Making another print run

Tucked away in the after part of the American "mother ship" Melville is a printer’s shop. It is not an elaborate affair, but it is essential, as the work of such a ship demands the use of an enormous amount of printed matter. The shop, although on the small scale, is up-to-date in every respect. Want of space deprives the printers of anything except elbow room. A small linotype machine occupies a very limited space on one side of the ship between decks. The rudder shafthead and steering machinery extends practically the full length of the room, and the shop is thus divided into two compartments. On the other side of the shaft and machinery two printing presses repose, and cabinets containing assorted jobbing type, and all the incidentals associated with any ordinary printing works, are fixed to the bulk-head. Two expert printers are in charge, and their time is fully occupied every day in attending to the printing necessary for the ship. When an Otago Daily Times reporter visited the shop yesterday, the "boss printer" — a young man who knows the business from A to Z — was busy in making up a "forme" while his assistant was setting type from one of the cabinet cases. The head printer exhibited some samples of the work executed in the shop. He displayed a budget of neatly-printed sheets set by the linotype in what is known in the printer’s world as "long primer, 30 ems." The work was certainly first-class, and fully equal to that executed in any printery establishment ashore.

"We are cramped for room," said the officer who had obligingly piloted the reporter around the shop. "You see," he added, "every inch of this ship is put to some use, and the printers have to make the best of things amongst all this machinery and shafting. Just duck right under that shaft and have a look at the linotype." The reporter did "duck under" the shaft, and came away quite satisfied that the American visitors can do wonders, even when cramped for space.

Councillors debate billboards

The City Council General Committee recommended that the application by Messrs C. and W. Shiel for permission to paint an advertising sign on their old office building fronting the North road, North-East Valley, be granted.

Cr Begg said the committee still adhered to the policy of placarding the town and suburbs with advertising signs. Time and again he had raised his voice against that sort of thing. Sooner or later they would have no space left. He would like to ask the chairman of the committee if those people would have the goods to sell that would be advertised on this particular part of the fence.

Cr Hayward said that  an advertising sign would be a long way ahead of a hideous wall. A painted advertisement would make the place more attractive.

Cr Begg: "How would you like it in front of your front door?"

Cr Taverner said he deplored the fact that the committee had agreed to this policy. A new advertisement had been painted in a street at the south end, and an old one had been removed, but in neither case were the goods for sale on the premises. The same thing appeared to be going on in other parts, and he thought that some discrimination was required.

Party, leader at odds

Mr Holland, leader of the parliamentary Labour group, is in serious disagreement with his own party in the matter of the visit from the American fleet to Australia and New Zealand. The Otago Labour Council, which seems to be specially impressed by the reflection that America is a "capitalist State," passed an absurdly expressed resolution last week in which it declared 

that it stood by the Labour movement "in declaring its emphatic hostility" to the visit and requested its representatives to refrain from participation in the welcome, and to expose the lavish expenditure of wealth upon the entertainment of the fleet.

Mr Holland’s ideas on the subject of hospitality are less crude than those of the Otago Labour Council, and his interpretation of the purpose of the visit of the fleet is more generous. He believes that "the day is fast coming when the British and American nations will be engaged in a movement to join all peoples in one great union for peace and goodwill." He need hardly 

have projected that day into the future: it is with us now. But he has offensively aggressive supporters whom he may find it hard to convince. — editorial — ODT, 13.8.1925

Compiled by Peter Dowden