Lydia Bailey: A Checklist of Her Imprints

Her Way

Mistress of Her Situation D 27 Her Way Although Lydia Bailey probably knew how to set type and pull a press from her days as a printer’s wife, once her husband died, she took on the role of master printer. As the owner of a traditional printing office, she was a combination of manager, director, and parent. She was responsible for the monthly balancing of the books, the daily activities of the press, and the continual care of her employees . As master of a printing office, Lydia also held a highly respectable position in the community and obviously felt bound to uphold her reputation.95 As one of her obituaries related, Lydia “had great energy and decision of character . She was upright and of high religious principle. For seven years before her death she bore composedly the physical weakness brought on by protracted years; but her energy of mind remained in vigor. At this period a large rent was offered for one of her houses by a person who desired to convert it into a drinking-saloon. ‘What!’ she exclaimed with emphasis, ‘rent my property opposite my own church for a tavern! Not if you give me six thousand dollars a year!’”96 This was a woman who knew her mind, was used to being in control, had social clout, and was not to be taken lightly. The focus on job and contract printing brought a distinctive set of managerial demands. Unlike those of a book publisher, Lydia’s profits did not depend on her ability to turn over stock. Lydia had no need to build inventory, nor did she cope with the pressures of marketing or storing it. There was no risk of capital or advance production. Job and contract printing was custom work to order , frequently conducted on a cash basis; it depended on an active, regular, and reliable client base, punctual payments, discounts, and donations. Frequent deadlines needed to be met. As Franklin aptly put it, “Punctuality is the life of credit.”97 Promptness, accuracy, and efficiency were paramount. Lydia achieved them with a keen business sense—keeping close watch over her accounts, resources , and employees; obtaining payments at the time of order; swapping; substituting printed goods for unreliable currency (for example, she was sometimes paid in copies that she then sold to people from whom she bought other goods); transacting business in cash whenever possible; paying debts without delay; giving immediate discounts or underselling to customers who promised her more work; and donating work to potentially valuable customers. In a period when the banking industry was still in its infancy and very volatile, she appears not to have borrowed from banks but instead exchanged a multitude of promissory notes with her many business associates. As she wrote to Mathew Carey in 1813, “Mr. Carey will confer a particular favour by lending me thirty dollars if convenient, I hope to be able to return it this evening.”98 28 D lydia bailey When she inherited Francis’s and Robert’s journal, accounts were being kept in single-entry manner. Once again demonstrating her desire to improve business practices, Lydia immediately shifted to a modified form of the more efficient (but mathematically more complicated) mode of double-entry bookkeeping . Although double-entry had been around for centuries, many early Americans favored the more traditional and simpler form of single-entry. However , the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries saw a gradual increase in the use of double-entry, promoted in such popular texts as George Fisher’s The instructor, or American young man’s best companion (first published in 1748, with more than a dozen reprints by 1813, including multiple reprints by John Bioren in Philadelphia in the early years of the nineteenth century) and Thomas Sarjeant’s Elementary principles of arithmetic (first published in Philadelphia in 1789, with subsequent similar titles). One might even imagine that Lydia was acquainted with these and comparable titles because she struck frequent balances to determine her profits and losses through daily upkeep and notes and reminders to herself and others.99 With regard to her physical plant, her one surviving journal itemizes purchases of supplies for the pressroom (such as ink, paper, furniture, and type) and books she had bound.100 Her sources for these products and services included most of the manufacturers of printing supplies in Philadelphia. Francis Bailey, Binny and Ronaldson, and John Bouvier (for Greek) furnished type. Isaac Mason, James...