Page 7 Advertisements Column 4

Grey River Argus, 30 June 1947, Page 7

WEST COAST LABOUR DAILY APPEAL FUND Maybe some of the younger generations know nothing of the early struggles of the “Argus” when it started off as a Labour Daily; the days when bets were made that we would not last six months; and incidentally our offices were gutted by fire before we had been running three months and we had the job of repairing them and salvaging what machinery we could. Perhaps we should mention here that thanks are due to those State miners and others who, after their day’s work was done, came in under the leadership of Paddy Webb and helped us rebuild that which had been destroyed by fire. So good were their efforts that inside of three weeks we were again printing our paper in our own building. But that was not all: we were boycotted for advertisements, even by local bodies, and police officers bought and carefully read our paper each day in order to see if in any sentence we printed a charge could be laid against us. Of course they succeeded! One day we printed an extract from a book which could be purchased anywhere in New Zealand for Is. That cost us £lOO. On another occasion in reporting am accident in a sawmill where a poor fellow had his leg torn off. by a bush loco we said/“Valuable lives would be lost in educating the Machinery Department and persons in Authority to a sense of their responsibilities.” Those words cost us £250, because a politicallyminded judge considered them libellous. There was no libel in the words used, but they were good enough to soak the workers’ paper for £250 with a pious hope that the idea of workers having their own daily newspaper would be nipped in the bud. A recital of some of our early difficulties may give our readers some idea of how dangerous Capitalists and Tories consider Labour daily newspapers are, and at the same time how essential to workers welfare. Jas. O’Brien, President. J. B. Kent, Secretary. F. L Turley, Organiser. (2).