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Typo: A Monthly Newspaper and Literary Review, Volume 1

And Explains why he Did it

And Explains why he Did it.

He would give the explanation, which he felt to be due to himself. When he entered on the proprietary of the Timaru Herald on March 1st, 1886, he found it losing something like £1000 a year. It was clearly impossible for him to conduct it and stand that loss. So he called the hands around him and gave them the preference to any others. He said, 'I am desirous of replacing no one of you if we can come to some arrangement.' There were eight printers, and they made an offer to him to contract to do the composition on the paper for £25 per week. Seven men got £3 a week each, and the foreman £4. At the time they entered into the agreement he told them that if any one had a chance of bettering himself he was at liberty to leave at a moment's notice, and they had scarcely entered into the contract when one man found other employment and left. At the end of six months he told them that in consequence of heavy losses he would not be able to continue the arrangement, and he put them on piecework at the rate of 1s per thousand letters composed. They earned from £4 to £4 11s a week under that arrangement. He also raised the editor's salary £1 a week. After continuing a month, losing at the rate of £70 to £80 a month, he had to explain to the men that he could not give more than £2 10s a week for 6½ hours per night and overtime at the rate of 1s 6d per hour. This was cheerfully accepted, and the best proof of that was that five out of the eight were still employed there at the same rate. He believed that one of them was on the Hawke's Bay Herald. Of course it was much to be regretted that an employer conducting a newspaper had to retrench, but he did not pay a lower rate than was paid in Napier, where he believed £2 10s was the rate of wages. »