Jobbing

That branch of the printing business which is devoted to the execution of job-work, as distinguished from book-work and news-work. The definition of a “job” is extremely difficult, for work which would be regarded as job-work in one house is not so considered in another. Savage says: “A job is anything which, when printed, does not exceed a sheet,” but pamphlets of five or more sheets frequently come under this designation, and even a periodical may be done as a “job” in a large office. The more general practice, however, is to call such things as placards, circulars, cards, &c., jobs, pamphlets book-work,a nd periodicals news-work.

The trade rules certainly define the nature of job-work more strictly than this, for the purpose of approximating to a scale of prices for labour done; but the word is generally applied to a much larger variety of work than would be included in this definition. Jobbing, in short, may be roughly divided into classes, as follows:—

1. Circulars, including professional and trading circulars; Notices of openings of premises and of removal; of partnerships and partnerships dissolved; Prospectuses of companies; Reports of meetings, financial reports, commercial circulars, price lists.
2. Cards, including visiting cards, traders’ cards, invitation, and “at home” cards, tickets of admission, direction cards, time-table and calendar cards, ball programmes, cartes du menu, cards of membership, memorial cards.
3. Billheads, including invoices, statements of accounts, and bills of particulars.
4. Handbills, including trade handbills, programmes, bills of the play, police notices.
5. Posting Bills, including Auction bills, sermon, bazaar, lecture and meeting bills, official regulations, proclamations, general trade bills, contents bills, theatre bills, concert bills, lost and found bills.
6. Blank Forms, including memorandums, blank tables, pawn-tickets, railway and other share scrip, cheques, allotment forms, and headings.
7. Labels, including direction labels and ornamental labels.

Besides these there is a large class of what may be called general work. Under this category will come Auctioneers’ catalogues, which vary in style according as they are commercial sale catalogues, real estate, property and laud sale catalogues; Almanacks, Diaries, Conditions of Sale, Chancery Bills, Acts of Parliament, &c. Each one of the kinds of work we have enumerated has its own fixed custom in regard to its style of composition and the size and description of paper or other material upon which it is to be printed. For instance: a catalogue of a sale of houses is set out on a totally different principle to that relating to a sale of household furniture or stock-in-trade, and while the one is invariably a full folio sheet, the other is usually a mere octavo. A catalogue of a sale of cotton, fruit, or wood, would differ entirely from either, and be a long narrow strip with rules between each line. No two sheets could be more dissimilar than a sermon bill and a play bill, either in shape or the style of letter employed. Many printers, indeed, now confine themselves to one branch of jobbing; thus there are large establishments where auctioneers’ work is chiefly produced, others where coloured placards and tea papers are executed, others who print only for pawnbrokers, or for law stationers, &c. These offices are furnished specially with a view to the rapid and economical production of one kind of work.