THE STORY OF A NEWSPAPER PLANT.

Inangahua Times, Volume IV, Issue 14, 11 May 1877, Page 2

THE STORY OF A NEWSPAPER PLANT.

[BTS HYDBB.] # The Napier Telegraph announces that Mr H. E. Webb has purchased the Coromandel Mail plant to start the Wai* km Free Press. The Telegraph next goes on to My " This plant has hitherto been moat unfortunate, Win* been twice through the Bankruptcy Court, and rained several other newspaper •peculators." The plant so libelled has never been twice through the Bankruptcy Court. It has undergone many trying ordeals and heatrcnding vicissitudes. Ihe office in which the plant once worked was burnt down. Bat the plant rose from its ashes die following d*y, with one of the nost picturesque libels ever written which

•caused H to double Us circulation almosi ifflpSktaly. ft was subsequentlyremove* fe> «Mrth^fl#?f j wh«» *™£JJ craft in wbicli it mi shipped got imefeM .'S * \h shore. The pUt «•«*; water thw« week* *»* "", S™ n J± jnit as oflcawo r-qmred, and circumstances sa*w^» « , ... . . A One* M wi""" sliuwnolder went info thft office whffl the hand* were absent md carefully spread the types over the floor, afterward* as carefully shovelling the (be whole into small heaps. But the papflf came out the next night with a well digested article upon the Odie forces, the erruptions of Provincial Councils, and a humorously written account of tbe •• accident," Once a bailiff was put in to take possession of the plant for rent, but he got uproariously tight and was locked tip for 48 hours. When be came out the plant was nowhere, but somehow it was made to apologise for its absence, through the means of printed slips. It however shortly turned up, again opened once more with a newspaper, and went to work. Shut up. Changed proprietorships. Opened again. Closed once more. Came out enlarged. Shut up again, and came out reduced. Came out three times a week ; then once ; then twice. Occasionally it did not come out at all. But it never ruined any newspaper speculators. It is as impossible to ruin a newspaper speculator as to square tbe circle, trisect an angle, or produce perpetual motion. Tbe editors at various times who kept the plant going were all men of great moral worth, and of undoubted veracity, except in matters connected with sold mining. It is more difficult to speak the truth when gold mines are involved than for man to walk up a perpendicular wall head downwards. We intend to write a history of printing plants when we have got time, or the Government offers a reward for it to be done. We recollect when the plant which started the Wellington E^ejfag Post was working a newspaper at Havelock under a tent, during the Whakamanna rash. People at that time could get nothing to eat but sardines and preserved lobster. The printers struck for wages when sardines went to four shillings a tin. Then the plant was taken to Wellington. The plant that now works the Lyell Argus was brought from Dunedin to start a paper on the Okarita rush. The popu« Jation dwind'ed away until only one man remained. That man was tbe editor, who sat at the door of bis tent and resisted all entreaties to move. Three weeks afterwards a cutter passing the spot saw a signal of distress flying. A party was sent ashore in a boat when they found the editor in a starving condition. For six days be bad subsisted on a half fig of tobacco and at tbe time when the sailors got to him he was boiling the uppers of his boots in a tin billy to make a meal. the plant wa3 removed and under various proprietors disseminated m much of truth as the types from long habit in another direction were capable of -find this Was very little indeed. Bat ifte" writer of tins feels an unconquerable conviction that tbe Coromandel plant has yet to fulfil its destiny and that a very nigh one ; otherwise how account for its many miraculous escapes. It has made -v^gany an impression. Ifc will mike many ttiore. .