“SNYDER'S” TROUBLES.

Patea Mail, Volume II, Issue 109, 26 April 1876, Page 3

“SNYDER'S” TROUBLES.

[From (ho Coromandel Mad.~\ ouuoEi.vrs. We desire to avail ourselves'of the present opportunity to enter into confidential communication wit Ij our readers. We have a great horror of secresy ; hut at the same time what we have to communicate need not go outside the colonies. We should bo sorry if what wo are about to relate reaches the cars of somoof ouriViends in Kamschalka or Cochin China, or Siberia, or in Creenhmd’a icy regions, or India's coral strand. our rosrnox. The Coromandel Mad under its present proprietorship lias existed six months come to-morrow. Now wc know its quite usual for newspaper proprietors when they report of themselves at staled periods to tell their readers how they have doubled their circulation, how their advertising supporters have increased ; how they intended to enlarge their paper and do wonders. We have nothing of that kind of thing to boast of. Wo have a large free circulation ; but wc have a poor patfauj one. In Coromandel proper ; and up the hills : iu the fiats and the valleys and in the back settlements only about one in every six lias paid Ids subscription. Wo have had during the llrst half of our six months existence, a fair share of advertising-, support ; but wo have received no money for the use made of onr columns. We have eked out an existence upon. “ CONTRAS.” A We arc open to confess that we have been allowed a fair supply of tea and sugar and general groceries, of bread and butcher’s moat, and other household and domestic necessaries in return for newspaper subscriptions, advertising, and job printing, but we have received no money. We have paid no one and no one has paid us, excepting in the manner indicated, and last Saturday afternoon it came about that our hands in the office positively refused to take for their joint week’s wages a ton of firewood, two hundred-weight of potatoes, twelve full-grown vegetable marrow's, and an order we could have given them on a blacksmith for a set of horseshoes. We pointed out the ingratitude of llieir behaviour, but they woie obdurate, they said they wanted money, and they did not intend to leave the ollicc until they got it. We said under those circumstances that perhaps it would be as well if they sent for their bedding while wc would go ont and look up a little cheap furniture for them so that they would ho able to make themselves as comfortable as circumstances would permit.

The extent that the “ contra ” business lia« been carried on in tbis oilice is beyond ordinary belief. THE SYSTEM PERFECTED. To give only a few instances of the perfection to which the system of contras has reached in Coromandel the writer of this has had his hair cut, his corns operated on ; ho has taken tonic and sedative medicines ; he has been served with rock oysters ; be lias bad his washing done ; he has made charitable and benevolent gifts ; he has taken marine excursions ; has found himself in mixed pickles and hoot blacking ami hair oil, all of which with many other things too numerous to mention, has been written oil' in cont ras. A MII.CII coat. It was only a week or two back (hat a man came to our oi'liee and wanted ns to advertise a milch goat he had lost. Wo told him the cost of insertion would he, half-a-erown. He said he had no half-a-erown to give, and didn’t think it was likely ho should have so tar as the appearance of tilings went, hut if we didn’t object he would send us a large bundle of swectUcrbs in exchange ; and there are the sweetherbs suspended to the ceiling of our kitchen sufficient to flavour the stuffing of many thousands of joints of veal. We are at this moment open to exchange sweetherbs for some boys’ boot laces. AN EXPLANATION. Of course when wo state wo have received no money we don’t mean to say absolutely no money ; but only a very little money indeed, and then only procured at a great outlay. For instance an hotelkeeper will owe us a quarter’s subscription for bis newspaper. We call on him, and lie says it is not convenient to pay then. But we know if ever we are to collect the money that ho expects ns to shout, and we shout to the extent of a shilling. A week after wo make a second application, when lie promises to pay for certain in a few days. This time we shout Is Gd because there happens to be a man we never saw before standing at the bar counter. But we have got used to this tiling. The third time of calling wo do got the seven and sixpence, but we found three of our supporters in the back parlour where we were called in to give a receipt, who with the landlord and ourselves led up to a shout of half-a-crown. WE RECKON UP. We walk back to our office and enter upon a profit and loss calculation of the transaction, and wc find as follows :—That to collect three half-crowns we have ontlaycil in fluids five shillings and sixpence, lots of paper for one quarter on which the Mail is printed, say one shilling, paying for a quarter’s delivery say iiinepcnco, and wo have just threepence left by the way of balance for ourselves. In the language of lie who wrote “Night Thoughts,” “If this wore not so frequent would not this he strange. That it is so frequent, this is stranger still." OUR ORtEF. But threepence is better than nothing, and the latter figure of naught is the exact price paid by many for the pleasure of reading the Coromandel Mail. There are tradesmen in Coromandel who make it a rule to borrow the newspaper from their next door neighbour. There are eight or ten business establishments in the heart of the town who do not subscribe to the Mail but got possession of it by other means than that of subscribing for it, and the surprising audacity of this arrangement is that in nine cases out of ten lias not been paid for by the lender. Wc send a goodly number of papers to (be Tokatca ranges ; but although the papers go up regularly by horse delivery no money ever comes down. There are people who insist they ’aw'd g,-t their paper without paying—w 'hi ■■ demand to he placed on the hj:;. Why—we really don't know d can’t say ; but this is c -o-