A steam rounding and backing machine has come 

 into use which increases the capacity of the binder 

 tenfold. Binderies with a former capacity of five 

 hundred volumes a day now produce five or six thousand 

 by using machines of this type. The new cover-making 

 machine feeds itself from a roll of cloth which it cuts 

 into pieces of the proper size as it goes along. It pastes 

 these on the boards, fastens edges, smooths backs and 

 sides, and drops the finished cover into a receptacle 

 automatically, doing in seconds what formerly took 

 several minutes to perform. Another interesting 

 machine covers paper books and magazines at the rate of 

 over twenty thousand a day. 



Of course leather-covered books cannot be bound by 

 machinery in the same manner as cloth-covered ones; 

 but even the processes involved in leather bindings are 

 now mostly done by machinery. And it is almost cer- 

 tain that within a short time leather books as well as all 

 other kinds will be bound automatically by machinery, 

 with a corresponding cheapening of prices, since, as has 

 been pointed out, the binding is the most expensive 

 part of book manufacture. 



