The Sun.
London, England, 1868-12-29 00:00:00

STEAM TYPE-COMPOSING MA CHINE.

During the past three weeks a machine, driven uy steam,
has been at work in Manchester setting type automati-
cally. Leading machinists pronounce it a decided success.
The inventor, Mr. Mackie, a native of Dundee, and who
has already made several machines for distributing and
setting type—machines of singular ingenuity—claims for
the one to which we refer as follows :

1. All brain work, except " justification," may be done
anywhere, and by persons who never need see a type.
2. Narrow paper is perforated by a tiny machine with
14 keys only for 100 kind of letters, and 20 keys for 200.
3. This perforating can be done at the rate of a Tinos
column of minion per hour.
4. Ihe actual composing of the type is done by a hori-
zontal wheel machine, having on its rim as many kinds of
type as required, which are placed one on the top of
another in endless lines, at the rate of 200 a minute.
5. The composer is driven by steam, by foot or hana,
and when the endless perforated paper is attached to it, it
works automatically.
6. The justification will be done by stickfuls, ana
.nstantaneomly.

7. The paper used for the perforations may be old copies
of the Times; new paper costs id. per column.
8. Errors are reduced to a minimum. The composing
machine makes none, and the perforating one only when
the operator is careless.

9. Duplicates may be perforated at one time, and lent,
sold, or used on two or more machines, and for different
sizes of type. . .

10. The same perforations distribute the type automa•

tically.

11. The perforated paper may be used years after for
future and corrected editions. Stereotyping is, therefore,
not needed.

12. One edition may be set in nonpareil and another in
pica from the same perforations.
13. Small type is set with the same rapidity as large.
14. An author may do his own perforations, and thus
save the chief cost of his work.
15. Intelligent women may perforate at home, for offices
any distance away.

16. Authors may send perforated slips instead of "early
sheets " abroad, and by putting on a number of composing
machines a foreign publisher might have an ordinary
volume out in a day or two.
17. The reserve force which these machines will give is
worthy of attention. Six perforators and three composers
will set a Times page in an hour. An office, therefore,
having six of such machines in stock—and they take up
little room—could run up two pages of late matter in an
hour.

18. There are no tapes, elastics, or gravitation move-
ments to get out of order.
That the machine has all the capabilities mentioned
there can be no doubt. But, as at present it is like a
Hoe's eight-feeder with only one attached, its production
is limited ; and we shall wait with interest the advent of
the completed one, guaranteed to be ready in three months,
Mr. Mackie proposes to call it the " Bonnie Dundee."—
Dundee Advertiter.

THE AGRICULTURAL LABOURER IN
AUSTRALIA.

The Melbourne correspondent of the Times has been
moved by the Rev. Canon Girdlestone's description of the
agricultural labourer in England to inquire into the condi-
tion of the same class in Australia. He betook himself to
some races, held outside Melbourne, that he might observe
the labourer. After giving Canon Girdlestone's descrip-
tion of the labourer in this country, the correspondent
continues :—" Contrast with the above terrible descrip-
tion—the description of a mere serf in all but the name
—the condition of our working men. The roughest and
least skilled labourers earn their ss. a day ; skilled
artisans nearly as much again, the cost of living
being so cheap that if they are sober and provident they
may easily put by half their wages, Your common shep-
herd gets his £4O a year and his rations, and if he be a
man with any brains—especially Scotch brains— he nut
unfrequently developes into a full-blown squatter. Farm
labourers grow into farmers on their own account, and
skilled mechanics into contractors. There are few of
the better sort who have not their little build-
ing society shares or other modes of saving.
With their increased means they soon acquire addi-
tional tastes and desires ; and so much the better.
They and their families have their Sunday suits and their
little holiday finery, and most of them take in a weekly
paper, and many of them a daily one. It cannot surprise
us, therefore, to find these classes largely represented at
the Melbourne races. Most of them, if in England, would
regard such an amusement as somethingbelonging to another
condition of existence. Why, then, instead of meeting the
Rev. Canon Girdlestone's plain speaking with 'excited in-
terruptions of dissent '— how expressive and significant
the. phrase of your reporter—why not form emigration
committees for assisting your redundant labourers and
their families to leave England for these shores? If Canon
Girdlestone's hearers will not see or acknowledge the
existence of the ugly subject of his discourse, let them
quietly export it to Australia. With millions of acres of
untitled land, with a superfluity of everything necessary
to the existence of man, you cannot easily overdo this
country with human hands. Independent of the bene-
ficent works of transforming a struggling amid suffering
creature (always on the edge of starvation) into a
prosperous colonist, with a future before him, there is the
economical fact that an English pauper is by the same
process converted into a good Australian customer of
Leeds and Manchester. Among the various duties which
will devolve on our Agent-General in England, Mr.
Verdon, this business of recruiting our population from
without is, I think, the most important. 'With a plethora
of money-seeking investment, all we want is population,
and upon this point I believe all classes of politicians are
now pretty well agreed.

A QUERY.—Is it merely a coincidence, or a condi-
tion of our parliamentary representation, that not a single
member of Mr. Gladstone's Cabinet sits for an English or
Scotch county? Mr. Chichester Fortescue is the only
county member in it, and he represents an Irish county.—
Birmingham. Poet.

TII E BALLOT. —An M.P., writing from the House
of Commons to an evening contemporary, says that three
objects must be effected by the ballot, or it will fail
entirely to be any improvement on the present system of
taking votes :--"1. Practical secrecy, or it will be no
defence against intimidation or bribery. 2. Practical
security against fraud, whether on the part of the return-
ing officer or the voter. 3. Secrecy as to the result, until
the close of the poll." The writer considers that the last-
named object would furnish the real advantage of voting
by Ballot. He asserts that nineteenth-twentieths of the
bribery he has seen or heard of took place
while the candidates were neck and neck ; and
that nine•tenths of the intimidation, "pressure," Sic.,
is exercised between ten and twelve, while "half-hourly
states of the po11" drive men's minds mad with excite-
ment, and for " a gain of five in the next return " they
will run any risk of discovery and disgrace. With the
ballot no one would be permitted to issue lists even of
those who had or who had not voted. No one would know
which side was winning, and so (concludes the writer)
"adieu to striking off sheets,' and frantic agents fetching
indifferent voters, and the old freemen and their friends
waiting in the back room of the public•house till the
three o'clock return' decided blues' or yellows' to pay
1111 market price.';;