Home Competition
A more serious competitive failure has been in meeting the challenge of newer and non-con- ventional methods of printing at home--notably the small offset machines on which more and more printing work is now being done, satisfac- torily enough for some purposes. and much more cheaply than by conventional methods. The first of these machines. the Rotaprint, was introduced to Britain in 1927, and the Multilith followed. They had a frosty reception from most British printers. who saw them only as cheap rivals which ought to be smashed. But now there are 10,000 small offsets in the hands of people who would otherwise be customers of the printing industry.
The story of the early days of the new machines was told in a recent article in the British Printer: No manufacturer has ever been unwilling to sell machines to printers. If it is only since the war that printers have begun to realise the possibilities of small offset printing, the delay is to be attributed to their own reluctance and even hide-bound opposition. In face of evident prejudice, the manufacturers were impelled, whatever their wishes in the matter might have been, to seek their outlets in the offices of printers' clients. and with every successful sale deal a blow at the printing industry's profits. . . . Much of the printers' distress arises from a latent conviction, derived from the history of the craft, that printing is a deep and secret skill. The small offset machine has proved ade- quately that it is certainly not secret, and much shallower than had been supposed.
Both sides of the industry played their parts in the resistance movement described here. In some areas, for example, both masters and unions tried to dissuade town halls from pro- ducing their own minutes and reports on the small offsets. But this pressure-group activity failed. if the printing industry had been alert enough to see the possibilities of the new machines and install them itself at the very be- ginning—as it is now doing--the' big drift of work to the customers' own machines might have been avoided. It could not have been entirely avoided, how- ever, for to some customers the presence of a Rotaprint or Multilith on their own premises has an irreplaceable advantage. The convenience for a large business firm or any other organi- sation of being able to give priority in printing to a particular item is one factor. In some or- ganisations, secrecy is another—the Atomic Energy Authority at Harwell, for example, has a reproduction department with a variety of small offsets, and no printer really thinks that he will ever be able to take its confidential work away, however low his price.
The unions have argued that the masters' re- luctance to introduce small offsets in the early stages of their development was a notable ex- ample of their restrictive thinking. It may be said that some conservative printers have had commendable msthetic reasons for resisting this method, but it is difficult to deny the PKTF argument that the new printing 'serves its pur- pose and is cheaper.' The unions would like to see more employers in the printing trade install- ing the machines, and they claim to have played their part by 'departing from a traditional atti- tude' and making arrangements for wage rates and staffing of the machines.
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