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I.
Since all of the printers did not quote specifically on all the financial aspects of the task and none gave any final quotation for the whole edition, it is impossible to make any comparisons of their estimates for the complete job. It is, however, possible to examine their quotations for printing and for the cost of paper.[4]
The two highest bids for printing were made by John Dunlap of Philadelphia, founder of the Pennsylvania Packet and for several years prior to 1785 one of several public printers to the Continental Congress, and by Isaac Collins, printer to the state of New Jersey. They both estimated $12 per sheet for the printing of one thousand copies. Dunlap added $6 for 'two perfect Reams' of paper; and Collins requested an advance for two hundred thirty-three reams at $3 a ream. Dunlap noted that 'the above Price has been made moderate, in the Expectation that the Number of Copies, which will be printed above those ordered by Congress, may sell so as to make Amends, by a small Profit to the Printer.' Another high bid was made by Charles Gist of Philadelphia, who had the backing of Timothy Pickering, then Quartermaster-General of the United States Army and later Secretary of State, in a letter recommending his work and his personal qualifications to Congress. Gist's price of £6.10 ($17) included the cost of the paper.
Francis Childs of New York, a protegé of Benjamin Franklin, quoted £6 in 'New York Currency' (about $15) in Pica, or £5.10 (about $13.70) in English, including the cost of paper, and noted that 'if the Journals should make 5 Volumes in English—They would only make 4 in Pica.' When Samuel Loudon, a Whig printer of New York, offered his estimate of $8 per sheet for the printing, he suggested three grades of paper priced for two reams and two quires at $4.25 for 'middling,' $5.50 for the 'best,' and $7 for the 'finest.'
The low bids were sent in by Bennett Wheeler, publisher and bookseller of Providence, Rhode Island, and public printer to his own state, and Colonel Eleazer Oswald of New York, one-time public printer in Philadelphia and founder in that city in 1782 of the Independent Gazeteer: or the Chronicle of
One bidder, James Adams, the first printer in Delaware, who had attempted unsuccessfully, a few years earlier, to establish a newspaper at Wilmington, declined to mention specific sums of money, but included in his proposals the following remarks about how his bid could be determined: 'Now, Sir, my Proposals concerning the above mention'd Business, are as follows, viz. That after you fix on the Type you would have the Work printed on, and the Size of the Paper, the Printer or Printers who proposes to do the Work should inform you what his Price by the Sheet, for one thousand Copies will be, exclusive of the Paper, as there is no other Way with Certainty to come to the Knowledge what the printing of the Whole will come to, as it is not known how much it will make; and if he is a Person of good Character in his Profession, I hereby promise, to do the Work considerably cheaper, Provided you will allow me to carry it on here in Wilmington. . . .'
Concerning the cost of forming and printing the index, the comments of the printers were varied. Dunlap stated that 'A person of unquestionable Abilities will be employed to make out a complete Index, the Cost of which cannot be ascertained until it is finished, but Care shall be taken to have it done on reasonable Terms. . . .' Childs offered to print it 'in a small neat type at £5 [$12.50] per sheet,' while Gist estimated the cost at £9 ($24.00) per sheet, paper included. Wheeler and Oswald estimated the cost for the index to be the same as for the text of the Journals, Oswald further noting that there would be no charge for forming and arranging the index. Isaac Collins considered the forming of the index as quite separate from the printing, saying, 'The INDEX to be printed in smaller Type . . . for Twenty Dollars by the Sheet; the forming of which to be a separate Charge, the Expense whereof it is impossible at present to ascertain with precision.'
The only other mention of expense in the proposals was concerned with the cost of binding the completed volumes, and only six printers referred to the matter at all. Loudon said he could bind the Journals 'in Folio Volumes, in blue boards [for] about half a Dollar each,' and Kollock quoted the same figure for binding volumes of eight hundred pages. Gist would bind them for 5/ (66ç) in volumes of 600-700 pages, or for 6/3 (84ç) for 1000 pages. Childs' bid of 6/ (80ç in his currency) did not refer to the number of pages;
Unfortunately no accurate estimate can be made of the final and total cost of the new edition of the Journals, for only one printer, Charles Gist, was willing to venture a prediction of how many pages would be in the completed work. In his proposal he guessed, as a basis for establishing his cost per sheet, that the whole work including the index was 'supposed to amount in the type as per Specimen Y No. 1 to about 3000 pages or 750 sheets folio . . ..' His total quotation for printing and paper at the rate of $15 per sheet would therefore have been in the neighborhood of $11,250, but his bid of $12.50 per sheet for the index would have lessened that figure somewhat. At 80ç per volume for binding, $800 would have been added to the cost of printing and paper, resulting in a final estimate of close to $12,000 for the edition. But when one considers that the Journal entries for 1785 in Fitzpatrick's 1933 edition are in the twenty-ninth volume, each volume in the edition containing between three and four hundred pages, it is reasonable to believe that Gist may have under-estimated the total number of pages that would have been necessary to print the whole from the beginning to the first Monday in November, 1785.
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