Other formats

    Adobe Portable Document Format file (facsimile images)   TEI XML file   ePub eBook file  

Connect

    mail icontwitter iconBlogspot iconrss icon

Typo: A Monthly Newspaper and Literary Review, Volume 5

Wellington, 25 Sept., 1891

Wellington, 25 Sept., 1891.

The annual report of the Government Printer has been published. The year 1890, he reports, was one of considerable activity in all branches, and the fourteen printing machines were kept fully employed. 4062 orders were received, consisting of 29,935 forms or pages, from which 31,596,355 copies were printed; the total value of work being £32,487. The expenditure for wages and overtime amounted to £18,207. The rate of progression during the past four years shows an annual increase in the value of work of about £4000. It will be necessary to largely supplement the working plant, and among the contemplated additions is type-casting apparatus, which it is expected will do away with the inconvenience caused by runs on sorts. The foundry, it is anticipated, could be worked in conjunction with the stereotype branch at little extra cost for labor. The profit and loss account shows a credit balance of £6,867, being over ten per cent. on the capital employed. Reference is made to the destruction by fire of the old Government Printing Office, causing much loss of lithographic plant, and of Government publications, some of which it will be necessary to reprint. The stamp-printing branch was placed under the control of the Government Printer in October last. The new machinery introduced had had a perceptible effect in cheapening and expediting the production of stamps, without recourse to overtime, and with a less expensive staff. A small issue of Samoan stamps was made during the year; also the new series of Government Insurance stamps; and the new 2½d and 5d postage stamps were produced for the first time in the month of December last. The complaints made respecting the gum used had been remedied. Reference is also made to the stereotype branch, railway-ticket printing, and the stationery department. It is interesting to note from the returns in the appendix that the cost of printing « Hansard » was £3,195 10s, and that the time occupied in « authors' corrections » of the same amounted to 3,436 hours.

At the meeting of the Trades Council on the 17th inst., the following resolution, of which notice had been given the previous week, was discussed and unanimously passed:— « That it is necessary in the interests of the working classes of the colony that first-class bona fide Liberal newspapers should be established in the principal cities of the colony, and that with a view to obtain one such newspaper in Wellington, a committee be appointed to ascertain and report upon the guaranteed measure of support that will be accorded by affiliated and non-affiliated bodies to such newspaper if established. » A committee was appointed to consider the best means of carrying the resolution into effect, to report at a future meeting.