PRINTER TOURIST.

Auckland Star, Volume LVI, Issue 293, 11 December 1925, Page 11

PRINTER TOURIST.

WORLD AT HIS FINGERTIPS.

WORKS WAY ROUND GLOBE.

A COSMOPOLITAN "COMP."

"If you have the wanderlust the only thing to do is to travel," said Mr. Arthur Floyd this morning to a "Star" reporter, and then he fell to talking about his experiences. He is now enjoying his second summer on end, and j-eels off the names of towns and continents that set you thinking if your bump of geography is _ not very good. A linotype operator, ho travels round the world on his trade and at the same time satisfies as keen a love of beautiful scenery as even Georg-e Borrow, that inveterate walker, possessed. And in his way Mr. Floyd is also a tramper, or "hiker" as they call them in the country where he spent last summer. Four years ago he made the acquaintance of New Zealand in his capacity of linotourist—the modern survival of Mark Twain's tramp-printer—and then he "hiked" it over the Milford Track and liked the Dominion so much that he is now back again.

It seems that the immediate cause of his wandering down this way is his desire to gee and photograph and write about the big sea fishing at' Russell. Those American millionaire sportsmen who go round bagging fierce denizens of the deep have their eyes on New Zealand. There is nothing so fierce or so strugglesome in the States as our swordfish and mako Ehark, and oven the lively tarpon is a slug beside these New Zealand fighters, so we are likely to see more of these optilent fishermen. But the fishing is merely incidental to Mr. Floyd's visit; essentially he is a student of mankind and scenery. He has been long enough in the States to have acquired something of an accent, but as a matter of fact he is a man of Kent, and still thinks dear old London the ideal spot to live —if you have money. Not being a millionaire, and having an itch to see the world, he travels on his trade. He has just had a very successful season in Sacramento, where he was engaged on what ct would call Government work, and apparently Government work is well paid all over the world. Netting something over 100 dollars a week, or £20, air. Floyd made enough to enable him to pack his grip when Sacramento's summer was done and now he is enjoying another. London, Paris, every State in America, Canada, the West Indies, Brazil, Uruguay and the Argentine, are some of the places where Mr. Floyd has worked the linotype or some modification of that ingenious machine. He makes light of setting Spanish, of wluch. he does not know half a dozen words, and when you express surprise, he simply replies with ''the old printer's proverb, "Follow * copy—even if it goes out of the window." In India the natives set up the English newspapers, and though their ignorance, of the language leads to amusing mistakes at times, the result on the whole is., entirely satisfactory. So that ignorance of the language does not debar Mr. Floyd from linotyping his way round the globe.

He is very enthusiastic about a big newspaper office in Buenos Aires, "La Pr.ensa," where they, have.their.own private theatre, and the distinguished guests of the paper are entertained in the newspaper's own residential quarters. Everything is fitted up with the luxury of a millionaire's, palace, marble being as common as bricks, and what is not silver is 6ilver-plated. On that trip, by the way, Mr. Floyd did not travel on his trade, but took advantage of the rates of exchange absurdly in favour of the dollar to do the country as a genuine tourist, the difference in values of the two currencies enabling him to secure for a few cents what would in normal times have meant many dollars.

Mr. Floyd is interesting -when he talks about the high prices some of the newspapers get for their advertisements. The "Saturday Evening Post," for instance, an American paper, gets 30,000 dollars for one issue of a remarkable double page advertisement, usually secured by motor car makers. And the "London Daily Mail" front page letsfor £1200 a single issue, and even then the advertisers have to wait their turn.

Wages in New .York in Mr. Floyd's line are something extraordinarily high, and sometimes men earn as high as £12 a week for night work, and £11 for day work.

While on the subject of prices, Mr. Floyd says that while some things are dearer in the States, many things are cheaper compared with New Zealand. A Ford car costs £55 for the cheapest model in the States, for instance, and benzine is 94d per gallon, while he has seen it down to 7d a gallon. Gramophone records at 7d each are another thing that are cheap in the States, Oddly enough, prices just over the border in Canada are much higher, and a Ford, for instance, cannot be bought for less than 900 dollars. One reason for the difference in prices is that Canada has a thirty-three and a-third tariff against outside goods. Incidentally Mr. Floyd was enthusiastic about the motor camping in the States, and specially mentioned the 1700-mile paved road from British Columbia to Mexico, which is full of motor people with their cars and their tents in the summer months.

After doing New Zealand once more Mr. Floyd will pack up and work his way East, via Australia, and he thinks Singapore should be a good place to pitch his tent in for a while, as they are enjoying a rubber boom there, and the building of the great dock works must mean the spending of a lot of money.

And so this care-free linotype operator, who does not mind whether he has to set English, Spanish, French, or just plain American, goes round the world, always interested.in new sights and new people, and never staying long enough in one place to get thoroughly tired of it—or thoroughly attached to it.