Correspondence

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume XIII, Issue 1030, 22 May 1869, Page 2

Correspondence

“THE PRESS.”

TO THE EDITOR OFTHE WANGANUI CHRONICLE

Wanganui, May 20, 1869. Sir, —1 see the editor at the Times office will persist in making us believe he has a pressman, by an article in his paper this morning. He wants to know how an Albion press can be worked without one ? He should be ashamed to ask such a question, when lie knows he does it —“ all with boys ” —and keeps men that have served their apprenticeship out of employment. It is not because a man or boy can pull off a few newspapers that he is a pressman ; far from it—as any of the work in the jobbing line the Times turns out will prove, for there is not a job comes out of the office but the presswork is a thorough disgrace to the trade, —and that anybody may see that knows the least bit about it, all because they have not got a pressman. The old “ moke ” might get one of his dark friends from Putiki, and let him look on for about two or three days and he would be able to work off the few papers lie prints just as well as they are at present done, but surely no one would think he was a tradesman a man is not a carpenter because he can saw and plane a piece of wood. Could he have had a pressman to strike off his papers to make an affidavit with the person who does the same at the Chronicle office, it would have saved all this, for I being a man that has served seven years’ apprenticeship (and can show indentures for it) in as good an office as there is in New South Wales, do not like to see the trade made so little of. He also says that I was prompted to insert those few lines which appeared in your issue of Tuesday last, —how sharp he thinks himself —allow me to tell him that he is mistaken, and if he come face to face with me I would tell him it a little plainer. It was under a great obligation I was allowed to insert them, the editor telling me to take no notice of the Times' falsehoods as he was sure no one else did. Perhaps the Times will say I am put up to this too, but as it happens I write this before the editor of this paper comes to the office, and all I hope is he will allow it to be inserted. I am, &c. T. W. Ferry.