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Typo: A Monthly Newspaper and Literary Review, Volume 5

[miscellaneous paragraphs]

Friends and supporters will note certain changes which have taken effect in the present issue. It represents a coalition of three publications, all of which have for some time past been issued from the same publishing house. The best features of all will be retained under the new management. Typo will still continue to represent the printing Craft, as before; and the literary department will be widened and enlarged, the assistance of contributors to the Review being retained. The proceedings of various scientific bodies will be fully recorded, as in the Record. The monthly issue, representing the combined circulation of the three periodicals, will be largely augmented. The paper will be conducted by the editor of Typo, and as the only literary monthly in New Zealand, will have a wide field of its own.

The best lye in the market (says the Union Printer) is put up in balls covered with resin, which can be broken off by striking on a hard substance. Lye or potash put up in cans is often of inferior quality.

Leipzig is said to be the fourth city in printing importance in the world, surpassing Vienna, and ranking after London, Paris, and New York. It employs six thousand journeyman printers, and over six hundred power-presses are in daily work.

The Artist Printer, complaining of word-ornaments, &c., being cast to nondescript set, giving unnecessary trouble in justifying, says: « It would benefit the Craft in the highest degree if all engravers were graduated from the composing-room, for then they would know what is wanted, and how to furnish it. » Hear, hear!

An old New York typo (says the Union Printer) varies the monotony of typesetting by making moulds in plaster from natural flowers, and after dipping the moulds in a preparation of beeswax produces some beautiful and durable work in rubber. He is said to excel in producing natural effects in the arrangement of his rubber flowers.

Mr M'Bride, Ohio commissioner of labor statistics (quoted in the Union Printer) says: « In England the average production for each employee is $496; of this the laborer gets $296 and capital $200. In the United States the average production for each employee in 1880 was $720, of which the laborer got $346 and capital $374. In England the laborer gets more than capital; in America capital gets more than labor. In England the laborer gets three-fifths of the products—in America less than one-half. » These are the natural effects of free-trade and protection respectively, and the disproportion in each case is a steadily increasing quantity; yet strange to say, it is generally the laborer who clamors for still more stringent protection.

A private letter from an Auckland « young lady, » now resident in California, giving her impressions of the people, has been published in the Auckland Star. She finds very little to admire, and is specially sarcastic about their pronunciation and orthography; yet it is quite possible that by « adopting the American lingo » she speaks better English than she did in Auckland. She criticises the American fashion of pronouncing the letter r in such words as are, first, and paper, which she says should be pronounced ah, fihst, and papah! She rightly objects to the shortening of the a in pass, commănd, &c.; but this vulgar practice is quite as much an English affectation as American. From her writing about the « broad » a in far, and her suppression of the r, we would almost take her for a Northumbrian. The full use of the r, which so offends - this lady critic, is not as universal as it should be. The chief of American poets, Whittier, seems to be almost deaf to the sound of the letter, and this is about the only mechanical defect in his verse. Some of his rhymes, such as scorn with fawn, abroad with abhorred, and law with war, would suit the Auckland lady, but are distressing to an English ear.