PrintingNews.com

Printing Industries of America/Graphic Arts Technical Foundation (PIA/GATF) and Printing News designate Illinois as the number two state for printing in the United States, led only by New York. Illinois is home to 2,206 printers, versus 3,323 in New York. However, printers in the Midwest tend to be larger, averaging nearly 31 employees per company in Illinois, versus only 24 per printer in New York, so Illinois has more printing employees than New York. Perhaps more important, the value of Illinois-based printing shipments in 2006 is estimated at more than $10 billion versus $11.5 billion in New York—so a significant case can be made that the Illinois printing industry is nearly as large as New York's.

The state is essentially divided into two sectors—north and south of Interstate 80. The north includes the major Metropolitan areas of Chicago and Rockford. The south includes the state capital, Springfield, as well as some major printing areas such as Champaign-Urbana and Effingham. Strictly in terms of numbers, the north portion is more important, with more than 61,000 printing company employees—or 73 percent of the state total—working in Chicago and Rockford alone.

Despite being known as the second city, Chicago lost that distinction (in terms of population) to Los Angeles some years ago, and now ranks number three. Clearly, California and Los Angeles (and the state of New York and New York City) are more important from an economic and demographic standpoint than Illinois and Chicago. So why does Illinois remain a significant factor in the printing industry? Call it an accident of geography—but as they say in the real estate business, the three most important things are: location, location, and location.

Go West, Young Man

Although Horace Greeley—publisher of The New York Tribune—is generally deemed the author of those famous three words of advice, credit for originally penning the phrase actually goes to John B. L. Soule, editor of the Terre Haute (Indiana) Express. Mr. Soule's 1851 editorial was actually titled: "Go West, Young Man, and Grow up with the Country," and Mr. Greeley appropriated the part of the phrase to title his own editorial in 1865. Regardless of the author, people in the United States have been migrating west since revolutionary days. In 1790, the demographic center of the United States was just outside of Baltimore, in the small town of Chestertown, Md. Since then, this nexus has marched steadily westward, and when Mr. Soule wrote his editorial, the population center had already crossed the Ohio River into eastern Ohio. Today, it lies near Steelville, Mo., more than 1,000 miles west of the East Coast. What does this have to do with Illinois and the printing industry?

Once information is printed, by its very nature it becomes heavy. Thus it makes sense to print information in a place that will minimize shipping costs or postage.

The demographic center of the United States moved into Illinois in 1940, just as the printing industry was beginning to think about moving from letterpress to offset, and just as the U.S. economy was becoming more market driven and urban, and far less agrarian. As this happened, a major portion of the printing industry effectively moved to Illinois. New printers started up in business, and others put operations in Illinois, because being near the demographic center of the United States made sense.

Magazines, such as Time, Life, and The Saturday Evening Post, came to be printed in the Midwest, and for anyone distributing their product nationwide, Illinois became a logical location. As a result, Illinoisans saw the growth and dominance in the industry of printers such as Chicago-based RR Donnelley and Wallace Business Forms (now Wallace Press), as well as downstate firms such as World Color—all supported by major, but largely long gone, manufacturers such as Miehle Printing Press and Manufacturing Co., McCain Brothers Manufacturing Co., and The Goss Printing Press Co.

Today, Chicago lies at the center of a printing crescent, which stretches from north of Milwaukee to Cincinnati. The area remains close enough to the demographic center of the United States to minimize shipping of magazines such as Newsweek, People, Business Week, and many others, and has created an important corollary business in the modern area of direct-mail printing.