AustLit

A group of Sydney compositors respond to an advertisement placed in the Australian on 1 May 1838. The advertisement suggested that there was work in the colony for thirty to forty compositors, but the local workers believed this assertion to be misleading.

In their open letter to the Trade Societies of Great Britain and Ireland, the local workmen outline the make-up of the local printing industry, noting that it is largely newspaper work and that 'book work is almost totally unknown in the Colony'. They state that the current numbers of compositors are: 44 free Compositors, 8 assigned Compositors, and 13 apprentices'.

The letter also highlights the wages that can be expected in the colony, the dearth of work in Van Diemen's Land and Swan River, and the suspicious fact that the advertisement has appeared only in the Australian and not in any of the other colonial newspapers.

In fact the advertisement, 'To the Printers of Great Britain' (link is to the version of the advertisement in the Sydney Gazette, 1 May 1838) was published in several Sydney, New South Wales, newspapers in May 1838. Individual newspapers added a paragraph to the advertisement further encouraging pressmen and or compositors to apply. The Australian newspaper's extra paragraph stated that '[t]hirty or forty Compositors would also find employment in the Colony, at a higher rate of wages than they obtain in England.'

The correspondence is signed by James Harrison, Thomas Armstrong, John Paterson, Alexander Barrie, Peter Tyler, John Laurie and John Rawson.