A Changing Economy = Changing Job Opportunities

In a recent issue of Outside the Box author John Mauldin told a story of life when he was growing up and how it created an opportunity for him to earn some extra money while he was going to college. But today things have changed so much that young people today don’t even understand what he is talking about.

With technology changing so rapidly, if you want a good job, it is critical that you keep up… and so with that lets look at life in 1958 from John’s perspective. ~Tim McMahon, editor

What is a Printer’s Devil?

By John Mauldin

A conversation today triggered a memory. I just turned 11 years old, and it was Christmas morning. I’d retrieved a few toys out from under the tree and was looking forward to going out to play with friends. But my dad said that first I had a project to do. He had just bought all the equipment to open a small printing shop in Bridgeport, Texas. This was 1959 (we had just left the Stone Age), and printing was still done with hand-set type and on letter presses. The small press that was invented in the early 1900s was now powered by an electric motor.

My dad had brought home a type case full of 12-point Franklin Gothic lead type. He turned the case upside down on the kitchen table and said, “Put all the type back and then you can go out and play.” There was nothing else to do but sit and look at each small piece of type, figuring out what each character was and putting in its respective small box. It took forever, but I eventually finished and got up to leave. My dad said “Wait a minute.”

He asked me to come over and look at another case where he hadn’t labeled all those individual little compartments with the letters that belonged in them. He pointed to one and asked me which letter belonged in there. I didn’t know. Then he asked me a second one. I didn’t know that one either. He went back over to the kitchen table and turned that type case – much like the one you see in the picture above – upside down. “Do it again.”

I’m only a little slow. When I finished and Dad started asking questions, I knew the answers. It was the start of a decades-long process love-hate affair with the printing business. I actually made money in college going around to the print shops and offering to clean up their “hell boxes,” which were the boxes and buckets full of type that had gotten jumbled and that no senior printer wanted to take the time to put back. So what do you find in hell? You find a printer’s devil, which is the young apprentice who does all the dirty work. And it was dirty. But by the late 1960s printing with actual type was on its way out, and then there were no young apprentices. Business was good, but within a few years all that knowledge was simply arcane trivia, of no use in the real world.

I was with my trainer yesterday, and while he was putting me through my paces, he was reading a report on his phone about the political changes. “What’s the GOP?” he asked. As I pumped away on the exercise bike I told him it stood for “Grand Old Party.” I went on to explain the term and added, “In the early days, writers would often set their own type for their newspaper columns. Republican Party had a lot more letters in it than GOP.” And then I explained setting type. You could see he was thinking I must be really old. And I thought back to all the hours I hand-set type as a young man.

And continued to pump. The Beast is pushing me harder as time goes on, and it’s helping, but leg days just kill me for the following few days. My legs feel like they’re wrapped in lead. For years I focused on upper body in my workouts, and my legs became appallingly weak. But knowing that as we get older our wheels take on ever more importance, I’m trying to get them in some kind of working order. They say no pain, no gain, so I must be gaining a lot. Surely?

Have a great week. Fall is in the air. Can Thanksgiving be far behind?

Your pretty much hurting somewhere every day analyst,

John Mauldin, Editor
Outside the Box