Trade in our city has been pretty brisk up to within the last month, but is now slackening off. This, of course, is due to the falling-off of parliamentary work. Parliament will finish up this week, and then we shall have a slack time, owing to the number of hands who will be turned away from the Government Printing Office. Already about a dozen in the piece-room have received a week's notice; and, as is customary, more will receive their little « love-letters » after the House has risen. I hear that when the Government Printer gets into his new premises he will do a great deal more work than he has hitherto undertaken, but it is not yet known how this will affect his staff. I hope for the sake of the comps. employed by him at present that the work will necessitate a larger excess staff than has hitherto been kept on.

Messrs. W. D. Haggett and Percy have leased the jobbing-room of the New Zealand Times from Mr. Chantry Harris. Mr. Harris has been foreman of the room for about three years. He is an old Christchurch Press apprentice, and worked in the jobbing-room of the Timaru Herald under his father, Mr. D. Haggett, for about eight years, in the Herald's palmy days, when Mr. Herbert Belfield was proprietor. Mr. Haggett is a first-class printer, with a taste for higher-class work, and he is sure to make a reputation for the firm. Mr. Percy has been a canvasser for the Times for some years, and is well up in the city's ways. I wish the new firm every success.

The various jobbing offices in this city have been fairly brisk during the month, and at present they are « on the rush » owing to the municipal rolls being in hand. The rolls this year have been divided into four parts, and the work given to four offices. The Government Printer has discharged about twenty hands since Parliament adjourned. Some of these are still about town, while others have gone to Melbourne, the Exhibition holding out a great inducement to the « great untravelled. » In a private letter which I received this week from a prominent Melbourne typo, occurs these words: « I must say that the New Zealanders are the most lucky men out—they invariably get work. Whether it is that you are sending over your best men, or that ours do not seek work properly, I do not know—but the fact remains. » I learn from the same source that during one fortnight since the recent strike no less than sixteen clearance cards from New Zealand and New South Wales were handed over to the Melbourne Society, and during the same period twenty-nine applications for membership were received. Thus it will be seen that Melbourne is the El Dorado of the colonial knight of the stick and rule.

The whole staff of employés of the Government Printing Office are now at work in their new premises, which are situated « just across the way » from the old offices. The new office is a three-story brick building, almost square, with the frontage where the side ought to be, the entrance to the court-yard where the front ought to be, and the back where the entrance to the court-yard ought to be; with two flights of iron spiral steps only, where there ought to be half-a-dozen ways of access to the different floors; with three floors where there ought to be only two; with one window in the composing-rooms where there ought to be two, and a frame-work to that window which ought to have one-third the quantity of wood in it, with conveniences in it which ought to be far more convenient than they are; with fixtures built of green wood, which ought to have been seasoned. It might truly be said that this building has been built after a set of regulations headed « What ought not to be done » The whole thing has been mismanaged from beginning to end. Its general appearance is more like that of a bonded warehouse than a printing establishment. I paid an unofficial visit to it the other day, and beheld a busy staff of typos doing lumping duty—here half-a-dozen putting a stone through an upstairs window (the old place), while several couples were carrying across the road cases, boxes, chases, forms, frames, and various other utensils appertaining to the craft. What a picnic the street urchins must have had among the débris! When I went into the court-yard, a busy scene was going on—heaps of cases and boxes of type, which several well-known comps. were sending up a steam lift to the store-room, where several more men were doing their best to pack them away in such places as will make it difficult for the unfortunate who may happen to want that particular « sort » or job to find. I found that the first floor to the right on going into the yard contained the Government Printer's and clerical offices and stationery store, while the machine-room (the finest and most convenient room in the whole building) took up the whole of the same floor to the left of the yard, and at the end of the yard running from east to west is the cutting-room. To the left on the second floor, immediately above the machine-room, is the time composing-room, the hands out of the two time rooms of the old building being amalgamated, under the charge of Mr Burns. This room faces the east; on the southern side are the press, apprentice, and store rooms, while on the west is the piece composing-room, the reader's and Mr Costall's rooms facing the north. The binding department occupies nearly the whole of the top floor, the exception being a moderately-sized room facing the north, which is used by the electro and stereo-typers. The edifice is built on a part of the reclaimed land to the east of « the largest wooden building in the Southern Hemisphere, » and was begun in April of last year. It is lighted by electricity, and I understand there is not a gaspipe inside the four walls. The building was designed and constructed under the direction of the Public Works Department.

The action in which the Hon. Mr Larnach claims £3000 damages for an alleged libel in the Auckland Herald, is to be heard in Wellington, the parties having agreed to change the venue to this city. Mr Bell is the leading counsel for the defence.

Readers of Typo are aware that the N.Z.T.A. have at last awakened to a sense of the « rotten state » of the craft in their colony, and that during the last year they have been devising means of reformation. Recognising at the outset that union means strength, they have issued an advertisement requesting all journeymen and apprentices in their sixth year to join the N.Z.T.A., a fine of £2 to be inflicted upon all failing to do so, if at any future time they desire to join.

The first number of a new country journal to be called the Featherston Chronicle and Martinborough Gazette was announced for the 10th of this month, under the editorship and management of Mr R. A. Butcher. Mr O'Shea, late of the New Zealand Times, is foreman printer.

Mr Geo. Dickson has been succeeded by Mr John Ash, as Secretary of the Otago Branch, N.Z.T.A.

There are no unemployed in this city at date of writing, the directory work, which is just being put in hand, absorbing all the surplus labor. Trade promises to be brisk up to the dawning of the new year.

A compositor named Henry D. Plante, aged 22, employed on the Otago Witness, met with a sad and fatal misadventure on the 18th inst. He was walking by the edge of the Roslyn tram line on the town belt, and just as he was emerging from the cutting was struck by a sudden gust of wind which threw him across the line in front of a tram, and he was run over. He was taken to the hospital, where he shortly afterwards died. At the inquest, a verdict of « accidental death » was returned. Plante's parents are dead; but he had an uncle at Timaru.