Inside the Scotto Print Shop: The Manufacturing of a Music Book

AbstractThe cost of labor was considerable. The workers Scotto employed ranged from young apprentices and piece-work journeymen to pressmen, compositors, and proof correctors. Other members of the print shop might include a journeyman who, after serving his apprenticeship, traveled from town to town, often for several years. A journeyman would stay in a particular locality anywhere from a month to one or two years, where he worked at the shop of the master printer. Ranking above the journeyman were the trained laborers, who worked either as compositors setting type and preparing forms or as pressmen who pulled the sheets of paper and operated the press. At the top of the workforce was the head compositor, who supervised the other workers and corrected the first proofs.