Chris,
You deserve much credit for hiring specialists in several fields to assist with your Erdnase research, which should (hopefully) yield more than uninformed speculation. And your even-keel demeanor in the face of others' vetting of your theory and arguments is also admirable. That said, I’m struggling with a number of your comments and interpretations.
lybrary wrote:The suggestion that he became a printer with 14 because of his love for books comes from the certified genealogist I am working with. She has researched many families from that region. That was here [sic] comment. I found it quite plausible.
Not sure why a certified genealogist’s speculation about Gallaway’s motivation to become a printer at age 14 is relevant. In any case, is this motivation within the realms of possibility? Okay. Plausible (in the positive connotation of that word)? I’m sceptical. What does sound plausible (again, in the positive connotation of that word) is EG was at an age where it was time to learn a trade.
lybrary wrote:…Typesetters were some of the most educated folks … This is from a typesetter and printer I have spoken with. He has told me a lot about the world of typesetters, their work in detail, how a print shop is organized, the importance of printing guilds back then, etc. Think about it, as a typesetter you typically read the portions you typeset 3 times during the course of setting it. Quite a lot of on the job reading. …
You alluded to this earlier when you wrote that “typesetters were typically the most widely read and thus informed folks in those days.” Is this what your typesetter/printer told you? I’d be curious to know his exact background. What exactly did he do? Did he work in a major publishing house? Was he an independent job printer? Did he work in a small or large printing firm? When was he in the trade? Etc.
When would a typesetter proper in the early 20th century read text 3 times? Typesetters (better known as compositors in the trade) in that era were, by and large, specialists – that’s all they did, unless it was pretty much a one or two-man shop and the owner was also asked to edit the text. Typesetters, cold and hot metal alike, had their “head in the lead” -- composing text was not a leisurely job of reading and pondering the meaning of words. These guys worked fast (and in some cases still in the early 1900s, their wages strictly depended on it, because they were paid on a piece-work basis, which was the long-standing tradition), and in most cases, they didn’t care what the author wrote – their job was to set the words per the author’s text. Try this experiment: take any page of definitions out of the Oxford dictionary and then type it into your word processor as fast and accurately as you possibly can, while at the same time maintaining the exact wording, spelling, punctuation, bolding, font size changes, italics, etc. That approximates the job of a compositor (and my guess is you would not retain much of the substance of what you typed).
Perhaps more important, and as others have pointed out, has the fact that Gallaway was a compositor been clearly established?
lybrary wrote: … A typesetter develops very nimble fingers due to the constant handling of movable type. It is actually quite beneficial for a card shark to be a typesetter. This was an observation a typesetter shared with me. The dexterity of typesetters is no surprise. …
That seems a very large stretch. Moreover (and still assuming he was a compositor), it assumes that Gallaway was working with cold-metal type, but perhaps you’ve already established that possibility by inspection of the bankruptcy (“BK” for short) files. If McKinney primarily worked with cold-metal type, I would expect that he’d have a very large and varied stock of founts, in which case this important asset should be listed as an asset in his BK docs. If a stock of founts is not listed, do the BK docs state that McKinney had any linotype or monotype machines (the former being more likely if he had either), another high-value asset? In that case the nimbleness you refer to would have been typing on a lino or mono keyboard. If not, then it seems likely that McKinney outsourced the typesetting to a larger company (newspapers and larger printing houses often did composing work for smaller printing companies in that era), and if that’s the case, then it seems unlikely that Gallaway was a compositor of any real significance, at least at that time.
IMHO, the foregoing seem minor quibbles in comparison to the following:
where did Galloway get such cheating knowledge – knowledge that many have claimed to be revolutionary and cutting-edge – and how did he find the time to do so? Chris, are you suggesting it was book-learned? I’m not at all an Erdnase student, but I have the vague recollection that Erdnase hints (or outright says it?) that his knowledge was gained over a period of years spent earning the trust of sophisticated cheats. (Hopefully the Erdnase cognoscenti can chime in!) In any event, it seems improbable that Gallaway – a man who worked in the printing trade since the age of 14 – was able to learn the “real work” in his off-hours.
Tom Sawyer wrote:… I was quite interested in some of the views expressed above by Richard Kaufman, Richard Hatch, and Bill Mullins concerning the significance of the Edward Galloway bookplate in a copy of the first edition of Erdnase. …
Do we know that the bookplate image kindly posted by Bill Mullins is the same as in Gallaway’s copy of TEATCT? Or maybe I’ve missed something here …
Tom Sawyer wrote:... It could be a stock bookplate, but it is a heavily "typographical" design, which to me implies that he might well have had it printed by one of the printers he worked for. …
The one posted by Bill is also very peculiar for a
private bookplate. I’ve seen a few private bookplates over the years, and can’t recall seeing one looking so institutional, with the fields “Catalogue Page,” Shelf,” and “Volumes in Set” (though perhaps they exist).
Tom Sawyer wrote:... I do believe that bookplates are one of THE key ways in which some collectors like to say "This is who I am," or "Look how special I am for believing such cool things," or maybe be a little sententious. Nobody else really gives a rap what they include on their bookplates, but many collectors seem to. I think that the wording on the bookplate gives a good idea of "how Gallaway viewed Gallaway." …
Certainly agree with your first point, Tom, but how far can we press the point? After all, would we expect to see sentiments such as “You Can’t Learn a Damned Thing from a Book” or “Books are Worthless” on a bookplate?