PUBLIC PRINTING.
IN these modern days of ours, printing has become a sort of " culte," and the humble profession of literature is transformed, to use the cant transcendental phrase, into the " priesthood of let- ters." Four years ago, Captain Pen went bragging about that he had done for his sturdy rival Captain Sword ; but the Exhibition of All Nations had not closed four months before Captain Sword was the principal figure in a certain coup d'etat ; and three years had not gone by, before, the pen failing in a rather lamentable fashion, the sword went forth to out that famous knot the " Ques- tion d'Orient." Yet we still go on believing in Captain Pen; there are still those among us who believe in Cheap Literature, " not wisely, but too well.' We still believe that masses of print will do our business, spread light far and wide over the earth, and conduce to that " progress of the species" of which so much is said and sung. The whole nation suffers from a plethora of print, and seems likely to suffer at least during our day and generation. IN these modern days of ours, printing has become a sort of " culte," and the humble profession of literature is transformed, to use the cant transcendental phrase, into the " priesthood of let- ters." Four years ago, Captain Pen went bragging about that he had done for his sturdy rival Captain Sword ; but the Exhibition of All Nations had not closed four months before Captain Sword was the principal figure in a certain coup d'etat ; and three years had not gone by, before, the pen failing in a rather lamentable fashion, the sword went forth to out that famous knot the " Ques- tion d'Orient." Yet we still go on believing in Captain Pen; there are still those among us who believe in Cheap Literature, " not wisely, but too well.' We still believe that masses of print will do our business, spread light far and wide over the earth, and conduce to that " progress of the species" of which so much is said and sung. The whole nation suffers from a plethora of print, and seems likely to suffer at least during our day and generation.
But there is one branch of printing, one great department, performed at the public expense and designed for the public good—what is called Parliamentary printing—which one would think should be an exception to the general rule. Alas ! the " paper bags " of the Parliamentary and Governmental class are far more vexing to the soul than ever were the paper bags of Herr Teufelsdrockh to his learned editor. To the Hofrath Heuschrecke class the confused heaps of blue-clad and other papers issuing from the public printing-presses are sources of solemn delight. But to the great majority they are sealed books— to the earnest few, direful specimens of chaos, nine times out of ten. Parliamentary and Governmental printing, like the Thames, has long been a nuisance in the public way, defying remedy. Several Select Committees have sat upon it—so they have incidentally upon the Thames; but the river flows on with unmitigated severity, and the flood of public printing augments with the lapse of years. The latest effort to stay it was made at the close of the session of 1854, when a Select Committee was appointed " to consider the cheapest, most expeditious, and most efficient mode of providing for the printing required for the Houses of Parliament and the public service." That Committee sat one day in 1854; it was reappoint- ed in 1855, and made its report at the close of the session. The document—a four-shilling blue-book of Report and Evidence'—is now before us; and it throws a great light upon the whole system.
• House of Commons Papers, No. 447. But here we may remark, that the terms of the resolution under whioh the Committee was appointed do not express the scope of the investigation into which the Committee was led. The Mem- ber who moved for the Committee intended that it should be an inquiry to discover the cheapest mode of printing what is required; but the vigorous evidence of Mr. M'Cullooh, Comptroller of the Stationery Office, carried the investigation far beyond the compa- ratively paltry question of expense of printing, to the larger question of what printing is ' required"—what ought to be printed "for the Houses of Parliament and the public service." It would have been more businesslike to begin with a Committee expressly for that purpose—a Committee to classify and regulate the control of the printing required ; and when that was done, the question of the expense of printing it might well have been taken into consideration.
At present the astonishing fact is, that the vast mass of public printing gravitates to the waste-paper warehouses. And no won- der. For the most part it is rubbish. The thin rays of light it contains are concealed in impenetrable fog. A. sensible nation should arrest this mania for senseless printing. Under the existing system, it appears that almost any public body may print to almost any extent. A Member moves the House of Commons for returns. The information may exist else- where. No matter • it is too much trouble to look for it. The returns are grante—and worse, printed—as a matter of course.
An Election Committee say the Hull—sits and takes cart-loads of u evidence." No matter what its length, no matter what the triviality of much of the so-called evidence. It is shovelled into the public printing-office, and in due time 'issues in blue-covered masses measured by the hundredweight, at a cost to the public of several thousand pounds. The evidence has been skimmed in the compendious newspaper-reports of the day; it is never read in the awful blue-book. A Select Committee investigates—say the Wine-duties. Not content with getting their report and evidence into type, they print appendices which nobody reads. Hear Mr. M'Culloch- "If you look," he says, "into the second volume" of the Report and Evi- dence of the Committee on the Wine-duties, "you will see a table of 234 pages of what is called Vattings of wine in the different docks.' There is not, I believe, a sane person in the empire who ever read one line of it, or ever will. But though perfectly useless, it occupies 234 pages, and 1750 copies were printed and circulated at the public expense."
But the House of Commons Committees are not the only offend- ers ; we have also the Royal Commissions. Their reports, with evidence and appendices, are published with the sanction of the Treasury or a Secretary of State. They are entirely under the control of the Government; it would perhaps be more correct to say that they are beyond the control of the Government, for no control is exercised so far as we can see. It is not the reports, say the Select Committee, that are bulky ; the bulk is caused by "attaching to them an enormous mass of useless detail." The Commissioners order any number of copies they think fit. In like manner, the Committee of the Privy Council on Education orders the printing of no fewer than 10,000 copies of books for distribu- tion among school-teachers and others, containing the names of all the little boys and all the little girls at school, and such like mat- ters. The publication of such books, we are told, encourages vo- luntary efforts in the cause of education; and in some degree it does : but the books should be weeded of " useless details."
Now the first question is, how to utilize this mass of public la- bour. If the public cannot get at the information procured at so much cost, the information might as well not exist. The rule should be, to print nothing but the reports : the exceptions to the rule should be the printing of abstracts—far more useful for the majority than the whole of the evidence ; and only in very rare cases should the whole of the evidence be printed at all. As to returns, let Members have them, when not injurious to the public) service, but don't send them to the printer above once in the hundred.
Having the rule laid down, how is it to be enforced ? Mr. M'Culloch, and Mr. Pardon, Librarian to the House of Commons, suggest a mode- ' think that the reports should be printed in the first instance; that the appendices and evidence should be kept in manuscript until authority should be given for printing them ; that this authority should be vested in the Printing Committee, acting of course under the directions of the House, and putting itself in communication with the different persons from whom those reports proceed ; and that the Committee should regulate whether any, and which, and how many of these documents, should be printed and circu- lated at the public expense." This, no doubt, would go some way to meet the evil; but the Committee do not adopt the entire suggestion, for they think that the evidence should be printed with the reports—the evidence in double columns, with a smaller type. As one step, we shall be glad to see extended powers placed in the hands of the Printing Committee; but we would much rather see as a further step, that among those extended powers was the power of saying, subject to an appeal to Parliament, whether the evidence should not be printed in abstract, or not at all.
The main question, as we have said, goes far beyond one of mere money cost. " The greatest saving you can effect," says Mr. M'Culloch, "is by preventing the printing of unnecessary docu- ments," and that not in a money sense only but as regards the *value of the documents themselves. On the subject of expense generally we do not enter at present. There may be question- able arrangements with printers, but they have a character of per- manence, not expressed but implied ; and four years hence, by the expiry of the patent of the Queen's printer, and the arrangements with the contract-printers, the whole scheme of payments will come under revision. It may well rest till then, if in the mean time the printing of " unnecessary documents" is prevented.
But there is one monetary point which calls for notice, because it has a wider bearing on the economy of public affairs. Among the printing for the public service is " Job-work printing"; com- prising printing for all the public departments. "It is that sort of printing which is in the shape of returns, headings of ledgers, tax-papers, circular letters, and forms of all sorts." This printing has hitherto been done by contract, but shamefully done ; and it is to this question of printing by oontraot that we would direct attention. Under this system the lowest tender must be taken; and all the work, no matter how heavy the order—sometimes for millions of copies of forms—must be sent to the contractor. He cannot do it all ; he employs somebody else, who employs some- body else, and so on. The work is badly done, and the Comp- troller is powerless to control it. The Comptroller of the Sta- tionery Office has had some experience of the working of this con- tract system, and he objects to it in tote, especially where the law enjoins that the lowest tender shall be accepted—" very often the lowest contract is in the end the dearest."
"I believe," says Mr. M'Culloch, "there is no system by which the pub- lic can be so easily and successfully defrauded as by a contract. Unless you look sharply and honestly after it, it is the most convenient possible cloak for robbery I am the slave of the contractor ; he is my master, and I am his slave. He knows very well that if he sends me any inferior article of forms executed under circumstances of great despatch in order to be ready to be sent to the Crimea, or anywhere, upon a certain day, however badly it may be executed, I have no power to reject it ; neither have I any power to employ another individual to execute it, because he would say, You are breaking my contract.' I reply, 'No ; you have broken it your- self; your work is so bad." Oh, no,' he would say, 'that is a question for a jury.' And, to be sure, it would a question for a jury ; and I should like to see the sort of justice that the Government would get when you brought that before a parcel of printers."
Mr. M'Culloch proposes a substitute-
" I have here a contract that I have made for the production of envelopes and if I had my own way I would have all the job-work people employed under those terms. It is in these terms—' I have to request that, if agree- able, you will acquaint me, on or before the 20th instant., with the prices at which you will be disposed to supply such quantities of special envelopes as may be ordered of you at any time during the twelve months beginning the let September next and ending the 31st August 1855, under the following conditions.' You will observe that the words are ' such quantities as may be ordered of you.' I do not bind myself to send them all the orders. Now, to show the advantage of this form of contract, I may mention, that we got tenders from several of the most respectable parties in London, and we took the one that was the lowest, because we were not bound to send anything to him unless he executed the work to our satisfaction. Not long after he com- menced he became a bankrupt, and could not go on. Now, if we had had a contract with him, we should have been obliged to go to his assignees and incur all sorts of inconveniences ; whereas, under this arrangement, I was able the very next day to send and order the envelopes to be produced by another party."
The result of this forcible testimony is, that the Committee re- commend the testing of Mr. M'Culloch's plan for a limited period.
On the whole, were we sanguine as to the good effects of Select Committees, we should look with great favour upon this Printing Committee ; for it arrives at these practical conclusions,—that the scale of prices should be revised in 1860, when all existing arrange- ments have expired; and that the powers of the Printing Com- mittee of the House of Commons should be extended so as to give them a more effectual control over, and enable them to determine upon the form and manner of the matters to be printed.
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