Working
The booming publishing industry was one of the first fields to employ on a large scale those with artistic training. Like workers in other industries, they found themselves in settings where work was segmented, assembly-line style, and individual tasks were specialized and repetitive. But they saw themselves contributing to the nation’s economic grown, and the work they produced fed a growing aesthetic sense among middle-class consumers.
The printing industry offered new opportunities, especially for white middle-class women with artistic training. Tools such as these, from 1889, were used for engraving printing plates to mass-produce illustrations. Other industries besides printing employed people with artistic skill. Industrial mills used drawing instruments to create technical drawings.
Printing press
The Pony printing press, built specifically for the New York Sun newspaper, could print 6,000 impressions per hour. Richard March Hoe submitted this model to patent the press in 1842.
Transfer from U.S. Patent and Trademark Office
