The make-up of the paper presented no great difficulties daring the strike period, although at times we were confronted with the irrefutable law of nature that a certain amount of matter is required to fill a given amount of space.
We recall a visitor at the formal opening of the "North-China" Building who, when being shown over the composing room, asked how it was that the paper was always full, that there were no Diank spaces at the bottom of columns, More than once during the strike we ourselves were slightly worried over that little detail, The Press-Room Rare indeed is the man who does not appreciate the music of machinery. The rhythm of a ship's engines, the purring of a well groomed motor, the clickety-clack of a locomotive—these uve truer expressions of the poetry of motion than any so-called classic dancing. To the true-born newspaper man the culminating notes of the intricate symphony that is the making of the modern newspaper, come from the pressroom.
If the great presses of the London and and New York dailies may be likened to a symphony orchestra (as has been done by a famous musician) then the Cossar press, used by the "North—China Daily News," may be likened to a delicately balanced stringed quartette, It is not a large press, as newspaper presses go, but it has the one quality that will be found in every machine that achieves its ultimate usefulness—it adapted to its particular purpose, The designers of the Cossar could hardly have had in mind such an office as the "North-China Daily News," where the highest standard of newspaper printing is required on a comparatively limited edition, yet had the press been designed expressly for us it hardly could have attained its purpose better, The Cossar is known as a flat-bed rotary press and, as far as we are aware, is the first application of the principle. Incidentally, the Cossar used by the ""North-China" was the first erected abroad. The functions of a press are too obvious to call for details—it is enough to say that it does ite work well. The Cossar certainly that throughout the strike with a minimum of expert attention, Need we explain our sensations when we say that, after the back-breaking grind of the composing room, when we found ourselves watching the smooth-running Cossar turning out the product of our combined labour, we felt as Kipling's McAndrew must have felt standing the middle watch on his pampered engines, not certain that he knew all'there was to know about them, holding them in deep respect, and strangely content that they were "slam banging' home again." a SONG FOR
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.