Quote:
Originally Posted by Pat R
I haven't found anything in the book on an employee count but I do remember finding an article about work that ALC did for the government
I think it was for printing envelopes. I can't remember if it said anything about the employees but I do remember being impressed at the volume
they were printing. I'm trying to find it if I saved it but I did find this clip from Dec. 19 1905 on a copyright suit involving ATC and ALC.
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Interesting, it seems the ATC/ALC duo were getting in copyright trouble before the card sets even.
I haven't found much trying to just shortcut this and looking for Brett and American Lithography referenced together to find a smoking gun connection. I haven't found envelopes, but here is an order from the Department of Agriculture for 411,627 copies of a series of 8 illustrations and then 2 other illustrations in the same count. American and Brett Lithography are both listed as among the vendors for this order, on page 301 (
https://www.google.com/books/edition...sec=frontcover).
The scale of business must have been huge, millions of cards in sets that aren't super common today were printed according the Lelands ledger, large orders like this seem abundant. And Fullgraff only got commission on orders of $30,000 or more, at least for a time, which was a very large sum amount of money in that period.
I think what we are learning is that American Lithography did not actually "gradually combine" the activities of all their subsidiaries as the book says. The reference in the next paragraph, that "The American Lithographic company produced all the products that had been made by its component companies, including cigar box labels, posters, trade cards, pamphlets and book illustrations" seem to be closer to what we are finding. They are not so much the actual printer as the producer and orchestration of a whole host of clandestine subsidiaries or very friendly partners, producing art and images and sourcing much of the actual printing work to these 'other companies', even splitting specific jobs between different sub-parts of their network. Perhaps it is better to think of ALC as the producer and one of many printers among their component companies, not so much the actual printer of all of it as is generally said within the hobby.