.jpg)
Typo: A Monthly Newspaper and Literary Review, Volume 2
[trade dispatches]
Wanted Badly—a Wide Latin to come in between great-primer and pica. Two sizes—2-1. brevier and 2-1. minion—would be welcome. Try it, Messrs S., B., & Co. The present gap in this splendid series is exasperatingly wide.
.jpg)
Mr B. K. Foster, the chess-editor of the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, has invented a new game called « Chancellor-Chess, which is reported to have « caused quite a flutter in chess circles. » An additional piece called the « Chancellor » is provided, combining the powers of the Knight and Rook, and the game is played on a board of 81 squares. The Chancellor stands on the King's right hand, the following being the order of the white pieces at the beginning of the game:
.jpg)
with nine pawns in the front rank. The King's Knight and Bishop change places—otherwise both Bishops would be on the same color. Special sets and boards are manufactured, special types have been struck, and problems are regularly published. The addition of so powerful a piece must add variety and interest to the game; and there is no valid reason against innovation, except this—that life is too short to master the traditional game as it stands.
To accept « the lowest tender » is often the most extravagant course. Especially is this the case in printing and advertising. To the pernicious tender system more than any other cause is due the fact that well-conducted printing offices are carried on at a loss, while the colony is overrun with « cock-robin shops » and so-called newspapers which have no subscribers. Sometimes after calling for tenders a public body sees the absurdity of accepting the lowest, and rather than waste the ratepayers' money without equivalent, pays a fair price. In a southern paper we find the following dictum on this subject:— « A public body have no concern with how much or where a newspaper circulates. Their business is to accept the lowest tender in the interests of the taxpayer, and they may depend upon it that those interested in their advertisements, who do not subscribe to their advertising medium, will very shortly find it to their advantage to do so. » —The real mistake is, where one or two papers can give the required publicity, and others cannot, to call for tenders at all. There is no reason why public institutions should obtain either printing or advertising below fair market rates. If any attempt at overcharge is made, they have their remedy.
Printers and stationers have not been so hardly used in the Black Tariff as most of their fellow-tradesmen; but indirectly, in their capacity of general consumers, they are made to bleed at every pore. We quote the following items bearing more or less directly upon the trade—a large proportion of which have hitherto been duty-free, and none taxed more than 15%:—Boilers, 20%; playing cards, 6d ⅌pack; copying presses, 15%; desks, 20%; drawings, 15%; fancy goods and toys, 20%; glue, 1½d [unclear: 7 lb]; handbills, programmes, circulars, playbills, and printed posters, 20%; writing ink, 20%; leather belting, 6d [unclear: 7 lb]; machinery not otherwise enumerated, 20%; paintings, framed or unframed, 20%; paper bags, coarse, including sugar-bags, 7/6 ⅌ cwt; paper bags, not otherwise enumerated, 25%; paper, brown wrapping, 4/- ⅌cwt; — wrapping, other kinds, including cartridge, small hands, and sugar papers, 5/- ⅌cwt: writing paper, not otherwise enumerated, 15%; pictorial calendars, show-cards, and other pictorial lithographs and prints, 25%; pictures and engravings, 15%; picture frames, 15%; stationery, manufactured (account-books, billheads, cheques, labels, and other printed and ruled paper, blank and headline copy-books, drawing-books, blotting-pads, sketch-books, manifold writers, albums, diaries, plain and faint-lined ruled books, and other printed and lithographed stationery), 25%; stationery not otherwise enumerated, 15%. The dutiable value is ten per cent, more than invoice value, including eases and packing, and to above duties must be added a « primage » tax of 1% (practically ⅌ 1¼) ad valorem.— The following articles are (nominally) exempt from duty, but are subject to « primage » —Bookbinders' materials (cloth, leather, thread, headbands, webbing, end-papers, tacketing-gut, marbling colors, marble-paper, blue paste for ruling-ink, staple-presses, wire staples, staple-sticks); card-or pasteboard, plain, not less than royal size; materials for cardboard boxes (gold- and silver-paper, plain and embossed, gelatine and colored papers known as box papers); gas engines; printing ink, machinery, presses, type, and materials; millboard; paper for printing purposes only; paper, hand- or machine-made, book or writing, of sizes not less than demy, when in original wrappers and with uncut edges as it leaves the mill; pearlash and potash; printed books, papers, and music, not otherwise enumerated; schoolbooks, slates, and apparatus.