniences these can work all night on a subject of urgent interest; and in twelve or eighteen hours from the time of the sketch's arrival it is admirably engraved and ready for the press. The description has been meantime rewritten or adapted by the resident editors and put in type. Thus far there has been the employment of photography, the electric telegraph, the railway express, division of labor among artists, mechanic invention as to blocks and combined literary talent—reducing a month's work to a day!
Then comes the printing-press. And here Mr. Leslie's own specific invention has done wonders. He found out a way so to overlay the cylinders by which certain effects of light and shade could be produced better and in one-tenth part of the time formerly consumed to produce the same results. The desired art of printing large and rapid editions of pictorial newspapers was thus rescued from final abandonment. There were also several minor difficulties which he has had to contend with, such as the warping of the blocks by change of temperature and the alteration in the character of the ink. And this latter article he is obliged (with the inferiority of the article in this country) to import from England and Germany.
But what a lesser world—(standing, indeed, in the world of New York like "a world within a world")—is this vast establishment of Frank Leslie's! And how unconsciously and carelessly we daily pass by such a hidden world, reading only the sign over the door! Such has been our own reflection, at least, after a chance visit we made to it yesterday—invited by a friend to look in for once, and see its wonders of industry and talent in operation. Let us tell one or two more of its statistics, thus gathered.
A tall white marble building, on City Hall Square, opposite the Park, is the locality we speak of. The street floor is a long hall of one hundred and forty feet, occupied by the desks and counters of the superintendents and financial clerks, and looking like a vast banking-house in London. The mailing departments are connected with this, and the united business of the four periodicals here issued—Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, the German illustrated paper, called Illustrirte Zeitung, Frank Leslie's Monthly, and the Budget of Fun—require, of course, a well-disciplined system of industry and management. Beneath is a cellar, and again another cellar beneath this, the first devoted to the printing-presses (which are worked by steam and are perfect marvels of human ingenuity when seen in operation), and the second to the vast preparations of paper and ink.
The several upper stories of the building are divided quite as systematically—the rooms where the numerous artists work together, the "dens" of the different members of the editorial corps, the type-setters of the two languages—German and English—and (last and most curious) the apartment of the many engavers on wood. This is under the more particular superintendence of Frank Leslie himself (originally an engraver), and the process, as carried on by these talented and fine-looking men with their various delicate implements, is exceedingly interesting.
The money circulation of which this single building (or rather Mr. Leslie's brain) is the valvular heart, is, of course very large. In answer to inquiries we ventured to make, we learned an item or two. Nearly one hundred and sixty-eight thousand dollars a year paid for paper, between six thousand and seven thousand dollars for printing ink, nearly six thousand dollars per month for salaries to sub-editors and artists, one hundred and thirty persons employed altogether, and the receipts about five hundred thousand dollars a year. Frank Leslie's is the oldest of the family of illustrated newspapers in America.
We really think such an establishment is a wonder—and not so much from any one feature, as from the mingled genius for combination and effectiveness which is at the bottom of it all! First, however, came the sagacity to detect a public want; and on the single certainty of a popularity for such knowledge as could go in to the eye at a glance—picture reading—it is securely established and sustained. And what a locust-swarm of pleasurable ad instructive impressions issues perpetually from that building, for the children of the country, the hurried and the uneducated, as well as for the intelligent and the art-loving!
What will they do next, we wonder! With the discoveries we have above enumerated for this age, what will the next age do for its share of inventive miracles? Looking ahead it is dim enough, to be sure—for human ingenuity seems exhausted—but looking back, we are ready for anything! The Frank Leslie of the year A.D. 1900 will perhaps have taken Vesuvius in hand, have loked into its brimstone and lava, and set up a private volcano in Broadway for the production of "monster editions" of earthquakes and Garibalditti! We shall do our best to look down and see how it all is.