NEWSPAPER STRIKE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18676, 4 October 1922, Page 5

NEWSPAPER STRIKE

(Fhom Our Own Correspondent.) SYDNEY, September 27. The newspaper strike in Perth, which ended last Saturday, endured for five Weeks.' 'Hie morning and the evening- and the Sunday newspapers laid all to close down. Iho mechanical staffs had applied for increased wages, and, their demands being resisted, they refused to operate the linotype or printing machines or to allow anyone else to do so. Around each office was a cordon of pickets. When sundry public: houses and coffee stalls started to post up real and imaginary cable and telegraphic news and wild rumours of wars, murders, suicides, and general catastrophe, got bruited about, Perth realised what a daily newspaper, or the absence ol if, is in the life of the community. A weekly paper made an effort at giving the people some nows, as also did other small broad-sheet aspirants for public patronage with “special’’ cables that bore a striking resemblance to those in the Adelaide and Melbourne papers that arrive weekly by the transcontinental railway, and which sold at a high premium among a community literally hungering for reliable news. Womenfolk did not seem ta miss the drapers’ bargain sales announcements, but just came into town every day on the off chance of “something doing in summer goods.’’ Commercial houses, however, suffered acutely. Picture screen advertisement writers worked overtime sandwich men announced the coming of D’Alvaroz, Melba, the Comic Opera Company, and Spivakovsky; odd spruikers in odd corners also heralded their advent. 'The town bellman, who had not; been heard in Perth for 40 years, also came to life again. Perth found its newspaper strike exceedingly inconvenient, and does not want another. " 1 -