MEMOIR OF DANIEL TREADWKI.I 



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their faces. In connection with two gentlemen, General W. II. Sumner and Mr. Bedford 

 Webster, I purchased type, procured workmen, and made contracts with some booksellers to 



print several books for them, and otherwise obtained work where I could get it. With lias 



two presses I continued operations in Batterymarch Street, in a building owned by Benjamin 



Bussey, for a year or two, the work being equal to any hand-press printing, and, being per- 

 formed by females at the rate of nine or ten impressions a minute, the saving of cpense w;is 

 important. In 1822, one of the principal booksellers of Boston purchased my i tablishment 



with the patent right for Massachusetts. It was removed to another place, and two more 

 presses added. The establishment was burned in 1826." 



During these two years many books were printed, and can be seen on the 

 shelves of libraries, bearing the imprint on the title-page, "TreadwelTs Power Press." 

 In 1822 an edition of the New Testament from stereotype plates was printed upon 

 this press. 



It must have required much boldness and perseverance on the part of the in- 

 ventor to embark in a trade to which he was not educated, with doubts of pecuniary 



success, the opposition of the printers, and something worse among the journey- 

 men; for his warehouse once took fire and his presses were damaged, not without 

 grave suspicion of those who supposed their livelihood in danger from this innova- 

 tion. It maybe also that the employment — now for the first time, probably — of 

 young women and girls in press- work may have added to their fears. 



The value of the Power Press was now demonstrated. In 182") propositions 

 came from Mr. Daniel Fanshaw, of New York, for the purchase of the presses; two 

 of them were sent to him to be used in printing the publications of the American 

 Bible Society and of the American Tract Society. These were soon followed by 

 others, and after a year or more twenty presses were in operation in Mr. Fanshaw's 

 office, with an increased profit to this enterprising printer for the first two years of 

 ten thousand dollars a year. Mr. Fanshaw writes to Mr. Tread well : "Your presses 

 work well, and are the admiration of all who see them. Mr. Thomas has made 

 no blunder as yet,, and begins to understand what he would be at." The Phila- 

 delphia made steam-engines, however, seem to have given him some trouble, and 

 his account does not reflect much credit on the mechanical skill of his assistants. 

 " Mr. Jennings's engine," he says, u does very well, but needs close looking after. 

 It sometimes refuses to go for ten or fifteen minutes: we then surround it, and 

 start it again, bnt we can seldom tell how we did it. When the engine has too 



much or too little water, or from any other cause refuses to go fast enough, and 

 seems inclining to a rest, the man who nurses her claps a lever to the fly-wheel, 

 and lends her a little help, until she regains her strength and vigor. 



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