#tramp printers

[antiquatedfuture]

The Tramp Printers: Forgotten Trails of Traveling Typographers

A gorgeously printed, in-depth history of "the tramp printer," a unionized wanderer who carried the skills and knowledge of the printing trade across the United States and beyond. Gathered together from years of research and countless tramp printer memoirs, The Tramp Printers: Forgotten Trails of the Traveling Typographers presents a fascinating and largely forgotten history while also looking at how similar issues of technology and worker's rights manifest today

[parallelcases]

Two more spreads from the Parallel Cases book.

[parallelcases]

Of the early day vintage of [printing] Pirates was ‘Judge’ Grigsby. On my way to Sedalia, I ran across him near the little town of Knob Noster. he was dressed in a frock coat, white waistcoat, striped trousers, immaculate linen and patent-leather shoes - all topped by a silk hat. he was one of the most picturesque of the old tourist printers, one who never rode in boxcars, but did his traveling either on the velvet cushions or on foot. i believe he preferred the latter mode as being more cognate with his philosophy of a leisurely and gracious manner of spending one’s life. As we walked along, he told me something of his theory of life: To live fully and richly, to acquire the greatest delight for the mind in the joys of intellectual curiosity… He quoted Rousseau to the effect that the only way to travel was on foot while one reveled in the freshness and harmony beside little streams. Railroads and steamboats, he said, had robbed the pilgrimages of journeymen workers of their property, thereby shortening their journey of life

Adventures of a Tramp Printer: 1880-1890  John Edward Hicks

[parallelcases]

Two or three days work in each town was all that the tramp printer wanted or would expect… He was always on the move – going nowhere in particular – but moving nevertheless. He usually reached a town on an early-morning freight train, and left the same way, under the cover of darkness…

Adventures of a Tramp Printer: 1880-1890 John Edward Hicks

[parallelcases]

The beginning of true ‘tramp printing’ in North America got under way during the California Gold Rush, and increased in magnitude after the Civil War. The years from the Revolution to the outbreak of hostilities between the North and South marked a time of expansion and proliferation of newspapers and commercial printers. Printing’s move West accelerates with the flow of emigrants to Oregon and California

Tramp Printers by John Howells and Marion Dearman