A FORCE FOR REFORM: 

THE AMERICAN PRESBYTERIAN MISSION PRESS IN CHINA, 1836-1870 

by 
Kay Lee Dove 

Thesis submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School 

Of the University of Maryland in partial fulfillment 

of the requirements of the degree of 

Master of Arts 
1977 



Copyright Kay Lee Dove 1977 



APPROVAL SHEET 

Title of Thesis: A Force for Reform: The American 

Presbyterian Mission Press in China, 

1836-1870 

Name of Cand i date: Kay Lee Dove 
Master of Arts, 1977 

Thesis and Abstract Approved: 

Date Approved: 

,vl-\t...Q..: / 

) 

e~7~ 
Nae: Dr. Kenneth E. Folsom 

Rank: Associate Professor 

Department: History 



ABSTRACT 

Title of The sis: A Force for Re form: ThJ \Pre sbyterian 

Mission Pr e ss in China, 1836- 187b 

Kay Lee Dove, Master of Arts, 1977 

The s is directed by: Associate Professor Kenneth E. Folsom 

Departme nt of History 

The American Presbyterian Mission Press (PMP) was a 

vital, if indirect, force in stimulating intellectual reform 

in China. During its early years, 1836-1870, the PMP 

de ve loped technological innovations in the printing of the 

Chinese language that led to the modernization of the 

Chinese printing industry, which, in turn, provided text­

books for modern education and periodical literature for the 

development of public opinion. At the same time, the Press 

trained a corps of Chinese in modern printing technology , 

Which was then able to apply this training in Chinese private 

and governmental printing offices. The PMP worked with 

Chinese printing establishments, selling them Chinese type 

and assisting them to p urchase printing presses and other 

equipment which was necessary for use with metal movable 

type. 

Before the 19th century Chinese printing had become a 

finely developed art, but by this time, printing technology 

in Europe and America had modernized, and it was more 

efficient and less expensive. Type founders and missionaries 

in Europe and Asia reduced the 40 ,000-character Chinese 

language to amanageablenumber by determining which 



characters were necessary for printing Christian literature. 

Then they mass-produced them in metal movable type. The 

PMP was the pioneer that succeeded in this effort, thereby 

modernizing China's printing industry and promoting the 

massive introduction of Western secular as well as religious 

thought. 

The modernization of China in general rests upon the 

modernization of the printing industry, for this development 

Preceded and made possible the refor~s which followed it. 



ii 

To my Mother, whose confidence in me never wavered; and 

to Betty Baehr, whose immediate interest in my subject 

encouraged me and without whose bibliographic expertise I 

could never have finished. 



iii 

TABLE OF CONTENTS 

Chapter 
Page 

I NTRODUCTION .................. · . · . · · · · · · · · • · • · · · . . . . . . 1 

I. THE BACKGROUND OF THE PMP, 1836- 1844.......... 9 

I I. THE EARLY YEARS, 1845-1870 .................... 53 

III. PRINTING: A VEHICLE FOR REFORM IN CHINA ...... 101 

CONCLUSION ................. . ............ · ·. ·. ·........ 126 

APPENDI X A. DIMENSIONS OF THE EARLY FONTS ............ 131 

APPENDI X B. NUMBER OF PAGES PRINTED .................. 132 

APPENDI X C. EXAMPLES OF TYPE CASES ................... 133 

WORKS CITED .................. ·········•···•·•·•···· ... 136 



INTRODUCTION 

The Ame r i can Pre sbyterian Miss i on Pre ss (PMP) wa s a 

vi tal , i f i n di r ect, f orce in stimulating i ntelle ctua l re form 

in China. During i t s ear ly years, 1836-1870, the PMP 

develo ped tec hnological innovations in t h e pr i nting of t he 

Chine s e language t hat led to the modernization o f the 

Ch i ne s e printing ind ustry, wh ich, in t ur n, provided t ext­

book s for modern e ducation and periodica l literature for the 

dev e lopme nt of public opinion. At t he same time , t he Press 

t rained a corps of Ch inese in mode rn p rinting technology, 

Which was then a ble to apply this training in Chinese private 

and government printing offices . The PMP worked dire ctly 

With many Chinese printing establishme nts , selling them 

Chines e type and assisting them in purchasing printing 

Pres s es and other e quipment, wh ich was nece ssary for use with 

me t a l movable type. 

Th e Presbyterians went to China, however , not to import 

West e rn printing technology, but to spre ad Christianity. 

The fact that they contributed to a technological and 

inte llectual revolution in China was merely a by-prod uct 

Of t heir dedication to proselytizing t h e Chinese . A series 

Of Gre at Awakenings, or religious revivals , in Europe and 

.Ame rica during the 18th century gave rise to a "New Protes­

tantism" which emphasized proselytism . This rebirth of 

e vange lism grew out of a recognition by the Protestant 

l 



2 

churches that they had neglected Christ's specific command, 

which said, "Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel 

to every creature. 111 Therefore, they had an ardent desire 

to atone for this omission, while at the same time they felt 

a sincere compassion for the less fortunate who had never 

known the saving power of God's Word. They made the goal of 

Christ's disciples their own: spreading the gospel for the 

Salvation of man. It was this widespread belief in the 

regenerative power of the Bible that justified the expense 

of printing and distributing it and other Christian litera­

ture to the Chinese as early as 1810. 2 

The concept of a mission press resulted from the 

Protestant assessment of the tremendous task of spreading 

the gospel to all the world. New and efficient methods of 

Printing religious literature were required to accomplish 

such a goal. Wes terners in the early 19th century felt that 

mission presses were especially important for t he ir work in 

China because they believed t hat a large percentage of the 

Chinese people were literate. Numerous writers commented 

"that th in no other heathen country are ere so many readers 

as in China;" therefore, if enough Bibles and other 

Christian literature could be provided to the Chinese, they 

Would be persuaded to believe in Christianity. 3 

Christianity was not entirely new to the Chinese in the 

early 19th century. The Nestorians in the 7th century and 

the Jesuits in the late 16th century had tried to spread 

Christianity there. But Catholic missionary work had been 



3 

thwarted by anti-Western decrees of t h e Chinese government 

in 1669 and 1717. Protestant missionary activity, as begun 

in 1807 by Robert Morrison , was also illegal. 4 

Morrison 's mandate from the London Missionary Society 

(LMS) was to study Chinese and to translate the Bible. In 

Order to legitimatize his presence in China, he took a job 

With the East India Company, and while working as both 

trader and missionary, he translated the Bible into Chinese 

and compiled a Chinese-English dictionary. 5 

Other Protestant miss ionaries followed Morri son ' s 

literary example while they lived in Southeast Asia. They 

Were successful in translating an imposing amoun t o f litera­

ture and printing it in Chinese before the treaty settlements 

of the 1840's and 1860's, which allowed their residence in 

China . When they could travel and preach in China, there 

Were so few missionaries in comparison to the millions of 

Chinese, that evangelization through literature remained a 

necessary adjunct to preaching directly . Therefore, the need 

for millions of pages of Christian literature necessitated 

an efficient method of providing them. In time , the PMP set 

the example for other mission presses in this undertaking. 

Many Protestant missionary boards had their own mission 

Presses; some of which operated for short periods while 

Others were quite successful for many years. The London 

Missionary Society was the first society to undertake print­

ing Chinese, but that activity took place in Southeast Asia 

before about 1843, when it was moved to Hong Kong. The LMS 



4 

Pres s wa s sold in 1873 to a group of Chinese (possibly to 

Wang T'ao, who founded the first succe ssful Chinese language 

da ily in 1874 that was wholly owned and operated by 

Ch i nese) .6 The first mission press to be established in 

Ch i n a was that of the American Board of Commissioners for 

Fore ign Missions (ABCFM) at Canton in 1832. At t h e outset 

all of their printing was done in English since it was 

ille gal for Westerners to use the Chinese language. This 

Pre ss was destroyed by fire during the civil disturbances 

at Canton in 1856 . 7 The American Presbyterian Board of 

Fore ign Missions (APBFM), however, was especially far-

sigh t e d in regard to a mission press . Its first resolution 

to send missionaries to China, also provided for a s uper­

inte ndent of press and a printer to go along with them. 

Actually, specific plans for a press preceded those which 

sent missionaries into the field because a font of Chinese 

type was ordered from a Paris firm in 1837 , whereas the 

APBFM ' s first missionary did not depart fr om the U.S . 

until 1838. The press equipment was not shipped to China 

until 1844 , but when it arrived there , the printing of 

Chinese began immediate l y . The PMP operat ed first at 

Macao, then at Ningpo, and finally , it was located at 

Shanghai in 1860 . 8 

Before the 19th century Chinese printing had become a 

finely developed art, in fact, nowhere in the world has 

artistic printing surpassed that of China . By the nineteenth 



century, though, printing technology in Europe and America 

had modernized, and, if it wa s not as beautiful as Chinese 

printing, it was more efficient and less expensive . This 

was the main reason that missionary printing by Chinese 

5 

methods was out of the question. Studies made by missionaries 

comparing three methods of printing (xylography, litho­

graphy and typography) for cost and efficiency left no doubt 

that somehow the Chinese character had to be adapted to 

metal movable type. The vast amount of religious literature 

needed to convert China could not be produced by wood block 

Printing, which was the primary Chinese method . 

By 1810, type founders and missionar ies in Europe and 

Asia had commenced the bewildering, tedious process of 

r e ducing the 40,000-character Chinese language to a 

managable number by determining just which characters were 

necessary for printing Christian literature. This accom­

plished, they turned their efforts to mass-producing these 

characters in metal movable type for use with printing 

Presses. The PMP was the pioneer that succeeded on both 

counts, thereby modernizing China's printing industry and 

Promoting the massive introduction of Western secular as 

Well as religious thought. 9 

It is ironic that the Chinese printing industry should 

have been modernized by Western printing technology at a 

time when the Chinese were rejecting outright everything 

else Western. The critical exception was modern printing 



6 

technology . The Chinese, as the inve ntors of printing, had 

a long heritage in the art; therefore , when t hey r e cognized 

that the West had improved printing t echniques, they eagerly 

sought to obtain them. Their intere st in Western printing 

technology coincided with t he urgent need, after the Taiping 

Rebellion (1850-1864), to replace t he bulk of literature 

Which had been destroyed in that civil war. 

Of all aspects o f Western civilization, modern printing 

technology was the most compatible to the Chinese, and print­

ing was the natural vehicle for reform in a country whose 

literature was held in high esteem and whose officials were 

all scholars. The modernization of this indigenous art, 

therefore, was critical to the introduction of new methods 

of government, new scientific, medical and technological 

knowledge, as well as new social and political ideologies, 

and, of course, new religious beliefs. 

By the 1890 ' s the printing industry in China was 

sufficiently modernized to provide an abundance of textbooks 

dealing with Western subjects. It was also capable of 

supporting a rapidly growing periodical trade. Texts and 

journals informed and influenced the Chinese and caused them 

to instigate social and political reforms and to modernize 

t he ir technology. Therefore, the modernization of China in 

general rests upon the modernization of the printing industry , 

for this development preceded and made possible the reforms 

Which followed it. 



INTRODUCTION 
Footnotes 

1. Christ's commandment to his disciples to 

spread the gospel to all men is known to modern man as the 

Great Commission and is recorded in the King James Version 

of Mark 16: 15-16 as: 

And he said unto them, "Go ye into all the 

world, and preach the gospel to every 

creature. He that believeth and is baptized 

shall be saved; ... 

and Matthew 28: 19 as: 

Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, 

baptizing them in the name of the Father, 

and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost ... 

7 

2. During the nineteenth century, belief in the 

regenerative power of the Bible was widespread. Samuel J. 

Mills, an early social worker in New York, Philadelphia and 

Washington, expressed it when he described the neglected 

people of these cities: " ... the saddest destitution was the 

lack of the Word of Life. Bibles and religious literature 

must therefore be rushed to the aid of these ignorant 

sii:in~rs." Oliver Wendell Elsbr~e,_The Rise o'f the Missionary 

~1r1t in America, 1790-1815 (Williamsport, Pa.: The 

Williamsport Printing and Binding Co., 1928), pp. 150-151. 

3. John c. Lowrie, A Manual of the Foreign 

~issions of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of 

~erica (New York: William Rankin, 1868), p. 131; "Christian 

Missions in China,: Chinese Repository, III (April 1835), 

566; Thomas Smith and John O. Choules, comps., The Origin 

~nd History of Missions, Vol. I (Boston: S. Walker, 1833), 

p. 267. 

4. E. C. Bowra, "Christian Missions in Kwang­

tung," The China Review, II (July 1872-June 1874), 244-247. 

The first sustained missionary effort to establish Chris­

tianity in China was made by Catholics in the sixteenth 

century. In 1555 a Dominican friar, Gospard la Croix, 

briefly entered China, thus, inaugurating Christian 

missionary work. Around 1560 when the Portuguese traders 

settled at Macao, a Jesuit mission was founded, but 

missionary attempts to enter China were thwarted until 1589. 

Finally, Michael Ruggiero and Matteo Ricci, who had been 

living in Macao for about ten years studying the Chinese 

language and customs, were able to persuade some officials 

to allow them to live in a village north of Canton. They 

built a chapel there and continued acculturating themselves 



8 

and proselytizing the Chinese. By 1601 Ricci had moved to 
Peking where he established a miss i on. G. Nye Ste iger, 
"China's Attempt to Absorbe Christia nity," T'oung Pao, XX IV 
(19 25-26), 229-230. 

5. Emanuel Herman Giedt, "A History of t he 
Planting of Protestant Christianity in the Province of 
Kua ngtun, China" (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Yale, 
1936), p. 64; British and Foreign Bi ble Society, Reports of 
~he British and Foreign Bible Society , Vol. III (1814-15), 
(London: J. Tilling, 1815), p. 32. For a translation of 
the edict forbidding the printing of Chr istian books in 
Chinese, see Smith and Choules, p. 502. 

6. W. S. Holt, "The Mission Press in China," 
Chinese Recorder, (May-Augus t 1897), 207, 211; Rufus 
Anderson, Memorial Volume o f the First Fifty Years of the 
~erican Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions 
(Boston: Published by the Board, 1862), p. 344; Paul A. 

Cohen, "Littoral and Hinterland in Nineteenth Century China: 
The 'Christian' Reformers," in John K. Fairbank, ed., The 
~issionary Enterprise in China and America (Cambridge:-­
Harvard University Press, 19 7 4), p. 203. 

7. Ibid., 210; Anderson, p . 344. 

8 . Annual Repo rt o f the Board of Foreign Missions 
of the Presbyterian Church in the United Stat~s of America, 
11337, p. 5; 1838, p. 17. The Presbyterian records clearly 
~tate that teaching, translating and printing were to be 
integral parts of the missionary enterprise. They also 
refer to this Board as the Foreign Mission Board of the 
Presbyterian Church (sometimes followed by "USA" to distin­
guish it from the Southern counterpart, which uses, "US"). 
In this paper APBFM is used to distinguish the Board of 
Foreign Missions of the American Presbyterian Church from 
those of the English , Scotch, Canadian and Southern 
Presbyterian Churches. 

9. Lin Yutang, A History of the Press and Public 
2Pinion in China (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 
1936), p. 84. 



CHAPTER I 

THE BACKGROUND OF THE PMP, 1836-1844 

The history of the Presbyterian Mission Press began on 

August 25, 1836, when the Western Foreign Missionary Board, 

subsequently the American Presbyterian Board of Foreign 

Missions, wrote a resolution expressing its intent to 

e stablish a mission in China, which would include an 

e vangelizing arm: a mission press. The fact that a reso­

lution called for the organization of the PMP two years 

before a Presbyterian mission actually went to China makes 

this mission press unique, as other mission presses were 

appended to missions which were already in the field. 1 

The authors of the reso l ution did not realize the 

number of intricate technological probl ems involved in their 

endeavor nor the amount of time that would be required to 

resolve them. The process of adapting one of the world ' s 

most difficul t written languages to the modern printing press 

involved the PMP ' s evaluation of previous Chinese and 

Western methods of printing Chinese. Once the most efficient 

method was identified, it was modernized by adapting it to 

the latest Western printing technology . Walter Lowrie, a 

non-technical layman who was affiliated with the Presbyterian 

Board, was the central figure in synthesizing the existing 

knowledge about printing Chinese with the newly developed 

technology of the West . 

9 



10 

It was eight years after the Board's resolution of 1836 

before the Press was actually established in China because 

the technological expertise needed to prepare a Chinese font 

Of type was located in Paris and the printing presses and 

other apparatus had to be manufactured and assembled in the 

United States. The employment of a superintendent for this 

new enterprise also required considerable time. In 1838 a 

Printer was employed, who, two years l ater , conceded that he 

had "been providentially prevented" from taking the job. It 

Was not until 1842 that Richard Cole, an experienced printer, 

Was hired by the Board. He immediately began casting type 

in New York from the Chinese matrices which the Board had 

Purchased from the type-founder, Marcellen LeGrand of Paris.2 

The preparations for the Press in New York had reached 

a favorable stage by 1843, so that in October of that year, 

Cole and his wife finally embarked for China to establish 

the PMP. They took with them one hand press and its fixtures, 

the Chinese matrices that had been made in Paris, a type 

casting machine and a set of tools for bookbinding . They 

arrived in Macao in February 1844 and joined the Presbyterian 

missionaries who had gathered there to wait for the Treaty of 

Wanghsia with the United States to become effective. They 

chose Macao rather than Hong King, which was already occupied 

by the British, because living expenses were less and it was 

considered a more heal thy e nvironment. 3 

Even though the Board had decided that the press would 

be permanently situated at Ningpo, the missionaries on the 



11 

spot decide d to begin printing operations as soon as possible 

at Macao. The job of locating a suitable building for the 

pres s, of unpac k ing and setting up the equipment and of 

havin g type cases, countertops and tables built was begun 

righ t away . These matters, in addition to arranging the 

type cases which contained between three and four thousand 

diffe r e nt type, was no small undertaking for Cole, who could 

not spe ak or read Chinese. Fortunately, Walter Lowrie, the 

missionary son of the Corresponding Secretary, had been 

studying the language for two years and could assist him. 

Another valuable assistant was Ayuk, a young Chinese who had 

gone to the U.S. with Robert Orr , a former missionary, in 

1841. Ayuk had been trained as a printer in the U.S., and 

he returned to China with Cole as an employee of the 

Board.4 

Cole had brought 3,500 matrices to China. However , 

0 nly a few type had been cast from them in New York; there­

fore, the type foundry was set up and type casting began 

immediately. A shipment of 323 additional matrices arrived 

from the u.s. on April 1, 1844. Although the matrices had 

been fashioned after the standard Chinese models in the 

~ang-hsi Dictionary, the majority of them were the divisible 

kind which, though easi ly read, were sometimes considered 

inelegant by the Chinese. This problem had been anticipated 

and an agreement with LeGrand had been reached to rework the 

unacce ptabl e ones. The Press issued two small publications 



12 

to assist in identifying these characters and perfecting 

the font . One was a 44 page Specimen Book, which contained 

the elements of the font, and the other was a 110 page 

booklet , which listed the 22,841 characters that could be 

formed by the type then on hand. These publications were 

very important because they presented all the elements of 

the entire font in a printed form that could be reviewed by 

the Chinese teachers, who were extremely helpful in e valuat­

ing the missionaries' use of the language and the workmanship 

of the Press. These publications were also sent to Lowrie 

and LeGrand for their ready reference in di scussing the 

matrices for particular type. At one point Cole instructed 

Lowrie to consult the Specimen Book in order to recognize 

certain d iscrepancies. The three-way, long-distance 

consultations between Asia, America and Europe continued for 

several years before the Paris font was finally perfected.s 

Three Chinese workmen, consisting of one compositor and 

two pressmen, along with two part-time helpers, printed the 

first literature on August 30, 1844, barely six months after 

the Press had arrived in Macao. It consisted of 5,000 copies 

of Ephesians, 3,000 for the Baptist mission and 2,000 for the 

Presbyterian mission. Other printing done during the first 

nineteen months in China included: Luke, 14,500 copies; 

~, 15,000 copies; "Two Friends" (a tract), 10,000 copies; 

and "Explanation of the Ten Commandments," 5,000 copies; as 

we11 as some job printing for Westerners in Macao , 10,000 



13 

pages. The number of pages printed while at Macao was 

3 ,642,000. This output was impressive considering that the 

greater part of the type used had to be cast and arranged in 

cases, that the office fixtures had to be manufactured and 

that all of the workmen except one had to be trained. 

Inexperience and lack of proper facilities as well as 

Pressure to "prove" that Chinese could be economically 

Printed by movable type, all tested the Superintendent's 

ingenuity. Of these first works printed, most were paid 

for by the American Bible Society and the American Tract 

So · ciety and not by the Presbyterian Mission. In fact, these 

so . cieties became for a time the most active clients of the 

PMP. So much so, that when they took away their business, 

the Press was adversely effected. It was never the intention 

Of the Press to print only for Presbyterians; rather it 

always aimed at furthering Christianity through printing 

regardless of who paid for it. That was its purpose; it 

Was an agency to evangelize China, first and foremost. The 

fact that Chinese printing was modernized as a direct result 

of the PMP ' s operations was an unexpected, though happy, 

C . . 
·01nc1dence, which, in time, resulted in intellectual and 

Political reform in China. 6 

The Press was successful in providing millions of pages 

of literature to Protestant missionaries in the years to 

come because of the foresight of one influential Presbyterian--

Walter Lowrie (1784-1868). In 1836, at 52 years of age, 



14 

Lowrie decided to change his career, which enabled him to 

dire ct t h e establishment and functioning of the Press for 

the nex t thirty years. He resigned his comfortable, presti­

gious position as Secretary of the U. S. Senate to become the 

Corresponding Secretary for t h e American Presbyterian Board 

of Foreign Missions. His decision was confounding to many 

of his friends and family. Former Secretaries had served 

in this position until their retirement, and since Lowrie 

Was esteemed by important men in the Senate and was somewhat 

of an expert on constitutional law and political history, it 

seemed to many that he was making a foolhardy decision in 

leaving his established position. He was giving up a 

comfortable home in Washington, a better than sufficient 

salary and a wide circle of friends among eminent men for a 

life in New York City, with which he and his family were 

unfamiliar, and at a salary barely able to sustain them . 

This, for a position which was not fully understood , but 

Which surely would entail much hard work and frustration. 

Foreign mission boards at this time were a new phenomenon, 

ana their purpose was unknown to many . It seemed incongruous 

for a man in Lowrie ' s position to ally himself, thus , with 

such an untested enterprise. 7 

Perhaps Lowrie ' s resignation woul d not have seemed so 

abrupt to his contemporaries if they had known these facts 

about his personal life: He had been converted to Chris­

tianity in 1802-0 3 during the Great Awakening, which had 

1 
· 8 

eft a religious imprint on thousands of Americans . 



15 

Consequently, he had aspired to become a minister, but 

marriage and "other impediments" got in the way of his 

e ducation. His appointment as a justice of the peace in 

Butler County, Pennsylvania in 1807, and, later, as County 

Commissioner had led him into public service, which included 

s e ven years in the Senate of Pennsylvania. He served as 

U.s. Senator during 1819-1825. 9 While in Washington he 

served on the Executive Committee of the American Coloni ­

zation Society, where he became acquainted with several 

outstanding Christian leaders who expressed a great zeal for 

the foreign missionary enterprise. Lowrie developed a keen 

interest in missions, which led him in 1831 to donate 

anonymously $1,000 to pay the salary of the secretary of 

the newly-formed Western Foreign Missionary Society , the 

forerunner of the APBFM . 10 And in 1833 Lowrie revealed his 

intense allegiance to the miss ion cause when he stated 

"••.that he could freely part with every child he had if 

they were called to leave their native shores on such an 

erranct . 11 11 Three of Lowrie's five sons did answer the call 

to foreign missions. John (1808-1900) went to India for 

three years, but his health failed, and he returned to New 

York where he was appointed Assistant Corresponding Secretary 

to the Board; he continued with the Board for the rest of 

his life. Walter (1819-1847) served in China for five years 

before he was martyred by coastal pirates . Reuben (1827-

1860) also went to China as a missionary, but died there 

afte . 12 
r only six years of service. 



16 

In performing his duties at the Board , Lowrie had the 

capacity to direct his attention to many details and to 

function amid interruptions. For instance, it became part 

of his job to meet the missionaries and their families 

before they embarked. He gave them " farewell counsels" in 

Which he revealed his broad knowledge of the differing 

Political and social conditions of the world, and when they 

had reached their destinations, he wrote to them giving 

support and encouragement. In one such letter, written in 

July 1840, he said, "Ever since you left us we have been 

thinking of you, talking of you, and, I hope praying for 

You."13 

Lowrie also became a point of contact between missionaries 

in the field and their families at home. He found it his 

duty to shop for the supplies that were needed abroad and to 

arrange for their shipment. The early letters to him from 

the superintendents of the Press are frequently quite 

lengthy and filled with detailed descriptions o f exactly 

Which type of equipment was needed for the shop or home. 

Cole wrote in December 1845 that he and his wife wanted a 

stove and a Dutch oven. The stove, he instructed , should 

burn coal and be designed to bake, boil, roast and to fry 

all at the same time. It did not seem too much to ask for 

two such stoves, one for himself and the other for an English 

Baptist missionary, Rev. W. Hudson, who was living in Ningpo. 

As for the Dutch oven, Lowrie was reminded that in New York 

th· " k Kettle. " 
is utensil was known as a Bae He also was 



cautioned against forgetting the lid "for without it, it 

would be perfectly useless." 14 

17 

It would seem that Lowrie's public and private life had 

Prepared him for his new career with the Board (1836-1868). 

In retrospect, many believed that Providence had directed 

his life with this as the goal.
15 In support of that con­

tention was Lowrie's unusual interest in and devotion to the 

study of the Chinese language at a time when few Americans 

knew anything at all about China. At least as early as 1825, 

When he was a Senator, he expressed concern about the 

religious condition of the Chinese when he wrote in his 

journal, "Should the way open for my going to them ... I feel 

I could leave all for that purpose." 16 Perhaps it was this 

desire to go to China that motivated Lowrie to study the 

Chinese language until he had acquired a "creditable rudi­

mentary mastery" through untutored, persistent effort. 17 He 

Probably believed that somehow he would go to China, but fate 

had des ignated him a pioneer "silent evangelizer," for he 

never went there. 

Lowrie knew the intrinsic value of a mission printing 

Press; h is work enabled him to promote the institution; 

and he had had enough practical experience with the language 

to eval uate the western printing of Chinese. He expected 

that the time would come when the Chinese people would read 

the Bible as generally as the English or American people and 

that mil lions of copies of it would be printed and 



universally circulated. This quality of support from the 

top, both psychological and financial, provided the PMP 

With the necessary ingredients for it to succeed beyond 

Lowrie's most expansive dream. Ironically, his vision of 

18 

success, that of converting the Chinese to Christianity, did 

not materialize. Rather, success came to the PMP, not in 

the intellectual realm, but in the technological, and 

Lowrie's hand was guiding it all the way. 

In the ensuing years between the resolution that 

Provided for a press and the actual establishment of the 

Press in China, Lowrie and the members of the Board dealt 

With many frustrations . There was delay in acquiring 

enough money to outfit the press, in obtaining a font of 

Chinese type, and not least, in employing a qualified 

Printer who was willing to take the job . Throughout the 

nearly century and a hal f o f Protestant missionary endeavor 

in China there were only a few men who were minister­

Printers. A great devotion and sense of calling was 

evident in most ministers , which was not necessarily felt 

by a man trained in the printing trade . And, of course , 

seminaries did not generally offer training in printing . 

One can imagine the difficulty o f finding these attributes 

combined in a person whose age and position were also 

compatible with making a ma j or change in his life. 

In spite of numerous obstacles, though , the Board 

Proceeded by doing what it could at the moment to prepare 



19 

for the press. In October 1836 Lowrie ordered a set of 

Chinese matrices from a Paris typefounder, Marcellin 

LeGrand. The Board had reviewed a specimen of his Chinese 

Printing and had read his prospectus, which announced that 

he hoped "to solve the problem of representing the figurative 

language of China with the fewest possible elements , without, 

however, altering the composition of the symbols. 1118 

LeGrand's effort, begun in 1834, was the first systematic 

attempt to produce an extensive font of Chinese type by 

Punches and matrices. 19 In the interest of science, he 

Undertook the arduous task of cutting steel punches to 

make matrices which would form the most common Chinese 

characters. At first he had believed that 9,000 matrices 

Would be required, but as he worked with the language, he 

realized that about one third of that number would suffice. 

The PMP had ordered 3,000 matrices in the beginning, but 

from time to time other characters were added, until Cole 

started printing with 3,Soo. 20 

This project was deemed possible because French 

Sinologists had ascertained that many Chinese characters 

could be typographically divided, thus cutting to a minimum 

the total number of matrices needed for a font of Chinese 

characters. After these innovators determined which charac­

ters were divisible and which were not, they reduced the 

divisible ones to their simplest elements, the radical and 

the primative, which were struck off as type on separate 

bodies . The radical element of the character was cut on 



20 

one third of a type body and the primative on two thirds of 

a body so that they could be recomposed into different 

characters, all of the same size. Some characters could be 

divided horizontally, but the majority were divided ver­

tically. For the indivisible characters, single type had 

to be made. The dimensions of these characters were the 

same as the English type so that they could be used with an 

ordinary letterpress. By interchanging the component parts, 

an aggregate of more than 22,741 characters could be formed 

by the LeGrand font when it was completed. 21 

It was not e nough simply to manufacture a font of 

Chinese type; a method of filing so many pieces of type in 

the type cases had to be devised. For this purpose the 

characters were arranged under the 214 radicals of the 

Chinese language as designated by the K' ang-hsi Dictionary. 

Each piece was identified by a number that was cut in the 

nick of the body, so that a printer could compose Chinese 

"with as little difficulty as numerical figures . 1122 

It was found in using the Paris font that the size of 

the component parts of many characters was out of proportion. 

In addition, these characters, fashioned by f o reign crafts­

men, even though they were assisted by Chinese students who 

Were in Paris at the time, appeared stiff and artificial 

and the strokes were too slim and often ended in a slight 

hook Which could not have been made in characters written 

w· 
ith a brush . Samuel Dyer of the London Missionary Society 



21 

in So u t heast As ia, who was also making a font of Chinese 

type , commente d that although the workmanship on this font 

Was exquisite , it was not suitable for printing book s 

in tended for t h e Chinese. He said, "It is ine legant; t h e 

part s are v e ry much out of their proper proportions; a n d out 

o f about 300 t hat I have seen, not ten could be selected as 

e qual to what would b e cut by a Chinese artist . The 

c haracte r is Ch inese, no doubt, but t he taste displayed in 

its execution is Fre nch." 23 He felt that the Le Grand system 

of d ividing the characters resulted in improperly formed 

characters. This method of dividing the character was also 

tried by a German typefounder, William A. Beyerhaus, who 

made a font of type for the PMP, after which the making of 

divisible type was abandoned because a better process of 

making matrices was discovered. 24 

When Lowrie had ordered the matrices, he had expected 

t hat within a year the Board's own typefounders in New 

York could take the LeGrand matrices and produce Chinese 

movab le type in any amount. This was an unrealistic time­

table, but the project was new, and no one, not even 

LeGrand, anticipated the amount of labor involved . He 

remarked that "of all the languages in the known world, the 

most difficult to represent by movable type, is ... the 

Chinese."25 

The Board had sent five hundred dollars to Paris in 

Partial payment of the projected cost of $4,218.75, only to 



22 

find that this estimate was not adequate, and was subsequently 

assessed an additional $1,600 to cover the cost of polishing 

and numbering the matrices. The manufacturing of punches 

and matrices is the most expensive aspect of producing any 

font, and it is multiplied when making a font of Chinese 

characters because of the large number required. A common 

English printing office case contains 56 pieces, but a full 

font of English type contains 240 pieces . In comparison, 

the projected number for LeGrand's font in the beginning 

Was 2,000, which grew at the hands of the Americans to 

contain at least 3,500 by the time the PMP began printing. 

As it was the first font used by the Press , LeGrand's 

matrices, therefore, served as the basis of the PMP's type­

foundry in China. 26 

After having ordered matrices from Paris, Lowrie 

continued to study the progress of other Western efforts on 

the same problem--that of finding a cheap and simple method 

Of casting movable type for printing Chinese . He sought 

out information about the previous efforts of other mission 

boards and looked carefully at the progress that they had 

made. When he learned that Samuel Dyer of the LMS in 

Penang was casting type, he asked a Presbyterian missionary 

in the area to send him a list of the Chinese characters 

Which Dyer had determined were necessary for printing 

Christian literature. Meanwhile, he checked the Paris 

matrices as they were received for accuracy and duplication. 



23 

In September 1840 he wrote that he had received Dyer's list 

and had found about 600 characters on that list which he 

did not already have. He sent to Paris for them to be made 

and when they were incorporated with those already in New 

York, Lowrie said that he had "matrices sufficient to make 

all the characters made by Dyer, besides six or eight 

thousand others." In 1842 Lowrie looked to the end of 

China's war with Britain and foresaw that if China was 

"thrown open," many books would be needed, and he contended 

that "now is the time to prepare for that state of things." 

He expressed great confidence in the value of the Press, 

While he stressed that it could not be brought into 

existence "in a day." 27 

The continued production of the LeGrand matrices 

rested on whether the typefounder would get additional 

orders for complete sets of matrices. He had stated that 

it would be economically infeasible to manufacture fewer 

than two complete sets, even though he had received orders 

for Partial sets. In time, the Royal Printing Establish-

ment of France, the British Museum and the LMS ordered 

complete sets, but other missionary and Bible societies 

Were unwilling to take a gamble on the usefulnes s of a 

font of Chinese metal type. To some, the cost was pro­

hibitive, while other groups even questioned the feasibility 

of the effort since there was no assurance that this was 

the . . Ch. 28 
most efficient method of printing inese. 



24 

The most widely-used Chinese method of printing--the 

Wood block method--had served them we ll for a thousand years, 

a
nd 

because of its use, they generally printed small editions 

of their works that could be done well by this method. The 

technique for wood block printing was very simple, if 

exacting. The text, comprising a leaf, which is the same 

as two pages, to be printed was transcribed on thin, tough, 

transparent paper by an expert calligrapher. A hardwood 

block one-half or three-quarters of an inch thick that had 

been cut to the size of a leaf was finely planed and 

squared, after which the surface was treated with a thick 

Solution of boiled rice to close the pores of the wood and 

to make the surface very smooth. When the rice sizing was 

hard, the manuscript was pasted face down on the block. The 

block was then put aside to dry , after which the paper was 

rubbed off leaving the residue of inked characters in 

reverse on it. An engraver then took his sharp gouges, 

Picks, and chise l s and cut away all the background , making 

the characters stand in relief on the wood block. This 

Process was tedious and required a sure hand as well as 

dev t· 0 ion to the task. If a mistake was made in the en-

graving of the block, a plug could be cut out and the error 

replaced with the correction. After the block was proof­

read, it was set upon a flat surface, such as a table, and 

the · · h · k ch· . k 
relief portion was brushed wit in . inese in was 

made With l amp-black obtained from pine wood and blended 



25 

Wi t h g lue a nd aromatic sub stances. Le af-s i zed paper was 

t hen l a i d on t he block and lightly brushe d until all parts 

of t he r e lief came into contact with it. The pape r was 

t h e n r e moved a nd dried, producing two pages of p rint which 

r epr e s e nted an e xact facsimile of the original manuscript. 

Th e paper was printed only on one side, and was fol ded 

doub l e to p r o d uce two page s in a bound book. It was 

e st imated t hat a block cut in this manne r would print about 

lO,ooo copies before it began to show wear. 29 

Th e size of the edition of missionary publications 

Was many times greater than that of the average Chinese 

Printing office. For instance, in 1812 the Chinese govern­

ment c e nsus put the population of China at 360 million, 

each of whom the Protestant missionaries wished to approach 

through preaching and religious literature. One can 

imagine the task of printing this number of Bibles, in 

addition to several varieties of pamphlets, tracts, and 

educational materials. There had to be an efficient, quick 

a nd inexpensive method d eveloped to print Chinese! 30 

John Lowrie, who was working at the Board, agreed 

totally with his father on the question of producing metal 

movable Chinese type. He wrote a circular letter to three 

missionaries in April 1843 in which he told them that he 

Was strongly in favor of giving the Press, implying the use 

Of d f . t . 1 H t d 
metal movable type , a full an · air ria. e sugges e 

that every new invention was met with some doubt and 



26 

misgivings. At this point he was in favor of considering 

it an "experiment," but one which had to be tried without 

conservative restraints. He felt that it was out of the 

question to expect enough Christian literature to be 

Printed on wood blocks. He said, "We live in the age of 

metal and steam. our plans should include thoroughly 

efficient machinery capable of enlargement to any required 

extent."31 

By 1840 the Board had received 2,276 matrices from 

Paris, and in 1841 it stated that nearly three thousand 

matrices had been completed. When they were compared with 

the list of characters which were used by the different 

m· . 
issionaries to China, Lowrie determined that only 270 mor e 

Were needed . More than 14,000 characters could now be 

formed by using the divided-character font. A specimen 

Page was attached to the 1841 Report of the Board which 

compared the size of the Paris type with the Dyer type . 

Dyer had produced a font of 3,300 characters which was 

con · sidered a sufficient number to print the Chinese Bible 

and r 1 . . e igious tracts, but in time this number was about 

doubled. The Dyer characters were twice the size of the 

Par· is characters; seven of them filled one square inch on 

the Page. The Annual Report of the Board for 1841 gave a 

comparison of the cost of printing the Bible by using each 

font. It stated that an octavo Chinese Bible with Dyer 

Char th 
acters would contain 3,367 pages, whereas e same 

" 0 lu 684 
me using the Paris type would require 1, pages. If 



27 

S,ooo copies of each Bible were printed, the Dyer would 

re · 
quire 2,434 reams of paper while the Paris would require 

only 1,218. With paper costing $3 a ream , the Dyer would 

cost $7,302 and the Paris would cost $3,651. The difference 

in cost for ld b $3 651 
paper alone wou e , . The response to 

th
e Dyer type was not totally negative, for it was considered 

Well-made and properly proportioned. It was felt that the 

Dyer type would be the ideal size for printing the text in 

a commentary of the Bible. 32 

The precedent for printing Christian literature in 

Ch' 
inese had already been set by the LMS and the ABCFM 

before the Presbyterian Press went to China . Therefore, it 

Was not considered unusual in 1843 for the Board to ship a 

complete press to China, for there were mission presses 

already located in various other countries of the world. 

In India at this time the Board had four presses with fonts 

Of type for . A b' Id R d D 
English, Persian, ra ic, no- oman, an eva 

Nagari characters. As of 1842 these presses had printed 

twelve d h th h d 
million pages and they state tat ey a enough 

Paper ·11· 33 A c 
on hand to print twelve mi ion more. s orres-

Pona · ing Secretary of the Board, Lowrie was well aware of 

th
e Printing operations of mission presses throughout the 

World. He was also cognizant of the work in Chinese which 

haa b 
een done by other mission presses. 

These presses had been publishing in Chinese in 

Va · 
rious centers outside China, such as Malacca, Batavia, 



28 

Calcutta, Penang, Seramapore and Singapore because a Chinese 

imperial edict of 1812 had made it a capital offense for 

Westerners or Chinese to print books on the Christian 

religion in Chinese . In spite of this prohibition, some 

missionary printing was carried on surreptitiously in 

Canton, but the major operations were set up in Southeast 

Asia . Even in the face of extremely adverse conditions the 

missionaries never questioned their belief that "the press 

Will be the great engine with which to batter the walls 

of separation, superstition and idolatry. 1134 Between 

1812 and the 1844 promulgation of the Toleration Edict, a 

score of missionaries produced under the most trying cir­

cumstances a considerable amount of literature in Chinese. 

By the end of the Opium War (1839-1842), they were able to 

Provide the Chinese with translations of Christian literature, 

Western geographies, histories, international law and 

Science. It might be noted, though, that only an excep-

tional few Chinese at this time realized the need for China 

to learn about the West, and even though the missionaries 

had done a commendable job of translation of useful material, 

the Chinese were not yet ready to make use of it nor to 

adopt the Western methods by which most of it was printed. 35 

Undaunted by the Chinese lack of interest, Westerners 

in Europe, America and Asia had experimented with various 

methods of manufacturing Chinese type for about fifty years 



b e for e Lowrie and his associates a t the Board were able 

t o fi n d an a dequate solution to t h e problem in the late 

l8 50's. 

29 

Th e Chinese themselves had exper imented sporadically 

sin c e the eleventh century with manufacturing movable t y pe 

f rom a vari e ty of substances, namely, clay , tin, wood , 

bron ze, copper and an alloy of lead and zinc. Wood was the 

substance most oft en used, but copper was preferred for its 

durability. One wonders, then, why the Westerners could 

not simply a dapt their printing method s to the Chinese? 

First o f all, the Chinese never developed an efficient 

method of manufacturing type. They consistently carved the 

type on the face of whatever material they u s ed . They did 

not take this a step further and use i t as a punch for 

making a matrix, which would have been per manent , and cast 

type from it. Rather, each type was carved anew , which 

r e · quired an enormous amount of time because the Chinese 

never divided their character typographically as the 

Westerners were very quick to do. Therefore, a font of 

type in the average Chinese printing office consisted o f 

from 50,000 to 250,000 separate type . The idea of con-

trolling so many pieces of type, most of which were similar 

in appearance , was unthinkable to Westerners . Even the 

Ch· inese were at times overwhelmed by this very problem. 

The second stumbling block to the e a sy adoption of 

Ch· inese methods was that the Chinese had never used a 



30 

Printing press. Their operations were totally manual, 

a nd again, costly, in terms of manpower . To have adjusted 

to Chinese methods would have meant a retrogression 

technologically for Westerners; therefore, a new method 

of Printing Chinese was the only acceptable answer. 

Robert Morrison was the first missionary to advocate 

the use of typography to print Chinese on a large scale, 

a nd he encouraged the Protestant mission boards to devise 

an adequate process. On his own he employed Chinese 

engravers to make metal type in order to print his trans­

lation of the Bible. Unfortunately, when they were half 

finished, the type was destroyed by the engravers them­

selves because the Manchu authorities appeared to be on the 

Verge of discovering the operation. However, Morrison 

finally succeeded in having his work printed in Malacca in 

1814--the first Chinese book to be printed by the Western 

method. 36 In support of this innovation he wrote to the 

editor of the Chinese Repository in 1833 that "the impor-

tance of bl t ta mod t 
procuring Chinese mova e ypes a era e 

expense, is ... an object of the first importance toward 

the d' h . t· 
1ffusion of useful knowledge and the Cris ian 

re1 · . . 
igion ... I know nothing so important as the casting of 

Cheap movable types, of Chinese characters." 37 

Morrison had persuaded the East India Company to 

e stablish a printing press in 1812 to print his A Dictionary 

Of th 
e Chinese Langua e. A professional printer, P . P. 



Thoms, was sent to Macao in 1814 with a press, type and 

other printing equipment. He employed a few Chinese type 

cutters to engrave the characters on the face of type made 

of an alloy of type metal and tin. In this manner Thoms 

made two fonts of different sizes known as "English" and 

"Two line great primer. " Nearly 200,000 separate type were 

cut for these fonts. Although this included an assortment 

of over 20,000 characters, there were still not enough of 

each character to print Chinese books . Also this type was 

crudely made, and so, it was only used for bilingual works 

for Western students of Chinese during the forty years that 

it Was in service. Besides Morrison's Mandarin dictionary, 

of Which 600 copies in six volumes were printed , Walter 

Benry Medhurst ' s Hokkeen and Samuel Wells Williams' Canton 

d' . 
ictionaries, as well as about twenty other Anglo-Chinese 

Works, were printed with these f onts. They were then given 

to Samuel Wells Williams , printer for the ABCFM, by Sir 

Benry Pott i nger when he wound up the affairs of the East 

India c 38 ompany in 1842. 

Questions dealing with metal movable type to print 

Ch· inese was a constant concern of Bible Societies and 

m· . 
issionaries. In 1813 Joshua Marshman, a Baptist at 

Serampore, gave a detailed account of the desirability of 

metal movab l e type o ver wood blocks. It rested on the 

convenience of being able to make several proof sheets 

and correct them, the beauty of the character cut in metal, 

31 



32 

t h e choice of printing either large or small editions, the 

durability of metal and its reuseability after the type 

Was worn, the possibility of being independent of the 

Chinese after the matrices were cut, t h e simplicity of com­

bining Chinese characters with the Roman alphabet, and the 

speed of printing. He admitted that the expense in the 

beginning was greater, but that it diminished as progress 

Was made. After the initial work of producing punches and 

matrices, millions of type could be cast from them at little 

expense. He predicted that the expense of casting metal 

type for the whole Bible would be one quarter of that of 

having wood blocks cut, after which the type would be 

available for future printing . One of the drawbacks in 

Using wood was that the fine strokes of a character which 

Was engraved in wood showed wear in a short time. Even 

large editions of a work wear out metal type, but wood 

Wears much quicker unless the type is very large, in which 

case a greater amount of paper is needed, increasing the 

Size of the book as well as its costs. For instance , in an 

edition of 10,000 copies of the Bible the cost for paper 

alone would be three times as much when using wood as when 

Using metal type. Another important consideration was that 

the presses used for printing Chinese with metal type could 

be Used to print any other language . Marshman determined 

that in every way metal type printing was far cheaper than 

Wo d 
. t· 39 

0 block or wood movable type prin ing. 



33 

One of the key personalities in the development of 

Chine se movable type was Samuel Dyer (1804-1843), a co­

worker of Morrison's. Dyer was not trained as a printer 

When he took up the cause of movable type printing. Ex­

periments and books were his only instructors, and h e had to 

train his assistants as he learned the process himself. In 

183 3 he procured a set of engraved wood blocks from which 

he cast metal plates the same thickness as metal type. He 

th
en sawed the plates into squares, thereby obtaining metal 

movable type; this same method was tried in New York in 

183 4 and by the Royal Printing Office i n Paris in 1838. 

Neither endeavor proved to be satisfactory because the 

characters were rough and all discrepancies in the block 

Were transferred to the stereotype plates, and consequently, 

to the individual type. Dyer also estimated that type made 

by this method was not durable enough to last for more than 

five to seven years, after which the process would have to 

be repeated . Nevertheless, he made 4,000 pieces of type by 

this method, considering it an expedient until punches and 

mat · 
40 

rices c o uld be made for a permanent font. 

It appeared for a long while that there was no 

altern t· · · t· to that of stereo 
a ive in movable type prin ing -

typing by means of wood blocks. Dyer's idea of cutting 

steel punches from which copper matrices could be struck 

a nd type cast seemed unattainable with a language of more 

than 40,0QO characters. After studying the problem for 



many years it occurred to him that not all the characters 

in the language would be necessary to print Christian books. 

He considered the possibility that there were many un-

necessary ones. To determine just how many, he decided to 

Calculate the number of characters actually used in native 

books which were similar in style and thought to Christian 

literature. Then he did the same with Christian works 

already in the language. He selected fourteen works in all 

and noted the number of times each character occurred, 

thereby determining the proportion of each character needed 

for a font. The proportions ran from l to 700 for various 

Characters. After several months work , he found that fewer 

than 5,000 different characters would be sufficient for 

Ch · 
ristian literature and that an additional 1,800 would 

allow most any literary printing. Once Dyer had solved this 

Problem, which no one had attempted before , choosing the 

Proper proportion for each type seemed extremely simple . 

He said, "The proportion of type should be calculated just 

in the same way that the proportion of each particular 

LETTER has already been calculated for the use of English 

Printers."41 

Encouraged by the prospect of using as few as 5,000 

Characters in a font, Dyer began making punches and 

matrices in 1833. He was aware of the divisibility of 

certain characters and found that he could cast the radical 

and the primative separately just as LeGrand was doing. He 

34 



35 

was very careful in the manufacture of the permanent 

punches, for this was the key to the quality of type which 

would be made from the matrices. 42 Dyer wrote to the LMS 

expressing his dedication and caution; he said, "I have 

Pondered the matter nearly six years. I have thought, and 

Planned, and compared and advised and read, and prayed ... 11 43 

His caution was also evident in the excellence of his work. 

He scrutinized every character and compared it with those 

of the K'ang-hsi Dictionary. Every punch was tempered by 

his own hand, every matrix was struck under his own eye, and 

the ingredients for type metal were prepared by him 

P~rsonally. His work shop was in a shelter at the end of his 

house. Here he had the machine for striking the matrices. 

His foundry for tempering punches and casting type was in a 

sma11 out-house and his own desk was his finishing shop. 44 

Dyer succeeded in cutting 1,845 punches for a 

large-sized font in an assortment of characters sufficient 

to print many tracts and scriptures. A smaller-sized font 

Was not completed before his death in 1843. At this time 

there seemed to be no prospect that his two fonts would 

ever be completed. Punch cutting in Asia was suspended 

Until 1846 when Richard Cole , formerly of the PMP, began 

to work with the LMS in Hong Kong and completed the Dyer 

Punches for the small set by 1847. Each set of the Dyer 

font consisted of 4,700 characters, which were subsequently 

doubled, so that the complete fonts were sufficient for not 

0 nly religious literature, but also for ordinary Chinese 



36 

books. They were clear, elegant and durable and thoroughly 

Chinese in the style of the character which made them very 

desirable a few years later to Chinese newspapermen. 

PMP e ventually acquired the Dyer font and made many 

duplicates of it for Chinese publishers of periodical 

literature.45 

The 

The LeGrand and Dyer fonts have been compared as to 

size. The PMP had intended to obtain the Dyer fonts but his 

Premature death made it seem as if they would never be 

completed. It was a stroke of good luck, then, when 

William A. Beyerhaus of Berlin proposed to aid mission work 

among the Chinese by cutting a font of divisible type 

between the sizes of Dyer's fonts. Samuel Wells Williams 

of the American Board of Commissions for Foreign Missions, 

While stationed in canton, examined the Beyerhaus specimen 

of Whole and divisible type and determined that the Prussian 

had perfected the LeGrand method of producing matrices. 

When Williams came to the U.S. in October 1845, he conferred 

With Walter Lowrie of the American Presbyterian Board of 

Foreign Missions and suggested that he order a font of 

3 ,200 matrices from Beyerhaus. Naturally, Lowrie was 

interested and offered to pay half of the expense of cutting 

the punches and producing the matrices in Berlin if Williams 

Would pay for the other half. Williams agreed and began a 

lecture tour in the u.s. to raise his share of the cost. 

These lectures were afterwards revised and published in 1848 



37 

as ! he Middl e Kingdom, a comprehensive study of China which 

has p r oved to b e an accurate assessment of that country in 

the nine t e enth century . 46 

Th e h istory of the PMP is strewn with instances of 

de lay and disappointment, and obtaining the Beyerhaus font 

Was one o f those e xasperating experiences. When the order 

Was s e nt to Beyerhaus in 1846 along with LlO O sterling, a 

long period of anxiety for Lowrie began which was not 

r e solved until the font reached the PMP in 1859 . The three-

Way correspondence between Lowrie in New York, Beyerhaus in 

Berlin and Williams in Canton did not f acil i tate the progress 

of completing the font. As joint owners of the unfinished 

font, Williams and Lowrie tried to keep in touch, but found 

that the months-long silences were not conducive to efficient 

management. Also there was the question of whether one of 

them should own the matrices while the other owned the type 

cast from them or whether they should maintain joint owner­

ship. Another problem involved agreement on a list of 

characters to be produced. At least two lists of desired 

Characters were sent to Beyerhaus; in time Lowrie settled 

on one of them, causing some matrices to be duplicated 

While others were omitted. 47 

Another source of anxiety was the time required to cut 

the punches, which was grossly underestimated and caused 

Low · 
· t 

rie to become disillusioned and impatien · Beyerhaus, 

just as LeGrand before him, had little idea of the time 



ne cessary to cut punches for 4,000 Chinese matrices. He 

Wrote Williams on June 7, 1846 that he believed he could 

With the assistance of two good workmen, cut "100 or 150 

I 

matrices in a month, and I hope to be able to finish them 

(say 4,000) towards the end of 1847 .. . " 48 (The LeGrand 

38 

matrices were eight years in arriving in China, after which 

five more years were spent in perfecting them. The Dyer 

font was at least ten years in the making, while the 

Beyerhaus font would be twelve years in getting to China.) 

Lowrie advised Williams in 1852 that if Beyerhaus did not 

complete the work in one year that he would seriously 

consider cancelling the contract. The trouble with that was 

that Beyerhaus had already been paid L200 sterling and had 

submitted 1,500 matrices which were of no value without the 

remainder. Lowrie did threaten Beyerhaus, who, nevertheless, 

Would not promise to finish on the date which Lowrie demanded, 

but continued to work as he could. He pointed out to Lowrie 

that he wanted to do his work well. Lowrie sent a friend, a 

Mr. Donelson, who was in Berlin, to visit Beyerhaus and to 

assess the situation. Mr. Donelson reported that Beyerhaus 

seemed to be working as fast as possible. The quality of 

Beyerhaus' work was such that Lowrie could not reject it 

even though he was bitterly disappointed at the length of 

time required to get it done. He wrote to Williams that 

"th. II • 

ls has been a troublesome business. During the years 

that Beyerhaus was completing his work, the PMP obtained the 



39 

Dyer fo n t, which Lowrie, however, considered less desirable 

than the Beyerha us. 49 

The painsta king job of examining each character for 

flaws was probably Lowrie's greatest contribution to the 

Pre ss. He worked tenaciously for about fifteen years on 

both t h e Paris and Beyerhaus fonts. He was one of the few 

Pe rsons in the U.S. capable of analyzing Chinese characters. 

He commente d during the drawn-out process with Beyerhaus, 

tha t if he live d to see the font in use, he would consider 

his life's work finished. He must have said this at a 

t. 
. 

ime of extre me fatigue because he continued to work for 

t e n years after the font was in use in China. 50 

Lowrie's feelings toward Beyerhaus were far from 

v · . 
i nd ictive, as evidenced in his letter in 1853 in which he 

informed Beyerhaus that a Chinese publisher at Foochow 

desired a font of movable type. This man had said that he 

could sell his book s for twice the usual price if they 

We re printed by metal movable type. Lowrie predicted that 

Whe n the trouble was settled in China (the Taiping Rebellion, 

185 0-1864), that there would be many Chinese printers 

Want· ing metal type. Lowrie saw this as a ready market for 

Beyerhaus and he was willing to help the typefounder make 

contacts in China.51 It is interesting to note that there 

Was a great demand in China after 1864 for movable type to 

reprint the mass of Chinese literature which had been 

destroyed in the Rebellion . By that time, though, the PMP 



40 

foundry was able to supply much of this demand, and being 

near at hand, was probably preferred to E a uropean foundry. 

Finally, the Beyerhaus matrices were sent to China 

and b ecarne another font in the rapidly growing assortment 

at the PMP. But before this was accomplished, Lowrie had 

made one other effort to hasten the time when the Press 

could actually begin printing with this font. One of the 

boarding students at Ningpo, Ding Sing, had been brought to 

the U.S. by Mr. Lyle as a servant. Lowrie assumed that he 

could be taught to cast the Beyerhaus type, thereby com­

Pleting some of the work in the U.S . before it was sent to 

China. 
h' d 

He bought a mold and casting mac 1ne an arranged 

for Ding Sing to work under the supervision of a typefounder. 

He Was · ld db 
optimistic that the experiment wou succee ecause 

Of the Chinese's apparent abilities . However, Ding Sing did 

not take an interest in the work and was frequently not even 

in th 
52 

e shop, so the experiment failed. 

That adapting Chinese characters to Western printing 

Was 
h' 

a successful endeavor is now obvious, butt is was not 

always the case. There were many detractors to the enter-

Prise 
I some of whom believed that the only way to evangelize 

Was through the spoken word. They, of course , saw no need 

for 
Printing presses in China at all. There were others 

Who, Upon seeing the excellent printing done by the Chinese, 

be1 · 
l k 

ieved that mission printing should use wood b oc s as the 

Ch· 
inese had done for centuries. The economy of wood-block 

Printing as done by the Chinese was difficult to ignore. 



41 

The Ch' _ inese Repository in 1833 printed an artic le by Dyer 

Pointing out the desirableness of Chinese metallic t ype and 

then followed 1· t immediately with an article on the cheap-

ness f 53 
0 printing with wood blocks. 

The advantages of wood-block print ing were several, but 

they were not all applicable to missionary needs. Those 

advant ages most frequently mentioned were: the ease of 

Preparing blocks by the Chinese engraver, the possibility of 

engraving all sizes and forms of characters on the same 

block th · 1 · · f h . t· t h' h 
, e simp 1c1ty o t e prin 1ng appara us w 1c c ould 

be p acked on a workman's back and carried along on itinerant 

trips, the inexpensive apparatus for printing , that is, no 

machinery, and the fact that this was t h e safest method of 

Producing an accurate text in Chinese.
54 

Some critics of mission printing felt that the time and 

expen . se involved was misdirected. Not all of these people 

were equally informed on the problems and goals of printing 

inc hinese. It was the goal of mission printing to be able 

to 

and 

Produce a large amount of religious literature economically 

expeditiously. An important aspect of mission printing 

that of the amount to be produced. Millions of copies 

Of tracts and Bibles were necessary for the millions of 

Ch · 
J.nese people. Block printing could never suffice. In an 

e ffort to meet this need the missionaries evaluated their 

method and achievements at every juncture. In 1834 Walter 

Benr . · h · 1 

Y Medhurst, a missionary-printer with the LMS, w 1 eat 

Batavi·a 
d t 

made a study of the comparative cost, a van ages 



42 

ana a· 
isadvantages of the three methods of printing then 

Used: xylography, lithography and typography. He was well 

acquainted with all of them and had used lithographic stones 

to Print his Chinese and English dictionary, Corean syllabary 

ana J a apanese vocabulary. Lithography allowed him to 

COmb" 
ine easily different languages on the same page, which 

Was n 
ecessary in dictionaries. One of the drawbacks was 

th
at the stones cracked easily; another was that he had to 

depend upon Chinese stone cutters for the engraving. There 

Were · . 
. 

similar disadvantages in wood-block printing. He 

fauna that the cost of printing 2,000 Chinese Bibles by 

XYlography would be Ll,901; by lithography, including press 

a
nd 

stone, Ll,262; by typography, including punches and 

type, Ll,515. He concluded that printing Chinese by metal 

type Was preferable to every other method for the same 

reasons as had Marshman. Medhurst's calculations included 

th
e transportation of Chinese workmen and materials to 

Batavi·a 
· · t· 

or Singapore where most missionary prin ing was 

done at the time_ss 

There is no indication that the missionaries considered 

Print· . 
ing in Chinese 

Product to Ch" ina. 

in the West and shipping the finished 

The process would have been too expensive. 

Labor 
t d the time 

Was plentiful and cheap in the Eas , an 

required to transport printed materials from the West and 

to distribute them in China would have been a detriment to 

the · 
missionary effort. 



43 

The missionaries reasoned that a gestation period for 

the gospel 1·n ch· d db f h 
1na was nee e e ore t ey began to preach 

directly, and so they printed a large body of literature in 

Southeast Asia and distributed it to the Chinese throughout 

the area for about twenty years before China was opened. 

Medhurst made a tally of literature which was printed 

between 1810 and 1836: 

At 
At 
At 
At 

Malacca and Canton 
Batavia 
Penang 
Singapore 

450,469 
191,394 

43,900 
66,000 

751,763 

Books and tracts 
II 

II 

II 

I-Ie s .d ai that by counting the number of pages of each work 

it Was determined that nearly eight million pages of religious 

PUbl · . lcations in the Chinese and Malayan languages had been 

Printed during this time. 56 

The Chinese response to this literature was very 

encouraging. For example, as William Mi lne (1785-1822) of 

the Lu 
T t 

L~s distributed copies of the Chinese New es ament 

amon 
t · h 

g the numerous Chinese immigrants in Ba avia, e was 

to1a by one of them, "If heaven prosper me, I purpose to 

return to Tokeen ... and will distribute and lend these good 

books to my brothers and to my relations.1157 This is 

e~actly what the missionaries had hoped for, but there is 

scant evidence that this actually happened, although there 

is evidence that some of this literature actually found its 

Way into the interior of China, and even more importantly, 

from the missionary point of view, into the Emperor's 



44 

Palace.58 Stories claiming that the Emperor had read 

Chri t· s ian tracts served to reenforce the missionaries' 

conf'd 
l ence of a successful lite rary campaign throughout 

China. Their communications from the field urged the speedy 

e stablishment of mission presses . Morrison's opinion has 

been noted, as well as Marshman's, Milne's and Dyer's. It 

has also been seen that William ' s influence on Lowrie was 

decisive in the vigor with which the PMP was developed. 

The Presbyterian administrators, who responded to the 

Pleas from the field by resolving to send a mission press 

to China in 1836, were thinking in rather narrow terms of 

Simply supplying the Chinese with Christian literature. 

They Were accustomed to a plentiful supply of religious and 

secular literature; therefore, the solution for China 

seemed to be clear- cut; a printing press provided with 

Chinese type would go to China and print all the literature 

neces 
h' Th 'f' 

sary to enlighten and save the C inese. e rami i-

cations of the decision to print Chinese by movable type 

dawned slowly as the monumental task of the typefounder 

Unfolded over a period of four to five years . Even LeGrand 

Was astounded by the difficulty of cutting punches for 

Chinese characters. Tremendous credit is due Lowrie and 

his associates for their ability to evaluate the previous 

We t 
. . t. 

s ern experiences, mostly missionary, in prin ing 

Chinese, and to combine the best process-- typography--

With th . . h l They produced a 

e latest printing tee no ogy . 



Viable organization which was capable of printing Chinese 

more cheaply and rapidly than anyone had done before, 

Chinese or Western. But their initial efforts were not 

sufficient to produce the revolution in Chinese printing 

Wh' lch was forthcoming in the late 18 00' s . 

45 



CHAPTER I 
Footnotes 

46 

Forei . l. . William Rankin, Handbook and Incidents of 

N. J _nWMissions of the Presbyterian Church, USA (Newark, 

Voiu·· · H. Shurts, 1893), p. 51; Rufus An erson Memorial 

~!Jle <;>f the First Fifty Years of the American B~ard of 

the ~ssioners for Foreign Missions (Boston: Published by 

Board oar , 1 62 , p. 97. The Wes~ern Foreign Missionary 

earl was formed by the Presbyterian Synod of Pittsburg as 

Chur; a~ 1831. After the division of the Presbyterian 

Schoo~ ~nto two bodies, called the Old School and the New 

Forei in_l8~7, the Old School Assembly adopted the Western 

Miss·gn Missionary Board and named it the Board of Foreign 

APBF~rns of the Presbyterian Church (Referred to herein as 

York ~ and its offices were moved from Pittsburg to New 

SecreCity. Lowrie joined the organization as Corresponding 

tary one year before the move. 

Mi 2. Annual Report of the Board of Foreign 

~ons f - -
of .Arn . o the Presbyterian Church in the United States 

~, 1840, p. 14; 1842, p. 12; 1844, p. 29. Here-

r referred to as Report of the Board. 

p. 20. 3. Rankin, p. 51; Report of the Board, 1845, 

Chin 4. W. s. Holt, "The Mission Press in China," 

~, X (May-August 1897), 212. 

5. Ibid.; Report of the Board, 1845, p. 21. 

Bisto . 6. Microfilm Collection at the Presbyterian 

Bere rical Society, "China Letters," Roll 190, Letter# 110. 

after referred to by roll number. 

n.p 7. John D. Wells, Hon. Walter Lowrie (New York: 

and·~ ~869), pp. 5, 7. Walter Lowrie was born in Edinburgh 

titlem~grated to the U.S. when he was eight years old. The 

g0 \7 the Honorable" followed Lowrie after he left the 

But~~nment. James A. McKee, ed., ~0th ~e~tury His~ory of 

~ounty, Pa. and Representative Citizens (Chicago: 

Ond-Arnold Publishing Co., 1909), P· 140. 

Mis • 8. Gaius Jackson Slosser, "Walter Lowrie, 

Xxx~lon Organizer" Presbyterian Historical Society Journal, 

173 3 r (March 1958), 6. The Great Awakening which began_in 

and ~as followed by another in 1800. A more long-lasting 

rev·Wldespread revival took place between 1825-1833. These 

e\7al\7al~ prepared the churches for the momentous task of 

Ser1;elizing the whole world. one indication o~ the 

Usness of the churches is found in the rapid growth of 



47 

s eminarie s. 1 
Amer1.· ca- b In 800 there was one Protestant seminary . 

Y 1820 th 
1.n 

one h ' e r e were seventeen and by 1880 there were 

Am _undred forty-two. Leonard Woolsey Bacon, A History of 

P--==-pe~1.~an Christianity (London: James Clarke & Co., 1899), 

. V1.1., 252. 

~- . 9. Ibid., 8; Biographical Directory of the 

~ue r1.can c Tiiz-=-j'-7~-:::-::~:.::=:;:--;:::::--::----i.;;;;:_,;.~::..;.__::~ 

~ing ongre ss, 1774 1961 (Washington: U.S. Government 

Office, 1961), p. 1239. 

of the 
Vol. I 
43-44_ 

10. Ibid., 11; James E. Bear, "The Mission Work 

Presbyte rian Church in the United States in China 11 

(unpublished, at Union Theological Seminary), pp.' 

11. Ibid., 12. 

A 1 
12. James Grant Wilson and John Fiske, eds., 

~on's Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Vol. IV 

LowW _York: D. Appleton and Co., 1888), pp. 45-46; John c. 

Bakr1.e, Memoirs of the Hon. Walter Lowrie (New York; The 

184 ~r ana Taylor Co., 1898), p. 164. Even though before 

Chi there were no Protestant missions on the mainland of 

the~a, they were still considered Chinese missions because 

their ultimate goal was to settle in China. In the meantime 

smaf~ missionaries began their study of the language and did 

Pena scale preaching and publishing in Singapore, Malacca, 

su ng and anywhere there were Chinese. Ashbel Green 

Ch{gested_that they try to evangelize the thousands of 

coanese fishermen while they were at sea along the China 

th 
st , and even the soldiers who had been sent out to guard 

an~m. ~.Historical Sketch or Compendious View of Domestic 

Ph1.iore1.gn Missions in the Presb terian Church of the USA 

a elph1.a: Williams. Martien, 1838 , p. 159. 

(Shan . 13. Gilbert McIntosh, The Mission Press in China 

gha1.: The American Mission Press, 1895), p. 2. 

14. Roll 190, Letter# 88. 

deny a 15. Wells on page 6 states that "one might as well 

Plan of God in the case of Moses, as of Mr. Lowrie." 

16. Slosser, 17. 

fu1 1 
17. Ibid., 13. For several years, even.when 

ha Y employed Lowrie rose early enough each morning to 

Ve t ' 
'd f d . . 

ar Wo hours of Chinese study. With the ai o a 1.ction-

Pry and grammar he could translate from Chinese. His 

heactica1 understanding of the language was invaluable when 

Was faced with decisions regarding the Press. Gree n, 



p. 178 L · mi . · _owrie became well versed enough to assist 
"M~si?naries to China in the study of the language 
Fors~ions of the Western Foreign Missionary Societ; 

11 

- eign Missionary Chronicle, IV (October 1836), 173. 

48 

of T 18. _Mcin~osh, P: 3; K. T. Wu, "The Development 
Libr!pography in China During the Nineteenth Century," The 
A Mary Quarterly, XXII (July 1952), 294; John c. Lowri~ 
of t~ual of the Foreign Missions of the Presb terian Chu;ch 
p": 

13
~-USA, 3rd. ed., New York: William Rankin, 1 68 , 

14
30

, 19. Cast type production began sometime in the 
engr sand 1440's by Johann Gutenberg (1398-1468) who 
stru~~e~ a letter in relief on a hard metal punch, which was 
mat . into a small slab of softer metal to provide a 
mat~~x--the intaglio impression of the letter. Then the 
with ix was placed at the bottom of a mold, which, when filled 
the molten metal, formed a shank of the same height with 
Whi ~haracter in relief at one end of the shank. The shank 
be 1 was long enough to be grasped with the fingers, could' 
Pri ~~ked into a frame or chase to make a rigid and uniform 
Pro~ ing su~face. Matrices and molds could be reused to 
sio uce an indefinite number of type all of the same dimen­
lea~s. _Early type metal consisted of a combination of molten 
iro' t~n and pewter and was made hard by the addition of 
Earr~ bismuth or antimony. Roger J. Trienens, "The Library's 
19

76
~est Incunabula," The Quarterl)' Journal'. XXXIII (January 

(
2
nd' 55-56; Daniel Berkeley Updike, Printing Types, Vol. I, 

Jame· ed. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1937), p. 5; 
the ;.Moran, Printing Presses, Histor and Develo ment from 
i\ngiifteenth Century to Modern Times Berkeley and Los 

e es: University of California Press, 1973), P· 18. 

Ty 20. Rankin, p. 51; Wu, "The Development of 
Pr \'~raphy, ''. 2 9 3-294 ; S • Wells Wi 11 iams, "Movable Types for 
18?S)ing Chinese," Chinese Recorder, VI (January-February 

, 28-29. 

'.I'yp 21. Lowrie A Manual, p. 132; Williams,"Movable 
dis e s ," 29. Joshua M;rshman, a Baptist missionary at Malacca 
Ch·covered early in the nineteenth century that most of the 
th!nese characters consisted of two elements, which he called 
im formatives and primatives. He considered this a very 
ap~~rtant discovery for students of the language'. but did not 
Char~ it to printing. Green, pp. 175-176, A_Ch1nese 
Pa cter which is not itself a radical, consists of two 
girts, the radical a~ the phonetic, or when it does not 
shve the sound of the character, the primative. The radical 

OUld · d . 1 Part give a clue to its sound. The ra 1ca may occupy any 
of the character. It may be at the top, the bottom, on 



49 

the l e ft · 
F. W or right, surrounding it, or in the middle f •t 

• Baller AM d · p · 
o i . 

Enal 
1 

•. • ~ an ar in rimer, quoted in Ma thews , . Ch . _ 

~ish Diet . . (R •· d . . inese 

Harv , ionary, evise American Edition, cambrid e· 

ard University Press, 1969), pp. xxii-xxiii. g · 

of sh 22. Ibid., p. 294. The Chinese devised a numbe 

the ~nemes to ar~ange characters in a dictionary. Toward r 

Sele t~ of the Ming dyn~sty the mode of arranging them by 

numbc ing the_most prominent part, or radical, fixed the 

char er of radicals at 214. The remaining part of the 

The Ma~ter was termed the primative. S. Wells Williams 

~iddle Ki d d V 1 r ( ' 

Scrib 
I 

ng om, rev. e ., o. , New York: Charles 

on thner s Sons, 1883), pp. 591-592. An historical sketch 

Clas~ ~eve~opment of Chinese characters and their subsequent 

(News~fication is found in Leon Wieger, Chinese Characters 

0 rk: Paragon Book Reprint Corp., 1965), pp. 6-22. 

( .London• w· . 
llliams , 

23. Evan Davies, Memoir of the Rev. Samuel Dyer 

John Snow, 1846), pp. 101-103; Rankin, p. 295; 

"M bl ova e Types," 29. 

24. Rankin, p. 297. 

25. Ibid.; Report of the Board, 1838, p. 17. 

p. 
13 

26. Ibid., p. 51; Bear, p. 49; Lowrie, A Manual 

(Mar hl; "Chinese Metallic Types," Chinese Repository, III ' 

C 1835), 533. 

27. McIntosh, p. 3. 

oft . 28. Rev. Albert B. Robinson, Historical Sketch 

Mls"-J:..._e Missions in China (Philadelphia: Woman's Foreign 

Low:~~nary Society of the Presbyterian Church, 1881), p. 18; 

, A Manual, p. 132; Report of the Board, 1838, p. 17. 

Theo 29. Williams, Middle_Kingdom, _Vo~. I, p. 601; 

Frand~re L. DeVinne, The Invention of Printing (New York: 

Typocis Hart & co., 1876), re~rint 1969, pp. 113-115~ . 

Ch· graphus Sinennis "Comparison of the Modes of Printing 

Th~nese," Chinese Re;ository, III (October 1834), 249; 

and mas Francis carter, The Invention of Printin in China 

~s Spread Westward 2nd. ed., New York : The Rona 

Pr~~s_company, 1955), pp. 34-35; Berthold Laufer, Paper and 

~ing in Ancient China, (New York: Burt Frai:iklin, 1931, 

spe~int, 1973), pp. 13, 26-27. William Milne, ii:i A Retro­

Ch· t of the First Ten Years of the Protestant Missions to 

~ Malacca: Anglo-Chinese Press, 1820) stat~s on p~ge 

and that wood blocks for printing were one-half inch thick 

Al Were carved on both sides to conserve storage space. 

thso the chief translator at the Kiangnan Arsenal states 

at Printing blocks used there in 1881 were engraved on 



both s ide . . 

five th sand tha t a skilful printer could print b hand 

China ,,
0 ~sand l e aves in a day. John Fryer, "Sciencr in 

' ature , XXIV (May -October 1881), 55. 

Cond i tion 3 0. M. Simpson Culbertson, "The Religious 

a ser of the Chinese and Their Claims on the Church" 

Presbm~n,. (New York: Board of Foreign Missions o f the ' 

Y erian Church 1857), p. 5. 

31. McIntosh, p. 3. 

also A 3 2. Report of the Board, 1841, pp. 10, 32. See 

PPendix A. 

33. Report of the Board, 1842, p. 24. 

Repos. t 34 • "Christian Missions in China," Chinese 

~, III (April 1835), 566. 

50 

literat 35. Wylie made a comprehensive compilation of the 

186 7 Ure published by missionaries in Southeast Asia before 

(Sha~ hAlexander Wylie, Memorials of Protestant Missionaries 

Reprigtae: American Presbyterian Mission Press, 1867), 

1967.n by Ch'eng-wen Publishing Company: Taipei, Taiwan, 

Pione 36. William John Townsend, Robert Morrison, The 

~ of Chinese Missions (New York: Fleming H. Revell, 

China',,P·, ?9; K. T. Wu, "The Development of Printing in 

Waite' Tien Hsia Monthly, III (September 1936), 156; 

(Londr Henry Medhurst, China: Its State and Prospects 

on: John Snow, 1838), p. 264. 

(Pebru 37. "Literary Notices," Chinese Repository, I 

ary 1833), 414; Medhurst, pp. 572-573, 575. 

38. Williams, "Movable Types," 26. 

the B .. 39. British and Foreign Bible Society, Reports of 

~lsh and Foreign Bible Society, Vol. III (London: J. 

Bibi!ng, ~815), pp. 473-474. Hereafter referred ~o ~s 

~- _Medhurst , p. 262. The c?st of printing with 

which locks varied according to the quality of the wood from 

Whi h the blocks were made and the style of character in 

cutcinthey were cut. For comparison, a certain set of blocks 

cut i the superior style would cost $1,800~ the_same set 

$g oon the middle style, $1,40 0 and in the inf ~rior style, 

qualit The cost of printing also varied according t? the 

suPeriy of paper and ink used. Again, each.copy using the 

~at . 0 r materials would cost $3 for the middle grade 

Not~riais, $2 and for the inferi~r , $1.50. "Literary 

lces , " 421-422. 



40. Davies, pp. 83-84, 88 . 

"Mov bl 41. Ibid.; "Literary Notice s , " 41 7; Willi'ams , 

a e Types," 29. 

42. Williams, "Movable Types ," 2 6 . 

43. Davies, pp. 94-95. 

44. Ibid., pp. 96, 102-103 . 

45. Williams, "Movable Type s," 29- 30 . 

46. Ibid. 

184 9 47. Letters from Lowrie: to Williams, December 

Grou a nd May 2, 1853; to Beyerhaus, June 28, 1853. Record 

(RG ~1
31 at the Presbyterian Historical Society Archives 

, PHS) . 

. 

48. Roll 190, Letter# 205. 

51 

17, 

184 9 N 49. Letters from Lowrie: to Williams, December 1 7 

June' 10
°vember 29, 1851; to Beyerhaus, August 18, 1853, ' 

Octob ' 1854, RG 31, PHS. Beyerhaus, in a letter to Lowrie 

quali~r 22 ~ 1846, suggested that Lowrie send him some good ' 

order Y Chinese paper by one of Donelson's dispatches "in 

Andre to save the high postage." Roll 190, Letter# 172. 

Pleniw J. D~nelson was envoy extraordinary and minister 

he acfotentiary to Prussia from 1846-1849 and it seems that 

Visited as a courier between Lowrie and Beyerhaus. He 

Welled the Prussian, taking some Chinese books to him as 

matr·as one of the lists of characters to be made into 

Clif~ces. Notable Names in American History, (3rd. ed. 

on, N.J.: James P. White & Co., 1973), p. 435. 

50. Letters from Lowrie to Williams, November 29, 

August 2, 1851. RG 31, PHS. 

51. Letter from Lowrie to Beyerhaus, August 18, 

RG 31, PHS. 

185 3 
52. Letters from Lowrie to Williams, August 1, 

'May 2, 1854. RG 31, PHS. 

53. "Literary Notices," 421-422. 

Print. 54. F. Hirth, "Western Appliances in the Chinese 

Ro _ing Industry" Journal of the North China Branch of the 

l8o;1 Asiatic· soci'et , xx (1885), 168. Morrison decided in 

be • to learn the art of engraving himself so that he could 

tra Lndependent of Chinese workmen. When he had finished 

nslating Acts, he bought a set of graving tools and began 



52 

to cut b wood bl ut soon learned that there was more to engraving a good ock than he had imagined. The time required for a made :orkma n to engrave Acts alone was about 200 days, which tran 
1

t cle ar to Morrison that he could not possibly be alts at~r, e ngr aver, and printer as well. There was no 

Pp 
er

2
n
3
at1ve for him but to employ Chinese workmen. Milne 

• 2-233. 
I 

Chin 55. Medhurst, pp. 569-570. A writer in the studese Repository in April 1834 recommended the "unwearied and yrof the ~hinese language," but asserted that "preaching writ~ omulgating the Word of God should be the primary, Chin in? the secondary object," "Spreading the Gospel in 
a,' 567. 

its t The Annual Report of the ABCFM for 1812 stated that mis _wo great objects were the establishment and support of Onesions and the translation and publication of the Bible. butiquarter of its annual income was earmarked for distri­lan ng the Holy Scriptures to the unevangelized in their own theg~ages. But in 1863 the charter was revised to reflect work act that Bible Societies had been formed to do that Year· Rufus Anderson, while writing about the first fifty exci: of_the ABCFM said that "the distribution of the Bible grandes inquiry ... but the preaching of the gospel is the and means appointed by Infinite Wisdom for the conversion lib salvation of man. Without this, the Scriptures, however amoerally distributed will have comparatively little effect tong any people .... the command is to 'preach the gospel 
evi~very creature ... ' " The practice of the ABCFM was Pri ently consistent with Anderson's view, because their thenter, Samuel Wells Williams, in 1845, could not obtain lectfunds necessary to buy the Beyerhaus font, and he made a "ll.tture tour to earn the money for it. James Stuart Udy, Tow itudes Within the protestant Churches of the Occident Biard the Propagation of Christianity in the Orient: An Bo!~~rical Survey to 1914," (unpublished Ph.D . dissertation, 

n University, 1952), pp. 246, 268. 

fiel The PMP was for several years the agency in the soc·d which printed and stored Bibles for numerous Bible let· · dist _ies which had been formed to translate, publish and 
ribute them. Udy, p. 267. 

56. Medhurst, p. 592. 

57. Bible Society, Vol. III, P· 335. 

Pla . 58 • Emanuel Herman Gied t, "A History . of the %ia~ting of Protestant Christianity in the Provrnce of Uni gtung, China•• (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Yale 
Versit , Y, 1936), p. 177. 



CHAPTER II 

THE EARLY YEARS, 1845-1870 

The history of the PMP before 1870 is the story of an 

evolvi 
ng enterprise. Its physical base was relocated 

frequently and its policy bore the influences of printers 

from Paris , Berlin and New York. When the Press was finally 

settled in Shanghai in 1860, the direct involvement of 

was gone, and that of the Board was greatly 

outside printers 

diminished. The organization in China had handled policy 

makin 
g, personnel management, logistics problems, and 

numer 
ous real estate arrangements, as well as its primary 

function. The successful management of these varied ex-

Periences indicate that the Press was flexible and had the 

Potential for tremendous growth and creativity , which was 

rea1· 
ized under the direction of its fifth superintendent , 

w· 
illiam Gamble, printer par excellence. By 1870 the PMP 

had e . 
d 

Xcited the printers of Chinese the worl over, and 

more • 
importantly, it had caught the attention of Chinese 

Printers 
f l t · · th 

, thereby setting the stage or a revo u ion in e 

Printing industry in China. 

The ever-developing PMP coped with the hardships of 

e
st

ablishing a foreign technology in a country where there 

were · 
h . ry and trained 

insufficient raw materials, mac ine , 

manpower. Handicaps were magnified by the fact that travel 

was extremely difficult and that the peculiarities of the 

53 



54 

language baffled the best of Western scholars. One 

commonly held opinion that was supported by Sir Henry 

Pot t inger, t h e English plenipotentiary, and Robert Morrison 

and that would e ffect the Press, was that Ningpo would 

b e come the most important of the five treaty ports (Canton, 

Amoy, Foochow, Ningpo, and Shanghai). Histor y, however, 

Prove d them wrong, but not before the Board in New York had 

des · ignated Ningpo as the location of the major Presbyterian 

Mission and the site of the Press. This desire to locate the 

Press strategically as well as its subsequent phenomenal 

growth were major reasons why it was moved about so 

freguentl y. The Press was situated at Macao, in two 

different locations at Ningpo and in two at Shanghai, all 

between 1844 and 1870. 1 

The Press was put into operation at Macao with the idea 

of moving it to canton, instead of Ningpo as the Board had 

suggeste d, since none of the missionaries had visited Ningpo 

a na knew little about the facilities there. Superintendent 

Cole was left at Macao to operate the Press while the 

miss· 
t th th t 

ionaries went to their assigned posts a e o er reaty 

Ports. Walter Lowrie, son of the Corresponding Secretary, 

Wrote to his father expressing concern because Cole had been 

left Without sufficient assistance with the language. 

Lowrie had stayed in Macao longer than the other Ningpo 

mis · 
2 

sionaries just to help with the Press. 



55 

Within a few months, Cole determined that the 

r e calcitrance of the Cantonese made the city an undesirable 

location for the Press and that it should be located at the 

m· 
ain station of t h e Mission, Ningpo, where the greatest 

number of missionaries would be translating and writing the 

1 · 
lterature to be printed. Cole also figured that production 

cost · 
sin Ningpo would be less than in Macao. Consequently, 

he notified the Ningpo Mission that he planned to move the 

Pre ss, causing a controversy among the missionaries there. 

They objected to moving the Press to Ningpo because of the 

uncertainty of whether the Ningpo station would be in the 

c· 
ity itself or on the island of Chusan, forty-five miles 

Offshore, since it was still under the control of the 

English. The climate on Chusan was more desirable than in 

the city and if the English kept control, which legally 

they could not do, the American Presbyterians could remain 

there 3 

Their second objection noted the difficulty of obtaining 

a suitable building in Ningpo for a printing press, with all 

its metal components. Many Chinese buildings were damp and 

Poorly ventilated . The building which was finally obtained 

for the Press had a stone floor which was always damp, and 

When it rained, water stood in some areas. This objection 

Proved to be justified a little later when the damp atmos­

Phere at the Press caused the illness of the superintendent, 

as Well as the · t After one very rainy 
rusting of equipmen . 



season, during which most of the staff was ill, the 

Mission finally decided to put down a wooden floor.4 

56 

The third objection illustrates that the missionaries 

Were responsive to the attitudes of the people whom they had 

come to convert. Because Ningpo and Chusan, the nearby 

island off the coast of h' h db · db 
C 1na, a een occupie y British 

troops during the Opium War, the populace was concerned 

that Westerners remained in the area. The Chinese did not 

distingu1·sh between · · · d th ·1·t 
the m1ss1onar1es an e mi 1 ary; all 

Weste rners were suspect; therefore, the missionaries were 

Particularly careful not to assume a threatening stance in 

the community. They noted that the Chinese authorities were 

concerned about the presence of so many Westerners (there 

Were missions other than the American Presbyterian), none of 

Whom Were apparently involved in any kind of work. This 

Was because the missionaries spent the greater part of their 

time · in language study. During the first few months that 

they 
h b 

Were in Ningpo, the only time that t ey were seen y 

the PUbli'c d t h' h ff d d 
was during their walks aroun own, w 1c a ore 

them the1·r 5 
only exercise. 

However, Cole acted on his own and arrived at Chusan in 

July 18 45 with the Press. rt was unloaded from the ocean-

90 ing vessel onto four Chinese boats which transported it 

llPstr . 
earn to Ningpo . since there was a favorable wind, the 

tr· 1 P required only eight hours and was made without mishap. 

Naturally, there was nothing the Mission could do, but to 

Put th 
'ble A 

e Press into working order as soon as possi · 



57 

ware house was rented for $300 a y ear, and the Press was in 

operation again by the first of September under the name of 

th
e Chine se and Amer ican Sacred Classic Book Establishment. 

Thr ee months were spent in packing, moving, repairing 

damaged fi x tures and setting up. 6 

Cole brought one compositor, Ayuk, and one pressman, 

Asut, With him to Ningpo. Ayuk was quite experienced by 

th is time and was interested in his work. His salary 

r e flected the este em of his employers--$16 a month. Asut 

Was earning only $9 at this time, and Cole intended to 

replace h1·m with a $6-a-month man as soon as one could be 

trained. However, Cole must have had difficulty in finding 

a trainee to replace Asut because in February 1846 the 

Pressman was offered $9 a month as a permanent wage with the 

st ipulation that he work for the Mission permanently. By 

October th 
1 d 

, ree other Chinese were emp oye: one apprentice, 

one Pressman, and one typecutter. Because the Chinese were 

unaccustomed to Western printing, they had to be trained in 

every aspect of the work, which resulted in a considerable 

hardship 7 
for the Superintendent. 

Cole had expected to operate the business with efficiency 

and to obtain a better quality workmanship than he was able 

to d 0 during the first year at Macao. In December 1845 he 

told the Board that satisfactory workmanship in Macao had 

been sacrificed by rushing into print before the font had 

been completed. He felt that the reputation of the Pre ss 

Would be established by the quality of its first issue s and 



58 

that this had been compromised by haste. He pointed out that 

he had agreed to push operations during the first year to 

Prove to the Executive Committee and to the Church at large 

that Printing Chinese by metallic divisible type was pref­

erable to using the Chinese wood-block method. One 

Positive aspect of the experience was that a supply of books 

had been printed for distribution. Cole urged the Board to 

understand his situation during the second year, especially 

if the total number of pages printed was fewer than for the 

f' irst year. He felt that time should be spent now in 

tr · 
aining men, organizing the office, correcting the font 

ana mak· 
bl · b 8 

ing ready to do a commenda e JO. 

Initially, all five of the missionaries at Ningpo were 

involved to some degree in the work of the Press. A 

Liter t · 
1 t d 

a ure Committee was appointed to se ec an approve the 

works to be printed, to determine the number of copies, the 

stYle and the expense of each edition and to proofread each 

work. I 
'bl f 

n addition, the Committee was responsi e or 

controlling the distribution of the literature to its own 

members and to those of other Protestant societies. 9 

A less demanding, yet vital, job was that of checking 

the 
existing characters in the font against a master list 

which h ad been prepared by Dyer to see whether or not all of 

the necessary characters were provided and whether they were 

Properly formed. Corrections on the Paris font continued 

Until l 
d one can assume 

849 before they were complete• 

that sustained corrective work with this font spanned the 



period from 1836 to 1849, even though it was being used 

regularly and duplicated after 1844 . 10 

Cole tried to have characters cut by his engraver to 

59 

Use with those h 
done by the Frenc, but the Chinese workman-

sh' 
ip, although beautifully executed , did not match the French 

st
Yle. And so the long process of identifying the misfits 

Was just a beginning to obtaining a correct font which con­

tained all of the characters that were necessary for printing 

Chr· · 1stian literature. In one letter to Lowrie, Cole requested 

51 
new matrices and noted especially that radical #140 and 

#118 Were too long and could not combine properly with any 

Primative. Then he asked for a longer #9 radical. He said, 

"L 
et it be cut the full length of the body of the type." He 

suggested to Lowrie that he use the Specimen Book as a guide 

in evaluating the type. In each case Lowrie forwarded 

Cole• 
s request to Paris, and in time, the corrected matrices 

reached th e Press in Ningpo. For all its tediousness, Cole 

th0Ught that the process was worthwhile because it was of 

the ut 
'f 

most importance that the font be uni orm . The cost 

of these corrections was small i