PROPAGANDA LEAFLET

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21281, 7 September 1932, Page 12

PROPAGANDA LEAFLET

REPRODUCED BY MIMEOGRAPH

TYPEWRITER NOT A PRESS

MAGISTRATE DISMISSES CHARGE

The prosecution of Lewis Williams, aged 27. labourer, on a charge of offering for sale a printed paper, the Watcrsider, on which the name and place of abode of the printer were not printed, contrary to section 6 of the Printers and Newspapers Registration Act, 1908, was dismissed by Mr. W. 11. McKean, S.M., in the Magistrate's Couvb yesterday. The paper in question wai typewritten and mimeographed, and it was held by the magistrate that a typewriter was not a printing press within the meaning of the Act. " The facts are not disputed," said Mr. McKean in delivering judgment. " The defendant sold to a constable a sheet of paper headed the Watersider. It was 'mimeographed by A. Kawson, 63 Newton Road, for the Watersiders' Concentration Group, C.P., N.Z.' The letters C.P., I presume, stand for Communist Party. The paper contains a statement that it 'gives expression of the militant section of the working class.' With the contents of the paper, however, I am not concerned. There is some evidence that there is no such person as 'A. Rawson.' To print a fictitious name is equally an offence. The evidence adduced is sufficient to place upon the defendant the onus of proving that the name is not a fictitious one, but tho question for determination is whether such a paper is one that has been printed within the meaning of the Act.

" The object of the Act is to prevent as far as possible the printing and circulation of libellous, indecent, or seditious matter by compelling the printer to register his press and to disclose his name and address by imprint upon publications by him. The Act requires every person who has any 'printing press or types for printing' to give notice of the location thereof to the nearest registrar of the Supreme Court. The present Statute is a re-enactment of early legislation which goes back to a time when typewriters and present methods of mechanical reproduction were not in use. "In one sense a typewriter has types for printing,' but it cannot be called a printing press. When the phrase types for printing' appears in a clause in a Statute requiring the registration of a printing press or types for printing, think it must b c deemed to refer to types of the kind that are used in a printing press. In construing a penal Statute it is necessary to see whether the offence charged comes within the actual words used, to create the offence. .There at e some Statutes in which the word printing is deemed to include 'any other method of reproduction,' but there is no such extension ol' the meaning of the word in the .Act under which these proceedings are taken. . . " I am therefore of the opinion that, as the paper is one that has been reproduced 1> V a mimeograph j it is not a printed paper within the meaning of the 1 rinters and Ne-.vspapers Registration Act. lhe charge is dismissed."