[Contextual note:  This article argues against the “personal” tax (income tax).  In 1913, the 16th Amendment to the Constitution made the income tax a permanent fixture in the U.S. tax system. The amendment gave Congress legal authority to tax income and resulted in a revenue law that taxed incomes of both individuals and corporations.]

December 13, 1910

“Lawson Purdy on Taxation; Prominent Alumnus Argues Against Personal Tax”

“In a recent address before the Albany Historical Society, Lawson Purdy, ’84, president of the New York City Commission of Taxes and Assessments, made a strong plea for the abolition of the personal tax.  Mr Purdy has made a special study of taxation for many years and is considered an expert on the subject.  He argues that because personal property cannot be taxed equitably and by the same method as real estate, the tax on it should be removed.  He has advocated several bills before the legislature which would wipe out all such taxes.  Mr. Purdy claims further that special taxes have withdrawn certain forms of personal property from general taxation.  He offers the following remedies: In that assessors are hampered by the fact that no deeds contain the true consideration for the conveyance of real estate unless they are made by executors and trustees, the law should provide that the true consideration for the transfer of real estate should be stated.  He argues that assessors should be appointed and not elected.  The men who do the actual work should be appointed under civil service rules, which would protect them from dismissal except for cause.  Mr. Purdy says also that the simplest way to deal with the remnant of personal property, now subject to the general property tax, is to abolish the tax.  The loss of the revenue would be more than made good by the increased value of real estate due to the relief from the danger inherent in the system of personal property.  Mr. Purdy’s views were quoted also in the American Magazine for December.  He is president of the Trinity Alumni Association.

Tags: From the Archives

View of the Russian empire during the reign of Catharine the Second, and to the close of the eighteenth century, by William Tooke (1744-1820).  (London, 1800).

 This is the second edition, following the first of 1799 (we have two copies of the second, and one of the first–a testament to the work’s importance, and the development of the Watkinson as a “library of reference.”  A recent antiquarian bookseller’s catalogue describes it thus:

 “Extensive overview of the peoples, customs, laws, religion, natural history, etc. of “the arctic eagle” (p. v), compiled from primary and secondary sources by a member of the Imperial Academy of Sciences and of the Free Economical Society at St. Petersburg. The Rev. Tooke was an “intelligent and observant Russophile” (DNB) responsible for several original works as well as a number of English translations (with added substance and critical apparati) of significant works on that country, including Georgi’s Russia, or, A Compleat Historical Account of All the Nations which Compose that Empire  and Castéra’s Life of Catharine II, Empress of Russia. The state of the Russian military forces is here described at length. The commerce section includes chapters on viniculture, sericulture, and apiculture, as well as mining and salt harvesting; at the back of the third volume are extensive tables of Russian imports and exports, merchant ships arrived and sailed, duties and taxes, and names of the most active St. Petersburg merchants. Coins and measures are also examined.”

In the bowels of the Watkinson I discovered a printing press. 

It is tucked into the corner of a former ladies’ bathroom (plumbing removed, pipes stoppered), behind a heavy cabinet full of type, and an old card catalog with glass slides depicting ruins and documents related to ancient Greece (cast-offs from the Classics department).

It is a Washington hand press, made by the Hoe company (aside from being an industrialist, Robert Hoe was also a very famous book collector). Samuel Rust first patented the design in 1821 (with an acorn frame), and re-designed it (the way ours looks) in 1829.  The Hoe Company bought the patent in 1835.  This model was one of the standard pieces of equipment for job-printing from the 1840s-1880s, and many of them, once they were “retired,” made their way into private press shops in the early 20thC.  This one was employed by the Cellar Press (Bloomfield, CT) from the 1930s to the 1960s. 

I say “discovered,” but of course the staff knew it was here.  It has been here since the late 1960s, when Mr. Peter Knapp (currently the College Archivist, but back then a reference librarian) had it removed from the Art department, and tried, in his pithy and self-deprecating words, to “mess around with it.”  It was donated, as many such presses were (and are), in the hopes  that it could still be useful, and not scrapped.  I find it heartening that this is happening–that the old technologies are not being cast out of hand (so to speak–if you know the language of printing, this will resonate as a pun).

Immediately upon discovering the press and the dozen or so trays of type (mostly Garamond, 10 to 24 pt), I began scheming.  That’s what I do.  I try to exploit every potential asset that comes into my hand.  So here, I thought, is an opportunity.

Most special collections programs use their historic presses to focus on printing as it relates to the “book arts” or “book history.”  That will certainly happen at Trinity, but more than that, I want to focus on using the press as a centerpiece for discussing writing and publishing (its history and future).  This seems to me a more forward-looking approach, and I hope it will engage a broader range of students (not just the artists and book-nerds, but all writers and readers on campus).  I’m just settling down with Richard Gabriel-Rummonds’ Printing on the Iron Handpress (1997), the definitive work on the subject, and fortuitous to me for the following reason:

“This manual is intended primarily for users of Washington-style handpresses, although many of the procedures will also be applicable to most other makes of iron handpresses, and some of the procedures will even be helpful for printers using manually operated cylinder presses, such as Vandercook proof presses.  I have singled out the Washington-style press because it is the most frequently found hand press in the United States” (Preface).

Up to now, I have only studied printing in the abstract–its history, and the basic outlines of its practices during the handpress period (1450-1850).  I intend to use this blog to document every stage of my transformation from an ignorant neophyte to a (hopefully) skilled amateur printer.  Stay tuned!

Tags: Washington Press

John Josselyn.  An account of two voyages to New England (London, 1674). 

“The first complete description of the flora and fauna of the Middle Atlantic and New England States” (Justin Winsor, Narrative & Critical History, III (360)).  This work is also the best contemporary English description of New Netherland, Josselyn having included that colony under the name New England.  His inclusion of the list of “prices of all necessaries for furnishing a Planter and his Family at his first coming” shows that this was a practical work for prospective settlers, an early immigrants’ guide.  Josselyn’s first-hand accounts are based on two residences in America, the first in 1638-39 and the second from 1663-71.  He was a gentleman traveler trained as a physician and surgeon, and his brother Henry was a principal representative in Maine of the Mason and Gorges heirs, whose interests conflicted with those of the Massachusetts Bay Colony—which perhaps accounts for Josselyn’s occasionally hostile remarks upon the latter colony.  Josselyn’s work is notable for his many knowledgeable comments on the medicinal uses of various flora and fauna, including tobacco, the cranberry and the blueberry.  The wild turkey and other northeastern species of birds and other animals are fully described for the first time.  Josselyn’s prose and poetry is now included by scholars within the canon of early American literature.  He published only two works, the present book and New England’s Rarities Discovered (London: 1672).  According to the Dictionary of American Biography, “the Account of Two Voyages is the more ambitious work:  it is a rather strange compound of scientific lore, suggestions for settlers, bits of local history and much general observation.”

December 9, 1910

“College Trained Journalists”  (From the Charleston News and Courier).

One or two newspapers have aroused some discussion by asserting that the college-trained men whom they have tried on their staffs have never been even moderately successful, from which it is argued that schools of journalism are worse than useless.  There was a time when medical schools were laughed at.  It was assumed that young men could only be properly trained in doctor’s offices, whereas, as a matter of fact, these were the very places where they received the poorest kind of training.  So also in the legal profession law schools were ridiculed.  Medical and law schools are modern things, and it has not been many years since they were objects of suspicion.  In fact, only when their early students became the older members of the profession did this suspicion die out.

It is manifestly absurd to assume that a man will be ruined for journalism if he is taught journalism as a profession, and it is just as ridiculous to assert that the student will not be greatly benefited by such training, assuming of course that the school which he attends is a food one.  In journalism as in anything else some aptitude for the work is required.  Some men cannot write and never will know how to write.  Others have no power of observation or are woefully deficient in the ability to condense or to separate the wheat from the chaff. 

One great trouble with journalism today is that there are not enough college -bred men in it.  If the press is to influence or make public opinion, evidently the press should itself be controlled by men who have been taught how to think clearly and well, who know the English language, who are acquainted with history and the arts, and who are thoroughly educated in a general way.  Yet the greatest journalists will still be born, not made, no matter how many schools of journalism there are.  The great mass of workers can be trained for their work, but even training cannot make great journalists.  They, like great men in every profession, are born, taking due pains after birth of course to make themselves ready for their life-work.

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Tags: From the Archives