If there ever was a boy who did not want a printing press I have yet to meet him. Ever since the day when Gutenburg62 invented movable types, and that was some 500 years ago, every boy - and not a few men - have wanted to set a few stickfuls of type and run off some impressions on a press, and many thousands of them have gratified that highly civilized ambition.

But you fellows of to-day have all the best of it, for you can buy a printing outfit complete for $1.50 on up to anything you want to pay for it. After all is said and done though, you can get more real enjoyment out of a small self-inking press than you can out of a larger one. Not only is there a lot of fun in printing cards, etc., for yourself but there is money in it too, if you go about it the right way, but that is another story.63

62 Johanne Gutenburg was a German printer. He invented movable types about the year of 1450.

63 To make money out of job-printing on a small scale read Money Making for Boys by the present author and published by Dodd, Mead and Co., New York City.

Kinds of Printing Presses

There are two kinds of printing presses made and these are (1) hand inked presses, and (2) self-inking presses.

You can make a printing press out of wood but to do a good job you must have a press built of iron and properly machined, that is finished up, for to do good printing a good outfit is needed to begin with.

Small hand inked and self-inking presses are sold in the toy departments of nearly all stores at prices ranging from $1.50 to $5.00 and this will include a font of type. Many of these little presses are made which use type about half the length of regular type and if you get a press of this kind you will never know the real joy of printing.