CONGRATULATIONS.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXIX, Issue 81, 25 May 1911, Page 5

CONGRATULATIONS.

[By Fifty-one.] Having installed linotypes and the latest and most up-to-date machinery for printing the “Stratford Evening Post,” will you allow me, as one who graduated at “case” and the “demy” and “double-demy” press, to congratulate the proprietary on the advanced stop taken. Had you hinted to me in the sixties—or oven the seventies —that papers would be produced by type-setting machines and turned out by. the mile, like sausages—well, I sun afraid I would have departed from my usual custom and used strong language. However, the - thing has come about, and the poor old comp, is no more. The first paper in Taranaki was printed on a demy hand-press, followed by si doubledemy, and for fully fifteen years after the former press turned out 'most of the jobbing required in the province —and I know it only too well. What printer is there to-day—l mean those who have learned the trade within the last twenty years—who knows anythin" about “firing a flasket,” “friars,” “monks,” “brayers,” etc. ? Or how many would care to stand up to a slab with a two-handled roller and apply ink to formes day after day? These are some of the luxuries indulged in by the old-day comp, who, after finishing composition, wont to press in the real sense of the word —lie worked off the former, himself, and the devil rolled. i was a devil at one time (may bo now), and 1 enjoyed it. Those were times when oven the devil imagined bo belonged to a profession, and be comported himself accordingly. Ho would pass the ticket-man at the door of a tneatro with the magic word “press” if ho hadn’t a sou in his pocket. What cared he? ho was a budding member of the Fourth Estate. It wouldn’t do to try any of those capers on now ; in fact,’ the’ devil’s dead. What remarkable changes have taken place in printing since the days of Gutenberg, Schaeffer, Faust, and even Caxtou? The former three gentlemen used to “set up their paper” with largo wooden types, and to grtjSMi. impression each would get on the forme in turn; then a screw-press was invented ; then a' hand-press ; then machines that would turn out a couple of thousand an hour, and wonders were achieved : to cap all wo now have machines that will .take, paper on in rolls of miles at thehack and run the issue out at the rate of over GO,DUO an hour. Ton, Mr Editor, have not yet arrived at the stage of the “London Times” or “Daily Mail,” the latter with an issue of over 400,000 daily ; hut 1 hope the time is not far distant when your circulation, through increase of population, will run into many thousands every evening. Like Othello, my occupation (as a comp) has gave; 1 ‘shall no more fly a Gasket, use a braver, or roll formes all day. The old comp must make way for modern appliances. There is no more use for him at caso, and ho has attended his last “chapel.” I have spoken.