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FIFTY YEARS A
JOURNALIST

MELVILLE E. STONE, LL.D.

COUNSELOR OF THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

HALF-TONE ILLUSTRATIONS
FROM PHOTOGRAPHS

LINE CUTS BY PAUL BROWN

GARDEN CITY, N. Y., AND TORONTO

DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
1 9 2 1

4&74

DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY

INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES

THE COUNTRY LITE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y.

PRETEXT

It seems to me that no right-minded person can enjoy the
business of writing of himself, but the life of a journalist is
spent in observing and recording the actions of other men,
usually of greater men and perhaps more interesting men
than himself, and the journalist who writes of his own
life, and of the things that have interested him in that life,
necessarily paints a picture of the period of his active days on
earth.

De Blowitz, the famous correspondent of the London
Times, who, in his day, played a greater part in the world's
affairs than most statesmen of the time, wrote his memoirs and
directed their publication on the ground that "it was unjust
that the journalist, unlike other writers, left nothing behind
him as a lasting testimonial of his efforts, his work, and his
success. " The dignity of the editorial office justifies a more
prominent record than most editors have left behind them.
Bonaparte said of governments that power was founded upon
public opinion, and this maxim was never more true than in our
own country. I hold the profession of journalism to be one of
the highest. In none should the individual feel a greater sense
of responsibility to his public, and in no other calling is there
a larger field of opportunity for public service.

It would be presuming to say that even as a rule editors
are profound, or that they are exceptionally brilliant intel-
lectually. The average and perhaps the best journalistic
mind is not consecutive, but rather likely to be discursive.
Wherefore, it may not be said that newspaper reading is the
best reading, nor that the education derived from the news-
paper is the best education, nor, above all, that the newspaper
should supplant the school. Newspaper reading tends to
superficiality, and the American citizen is superficial. As
T. P. O'Connor once said when I asked him for a final judgment

vi PRETEXT

upon our people: "They are the best half-educated lot in the
world." Newspaper reading is a mania with us.

By reason of his opportunities, an editor is able to pry into
the whys and wherefores of many "enterprises of great pith
and moment." And in some degree the work has a distinctly
permanent value. Out of its abstract and brief chronicle of
the day is created a reservoir of fact from which the wise his-
torian might well draw his interpretations and deductions, if he
would.

Herbert Spencer, in his work on "The Philosophy of Style,"
calls attention to a common weakness on the part of those who
write our histories. He says: "A modern newspaper state-
ment, though probably true, if quoted as testimony would be
laughed at, but the letter of a court gossip written some cen-
turies ago is thought good historical evidence."

And so, having passed man's allotment of three-score and ten,
I am to tell a newspaperman's tale.

The fates seem to have set some curious milestones along
my pathway at ten-year intervals. For instance, in 1848, the
great revolutionary year, I was born. In that year also the
first Associated Press was organized. In 1858, 1 learned to set
type. In that year also the first successful Atlantic cable was
laid. In 1868, I first began the publication of a newspaper.
In 1878, 1 became a member of the Associated Press, represent-
ing the Chicago Daily News which I had founded. In 1888,
I retired from journalism, as I supposed, permanently. In
1898, having become executive officer of the Associated Press,
and having won a contest for supremacy, of four years' duration,
I set out on a campaign to extend its foreign service and make
it a world-covering institution. In 1908, I entered upon the
most eventful ten years of my life. In 191 8, having served
the Association a quarter of a century, I withdrew from im-
mediate control of its activities.

CONTENTS
FIRST DECADE

PAOI

The Year of My Birth . i

The State of Illinois 3

The Town of Hudson 4

My Family 5

My Childhood Days 11

At Nauvoo 14

The Underground Railway 16

SECOND DECADE

The Year 1858 22

Mr. Lincoln's Election 25

Boyhood in Chicago 27

THIRD DECADE

Election of General Grant 31

The Great Chicago Fire 34

In Daily Journalism 36

Meeting with Ito 37

The Case of Baron de Palm 39

A Tour of the South 42

As a Washington Correspondent 44

Founding a Daily Paper 5°

Creating 99-CENT Stores 60

Enter Victor F. Lawson 62

Story of "Ross Raymond" 65

Dick Lane, My Burglar Friend 7*

The Case of Judge Blodgett 74

Detective Journalism — The Spencer Case . , , . . 77

vii

viii CONTENTS

FOURTH DECADE

PAGE

A Tour in Europe 83

Meeting Gambetta and Clemenceau 90

More Detective Journalism 92

The Campaign of 1880 97

What I Knew About Grant 101

Founding the "Morning News" 107

How to Edit News 109

Origin of a Famous Phrase 116

Acquaintance with Diaz 118

An Invitation from New York 121

Founding the First Mail Train 124

Days with Eugene Field 125

Correcting Some False Ideas "... 132

The Puritan Strain 133

Practical Jokes 134

Emory Storrs and His Tailor 141

The Campaign of 1884 143

"Not for Forty Nominations!" 149

The Famous Mackin Case 157

The Case of McGarigle 163

Organizing the Linotype Company 165

Convicting the Chicago Anarchists 166

Warfare in Earnest 17c

Words Can Kill 171

Hunting Down the Guilty 172

Tense Days 175

Punishing Corrupt Public Officials 177

Retiring from Journalism 179

FIFTH DECADE

A Sentimental Journey 183

Pays with Andrew D. White 189

The Diedrichs Affair 190

Banking and Other Activities 194

Visit of W. T. Stead 200

Evolution of News Gathering 204

CONTENTS

rAoi

The First Associated Press 207

A Masterpiece of Reporting 211

The Campaign of 1896 218

Collapse of the United Press 223

A Princely Offer 227

Reporting the Spanish War 228

Leonard Wood's Protege 230

A Rascal Named Smith 232

SIXTH DECADE

^-Forming a New Associated Press . '. 235

Wireless Telegraphy 239

The Assassination of President McKinley 240

Prince Henry's Visit 241

The Martinique Disaster 241

v Extension of the Foreign Service of the Associated Press 243

Audience of the Italian King 248

Audience of Pope Leo XIII 250

Dinner With the Kaiser 252

The Death of Pope Leo XIII 258

The Removal of the Russian Censorship on Foreign News 261

The Russo-Japanese War 278

The Qualities Needed in a War Correspondent . . . 282

The Portsmouth Conference 284

The Case of Lagerkranz 296

SEVENTH DECADE

Genesis of the World War 299

Discovery of the North Pole 301

An English Panic 30a

Days in Paris 303

The German Situation 304

Visiting Asia 307

Selecting an Associate 309

The World War 3°9

Lack of Preparedness 3X<*

x CONTENTS

PAG*

"Reporting the War 317

Case of Cardinal Mercier 318

Case of the "Lusitania" 319

Doctor Depage's Hospital 323

America in the War 325

The Memorable Year 1918 329

A Fine Funeral 330

Creel Committee 342

Greetings Abroad 345

The Associated Press of To-day 361

Presidential Years 365

Our Critics , 367

LIST OF HALFTONE ILLUSTRATIONS
The Author at His Desk Frontispiece

FACING PAGE

"Five Oaks," the Cottage in Which I Was Born ... 4

My Father 20

My Mother 21

A Dedication from Eugene Field 132

President Arthur 133

President McKinley 148

Mr. Kaneko 149

President Roosevelt 276

Prince William of Sweden 277

Lord Northcliffe 292

President Taft 293

President Wilson 324

The Hero of the Battle of the Marne 325

Georges Clemenceau 340

Marshal Foch 341

LIST OF TEXT ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE

Rev. James Creighton 7

Rev. William Maine Fox 7

Prof. Ormond Stone 10

Nauvoo Mormon Temple 15

Carthage Jail 16

The Author at Eight Years ......... 17

Facsimile of Letterhead, 1868 32

The Author as an Iron Founder 33

Colonel Forrest 37

Ito in 1872 38

Colonel E. W. Halford 39

"Lola Montez" 40

Henry W. Grady 44

Victor F. Lawson in 1876 62

Melville E. Stone in 1876 62

John J. Flinn 63

"Rose Raymond" 65

Dick Lane 71

William H. Crane 83

Charles Stewart Parnell 85

John Dillon 88

John Ballantyne 108

Joseph Hatton , 108

William E. Curtis 108

F. W. Reilly no

W. S. B. Matthews Ill

xii

LIST OF TEXT ILLUSTRATIONS xiii

PAOE

Colonel Harvey 112

Slason Thompson 112

"Bill" Nye 112

George Ade 112

John T. McCutcheon 113

Senibodi in the Daily News Office 114

President Diaz 119

William H. Smith Letter 122

Matthew Arnold's Cable 124

Eugene Field by Himself 127

Mr. Field Reading His Beautiful Poem 131

Eugene Field at Work 133

Inscription in a Book by Eugene Field 135

Field Bursts Into Song 136

A Field Appreciation 138

Casey's of Table d'Hote Fame 139

Field Invites Himself to My Country Home .... 139

Appeal for a Small Loan . 14°

Lord Coleridge H1

Grover Cleveland *55

Joseph C. Mackin 157

Julius S. Grinnell J73

Albert R. Parsons 176

J. J. Knickerbocker 184

Baron Richtofen I9°

W. T. Stead *»

D.H.Craig 207

Gerard Hallock 207

Alexander Jones 2°7

J. W. Simonton 2°9

William Henry Smith 210

Letter from William McKinley 224

xiv LIST OF TEXT ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE

Letter from William Jennings Bryan 225

Joseph Pulitzer 227

"Major Bellairs" 230

The Rascal Smith 232

Prince Henry 241

Facsimile of Kaiser's Cable 242

"Command" to Audience of the Kaiser 266

Admiral Peary's Telegram 301

Frederick Roy Martin 309

Cardinal Mercier 319

Herbert Stuart Stone . - . . 323

Melville E. Stone, Jr 323

Victor F. Lawson * 333

Frank B. Noyes 334

Adolph S. Ochs 340

Dinner of the British Press 345

FIFTY YEARS A
JOURNALIST

FIRST DECADE

The Year of My Birth

I WAS born at Hudson, Illinois, on August 22, 1848.
The year 1848 was an interesting one. If the period of
one's nativity has anything to do with his career, it was a
good year for a journalist to be born in. All Europe was
ablaze with revolutionary fires. Louis Philippe was dethroned
in Paris; another Louis abdicated in Bavaria; Ferdinand of
Austria, under compulsion, handed over his sceptre to his son
Francis Joseph, whose long reign ended in death at the moment
of the complete downfall of his empire in the great World War.
There were revolutionary uprisings in all the German states,
in Hungary, and in Italy. Great Britain was not free, for
while the year saw the close of the Chartist outbreak in
England, its principles survived and finally became incorpo-
rated into law; and the young Ireland rebellion was on in
Ireland. Switzerland ceased her internecine contest and
adopted her republican constitution. Garibaldi, Kossuth, Glad-
stone, Disraeli, were achieving things on the European stage.
Abraham Lincoln was serving his first term in our Federal
Congress, and Stephen A. Douglas his first term in the Senate.
The Free-Soil party was organized and the Slavery question
became the national political issue in the United States. On
February 2nd of the year peace was signed with Mexico, and
we took over the Southwest Territory which ultimately
developed into the great and prosperous states of California,
Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Arizona. The acquisition of this

2 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST U848

territory inspired two revolutions in the United States.
Whether or not human slavery should be permitted in this
new area became a bone of contention, and no settlement of the
right of Congress to forbid human bondage in the territories
was reached until the Civil War of 1861.

Also the question was revived of the relation of gold and
silver in our monetary system. It had been thought to have
been arranged by Congress in 1834, when an ounce of gold was
declared to be equal to sixteen ounces of silver. This law was
ultimately found to be no more effective than King Canute's
mandate forbidding the sea to advance. Nine days before the
signing of the Mexican peace treaty gold was discovered
at Sutter's mill race in Coloma, California. The output of
the precious metal was so great that the ratio of sixteen to
one could not be maintained. An immutable economic law had
been declared three centuries before that no statutory enact-
ment could annul. It had been announced by Sir Thomas
Gresham of England, and even before him, by Copernicus and
others. It declared that any cheap money circulated in a
country would drive a dearer money out of use. This ques-
tion, the issue over a double monetary standard, called bi-
metallism, thus begun in 1848, continued to trouble the nation
until the defeat of Mr. Bryan in the Presidential election of 1896.

The lamp of liberty which had been lighted in 1793 and
which had flickered out in Europe after Waterloo was relighted.

Inspired by the year, Tennyson wrote Aubrey de Vere that
he would publish "In Memoriam." It had grown from time to
time after Arthur Hallam's death in 1833. It was the greatest
verse of his century, and voiced the spirit of 1848:

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow;
The year is going, let him go;

Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind,
For those that here we see no more;
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress for all mankind.

1848) FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST )

Ring out a slowly dying cause,
And ancient forms of party strife;
Ring in the nobler modes of life,

With sweeter manners, purer laws.

The year 1848 was the dawn of a new day.

The State of Illinois

The section of the country in which I first saw the light was
what the militarists would call a strategic state. There is a
singularly interesting historical note illustrative of this. Back
in the days before the formation of the Republic and the
adoption of the Federal Constitution, the Colonial Congress
adopted what has been well called the "immortal ordinance of
1787" for the governance of the "Northwest Territory," i.e.:
the country lying west and north of the Ohio River and east of
the Mississippi. The fifth article of this ordinance provided
that there should be "formed in the said Territory not less
than three, nor more than five states"; that the most western
state should have its northern boundary at a line drawn east
and west through the "southern bend, or extremity of Lake
Michigan," or should extend to the Canadian frontier on Lake
Superior. This meant that this "northern line" should divide
Illinois from Wisconsin, if the area involved should contain
two states and not one.

But thirty years later a very wise man represented this part
of the country as a delegate from the Territory of Illinois in the
Congress of the United States. It was one Nathaniel Pope,
and he had ideas of his own. In January, 1818, he received a
petition from the legislature of his territory praying for ad-
mission into the Union as a state. This petition he presented
to Congress, and he was instructed to prepare and report a bill
to deal with the matter. Disregarding wholly the plan of the
"immortal ordinance," he fixed the northern boundary of the
new State of Illinois at 420 30' north latitude, some forty miles
north of the "southern bend of Lake Michigan." In ex-
planation of this change he argued that all republics were in
danger of dissolution. In that day practically all transporta-

4 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [1848

tion was by water, and all of the streams and rivers of Illinois
below the parallel of the "southern bend of Lake Michigan"
flowed south. Therefore, said Judge Pope, if trouble should
arise between the North and the South, Illinois would become,
by her commercial interest, joined to a southern confederacy of
states. But if Congress should go forty miles farther north, as
he proposed, for a northern boundary of the new state, they
would cross a watershed and join to the state waters which
flowed into the Great Lakes and out through the St. Lawrence
River. And thus Illinois would have an interest binding her to
the northern as well as to the southern portion of the Union,
and could never consent to a dissolution of the Republic.
Upon this issue Judge Pope won.

When one remembers that in the hour in which a division
of the Union was attempted this state furnished to the contest
Mr. Lincoln and General Grant, the prevision of Judge Pope
seems dramatic.

The Town of Hudson

Hudson, my birthplace, was and is a village nine miles north
of Bloomington, Illinois. The house in which I was born is
still standing. It is known as " Five Oaks," and is the home of
Thomas Stevenson, brother of the former Vice-President of the
United States. It takes its name from five massive trees which
have grown from acorns planted many years ago by Mrs.
Stevenson's father. The house was built in 1837, and in some
ways bears evidence of its age. One section was set apart for
my father and his family.

Hudson was also the birthplace of Elbert Hubbard, famed as
the editor of the Philistine. His father was the village doctor.
I met Elbert twice — first at Grand Rapids on the evening of
June 11, 191 1, when, at a banquet, we were both to speak. The
" function " took place in the opera house. The speakers' table
was arranged at the back of the footlights on the stage, and the
other diners were placed at tables on the floor of the auditorium.
As we began I noted the absence of one of the speakers. Two
or three courses had been served, when I saw a curiously garbed

"Five Oaks," the Cottage in which I was Born on August 22nd,
1848, at Hudson, Illinois

i848] FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 5

citizen enter the front door and come stalking through the
crowd. There was no mistaking his identity. He wore an
ordinary dress coat, a coloured waistcoat, and gray trousers, with
tan shoes and a flowing black tie, such as Parisian artists affect.
He came on the stage and stopped at the back of my chair,
tapped me on the shoulder, and greeted me with: "Hello, Mel-
ville, how are you?" And not to be outdone, I replied to the
stranger: "Glad to see you, Fra Elbertus." Later in the even-
ing we had an opportunity to become acquainted.

Then on May 1, 191 5, as I was leaving the Lusitaniay which
was about to sail on her final, fatal trip, at the foot of the gang-
plank I encountered Hubbard and his wife. We chatted for a
moment. We spoke of the threatening advertisement in the
morning papers, cautioning people against taking passage on
the ship. "Well, if they sink her," laughed Hubbard, "I will
have a chance some day to meet the Kaiser in hell." And
with that we parted, at this our second and last meeting.
Hubbard and his wife perished when the ship went down.

Another curious character from Hudson was "Buffalo
Jones," a quaint Illinois farmer who, accompanied by two cow-
boys, went out to East Africa and captured with the lasso all
sorts of wild animals — such as gave attractiveness to the stories
of Winston Churchill and Theodore Roosevelt. On his in-
vitation I heard him lecture in New York one night. He had
taken moving pictures of his expedition, and the audience
roared with laughter as they saw him seize an untamed lioness,
such as challenged the prowess of the great Nimrods, pull her
by the tail into focus for the camera, and cuff her about as if she
had been a lazy cow. He seemed to have encountered none of
the dangers nor to have experienced any of the thrilling episodes
of which we had read so much. For him the "desert and the
vasty wilds" had no terrors; rhinos, hippos, and even swish-tail
lions, were simple playthings. His sifari was little more than
two cowboys, a few natives, and his ropes.

My Family

My family was of English stock. The first of the name of
whom we are acquaint was one Walter atte Stone, who lived

6 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [1848

at Great Bromley, Essex, England, in 1320, before the days
of Chaucer and Wickliffe. The name is supposed to mean
Walter at the Stone, indicating the site of his home. Ten
generations later, one "Husbandman Symon Stone," aged 50,
with his wife Joan, and five children, "imbarqued in ye shippe
INCREASE, 15th April, 1635, having taken the oathes of
Allegiance,'* for New England. Ninth in succession from this
immigrant was my father.

My father's mother was a Fordyce, one of the family which
produced Samuel Fordyce, a well-known railroad builder of
St. Louis.

My mother's father was a Creighton, of a lowland Scottish
line, well known in Dumfries. In the St. Michael's church-
yard, close to the tomb of Robert Burns, lie the bodies of many
members of the family. A branch went to Ireland at the time
of the Cromwellian Invasion and settled in the County Fer-
managh.

My mother's mother was Matilda Fox, of the ancient Fox
Sept of Kilcoursey, in the King's County, Ireland.

It thus appears that the blood in my veins is mingled English,
Scottish, and Irish. With a somewhat similar ancestry, Baron
Speck von Sternberg was appointed German Ambassador to
the United States some years ago. I happened to be in Berlin
and gave him a dinner. Responding to the personal toast,
he rose and said, "My father was German, my mother Scotch,
and I was born in England; that makes me an American."

Malvina Stone, the mother of President Chester A. Arthur,
and Mary Bryan Stone, wife of Cyrus W. Field, were of our
Stone family.

There were many clergymen, physicians, and journalists
among my relatives. When John Wesley organized the
Methodists, the Irish Creightons were among his followers. In
Mr. Wesley's diary he frequently mentions them. On May
28, 1785, he notes that he preached in Mr. (Robert) Creigh-
ton's barn at Cavan, Ireland. This Robert Creighton was
my great-grandfather. And his brother was the Rev.
James Creighton, coadjutor and most intimate friend of Mr.
Wesley. James Creighton, with Charles Wesley, was of

1848]

FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST

Rev. Jamet Creighton

the hymn writers of the early Methodist connection. In the
picture of Wesley's deathbed, often found in Methodist homes,
he stands holding the hand of the dying
/ a^w-Jk founder of the denomination. He minis-

/ f \ tered at the City Road Wesleyan Chapel,

f / ,/f *5*y w London, for many years after Wesley's
death. My grandfather's first cousins
were the Rev. Doctor William Creigh-
ton Dandy, an eminent Methodist clergy-
man of Chicago, and Mrs. John Milton
Phillips, wife of a well-known Methodist
divine of Cincinnati. My father, the
Rev. Elijah Stone, was a well-known
Methodist minister of Illinois. His
uncle was the Rev. Isaac Stone (Meth-
odist) of northern New York, and his brother, the Rev. David
Stone (Methodist) of Minnesota. Of the Fox clan, the Rev.
William Maine Fox was a pioneer Methodist preacher of
Madison, Wisconsin.

Among the journalists was Emily Crawford, the famous
Paris correspondent. She and her husband, George Morland
Crawford, were people of note in their day. Crawford and the
novelist Thackeray had been friends from early manhood.
They were both of Trinity College, Cambridge, roommates at
2, Lamb Court, Inner Temple, studying law; members of the
same London clubs, and both turned to
journalism rather than the profession of law.
As the years went on Thackeray became a
partial owner of the London Daily News "▼ ^r

and, upon his suggestion, Crawford was ylnt/yiSlm
appointed in 1851 resident correspondent
for the paper, in Paris. What Thackeray
thought of his friend may best be learned
from a letter which he wrote to Craw-
ford, who had nursed him through a
critical illness in 1849 — one which well-
nigh left the story of "Pendennis" forever unfinished. The
letter was of the book in which Thackeray visualized Crawford

■y&r

Rev. William Maine Fox

8 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [1848

as George Warrington, the friend of Arthur Pendennis. In it
he said :

You will find much to remind you of the old talks in this book.
There is something of you in Warrington, but he is not fit to hold a
candle to you, for taking you all-round, you are the most genuine
fellow that ever strayed from a better world into this. You don't
smoke, and he is a confirmed smoker of tobacco. Bordeaux and Port
were your favourites at "The Deanery" and "The Garrick" and War-
rington is guzzling beer. But he has your honesty, and, like you,
couldn't posture if he tried. You had a strong affinity for the Irish.
May you some day find an Irish girl to lead you to matrimony.
There's no such good wife as a daughter of Erin.

"The Deanery" and "The Garrick" were two well-known
clubs of London. The Deanery was in Dean Street, Soho.
Among the notables who had made it at least a temporary home
were Goldsmith and De Quincey, and Hazlitt and George
Morland, the talented but dissipated painter, for whom Craw-
ford was named. It was rather a breeding house of journalists.
Thackeray, George Augustus Sala, and Crawford all frequented
it. The Garrick was, as it is to-day, a rendezvous for actors
and press men.

The Irish wife whom Crawford was to find was Emily, the
granddaughter of Amelia Fox Johnstone of Cleveland, Ohio,
who was my mother's aunt. When a girl of seventeen, Emily
went to Paris to study at the Sorbonne. While yet in her
teens she sent some articles to the London Morning Star,
which so pleased the editor that he appointed her Paris corres-
pondent. Thus she and Crawford met, and in 1864 they were
married. Thackeray was not privileged to attend the wedding.
He died in 1863.

For twenty-two years, until the death of Crawford in 1885,
the couple worked together in a literary partnership seldom
likened. They were both journalists of the best type, having
wide knowledge of affairs, keen sense of perspective, fine
literary style, ceaseless industry, and a vivid appreciation of
the responsibilities attaching to the office.

1848] FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST g

Richard Whiting, in his valuable contribution to the his-
tory of British journalism, "My Harvest," says of the
twain :

Mrs. Crawford was as important, to put it mildly, as the man who
had given her the name by which she was so widely known. She
had extraordinary facility with the pen. The sex attributes of mind,
as commonly generalized, seemed to have changed; hers was the will
behind the instrument, the address, the energy to face the world.
Under growing infirmities, his part declined to the practice of the
domestic virtues. He was a dignified person who had been a good
hand in his day, but that day was gone; and since he could no longer
fill the part of the new man of the period, it was filled for him in their
common interest by his partner, as the new woman. For the Daily
News she wrote one kind of a political letter befitting the gravity of
the subject, and for Truth quite another, a perfect storehouse of
the anecdote of the day as it bore on the drama of public life. She
knew all the leading men, especially on the Republican side; Gam-
betta was often to be met at her luncheon table.

With this she produced articles for the reviews, British and Amer-
ican, and I think had another correspondence for a New York paper.
It was an all-devouring activity. Some of the work had the blem-
ishes of haste, none of it was less than womanlike. There was a
powerful mind behind it, too often doing less than justice to itself,
but — one must live! A chance word of hers once put me on the track
of an estimate of character in a common friend, at which I had been
tinkering for years. She was handsome, but in a mannish way — a
big, powerful head, lips apt for a smile or a resolve, a solid block of
brow, with sparkling Irish eyes to light its recesses with promise of
good fellowship and entertainment. As she advanced in age she
looked like a marquise of the old school, with a mass of silvery
white hair — warranted natural for the indispensable effect of the
peruke.

In her husband's interest she fought the great De Blowitz in a strug-
gle for the primacy of the press gallery at the Assembly. In their
relations witfythe questor of that body the correspondents were repre-
sented by the, suffrages of his colleagues. Blowitz sighed for the post,
and began to make interest with the little constituency for the next
sessional election. Crawford's prospects looked poor, but when the
lady entered into the fray, they soon improved. She interviewed the
authorities, she wrought by turn on the hopes and fears of the con-

io FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [1848

stituency, she stuck at nothing, and she won. The great one bated
no jot of grandeur in defeat. When he saw how things were going,
he took care to cast his vote on the winning side, with compliments
addressed to the hearts of his supporters by inference at the expense
of their heads.

The London Daily News was sold to a syndicate of which
Henry Labouchere was a member. He was always a rover by
nature. He went to Paris and fell in with the Crawfords. After
the fall of the Emperor in 1870 the siege of Paris was on. The
Crawfords went with their young children to Tours, where
Gambetta, escaping from the metropolis by balloon, had
established a branch of the Government of National Defence.
"Labby" remained in Paris and wrote his memorable letters
of a "Besieged Resident." A friendship between the corres-
pondents sprang up, and when Labouchere founded Truth
in 1877, Mrs. Crawford, in addition to her other work, wrote a
weekly Paris letter which she continued throughout the rest
of her life. Her husband died in 1885, and the post of Paris
correspondent for the Daily News was given her without reduc-
tion of compensation. She, at my request, did occasional work
for the Associated Press. Notably, in 1899, she contributed
a most graphic series of pen pictures of the Dreyfus trial at
Rennes.
Mrs. Crawford in her latter days took up her residence at
Senlis, outside of Paris, and was there when
the Germans invaded the place in 1914. She
never survived the shock. She went to Bristol,
England, to live with a son, and died in 1917.
My older and only brother, Prof.
Ormond Stone, held the chair of higher
mathematics at the University of Virginia,
and was director of the Leander McCormick
Astronomical Observatory at the same insti-
tution for eighteen years, and is now enjoying
prof. ormond Stone a wen_earned retirement. My grand-nephew

Alexander Stark, Junior, was the youngest major in our Na-
tional Army, having won the position, and numerous decora-

1848] FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST //

tions, because of great gallantry in the sanguinary struggle in
the Argonne.

My Childhood Days

My father was a New Yorker by birth, but was taken to the
West in his early boyhood. He met my mother when both
were students at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois. They
were married in March, 1846.

I am grateful that my lines fell in pleasant places; that I
was born on the boundless prairies of the West; that we were a
people only reasonably good and in no sense transcendental;
that our conscience was the homely Western conscience; that
we did not measure a man's morals either by his manners or
his money.

The Middle West, in the 'forties, and for years thereafter,
was distinctly American, and I think more so than any other
section of the country. The people were simple-minded, blunt,
honest — none of them put on any "side." Many chewed
tobacco and few men wore "evening clothes." Ladies of
quality frequently smoked cob or clay pipes. Men frequently,
as a substitute for a necktie, grew a full beard. One of this
sort, whom I met in Paris many years ago, was an adept in
profanity, and when I met him, he "blew off steam" in true
Western fashion. I asked him his troubles. "This d — d
country has no fine-cut chewing tobacco," he replied It also
touched him to the quick that when he crossed the Rhine and
visited Frankfort not one of "the scurvy cabmen could speak
English." It never occurred to him that the cabmen might
have wondered that he did not speak German.

In many ways there was real advantage in the primitive life
we led. We did more thinking on any given subject than is
possible in these rushing, crowded days. We read less tittle-
tattle in our newspapers. The mad passion for haste had not
seized upon us. We enjoyed Dickens and Thackeray, or serious
books on important subjects, instead of nibbling at a thousand
trifling titbits respecting inconsequential affairs.

A buggy contented us instead of a law-breaking motor car.

12 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [1848

If we desired to communicate with a friend a mile away, it
served our purpose to write him a note, send it by messenger,
and wait an hour for his reply, instead of fretting because there
was a delay of a minute on a then non-existent telephone.

They were stage-coach days. The horse was an indispensable
animal. He drew the carriage, the farm wagon, the plough, and
the canal boat. I can remember vividly the days when the
arrival or departure of the stage was an event in an Illinois
town. It cost #10 and required ten days to send a letter from
Missouri to California by the overland coach. Such advance-
ment in human comfort as had been made on the seaboard was
slow in reaching west of the Alleghany Mountains. Our food
was simple and was provided by our own farm labour. Our
clothes were, as a rule, homespun. The use of coal was not
great. The home fires were made from wood.

Methodism seemed well fitted for the time. In some sense
its activities doubtless furnished entertainment for the people.
The sermons were largely argumentative. Methodist preach-
ers advocated Free Will and Baptism by sprinkling and ener-
getically denounced Predestination and Immersion. We had
ordained ministers, local preachers, and class leaders. We had
members on probation and those in full membership. In the
absence of the cinema our diversions were the revival meetings
in the winter and the camp meetings in the summer. Among our
entertainers were a certain number of people who "went for-
ward to the mourners' bench" and were converted every sum-
mer and winter and quite as consistently "backslid" every
spring and fall.

But this was the Middle West, and the Middle West in the
last half century dominated the country.

A pioneer Methodist minister in Illinois in the 'forties led a
gypsy life. Under the rules of the denomination he could
minister over one charge but two years and more often was
limited to one year. The compensation was necessarily beg-
garly; it was missionary work. With little more than a horse
and saddlebags containing a change of clothing, these evange-
lists rode from place to place, pleaded their cause in school-
houses, or wherever possible; were housed by their adherents,

1848] FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST i3

and thus, obeying the divine call and injunction, they took no
thought for the morrow. They uncomplainingly endured great
hardships, and when they repeated the Lord's Prayer their
petition for their daily bread was by no means a meaningless
appeal. At best their hire was a pittance in money, sometimes
supplemented by a "donation party," at which they received
a curious collection of more or less useless trumpery. Now and
then there was a parsonage to live in, but this was far from
being assured. Their household belongings were scarcely
worth moving from place to place. Frequently, if not indeed
as a rule, the preacher was forced to add to his meagre income
by something in the way of an avocation. None of these
efforts was thought to be infra dig. The little earned by these
outside occupations was all too small to be the subject of criti-
cism. They were a noble band of God-fearing and God-serving
men, who enjoyed the profound respect of everyone.

If any one would care to know what manner of man my
father was, let me say, he was the gentlest, kindest I ever knew.
There was ever the soft answer that would turn away wrath.
Yet he had conviction immovable. Patient to a degree, never
stirred to anger, while stalwart in moral tone and unyielding
in his endeavour. A fine Greek scholar, read in all the books of
his profession, unswerving in his faith, believing absolutely in
the plenary inspiration of the Scriptures, ardent in his defence
of Arminianism, champion of the doctrine of Free Will, and un-
compromising in his opposition to the dogma of Foreordination,
very human and never at one with the Perfectionist class,
liberal in his sympathies, so charitable that he would spend
his last dollar in aid of the Bible or missionary cause, un-
touched through life by any breath of calumny.

The deprivations of the preachers' life were fully shared by
their families. The hardships endured by my sainted mother
in the period of my childhood are indelibly burned into my
memory. With no help from any servant, she, like Martha,
"was cumbered about much serving," yet found time to devote
herself efficiently to the peculiarly burdensome duties incum-
bent upon a minister's wife. She made and mended the scanty
wardrobe of her children, cooked their meals, scrubbed her

14 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [,848

floors, entertained visitors — of whom there were many — made
pastoral calls when necessary, taught in Sunday School, and
never missed a prayer- or a class-meeting. She was a generously
good and not a meanly good Christian.

And we boys! The lot of a minister's son is not a happy one.
With all of the cares imposed upon the parents, close attention
to the children was scarcely possible. Yet there was always
the benign Christian example in the home life which meant
much. I never knew my father or mother to do an act which I
could fairly criticize. In all respects and in every relation they
led upright, godly lives. For this I must ever be sensible and
sincerely grateful. Whatever have been or are my delinquen-
cies, they cannot be charged to them. I know the age-old jibes
concerning preachers' sons and deacons' daughters^ but have
no great concern respecting them. It is true that much, and
far too much, is expected of the unfortunates. They are
constantly in the eye of the members of the congregation, and
little allowance is made for their shortcomings. Trivial offences
are magnified, and they are rarely treated with real justice.
Yet in a long life I have known many preachers' sons, and there
have been very few "black sheep" among them. In nine cases
out of ten they have proved to be high-minded, honourable,
and respected citizens.

Moreover, I am convinced that the legacy of poverty left me
was a priceless one. It is the rich man's son and not the poor
man's who deserves pity. As Emerson so well said in his essay
on Compensation:

Whilst he sits on the cushion of advantages, he goes to sleep. When
a man is pushed, tormented, defeated, he has a chance to learn some-
thing; he has been put on his wits, on his manhood; he has gained
facts; learns his ignorance; is cured of the insanity of conceit; has got
moderation and real skill.

At Nauvoo

The first home I remember was at Nauvoo, a little city on
the banks of the Mississippi River, made famous by the Mor-

1848)

FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST

mons under the prophet Joe Smith. Smith had secured a city
charter, which made him not merely mayor but autocrat of the
whole neighbourhood. Even Mr. Lincoln and Judge Douglas
found it politic to seek his political aid. At one time he an-
nounced himself as a candidate for the Presidency of the
United States, but even this did not fully satisfy his ambition,
and he prepared to found a monarchy of which he was to be
king.

The Mormons led a stormy life and aroused such hostility
on the part of their neighbours as to provoke a local war. Only
five years before we moved there non-Mormons had mur-
dered Joe Smith and his brother Hyrum, and had driven the
whole outfit from the place. Then, but three years before my
arrival, the wonderful temple which the Mormons had built
was burned and nothing but the charred walls were left. On
this ruin, as a child, I played. Though but five years old,
there were incidents which have lived in my memory. I was
taken to Carthage, the county capital, and shown the blood
spot on the jail floor where Hyrum Smith was killed. Joe
Smith's wife abandoned the church, and not long after married
the captain of a Mississippi River steamboat, bought a Nauvoo
hotel, and settled down to an or-
derly and comfortable existence.
We made her acquaintance and
found her a worthy woman.
One of her sons, Joseph Smith,
Junior, lived with her, and later
became chief of a non-polyga-
mous branch of the Mormon
Church. I knew him for many
years, and, while not accepting
his faith in the tenets of his
denomination, respected him
greatly. He lived at Piano,
Illinois, not far from Chicago,
and published the Saint's
Herald, the organ of his denomi-
nation. Later, he moved

FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST

[1848

to Missouri. I do not think he ever secured many fol-
lowers.

The first half of the 19th Century was alive with both re-
ligious and socialistic develop-
ments. And Nauvoo was not
exceptional. Besides the Mor-
mon colony, there was an at-
tempt by a Frenchman named
Cabet to establish there a
social organization of Icarians
not unlike Robert Dale Owen's
Harmony Enterprises in In-
diana, the Oneida Community,
and Brook Farm. It was
famous for a while, but did
not succeed. Its founder went
to St. Louis for another trial,
but soon dropped out of sight.
Under Brigham Young's leadership the Mormons in the
year of my birth "trekked" away to Salt Lake City.

Carthage Jail

The Underground Railway

There was only the river between Nauvoo and the slave
state of Missouri. My father's house and the houses of my
maternal grandfather at Canton, and my uncle in Stark County,
Illinois, were all stations on the Underground Railway, and the
Negroes from Missouri and the other slave states were con-
tinually passed by night from one to the other and pushed
along to Owen Lovejoy's house at Princeton — and thence to
Chicago and to freedom in Canada. On one occasion a couple
of Negroes arrived at our home in Nauvoo on their master's
horses, which they had appropriated. These horses were put
in our stable, and for safety the Negroes were buried under the
hay in the loft. Some hours later, the masters came in search
of their slaves. My mother was too honest to lie about it,
and said that they might go out to the stable and see if they
could pick out their animals. They were insulting and com-

i854l FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST i7

pelled her to get them their dinner. They went out to look for
their horses, but were too drunk to identify them, and went away
leaving the Negroes undiscovered. The next day my father
put the poor creatures in a wagon, covered them with straw, and
drove them to the next station on the Underground Railway.

Because of my mother's failing health, we moved to Chicago
in 1854. My father, as other circuit-riding preachers, had been
given a small commission on such subscriptions to the church
periodicals as he could obtain and on the sale of Bibles and
other religious books. With the little he had gained in this
way it was possible to undertake the long and wearisome trip.
The family was crowded on what was called a Democrat wagon
and we set out. We stopped with the "brethren" of the
denomination en routey and after several days on the road,
reached our destination in the late summer of 1854. The ex-
perience of our family as conductors on the Underground
Railway stood us in good stead as we sought houses of refuge.

We were welcomed on our arrival by
two eminent Methodists, a distinguished
doctor and a judge. The doctor, who for
many years was accounted the leader in his
profession in the West, speedily restored
my mother's health, and the judge har-
boured us as visitors in his home. But it
was no time for idleness, and soon, when
my mother's health was sufficiently re-
stored, my father was appointed as a a

(( I-. 11 1 1 t> The Author at Eight Yean

supply at a small suburban town. I o (From ambrotype taken by m
eke out a livelihood he manufactured and f,ther)

sold "Stone's Chinese Liniment, for man and beast." He also
gave up his devotion to homoeopathy and became an advocate of
hydropathy. He practised on me, and I had frequent and ex-
hausting "wet sheet packs" for ailments which, I am sure, were
purely imaginary. Our intimate neighbour was a sister of the
statesman, Anson Burlingame, and a cousin of the evangelist,
D. L. Moody. The next year, 1856, Father was sent to the
Libertyville circuit in an adjoining county. Here he added to
his meagre income by setting up a daguerreotype and ambrotype

18 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [1848

gallery. The first National Republican Presidential campaign
was on and aroused great interest. It was a happy time, as
always with an eight-year-old boy. There was no sense of
responsibility, no fear for the future, perfect repose in the con-
fidence that one's parents will provide, and no solicitude re-
specting their ability to do so.

Another year and another move. This time to DeKalb, in
the western part of the state. Then it was more interesting.
I was beginning to look upon a larger world. Then it was that
my checkered career began. I was not yet striving to find
what the French call their metier. But, during the summer
school vacations, I went to work, alike because I could earn a
little and because I became interested in things of practical
value. In a limited way, and chiefly because it amused me,
I learned to set type. My older brother was regularly em-
ployed at a wage, and I hung about the printing office, mastered
the location of the various letters of the alphabet in the cases,
and pushed the roller over the type on an old-fashioned hand-
press. For a half-dozen years thereafter I spent my summers
first at one thing and then at another. It was a case of "every-
thing by starts and nothing long." Yet it proved of value in
the end. My health was never good. I was quite frail through-
out my boyhood and early manhood. It was thought, when I
was ten years old, that I was to be a victim of tuberculosis. Also
I had little chance of an education. We moved from place to
place and I was under instruction from so many teachers that
I had no settled and continuous training. I was, however, an
omniverous reader, and had great nervous energy and distinct
power of concentration and persistency, which characteristics
have followed me through life. As Byron once said of himself,
"I often felt deficient in that which it was incumbent on any
man to know." This, I am confident, is the feeling of every
youngster as he seems to be passing from dependency to re-
sponsibility.

My father now engaged two bright young men as agents and
sent them out to sell and put up lightning rods. Both of these
young men were also teachers in the public school at which I
was a pupil.

,8S7l FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST jg

When nine years old I fell in love — with a young girl of eight.
Her father, Joseph Glidden, was a farmer. To protect his
lands he invented a barbed-wire fence, for timber was even
then getting scarce and the fence rails were passing into disuse.
He had no money to exploit it, but in the town was a retail
grocery store, kept by the firm of Ellwood & DeLong, and
Isaac Ellwood financed him. He subsequently became a
multi-millionaire, as did Ellwood. In the same village was a
member of my father's church named Jacob Haish, who ran
a planing mill, and when he saw Glidden's success, started out
to make a barbed wire of his own. There was a long contest
against Haish's piracy, in which Haish was finally defeated.

I remember very well a church festival where for the first
time oysters were served. They were of the old-fashioned
canned variety which I do not think I have seen for half a
century. One must acquire a taste for oysters, and in this
instance, they were an unpleasant novelty. The affair gave
rise to a new version of a church hymn. One stanza of the
popular hymn ran thus:

Far out upon the prairie,

How many children dwell;
Who never see the Bible,

Or hear the Sabbath bell.

We parodied it, and sang with great gusto:

Far out upon the prairie,

How many children dwell;
Who never ate an oyster,

Nor even saw a shell.

There was a Sunday-School entertainment, at which a play
called "The Treason of Benedict Arnold" was produced. I
appeared as Major Andre. When I was efficiently hanged,
there was loud applause.

I bought a rattan cane and came sailing jauntily into my
father's house one day. Bishop Ames, an eminent Methodist
divine, was calling. He turned to me and quietly asked in a

20 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [,857

serious tone: "My son, carrying a cane always argues weakness
— either physical, or mental. In your case, which is it?" He
cured me.

One Sunday, while we were living in DeKalb, I was in the
pastor's pew, and my father was preaching. A curious old
gentleman appeared and was seated by my side. A few
moments after the opening of the service, and when the sermon
was in progress, he dropped his head and apparently went
sound asleep. I thought him most irreverent. When he went
home with us for luncheon, I learned that he was Horace
Greeley. He had heard every word of the sermon and earnestly
discussed it with my father during the luncheon hour. The
next night he lectured in the church. This lecture tour was one
of the many occasions on which this strange, untrustworthy,
and greatly overrated man was doing violence to the hopes of
the sound-hearted people of the North. He was urging the elec-
tion of Douglas, against Lincoln, for the United States Senate.

Norman B. Judd, chairman of the Illinois Republican
Committee, wrote in a letter to Senator Lyman Trumbull:

Horace Greeley has been here lecturing and doing what mischief he
could. He took Tom Dyer [Democratic ex-Mayor of Chicago] into
his confidence and told him all the party secrets that he knew, such
as that we had been east and endeavoured to get money for the canvass
and that we failed, etc.; — a beautiful chap he is to be entrusted with
the interests of the party.

W. H. Herndon (Lincoln's law partner) wrote to Trumbull:

There are some Republicans here — more than we had any idea of —
who had been silently influenced by Greeley and who intended to go
for Douglas, or not take sides against him.

Few of the famous journalists of my boyhood days were
really ornaments of their vocation. They were largely respon-
sible for the dislike, if not contempt, in which the editorial
office was held. Turn back to their labours and examine their
work. As I have said of Greeley, he was a shifty and wholly
untrustworthy person, vituperative in the last degree, and a

My Father

My Mother

,858] FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 21

persistent office-beggar. Dana was a malignant who fre-
quently misused his power. Thurlow Weed was primarily a
political boss and was not in any sense a notable editor. The
elder Bennett, while deserving of much commendation foi
his enterprise as a news gatherer, was little better than a black-
guard in the conduct of his paper. George D. Prentice revelled
in indecencies, as did Wilbur F. Storey, of the Chicago Times.

We moved from DeKalb to Kaneville for a year, and after
that to Naperville. I was now in my eleventh year. I attended
a German Sunday School and became grounded in the language.
A famous divorce case was on trial. Isaac H. Burch, a wealthy
citizen of Chicago, was the accuser of his wife, who was a niece
of Erastus Corning, the famous politician of New York. The
case had come to Naperville on a change of venue and Mrs.
Burch and her small daughter Minnie were living with some
neighbours of ours. Mr. Burch lost the case, but obviously
the couple could never resume marital relations. The wife
and her child went to France and lived in Paris. The little girl
grew to womanhood and became the wife of M. Ribot, the
famous French statesman.

Also there was a boy in the village who grew to fame. He
became the agent for Haish, our friend of DeKalb, having as
his field the State of Texas, and finally became a well-known
multi-millionaire. His name was John W. Gates. Also in
the adjacent village of Warrenville, where my father preached,
there was a family attached to whom as a nephew was a lad who
subsequently became interested in the barbed-wire business,
although a lawyer. It was Judge Elbert H. Gary, now chief
of the United States Steel Corporation.

SECOND DECADE

The Year 1858

A NUMBER of notable things happened in 1858. Cyrus
W. Field, in June of that year, successfully laid his first
Atlantic cable. He had tried to lay one a year before,
but it had broken in mid-ocean. This second cable was oper-
ated for four months, and 732 messages were transmitted
through it. At the same time, William Thomson (later Lord
Kelvin) invented his mirror galvanometer, by which he was
able to locate the ends of a broken cable in the trackless waste of
the sea, and to recover and splice the ends so as to make possi-
ble its use.

Still more important — it was in 1858 that the North and
South really joined issue on the Slavery question. The hour
which Judge Pope had prophesied, when the State of Illinois
should bind the Union together, arrived. From the early days
of the Republic a smouldering fire had burned on the altar of
human justice. A few of the Fathers had felt keenly the bar-
barism of human bondage. Indeed, before the adoption of the
National Constitution the Continental Congress of 1787 had
voiced the conscience of the people of the colonies by for ever
inhibiting the custom in the Northwest Territory. It was
this act which made the Ohio River the dividing line between
the free and the slave territories.

Yet compromise after compromise was resorted to in the vain
hope that time would furnish a solution of the most difficult
problem. The union of the states was of such overshadowing
moment that anything and everything must yield to its main-
tenance. Two men of Illinois, Abraham Lincoln and Stephen
A. Douglas, precipitated the crisis which put an end to the
vexed question. Curiously enough, Douglas, Northern-born,
a native of Vermont, espoused the cause of the slave-holding

i858J FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 23

South, while Lincoln, Southern-born, a child of Kentucky,
spoke for freedom. The Missouri compromise, written by
Jesse B. Thomas, United States Senator from Illinois, and
agreed to in 1820, had fixed a line at latitude 360 30' north,
as the divisional point between the contesting elements. In
1848, when California became our property by treaty with
Mexico, it was admitted to the Union as a free state and there
was temporary peace. Six years later, however, Douglas,
another Illinois senator, introduced a bill for the admission of
Kansas and Nebraska, leaving the question of slavery to the
decision of the people resident in the territories named. This
became a law and ended the famous Missouri Compromise.

Open warfare followed. The Republican party was organ-
ized, not in favour of the abolition of slavery, but as an effort to
prevent its extension into the territories. It became a na-
tional organization, and in 1856 nominated John C. Fremont
for the Presidency. Mr. Lincoln led the list of electors from
Illinois. Fremont did not carry the state, but the Republicans
elected their candidates for the state offices.

In 1858 the senatorial term of Judge Douglas was about to
expire, and there was a campaign for the succession. Mr.
Lincoln was named by the Republicans. He boldly declared
the issue and challenged the slaveholders to a final contest.
He said :

A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this gov-
ernment cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do
not expect the Union to be dissolved. I do not expect the house to
fall, but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all
one thing, or all the other; either the opponents of slavery will arrest
the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest
in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction, or its ad-
vocates will push it forward till it shall become alike lawful in all the
states, old as well as new, North as well as South.

Douglas was between two fires. The United States Supreme
Court, in the famous Dred Scott Decision, had declared a Negro
slave to be property which, like a horse, his owner could take
into a territory. Douglas, in order to hold his Northern con-

24 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [,8S8

stituency together and secure a reelection to the Senate, set
up the claim that the people living in a territory could nullify
this decision by hostile police regulations. This attitude did
not, of course, please the Southern slaveholders. Lincoln was
also between two fires. The Republicans of the Eastern states
favoured the election of Douglas, thinking the measure he
advocated the best obtainable.

A famous debate between Lincoln and Douglas followed.
Douglas won reelection as a senator, but Lincoln became a
national figure. In February, i860, he spoke at Cooper In-
stitute in New York City. In manner he was not altogether
"genteel" — but in matter he was a commanding influence.
As the late Hamilton Mabie said of him:

He had a style — a distinctive, individual, characteristic form of
expression. In his own way he gained an insight into the structure of
English and a freedom and skill in the selection and combination of
words which not only made him the most convincing speaker of his
time, but which have secured for his speeches a permanent place in
literature.

This Cooper Institute address, which really made him
President of the United States, was a remarkable incident in
his life. The Republicans of New York invited him. But as
they thought their Governor, Seward, the logical candidate for
the high office of Chief Magistrate, they had little respect for
their guest. He had been regarded as a "rough-and-tumble"
sort of Westerner, and they assembled to hear an unpolished
backwoodsman deliver himself. The hall was crowded, and
William Cullen Bryant, the poet, presided. Mr. Lincoln's
address proved a masterpiece.

Robert Lincoln, Mr. Lincoln's son, once told me a good story
of the effect of the speech. He said :

I was responsible for my father's nomination. I was at St. Paul's
School at Concord, N. H., preparing for Harvard. I had failed in my
exams. When my father came east to speak in New York, he ar-
ranged to go to Concord to talk to me, to tell me how he and my
mother were denying themselves to give me an education, and how
important it was that I should apply myself to my studies. The

i860] FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 25

people of the New England States learned of this, and after his Cooper
Institute speech asked him to address meetings in several of their
cities. Thus they came to know him and in the end to believe him a
worthy candidate for the Presidency.

I remember one evening when, with my father, I went to hear
a Republican speech by Owen Lovejoy. The evening was hot
and the hall crowded. Chairman Judd presided. The speaker
laid off his coat and removed his "stock" and collar. Handing
them to the Chairman, he shouted in stentorian tones: "Here,
Judd, hold my garments while I proceed to stone Stephen"
[Douglas].

Mr. Lincoln's Election

And then Mr. Lincoln was elected. And how we Illinoisans
followed him to Washington and his great office with all of our
solicitude and our prayers. I doubt that there ever was
another such occasion. He evoked our devotion. Before he
left his home civil war was on ; yet in him there was no hatred
of Southerner nor of slaveholder. There was simply an obliga-
tion to duty — fealty to his oath of office. And from the hour of
parting to accept the labours of the Chief Magistracy till the
return, a corpse, slain by the assassin, there was in Illinois ever
an affectionate devotion such, as I cannot help believing, has
never followed any other public man in the country.

Many people have written of Mr. Lincoln. He has been
painted in many colours. Yet, if the effort has been that of
one not an Illinoisan, it has not been quite well done. None
but one of his own state could ever fully understand him. His
simplicity, his honesty, his straightforwardness, his clarity of
vision — all these things we knew. We minded not his democ-
racy of manner; his untidiness, sometimes, of dress; his gauch-
erie, if you please. Over it all was a great soul, filled with
prophecy of the future — prophecy born of such a sense of
justice as made prophecy easy and unerring. He was our idol.

And the part played by Judge Douglas when the Civil War
came has never been fully appreciated. He had opposed Mr.
Lincoln for the senatorship and the Presidency. But in the face

26 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [i860

of the threatened dissolution of the Union he stirred every loyal
heart in the state by his gallant defence of the nation and his
plea for the support of his long-time political antagonist. The
speech he made before the State Legislature twelve days after
the attack on Fort Sumter was of controlling influence in Illi-
nois. It swung to the support of President Lincoln most of
even the bitter partisans of Douglas's own party.

An illustration occurs to me. A crabbed old judge lived in
a small city of northern Illinois, in the early days of the war.
There was to be a Union meeting and the judge, a violent Doug-
las man, was asked to preside. He hesitated, but consented.
The evening came, and the "Opera House," a hall over a
grocery store, was crowded. As prearranged, a man rose and
moved that "our distinguished citizen," the judge, be chosen
as chairman. The motion was carried unanimously, with loud
applause. Then a committee of three was named to conduct
the chairman to the platform, and he began his speech with
great dignity, thus :

Ladies and gentlemen; This is the happiest moment of my life.
You have all known me as a true and tried Democrat, and therefore
may be surprised at my contentment. But my reason is this: Life
is a wheel of fortune, and when I have reached the point that I can
officiate at a meeting of Black Republicans, I am sure that the wheel
has touched the lowest level, and whichever way the darned thing
turns, it must go up.

Douglas, by his speech before the Legislature, confirmed his
title to the sobriquet of "the Little Giant." As Horace White
said in his "Life of Lyman Trumbull":

He was the only man who could have saved southern Illinois from
the danger of an internecine war. The Southern counties followed
him as faithfully, and as unanimously as they had followed him in
previous years, and sent their sons into the field to fight for the
Union as numerously and as bravely as any other section of the state,
or of the country.

In less than two months after his speech Douglas was dead,
but he had done his work, and had done it so well that he had
won a title to immortality.

i860] FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 27

Perhaps the most striking example of his influence was in
the case of John A. Logan. Logan was a devoted adherent of
"the Little Giant," and had been elected to Congress from the
Ninth Illinois District by a vote of 20,000 against 5,000 for
his opponent, yet he answered the call to arms from Lincoln,
and became the great volunteer general of the war.

Boyhood in Chicago

It was during the campaign of i860 that we moved back to
Chicago, my father being appointed pastor of the Des Plaines
Street Methodist Church. He served there for two years.
We moved into the city from Naperville, a distance of thirty
miles, by the usual lumber wagon, my mother and her children
sitting high up on the furniture and my father walking a good
share of the distance. He found a comfortable home, and we
two sons resumed school life. I shall never forget a wise
decision made by my father. Mother had traces of aristocracy
still surviving, I suppose, as a heritage from her Irish "royal
line." She thought her boys should attend a private school,
or have a tutor. "No," said my father, "I have laboured for
years under a distinct misfortune. Sunday after Sunday I
have risen in the pulpit and preached a sermon, and there was
no one to tell me that I did not know what I was talking about.
It will be much better for our children to attend a public school,
where they will be drilled in democratic notions, and where they
will find independent companions to challenge their ideas."
And so it was settled. I was sent to the Foster Grammar
School.

It was necessary to help the family exchequer. I secured
a position to carry the- Chicago Tribune to its subscribers in a
certain quarter of the city. This meant that I must be out of
bed about four o'clock every morning, go to the newspaper office
for my bundle of papers, and walk out to serve them. I
reached home about eight o'clock, breakfasted, and was at
school at nine. For a time I also had an afternoon task, the
sweeping of the floor of the Board of Trade rooms, which were
almost knee-deep with wheat and oats and corn after the

28 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [,86*

day's session closed. I found time to attend on certain even-
ings a Palestine Class for the study of the geography of the
Holy Land, and a lodge of Good Templars of which I became
chief officer. And yet I was pursuing my studies so earnestly
that for the year I ranked second in my class and was awarded
the "Foster Medal."

I entered the Chicago High School, but after a year was forced
to drop out for a twelve-month. I never finished the course.
At the close of his two years' service, my father was sent to the
church at Kankakee, and thither I followed him. I bought and
sold old paper and rars for a time, and then secured a position
in the leading dry-goods store of the place. Outside of the town
there were two or three settlements of French Canadians. I
soon picked up their patois and was able to serve them as a
clerk in our store. One day there was a public examination
for teachers' certificates, conducted under the auspices of the
State Superintendent of Public Instruction. I attended, an-
swered the questions, and was adjudged fit to teach. I was
then fifteen years old. I was offered a school in a remote
corner of the country, but on condition that I should "board
around," that is, that I should live with one family or an-
other a week at a time. On reflection I declined. Then I
learned of a patent gong doorbell, for which there seemed to be
a market. Doorbells were a novelty in Illinois in those days.
I bought a stock of the bells and the necessary tools to affix them
and set out. I peddled them from house to house with success
for several months.

My father was next appointed to the church at Morris,
Illinois. It was now the early spring of 1864. The Civil War
was in full swing. I enlisted as a drummer and was anxious to
"go to the front," but my father promptly cancelled the en-
listment, as he had an undoubted right to do. His health was
breaking and he retired from the ministry and engaged in the
manufacture of saw-mill tools with his brother in Chicago.
While in Morris there was a charming little girl who was run-
ning about the place, and who, in later years, became famous
as Jessie Bartlett Davis, the opera singer.

Back in Chicago I began the study of law. I read Walker's

i864] FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 29

"Introduction to American Law," Blackstone, Greenleaf,
Parsons, and other standard works, and was in a fair way to
pass the bar. My mother dissuaded me. I then went into
my father's factory and divided my time in aiding the book-
keeping and in learning the machinist trade. I qualified to run
a lathe and planer and to do a certain amount of work with a
file and a vise.

When I was in the Chicago High School, the war was on and
there were recruiting, marching, and tearful good-byes every-
where. The city developed two of the best writers of war
songs the world has ever known.

Dr. George F. Root of the music-publishing firm of Root &
Cady wrote: "The Battle Cry of Freedom"; "Tramp, Tramp,
Tramp, the Boys Are Marching"; and "Just Before the Battle,
Mother."

Henry C. Work, a journeyman printer, wrote: "Kingdom
Coming"; "Babylon Is Fallen"; and "Marching Through
Georgia." He also wrote "My Grandfather's Clock." Later
we organized brigades of various sorts — there was the Irish Bri-
gade under General Mulligan, who fought in almost the first
battle of the war, and there were the Germans, who went "to
fight mit Sigel." Illinois contributed more than her share of
men to the Union cause.

In the midsummer of 1864 Mr. Ballentine, commercial editor
of the Chicago Tribune and father of a schoolmate of mine,
asked me to help him in his work. This resulted in a short
period of service as a reporter, although I was but sixteen
years of age.

There were the makings of big men in Chicago at that time,
but we did not know how big they were to become. For ex-
ample, I used often to take our family washing to a neighbour-
ing laundry. This establishment was maintained by one George
M. Pullman who had just invented a sleeping car. He had set
up a laundry to wash the bed linen of the cars, and took in con-
sumers' work to help eke out expenses. He became one of the
great millionaires of the nation.

I shall never forget a morning in April, 1865. We lived on
West Madison Street in Chicago, and it was my habit to rise

30 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [,865

early and get the morning paper. I did so on this particular
morning and came bounding through the house, announcing the
assassination of Mr. Lincoln. I dressed at once and started for
the Tribune office. When I reached there the street was crowded,
and the windows were filled with bulletins announcing the death
of Mr. Lincoln, Secretary Seward, General Grant, and Andrew
Johnson. The wild burst of rage was beyond description. Un-
able to enter the Tribune Building because of the crowd, I made
my way around the corner to the Matteson House, which was
located on the corner of Dearborn and Randolph streets a
block away. In it was an ancient lounging rotunda. It was
packed. Very soon I heard the crack of a revolver, and a
man fell in the centre of the room. His assailant stood per-
fectly composed with a smoking revolver in his hand, and
justified his action by saying: "He said it served Lincoln right."
There was no arrest. No one would have dared arrest the man.
He walked out a hero. I never knew who he was.

THIRD DECADE

Election of General Grant

THE year 1868 was an exceedingly interesting one. It
had much personal interest for me aside from the great
public interest. As must be seen, I was hunting for a
place in the world. For a month or two I was a reporter for
the Chicago Republican. I attended the Republican National
Convention, held at Crosby's Opera House in Chicago on May
20th. With great enthusiasm, General Grant was nominated
for President and Schuyler Colfax for Vice-President. The
rally song of the day was written by General Halpine (Miles
O'Reilly), and ran thus:

So, boys, a final bumper,
While we all in chorus chant,
For next President we nominate
Our own Ulysses Grant.

And if asked what state he hails from,

This our sole reply shall be:
"From near Appomattox Court House,
And its famous apple tree."

For 'twas there to our Ulysses

That Lee gave up the fight,
Now, boys, to Grant for President,

And God defend the right.

Mr. Colfax was one of the many office-seeking journalists
of the day. He had been the proprietor of the South Bend,
Indiana, Register, and frequently visited Chicago. I knew him
as he grew, step by step, to be member of Congress, Speaker
of the House of Representatives, and in his later years, when he
was on lecture tour, he and I corresponded freely.

Less than a week after the Convention President Johnson

32 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [1868

was impeached before the Senate at Washington. I had seen
him and heard him speak when he passed through Chicago
"swinging around the circle" in denunciation of Congress. It
was this tour and these speeches that aroused the hostility of
Congress and precipitated theattemptto remove him from office.
Years after I came to know him in Washington when he returned
to the Capitol as United States Senator from Tennessee.

It was in the early summer of 1868 that I first travelled be-
yond the border of my native state. I went to New York City
and assisted Franc B. Wilkie, a well-known Chicago journalist,
in reporting the session of the National Democratic Conven-
tion, which nominated Seymour and Blair. There were some
very interesting incidents connected with the work. Seymour
did not want to be nominated, but Salmon P. Chase, of Ohio,
did. He had been an ardent abolitionist and a member of
Lincoln's Cabinet, and, strangely enough, appeared as a candi-
date for the nomination before a Democratic National Con-
vention. His daughter, who afterward married a governor of
Rhode Island and became the famous Kate Chase Sprague,
conducted his headquarters in New York.

His case was not unlike that of a number of the leading
Abolitionists. I have spoken of Greeley's attempt to defeat
Lincoln and elect Douglas as senator in 1858. When the
Civil War came on, very few of these Abolitionist leaders
fought in the Union Army. They were for ever fussing and

7Hb

Sawyer and Mechanic,

The onU/ paper

Published in the United State*

devoted to Saw and Flour

MILL WORK

Term*. SQcts.jxryr

M. E. STONE,

Editor ihd Puilihii,

168 Clark Street.

.JB

No, 168 Clark Street.

■jerries or melville e. stone,

<Jj/liiu ant/ JdJf/oivd <=zd&€W €fnt/ ^^€€Z7t€^nma^fZfZT^

Facsimile of letterhead, 1868

never fighting. Many of them had been advocates of seces-
sion, even before the Southern conspiracy developed. They
held that any state had a right to leave the Union, and proposed

1869] FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 33

that the New England States should set up an independent
government. Wendell Phillips would not take an oath to sup-
port the Constitution of the United States. Greeley and
Sumner both gave Presidents Lincoln and Grant infinite trou-
ble. Greeley, as stage play, signed Jeff Davis's bail bond, and
in 1872 he became the Democratic candidate for President.

In 1868 I began the publication of my first newspaper,
the Sawyer and Mechanic. I issued it from the printing office
of a friend. He was a kindly disposed gentleman who often
employed reformed drunkards. One night a backslider was
put abed in a room in a remote part of the building. He was
suffering from delirium tremens, and I was asked to assist in
keeping guard over him. About midnight I dropped off
in a doze and my patient slipped from the room. In his condi-
tion he was quite irresponsible, and as, in his raving, he had
tried to jump from the window and kill himself I was alarmed.
I went off to hunt for him. There were no lights about the
place and I was forced to feel my way. Suddenly I found
myself passing my hand over what was obviously a nude corpse.
I hastily lighted a match and discovered that I was in the

MELVILLE E. STONE,

MAKER AND FACTOR OF

HARDWARE

LAKE SHORE IRON WORKS,

371 TO 377 ILLINOIS STREET,

CHICAGO.

Author as an iron founder

dissecting room of a medical college. And there on his knees,
sobbing and praying, was my charge, frightened stiff but per-
fectly sober. I led him to his own room and after explaining

34 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [,871

the situation, he passed into peaceful slumber and gave me no
more trouble.

My paper did not last long. Then my father bought for me
an interest in an iron foundry and machine shop. I was suc-
cessful and soon after purchased the interests of my partners
and became sole owner. On November 25, 1869, I was mar-
ried. Shortly after, the folding iron theatre chair made its
first appearance and took the place of the old-fashioned benches
that had been in common use. I secured the right to use a
patent and introduced a folding theatre chair of my own to
Chicago. I furnished Wood's Museum with a thousand of
these folding chairs in the spring of 1871, and in the later
summer sold another thousand to Crosby's Opera House.

The Great Chicago Fire

On the evening of the 8th, of October, 1871, 1 had finished my
contract in Crosby's Opera House, save some details that
would occupy perhaps two hours. Mr. Crosby asked me to
complete the work on the following morning, Sunday, because
Thomas's Orchestra was to open the house on Monday night
and would need the place for rehearsal on Monday forenoon.
I objected and told him that I could easily finish the task on
Monday morning in ample time for the rehearsal. It was then
agreed that we should meet the succeeding evening and light
the place for a sort of unofficial opening. As we stood upon the
stage viewing the beautiful scene (Mr. Crosby had expended
a vast sum of money in refurnishing the place) someone said
that the stage carpenter had lost his all the night before in a
fire in a remote section of the city. I casually remarked that
it would be a horrible thing if the opera house should burn, to
which Crosby replied, laughingly: "Oh, it will not. I have
studied the statistics of theatre fires and they occur on an
average of once in five years. We had a fire two years ago, so
we are immune for three more."

Late that night I went home. I lived three miles away. I
had scarcely gone to bed when there was a wild alarm and the
great Chicago fire had begun. I dressed and started for my

i87i) FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 55

foundry. As I neared it, I found myself shut off by the flames
and saw that it would be impossible for me to reach the place.
Later it turned out that two of my iron moulders, in an effort
to save the wooden patterns, had gone there and been
burned to death. I wandered away aimlessly and finally sat
down on the steps of the First National Bank Building on the
corner of Washington and State streets. As indicative of the
curious state of mind that one takes on in such disasters, I
remember that a man sat at my side with a mass of sheets of
postage stamps that he had evidently taken from some office to
save. With scissors in hand he was calmly cutting them in
shreds and throwing them into the street. It occasioned no
surprise in my mind, but seemed to be a perfectly natural thing
to do.

Pursued by the fire I wandered along the lake shore and
reached a friend's house which obviously was soon to be de-
stroyed. I set out to find something in the way of a cart to
help him to remove his goods. I found a milk wagon and into
that he and I very carefully put a sewing machine, and his wife
and he and I marched for a mile to save this comparatively
worthless thing. It was all that we tried to rescue.

I reached, by a roundabout road, my home about noon on
Monday. On the way I met the chairman of the Board of
Aldermen, and he and I talked over the situation and tried to
think how to reorganize the city government. We finally
engaged the First Congregational Church on Washington
Street and prepared a notice that the City Council would meet
there and signed the name of the mayor to the call. At home,
I hitched up my horse and buggy and drove out on the North
Side, whither the refugees had escaped, to tell them to come to
the church, where food and clothing would be provided. I
found the people in all stages of dress and undress. We gath-
ered as many as we could, and the people living near the church
who were not in the fire zone fed and clothed them as best they
could.

A few weeks later, after the beneficence of the world was
so remarkably disclosed, a vacant square was secured, and on
it we built barracks in which several hundred destitute people

j6 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [1872

were housed for the winter. In conjunction with General
0. L. Mann, I was placed in charge of it, and devoted myself
through the later fall of 187 1 and early winter of 1872 to doling
out coal, blankets, clothing, etc., to these poor people.

With the lapse of fifty years people have forgotten to a great
degree the extent of this calamity, which swept away nearly
#200,000,000 worth of property, took 250 human lives, and left
100,000 people homeless and destitute'. It was one of the great
disasters of history, and the world as a whole came to the relief
of the sufferers. But the factor at the terrible hour was the
courage of the Chicagoans themselves. I do not believe that
any community in the face of so great a calamity so quickly
pulled itself together and embarked upon the task of rebuilding.
Yet for years thereafter it was a ragged and unsightly town.
Changes in the grades of streets were not promptly accepted
by builders upon adjacent property, and even in the down-town
districts pedestrians went up and down flights of steps in pass-
ing along the street where some new building blanked an old
one. Frame shanties were side by side with brick- and lime-
stone edifices, but everywhere was active business, everywhere
men were making money fast.

In Daily Journalism

My foundry business did not revive, and after the winter
given to executive work in connection with the relief of the
destitute I was called upon to take charge of a newspaper, the
Republican. Mr. J. Young Scammon, who had bought the
paper, was president of the Chicago Astronomical Society, and
my brother, Ormond, was an assistant teacher of astronomy
in the Chicago University. Thus Scammon came to know of
me. He asked me to take the editorship of the sheet; I was
thoroughly incompetent for so responsible a position, and at
my suggestion an adjustment was effected by which Colonel
J. K. C. Forrest became editor-in-chief and I managing editor.
I had some interesting as well as amusing experiences, of some
of which I am not altogether proud.

Mr. Scammon located the office of his paper in a large brick

i872] FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 37

stable, at the back of his palatial home, which was situated at the
extreme southern limit of the burned district. Here, in what
had been a wide hay loft, were all of the editorial and business
departments, as well as the type-setting
room. We made things lively.

A rich whiskey merchant, one Pat
O'Neill, got into an altercation with one of
his men and the man was killed. Whether
or not it was a case of self-defence was never
known. O'Neill was a very important citi-
zen, and when I told the story in the col-
umns of the paper, he took offence. He
came up to our den to shoot me. One of

,. ii-i tt t Colonel Forrest

our editors sat behind me. He took a re-
volver from the drawer of his desk and slipped it into my
hand. I had the drop on O'Neill and ordered him down-
stairs. He went. But there might be a libel suit, and poor
Colonel Forrest was greatly troubled. Scammon was ab-
sent from the city, he was a terrible autocrat, and what he
might do on his return to town was appalling. So poor Forrest
sat down and wrote an absurd editorial, apologetic to O'Neill,
and saying he hoped Scammon would forgive us. The Chicago
Times said there was but one possible excuse for the apology —
beer. Forrest was heartbroken.

Meeting with Ito

Across the street from our stable was the only surviving
first-class hotel in the city. I took my luncheons there. One
day a strange company of people arrived. They constituted
the Japanese expedition to the United States under Iwakura.
They were on their way to Washington and other capitals of
the Western nations to secure release from the burdensome
treaties which had been imposed upon their country at the time
of the invasion of Commodore Perry. The secretary of the
group was a young man named Ito. He told me the story of
the opening of Japan, which was interesting. It was a south-
west wind that did the business. The Japanese wanted to live

38 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [187a

the life of a hermit nation, or, as they expressed it, "like frogs
in a well." It was the day of sailing vessels. The prevailing
winds were from the southwest. So they thought that for their
protection from the "foreign devils" it was
only necessary to guard the southwest corner
of their little empire, whence any sailing
vessel must come. But there came into one
of their ports a ship without any sails at all,
with, instead, what seemed like a stove
smoking lustily from the chimney. Of course,
the watchman on the coast was useless and
they must meet the new condition by finding
out how this new kind of a boat was made to
go. It was against the law of Japan for any
one to leave the country without consent of the government,
but two young patriots, Ito and Inouye, escaped, and with the
aid of a shipping merchant at Shanghai, went to London.
There they learned the secret of the steamship and came home
to tell their countrymen how idle it was to attempt to keep the
foreigner away any longer.

I became acquainted with Ito and, although I never saw him
again, we continued as friends through his long life. Also with
the group was an eleven-year-old boy, the son of a great Japa-
nese statesman, Okubo. His name was Makino, and I next
met him as one of the Japanese Peace Commissioners in Paris
in 1918.

My zeal ran away with my judgment, and on one or two
occasions I stole important documents and printed them—
documents that were ultimately intended for publication, but
which I was not authorized to publish when I did. Among
these was the first report of the chief of the Chicago Fire Depart-
ment. I climbed over a partition in the City Hall under the
eyes of the police to secure the report of the fire chief, and I
lay back of an organ loft for half a day to get the report of a
secret church trial.

These newspaper triumphs made me an important man for
the moment with my fellow-newspapermen, but aroused a
great deal of indignation on the part of the victims and also on

i872] FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 39

the part of Mr. Scammon, who did not approve of that kind of
journalism. The name of the paper was changed to the
Inter-Ocean. I retired from the office of
managing editor and E. W. Halford
was called from Indianapolis to take the
place, while I became city editor. One
of my reporters was the young son of
a Methodist preacher, who had learned a
little of newspaper work at Erie, Pennsyl-
vania. Later in life he worked for me for
several years and grew to fame as a
writing journalist. It was William Eleroy
Curtis, whose letters and books upon his Colonel E- w- HaIford
travels in foreign countries were notable. Mr. Halford was
afterward private secretary to President Harrison, and now
lives at Leonia, New Jersey.

The Case of Baron de Palm

I made the acquaintance of a remarkable character, one
Baron de Palm. At first sight one would recognize him as a
decayed voluptuary, of the sort that frequent the Continental
watering places of Europe in the season. Habited faultlessly,
with hair and beard carefully dressed, washed-out face and
eyes, shaky on his legs, he had evidently, like Cousin John's
profligate in Owen Meredith's "Lucille," never neglected an
occasion to please himself. Such men were almost unknown
at the time in bustling Chicago.

He told me his life's story. He was a Bavarian. He was
Baron Johan Heinrich Ludwig de Palm; had descended from a
line of German barons running back ten centuries. He was
Grand Cross Commander of the Order of the Holy Sepulchre.
His father was a prince of the Holy Roman Empire, and his
mother a notable Countess of Thunefeldt. Born at Augsburg
in 1809, he was educated for a diplomatic career, and served
his king with distinction at almost every capital. Then he
came to be chamberlain of Ludwig I, and here was experience.
Ludwig was not the crazy Bavarian king, but in his veins ran

FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST

[1872

the insane current which marked his family. Someone said
of him that he was a "Lovelace with a touch of the Minnesinger
about him — a mixture of Haroun-al-Raschid and Henry IV,
the most meritorious and meretricious monarch of Europe."
He built the Glyptothek, the Pinakothek, the Walhalla, and
practically all of the show places of Munich. He came to the
throne determined to give his people a liberal form of govern-
ment, and for a time he honestly struggled to that end.

Withal he had pronounced weaknesses. It was De Palm's
mission to minister to these.

One day an Irish girl arrived in Munich to fill an engagement
as a Spanish dancer at the theatre. She was not a good dan-
sense, but was young and good-looking. De Palm made her
acquaintance at once. He knew her as Lizzie Gilbert, then and
ever after. Her stage name was
Lola Montez, and under this pseu-
donym she earned world-wide
fame. Her real name was prob-
ably Maria Dolores Eliza Rosanna
Gilbert, although it was not quite
certain. She was born at Limer-
ick, Ireland, about 181 8. Her
father was a respectable country
squire and her mother a Spanish I
chorus girl. The squire was sent
to India for service and died there,
leaving a young widow and her
infant daughter. The daughter learned bad tricks from the
Hindu servants, and it became necessary for her mother to
take her back to England. Life in the homeland did not
reform her, for when she was little more than fifteen she eloped
with a certain Captain James of the British Army, and they
were married. Again there was an assignment to service in
India. Soon Eliza's conduct compelled her husband to divorce
her.

She returned to Europe and went on the stage as a Spanish
dancer. She made her debut as "Lola Montez" at Her Ma-
jesty's Theatre, London, was hissed and dismissed at once.

Lola Montez

,872] FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 41

Then she set out for the Continent, and appeared at one city
after another, with varying success, but with ever-attendant
scandalous incident, until, six years later, she arrived in
Munich.

When De Palm saw her, he thought she might please his
royal master. And he was not wrong. He introduced her to
the King, and five days later the monarch called together his
ministers and presented his "Lolita" to them as his "best
friend." She was shrewd, and, indeed, intellectually brilliant.
Very soon she had achieved complete mastery of the King. He
created her Comtesse de Landsfeld, built her a villa, and gave
her an ample income. She practically usurped the place of the
Queen and also, and not unwisely, dictated the liberalizing
policy of the Bavarian Government. Then came the wave of
revolution which swept over Europe in 1848, and it burst upon
Bavaria.

The court scandal was made the occasion for the revolt.
The King was forced to decree that the Comtesse de Landsfeld
had "ceased to possess the rights of naturalization in Bavaria,"
and to order her imprisonment as a disturber of the peace of
the kingdom. She escaped, but secretly returned in boy's
clothing and advised the King to abdicate, which he did. She
floated around for a time, always getting into trouble. She
married again and again, was charged with bigamy, escaped to
Spain, and thence, in 1851, to New York.

With the downfall of the King, De Palm also left Munich,
and for a time was with Lola Montez. Then they quarrelled
and he went to one of his castles on Lake Constance. She came
to America. She appeared a number of times on the Boston
and New York stage. A clergyman wrote some lectures for
her and she delivered them, with success, throughout the
United States. She also published them in book form. Finally,
when but forty-two years old, she broke down, came to
New York, fell under influence of a worthy clergyman, did
missionary work among the magdalens of the city for a few
months, and then died in comparative poverty in Astoria, Long
Island, and was buried in Greenwood Cemetery in Brooklyn.

Alone, on the ledge of a hill, surrounded by the imposing

42 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [idp

tombs of the Van Rensselaers and the Barramores, and looking
down on a quiet and restful lake separating it from the busy
and rushing life of lower Brooklyn, lies a burial spot, on which
is a marble slab, not quite upright, bearing the inscription :

Mrs.

Eliza Gilbert

Died

January 17, 1861

Age 42

And there any one may go to-day and see the last resting
place of Lola Montez. It is on Lot 12,730 of Section 8 of the
Greenwood Cemetery map; on Summit Avenue, at the end of
Andrean path, not far from the Ninth Avenue gate.

When he heard that she was dead, De Palm sailed for this
country. He went at once to Chicago and took out his first
naturalization papers. As he later told me, he had had quite
enough of the gay life, and, wishing to get close to Nature, he
went to the Far West, and for some years lived with the Indian
tribes, and greatly enjoyed it.

He returned to Chicago and lived there in comparative
seclusion until 1878. Then he came to New York, joined the
Theosophist Society, and on May 21st of that year died, a
worn-out man, at the Roosevelt Hospital. There was a
notable Theosophist furneral with orphic hymns and mystic
liturgy in the Masonic Temple of New York City, and later a
cremation in western Pennsylvania. It was the first crema-
tion in the United States. He had always been a spendthrift
and died penniless.

A Tour of the South

' In the summer and fall of 1872 I did some editorial writing
in the campaign for General Grant's second term, which we
supported ardently. Then my health broke. The constant
strain of working until the paper went to press in the early
morning and then walking, as was necessary because of the

,873] FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 43

absence of street railways at the time, through the burned
district, for three or four miles, was too much for me. Mr.
Scammon asked me to take a vacation and advised me that I
should be free to write as much as I chose. I set out for an
extended tour of the South, with the purpose of writing a series
of articles for the Inter-Oceany justifying Carpet-bag rule as the
only sort of government possible during the period of reconstruc-
tion. I first, by way of diversion, visited and studied the
battle-field of Shiloh. It was undeniably the scene of one of the
decisive struggles of our Civil War. Although nearly eleven
years had elapsed since the fateful days, abundant evidences
of its sanguinary character survived. The wreckage of war
was still distinctly visible. The visit was most instructive.
I had read and reread the story of the battle, but as I walked
over the field my concept of it changed, and I came to see that
those two days of April, 1862, as much as any others dur-
ing the whole war, bore testimony to the great tactical genius
of Grant.

It was early in the period of the national strife. Even gen-
erals were limited in their knowledge of the art of war, and
deficient in their sense of the first duty of a soldier — intelligent
obedience. Grant's plan of battle was perfect. It has been said
that he was surprised. And so he was. Halleck had ordered
him to go to Pittsburg Landing and await General Buell's ar-
rival. But Halleck had not ordered and could not order the
Confederate general, Albert Johnson, to await Buell's arrival.
And Johnson did not. He attacked the Grant forces a day too
soon. But that obviously was not Grant's fault. It was
Grant's duty to meet the situation. He did so in a manner
which would have done credit to Bonaparte in his palmiest
day. One man, a trusted subordinate general, failed him.
It was Lew Wallace, afterward the author of "Ben Hur," who
mistook a road and wandered away, as Grouchy did at Water-
loo. Grant's troops were forced back to the river in some
confusion, and it was again, as at Waterloo, "night or Buell."
Fortunately night came; fortunately for the North the Confed-
erate general, Johnson, was killed; and fortunately, finally, it was
Grant, that cool, undaunted captain, who said in the moment

44 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [1873

of his apparent defeat: "I do not despair of defeating them
yet." And the next day he did defeat them.

I went to New Orleans. I found the hotels crowded, and
secured accommodations at Mrs. Edward's boarding house.
It was the building occupied by General Butler as his head-
quarters when in command of the city. William Pitt Kellogg
was governor, P. B. S. Pinchback, a Negro alleged lawyer,
but really a race-track tout, was lieutenant-governor, and the
Legislature was a compact Negro Carpet-bag outfit. Out of
my contact with these people my view of the policy of recon-
struction adopted by the North was com-
pletely changed.

I spent some time in Atlanta and made the
acquaintance of Alexander H. Stephens and
Ben Hill. Three young men, Henry Grady,
St. Clair Abrams, and "Bob "Alston, were
struggling with a daily paper, the Herald.
They spent almost every evening with me
talking over the profession of journalism. In
these discussions we all learned much.

At Richmond I met General John B. Gor-
don who acted as my guide for a very interesting visit to
Libby Prison and the former residence of Jefferson Davis.

As a Washington Correspondent

In June I was back in Chicago, but it was obvious that I
was not strong enough to take up again the strenuous life
connected with a morning paper. Then I was invited to take
the managing editorship of the Chicago Mail, a two-cent
evening newspaper, and accepted. All the other papers in
the city were five cents a copy. The Rev. Oliver A. Wiilard,
a brother of Frances E. Wiilard, the famous temperance ad-
vocate, was the editor. In less than two months I effected a
consolidation of the Mail and the Chicago Evening Post. The
Post had an Associated Press service and the Mail had not.
I then became the managing editor of the Post and Mail, but
very soon went to the National Capitol as Washington corres-

i874] FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 45

pondent. In making the arrangement I wanted to add one or
two papers to my list, and I visited St. Louis to see Stilson
Hutchins, the proprietor of the St. Louis Dispatch. As I
entered the counting room of the Dispatch I found a curi-
ous creature sitting high up on the counter telling side-
splitting stories to Hutchins and everybody about him. It was
Eugene Field. Then and there began an acquaintance which
lasted through his life. I went to Washington, and soon was
added to the staff of the New York Herald, which was then
operating under Howard Preston.

It was an interesting and exciting session of the Forty-third
Congress. The service had a distinctly educational value. I
widened my acquaintance with public men and public affairs.
Out of my acquaintance with Alexander Stephens, who was
once more in Congress, grew an affectionate intimacy, and
I sometimes went to the National Hotel to play whist with him
until very late hours.

That winter Andrew Johnson was elected to the Senate from
Tennessee, and he came back to Washington. One Sunday
morning I was assigned to interview him. It was the last in-
terview that any newspaperman had with the ex-President.
He stood in the parlour of his suite, with a number of flags of
the country draped behind him as a background. He was
dressed in the typical frock coat of the statesman, with a white
tie. He had quarrelled with General Grant, who* had become
President, and there was great interest to learn his attitude. I
shall never forget the manner in which he struck a pose in the
traditional attitude of Henry Clay and said, with his deep,
stentorian voice:

I come, sir, with the Constitution of my country in one hand and
the olive branch of peace in the other, and if that damned liar in
the White House plays decent, we will get on.

Nellie Grant was married to Algernon Sartoris by the Rev.
O. H. Tiffany. I had their marriage certificate engrossed and
presented it to them. I had frequent and very agreeable visits
at the White House, and Fred Grant and I became lifelong
friends.

46 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [1875

On one occasion I interviewed General Sherman, and his
declarations were distinctly sensational. He was bitterly
opposed to releasing sons of important officials from their
duties in the army to enable them to enjoy themselves in
Washington, and among the number that he singled out for
criticism was the President's own son.

I was a little timorous about publishing it, but General
Sherman said it would not disturb his relations with President
Grant, and afterward his point of view was confirmed in a talk
I had with President Grant.

General Butler was the leader of the House and Samuel J.
Randall leader of the Democratic side. As the Forty-third
Congress was about to close I was with Randall when Butler
came up, and Randall asked him to hold a Sunday session.
Butler said no, he would not consent to it; he never would
do any work on Sunday that was not necessary. Randall
turned and chaffingly said: "Oh, that is your New England
Puritanism, I suppose. That serves you to good purpose,
and I expect to meet you some day, Butler, in another and
better world."

Butler replied in a flash: "Oh, no, Sam: you will be there,
as you are here, a member of the Lower House."

On another occasion an attack was made on Butler for his
defence of the Jayne-Sanborn contracts. These contracts had
been entered into by the Treasury Department and were con-
tracts for the collection of delinquent internal revenue taxes and
customs duties which had accumulated during the war. I
think it was 50 per cent, of the collections that were to be given;
I think the moiety was 50 per cent. The charge was — and it
seemed to be well grounded — that these delinquent taxes
could have been collected for the asking, as in the case of the
Pennsylvania Railroad. A sub-committee of the Judiciary
Committee, under the chairmanship of Charles Foster of Ohio,
later Secretary of the Treasury, and known because of certain
successful speculations as "Calico Charley," had investigated
the cases and presented a report sharply criticizing Butler's
action. Butler was instantly taken ill, and for three or four
days it was announced that he was on the point of death. When

i875l FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 47

the sympathy of the country had been duly roused it was
announced that he would appear in the House of Representa-
tives on a certain Friday evening to make the speech of his life
in defence of his relation to the Jayne-Sanbom contracts. The
house was crowded, floor and gallery. Butler rose and made his
speech. He proceeded to denounce a leading firm of New York
in unmeasured terms, and in the midst of it was interrupted
by Foster.

Butler instantly clapped his hands, called a page, wrote
something on a card, and sent the boy to his home on Capitol
Hill — a big granite house still pointed out to tourists. The
boy soon returned and handed General Butler a paper. The
General was very near-sighted, and he handed this document to
the clerk to be read and made a part of his speech. In loud
tones the clerk proceeded to read "A letter to Mr. Tenny,
District Attorney of Brooklyn," in which appeared a statement
substantially as follows: "Have no fear for your friends Jayne
and Sanborn. We are not going to hurt them. All we are
trying to do is to get a rap at 'Old Cockeye.' "

This was signed "Charles Foster."

Then Butler proceeded with his peroration. Of course every-
one recognized that he was "Old Cockeye." He asked what
"Old Cockeye" had done to justify such an attack from a
Republican committee. He told his audience how he, a Demo-
crat, had voted for Jefferson Davis in the Charleston Conten-
tion in i860, had bared his breast to the enemy's bullets and
thereafter fought for his country, and he wound up with a most
effective appeal. When he closed there was a hush over the
hall.

Poor Foster was at a loss for something to say, and finally,
as if he were at a Methodist prayer meeting, piped out : " Let
us pray."

Butler had turned to take his seat, when he stopped and
sang out in his peculiar whining voice: " Yes, and spell it as you
always do, with an V. "

Among the curious persons whom I knew very well was
Colonel George Butler. He had led a checkered career, had
been the husband of Rose Ettynge, the actress, at one time,

48 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [1875

and Consul General of the United States to Egypt at another,
but had always so yielded to his love for alcohol that his life
had been a failure. Nevertheless, as he was a nephew of Gen-
eral Benjamin F. Butler, he always maintained a certain stand-
ing. When I knew him in 1874-5 ne was a pitiable object.
He was personally untidy, usually the worse for drink, and
spent his time sitting about as an idler in the public rooms of
different hotels.

One day he visited the State Department in a state of intoxi-
cation. The State Department, as is well known, is the very
embodiment of the dignity of our Government; and there was
a gentleman of the old school connected with the service who
still affected the blue cutaway coat with gilt buttons and buff
waistcoat that came down from the former century. He was a
veritable Colonel Newcome in politeness. Butler overheard
him say he was about to visit New York and sidling up to him,
said with a pleading voice: "So you are going to New York,
Judge?"

"Yes, Colonel," replied the judge.

"Well," pleaded Butler, "will you do me a favour?'7

"Certainly," replied the courteous judge, "if it is in my
power."

Then Butler fumbled through his pockets and found a
pawn ticket. Handing it to the judge, he urged: "When you
reach New York will you go up to a pawn shop in Chatham
Street and get my watch, pay the small charge on it, and bring
it back?"

"Ah!" said the judge, "I never was in a pawn shop in my life,
and I am afraid that I should find it difficult to do your errand.
I want to accommodate you, but I think pawnbrokers are
pretty bad people and they might easily trick me."

"Oh, no," persisted Butler, "they cannot do that; this watch
is one that my uncle Ben gave me and I prize it very highly."

"But how should I know it?" asked the judge.

"Well," answered Butler, "I have had occasion to pawn
it a good many times, and you will know it by the inscrip-
tion that is under the back cover: '/ know that my Redeemer
Liveth'."

i875\ FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 40

Mr. M was a congressman from southern Illinois. He

delighted in a game of poker. Going home from an evening's
sport with a couple of associates, he asked them to come in for
a "nightcap." They thanked him, but were unwilling to dis-
turb the family. "I'd have you understand," said he with a
pompous air, "that I am Caesar in my own house, and that I
permit no interference with my wishes."

At that instant an upper window flew open, a woman in her
sleeping apparel appeared, and in a gentle voice said: "It's all
right, gentlemen, you can go on home and leave Caesar to me.
I will take care of him."

Stillson Hutchins, the well-known journalist, came to New
York for a night at poker. The game broke up in the small
hours with Hutchins a winner to the tune of some thou-
sands of dollars. One of the players suggested the danger of
walking the street with so much money on his person. "Yes,
I know it," said Hutchins. "I'll accompany you," offered his
friend. "iVo," came the quick reply, "you are the rascal I'm
afraid of."

My service in Washington was an exceedingly pleasant period
of my journalistic life. It seems to me that there was a richer
and fuller intellectual interest in the Washington correspon-
dence at that time than there is now. The correspondent had
a wider editorial latitude than he has to-day, and the field for
individual achievement in the collection of news was vastly
greater. I must admit that the press associations now cover
Washington news in such a way that there is little left to the
initiative of the individual correspondent. Prominent states-
men or politicians who desire to put a matter of importance
before the world send it direct to the Press Association them-
selves, knowing that it will go to all the principal papers in the
country. There is less endeavour on the part of public men
to keep in close touch with individual correspondents than
there was thirty years ago, because the need of such intimacy
is less.

More and more the special correspondent at Washington is
limited to reporting or discussing matters of interest only in

50 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [1875

the limited field of his paper. The greater the field of his paper
the more likely the matter is to be of national importance, and
if of national interest it is covered in the manner mentioned
above. Nobody is better aware of this fact than the present
group of correspondents at Washington.

A few papers now maintain representatives who are given
a semi-editorial authority and whose dispatches not merely
transcribe the news but comment upon it. It is possible that
this practice may grow, although the tendency of the American
press to limit editorial comment rigidly to the editorial columns
is rather against it. In the older countries of the world there
is no precise parallel to the position of our correspondents at
Washington, because elsewhere the political capital of the
nation is at the same time the commercial capital and the great
papers of the country are published there.

Our great papers are in New York, Chicago, Philadelphia,
and San Francisco. It seems reasonable to believe that in
time there will grow up in American journalism the practice
of having the Washington correspondent in a certain sense an
editorial writer, schooled in the policy of his paper, and author-
ized to express its views in his dispatches, enjoying as he does
first-hand intimacy with the forces governing the country. I
hesitate to offer predictions, but it seems to me that only by
the development of this form of correspondent can the position
of Washington correspondent again assume the importance
that it had when such men as George Alfred Townsend, Henry
Watterson, Murat Halstead, Whitelaw Reid, and others of their
sort were prominent there.

Founding a Daily Paper

Early in the year 1874 my attention had been directed to the
possibility of establishing a one-cent daily newspaper in Chicago.
I studied the New York Daily News and the Philadelphia Star,
both of which were successful. When the summer vacation of
Congress came on I went home to Chicago and tried an
experiment. Mr, William Dougherty, a well-known reporter,
happened to be idle and I told him of my idea and said I would

i87s) FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 5/

back him if he cared to start such a paper and see how it would
be received by the public. He assented and, without any
investment for a plant, issued for a couple of months, in an
out-of-the-way location, the Chicago Herald. It could not be
a permanent venture, as, indeed, it was not intended that it
should be. It was what the French would call a ballon d'essai.
Chicago was obviously the city of promise for my experiment.
In forty years it had grown from a village to a metropolis with
more than a million inhabitants. And, as in the Norse Saga
the fabled Norns were weaving the fates of its people in their
mystic looms, its possibilities were without limit. The hinter-
land was vast in proportion and rich in fruitage. So that, both
as entrepot and depot, the city was certain to have a great
future. I was convinced by this experience that there was a
field and set out to prepare to occupy it.

I went back to Washington for the winter session of Congress
of 1874-5. After the close of a special session of the Senate
called for March, 1875, 1 returned to Chicago and to the manag-
ing editorship of the Post and Mail. But not for long. I was
not pleased with the methods of the paper. It was in financial
straits and the managers were anxious to force contributions for
wealthy political aspirants. Also, I was obsessed with the
desire to found my one-cent journal.

I had no money. For a short time, in conjunction with a
fellow worker on the Post and Mail, I ran a correspondence
bureau. George Lanigan, the then famous author of the
"Ahkound of Swat," was a neighbour. He had been serving
the New York Herald as its Chicago representative. He had
received an offer to go to the Rochester Post-Express. Where-
fore he surrendered his Herald work to me and departed. It
was a windfall to me. A young Englishman, Percy Meggy,
came along and I aroused his interest in my one-cent project.
He had something like five thousand dollars in cash. He
was ready to enlist in the undertaking. And so he, Dougherty,
and I embarked on a very hazardous Odyssey. The winds
seemed fair. Nevertheless, our craft required close attention
if we were to make progress. On the 25th day of December
we issued an experimental copy of the Chicago Daily Netvsy

52 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [l876

with an announcement that on the first of the year, 1876, we
should begin the publication regularly. This we did. There
were four other evening newspapers in Chicago, all well estab-
lished and supported by adequate capital.

Meggy was what the English call a " remittance man." That
is, he depended on remittances of cash from his British home.
Sometimes his remittances came as expected; sometimes they
did not. This occasioned a certain degree of solicitude on the
part of the partners and the employees. Not so, however,
with Meggy. He never had any solicitude about anything.
He was the capitalist of the institution, and stoutly maintained
all of the prerogatives of your ideal capitalist. His role was that
of the idle rich. So far as labour went he was on a perpetual
strike. His mind was on his brierwood pipe and the matinee
tickets. Although ostensibly an editor, he wrote nothing, read
no copy, and as to any other kind of work, did as little.

Dougherty was the fighting journalist, and as the paper was
avowedly aggressive, and deservedly so in a city where corrup-
tion was running riot, he had an abundant opportunity for the
exercise of his talents. He filled his office with distinct credit.

If we were to succeed and create a permanent institution, we
must take an original line, appeal to and win public approval,
and, above all, be patient. We were not building for a day but
for all time. Therefore we had certain definite and quite novel
rules. Unlike our competitors, we must with single-mindedness
accept as our only masters, our readers. We should aim at a
reputation for veracity and fair dealing in all our relations with
the public. Our quest was for public respect and permanency.
To create a newspaper which should endure must be our sole
aim; that is, the newspaper must be the end of our ambition,
and in no sense the means to some other end. It followed that
the paper should be independent of any political party. I had
had experience in service upon a party organ, the Inter-Ocean^
and had seen what such service meant. Assured of the paper's
support, the party managers and heelers never visited the
office except to give orders. They put their feet on our tables,
smoked our cigars, now and then invited one of the "boys'*
to a luncheon, but went to the opposition papers to consult

i8t6] FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 53

about their policy or the fitness of their prospective candidates.

Likewise, the paper must be independent of any other selfish
interest. As a precautionary measure, its proprietors should
not be permitted at any time to hold stock in any public- 1
utility corporation. The paper must have no axes to grind, no
friends to reward, no enemies to punish. In its every phase as
a news-purveying organ, or as a director of public opinion, it
must be wholly divorced from any private or unworthy purpose.
It must have only two sources of revenue — from the sale of
papers and the sale of advertising. Its hallmark must be
dignity and decency.

The first intent of the publication was the collection and
presentation of the world's news. It was recognized that in
its editorial department there were three offices to perform:
First, to print news; second, to endeavour to guide public
opinion aright; and, third, to furnish entertainment. I used
this order because I believed it to be the correct one. I believed
it to be even a business mistake to invert this order and to make
the entertainment of the reader of first importance. I think
the business of guiding public opinion, while obviously in-
volving large responsibility, is, after all, secondary. Following
this order, the proper presentation of the news was the first
thing of consequence. The news was put upon the first page
of the journal, the most conspicuous place, and an effort made
to present a true perspective of the world's real developing
history. I had a view that the relation of a newspaper to a
community was not very different from that of an individual.
And so, in our dispensing the news, we were not unlike the
witness in court, bound to "tell the truth, the whole truth,
and nothing but the truth." This, subject to the limitations
that the news was of a character proper to publish. The
paper, while independent in all things, must be neutral to none.

I suppose there are no two journalists in the world who would
agree precisely as to the relative value of the various news
articles before them. I sought, however, to establish certain
approximate standards, which seemed to me wise, to deter-
mine alike what should and what should not be presented. In
a certain sense the counting room must have no influence in the

54 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST (l876

matter, and yet in a larger sense it must have everything to do
with it. There must be no pandering to the vitiated taste of
the unthinking. There must be no publishing of so-called
sensational and exaggerated or scandalous material for the
purpose of making sales. The paper must be cheap only as to
its price. There must always be a sense of responsibility. We
were engaged in something else than a mere business enterprise
in which we should seek to provide anything and everything
that the public might crave.

Therefore, a rule provided that in his relation to the public
every man's activities were a proper subject for attention,
while in his domestic relations he was entitled to privacy
which no newspaper was privileged to invade. Also a rule
that nothing should be printed which a worthy young gentle-
woman could not read aloud in the presence of a mixed com-
pany. Still another rule, that every effort should be made for
accuracy and impartiality, and that if we were ever led, through
error, into a mis-statement, there should be a fair, frank, and
open acknowledgment and apology. I discarded utterly the
common effort to assume the editor's infallibility, believing it
was much easier and infinitely more important to gain a reputa-
tion for integrity.

With these principles which were obviously wise, yet prac-
tically revolutionary, as newspapers were then conducted, we
began business. As workshop, we secured accommodations
in the building occupied by a daily Norwegian paper, the Skan-
dinaven. The composing room was on the fourth floor, and
one corner was partitioned off roughly to serve as an editorial
department. The writing was done on inverted packing cases.
As a number of other papers were published in the building,
we were able to rent press facilities. Our business office was a
space about ten feet square ruled off in a corner of the counting
room of the Skandinaven. Scarcely had the paper begun its
career, however, before serious problems were presented. First,
initial issues were larger than expected. The first day we sold
about 9,000 copies. At once additional printing-press facilities
were demanded. In time we bought an old-fashioned four-
cylinder Hoe rotary press capable of turning out ten thousand

i8t6] FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 5$

copies an hour. Second, the capital in sight was limited, and
naturally there was very limited credit. Third, there were a
number of important news developments, which, being ade-
quately reported, stimulated the circulation in such a measure
as to threaten, with the limited press facilities and the limited
capital, a collapse.

The employees of the paper were a fine lot of men. They
enlisted as soldiers, ready and anxious to share in the trials,
the disappointments, all of the vicissitudes of the enterprise.
It was never a case of "master and man," but a family. John
J. Flinn was chief editorial assistant and was very efficient. In
later years he became leading editorial writer on the Christian
Science Monitor. Andrew B. Adair was the foreman of the
composing room on the first day of issue, and has held the
place with greatly widening responsibility through a half
century to the present day. Cornelius McAuliffe was a journey-
man typesetter at the same eventful beginning, had ambition
to become an editor, and so developed that he later, and for
a considerable period until his death, directed the news columns
of the Chicago Record-Herald. Kirk La Shelle in the early days
of the paper was also a typesetter. He became interested in the
drama, showed capacity, was made critic, and grew famous as a
theatrical manager. And Elwyn Barron was a reporter. He
developed into a well-known dramatic author, collaborating
with Wilson Barrett on several pieces and being the sole author
of others, all of them successful.

Frequently, in those strenuous days, pay hour came and
"the ghost" did not walk, for there was no money in the shop.
But there was no complaint. There was ever sympathy and
confidence for the struggling proprietor. My gratitude and
affection for my fellow workers of that period have ever been
measureless.

In less than a week from the first issue we were refusing ad-
vertisements, because we could not permit them to encroach
on the space reserved for news. The very novelty of such a
daily newspaper, so conducted, proved a sensation. The larg-
est department store in the city thought to see what the bant-
ling was like and sent us a column advertisement. Back it went

56 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [l876

with a polite note that if reduced to a half column and held
over for two days, we would find room for it. Then they re-
turned it with a three-line editorial item calling attention to it.
It was the custom of the Chicago papers to insert such items.
Of course we refused, as we did their demand for a given loca-
tion. At first we were told that all this was a "bluff," later
that it was arbitrary, and we were notified that they would
never patronize the paper if these "reasonable" requests were
not met. When they saw that we were in earnest they not only
backed down, but confessed their approval of our policy.

An adverse criticism upon a play appeared, and the pro-
prietor of the theatre summarily withdrew his advertisement;
but when he found that it made no difference whatever with the
treatment of his playhouse, that good plays were commended
and bad ones condemned, he thought better of his action and
resumed his advertising.

Undeniably, so far as I was concerned, there were enthusiasm
and energy about the business, but there was also no small
measure of good fortune. First, a fine collection of enemies
developed. The Chicago Tribune ', which was conducted upon
the theory that it was justified in publishing whatever it be-
lieved the public would enjoy reading, attacked the enterprise
even before the first copy of the Daily News was issued, despite
the fact that the projected newspaper was to be in no sense
a competitor, the Tribune being a morning paper and the Daily
News an evening paper. This assault was so ungenerous that
it aroused for us the sympathy of very many people.

One evening, shortly after the Daily News was founded, I
was invited, with the editor of another paper, a veteran in the
business, to address the Commercial Club of Chicago on jour-
nalism. My associate speaker had been censured rather
severely for the publication of scandalous matter and was
on his mettle. He was to make answer to a company of mer-
chants, men of distinctly commercial type, and here was his
opportunity. In a defiant tone he told them that the journal-
ist, like themselves, was in business to make money, and was
perfectly justified in giving the public anything it might want.
If the newspapers were low in tone, it was because the readers

i8t6] FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 57

craved sensation. If his hearers did not like his paper, they
had better start one of the kind they liked and see how it would
succeed.

Then it was my turn. I flatly challenged the view of my
confrere. I agreed that every merchant had certain responsi-
bilities in the conduct of his business, but held that the limita-
tions upon the journalist were infinitely greater; that in the*
conduct of so important an educational force as the daily
newspaper, the editor was chargeable with a very high duty in
respect of the decencies of his publication — a duty which he
could not escape.

A very eminent citizen closed the discussion by calmly say-
ing that the "give the public what it wants" doctrine was that
on which keepers of dissolute houses justified their vocation,
and that, if a journalist were willing shamelessly to take his
place with such people, he must be privileged to do so.

No line of paid reading matter was admitted to the news
columns. Everything in the way of advertising was printed
as advertising so that the reader could easily distinguish it.

And as to the business department; it was recognized that
advertising was legitimate. But our theory was that everyone
was free to advertise or not, precisely as he was free to buy
groceries at a grocery, or dry goods at a dry goods store. And
no one lost standing with the paper if he neglected to use its
advertising columns. Indeed, it was not unusual to advise
people who brought advertisements to the office that they
would get better results by taking their notices elsewhere. For
instance, if a man wished to sell an engine, he would be thanked
for coming to us, but told that it would be wiser for him to put
his advertisement in some journal making a specialty of me-
chanics. And with the earliest issue the actual paid circulation,
day by day, was printed at the head of the editorial column and
sworn to. Our belief was that the advertiser should be per-
fectly free to advertise, or not to advertise, and that if he did
want to advertise he had the same right to know the extent
and the character of the circulation of the paper that you would
have if you entered a dry goods store to buy prints and de-
manded to know whether they were fast colours, and a yard

58 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [1876

wide, or not. We had no right to expect him to buy a pig in a
bag. Our aim was, therefore, to give the fullest possible in-
formation and to invite the advertiser to verify our statements
by any method that might suggest itself.

There was no boasting of circulation, no bragging of the
increase in sales. We were content to permit the sworn state-
ments to speak for themselves. Now and then when, because
of a violent storm — not an infrequent occurrence in Chicago —
or on the opening of the school term in the autumn, the news-
boys were less active than usual, an editorial mention of the
decline in the issue was inserted. As a result, the faith of the
people in our sworn declaration grew until it was not uncommon
for men to make bets as to the circulation of the paper for an
ensuing month.

Having no liking for the quite common theory that a news-
paper was somehow entitled to a man's advertising, and in
case of his failure to "come across" resentment was justifiable
(a sort of genteel blackmail), we had no employees to go begging
as mendicants for patronage. We engaged a young man who
had never been connected with a newspaper, and his sole mis-
sion was to go to the merchants, tell them that he was not
soliciting from them, but if they thought of advertising in the
paper, it was his duty to tell them all about it and to put them
in the way of verifying his assertions.

If our sworn statement was questioned, my answer was that
at least twenty employees of the paper knew the facts, and we
were not such fools as to put ourselves at their mercy by issuing
a falsehood. This, of course, was conclusive.

After we began publication, I found that, through inadver-
tence, we were accepting and publishing so-called "Personal"
advertisements, which in reality were of an immoral character.
A letter came to the office asking for the insertion of a "Wanted"
for two girls for an establishment at South Bend, Ind. It
opened my eyes as to the "Personals." I published a notice
that they would be refused, and thereafter every advertisement
was accepted subject to editorial censorship, to the end that no
improper notices should be admitted.

A disreputable quack doctor engaged a lawyer to begin an

Art FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 5g

action to compel us to print his announcement. He failed, but,
in the attempt, disclosed our policy, much to our benefit.

Inasmuch as we regarded the reader of more value than the
advertiser, and inasmuch as our first duty, as we conceived it,
was to the reader, while aiming to deal fairly with the adver-
tiser at all times, we insisted that he should take second place.
We therefore made it an inflexible rule that all locations of
advertising must be at publisher's option, and we made no con-
tracts whatever for "top of column next to reading matter."
In the make-up of the paper the news was considered para-
mount and the advertising relegated to a less important
place.

The rule was also absolute that there should be no cutting
of rates under any circumstances. One day the junior partner
of a leading dry goods firm called. With no small degree of
pomposity he said he would talk of advertising; that he never
dealt with underlings and therefore had called to see the pro-
prietor of the institution. He was good enough to say that he
might be induced to make a contract, but he wanted me to
bear in mind that ours was a poor, struggling journal, while his
house was a very important one, and that if he patronized us
it would result in others doing likewise, so that any business
between us was likely to be of as great benefit to the paper as
to his firm. Of course this meant that he wanted a special
rate. I asked him if it was not so, and he readily assented.

"What concession would you think fair?" I suggested.

He thought 10 per cent, would do.

"You mean from our lowest price ? " I rejoined.

"Certainly," he replied.

Then I told him that we had established a rule that we would
never cut our rates; that we had in no case violated the rule,
and that we had regarded it as inflexible. "But," I added,
"I recognize the force of what you say, and in order to secure
your patronage I will break the rule on one condition."

"What is that?" he asked eagerly.

"That you will permit my family to buy such goods as they
may choose at your store 10 per cent, cheaper than any one
else and give me a writing to that effect which I may publish."

60 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [1876

"Good heavens!" he shouted, "we run a one-price store, and
such an announcement would ruin us!"

He went away in high dudgeon, but a week later made a con-
tract upon our terms.

It was the period when the telephone was introduced. The
telephones were first installed in the drug stores. We seized
the opportunity to make contracts with a considerable number
of the drug stores to act as advertising agents. We allowed a
small commission, and the advertisements were phoned in.
Their appearance in the paper was prompt, and our patrons
were saved the delay and expense of making a journey to the
office. The Daily News was a pioneer in this method of locat-
ing branch agencies, j ,

Creating 99-Cent Stores

One of the difficulties encountered was to induce people to
use the one-cent coin. The smallest denomination current in
the city was the five-cent piece. The smaller coin was prac-
tically unknown. I imported from the Philadelphia Mint
some barrels of pennies and persuaded certain merchants
to mark their goods at 59, or 69, or 99 cents. Thus began in
Chicago what were known as "99-cent stores." The customer
(frequently to his disgust) would be returned a penny in change,
and the only use he could make of it was to buy a copy of the
Daily News. The pennies which the newsboys paid into the
office for the purchase of papers were put up in packages of
25 or 50 and each morning distributed to the stores selling 99-
cent goods. It was a slow process, but in time resulted in a
general circulation of the coins.

As I have said, the founding of such a paper required patience.
And neither of my partners had the necessary power of endur-
ance. They were in no mood for a prolonged struggle. They
wanted to quit. Meggy wanted to go home to England and
Dougherty to find a new position. And so we took the money
from the till and gave it to them, and I was left alone in my
glory.

Meggy spent a short time in England and then, charged

i8t6] FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 61

with his experience of perpetual strife in the Daily News office,
went out to Australia and became, as a high priest of idleness,
a leader in the political labour movement which eventually
secured control of the Government. Later, Dougherty died.
His daughter married Stuart Robson, the actor, and is still a
worthy member of the theatrical profession.

I struggled on. The paper was successful; indeed, far- too
successful. The demand was so great that it was clearly im-
possible to provide the necessary facilities for its production on
the slender pocketbook at my command. I must find a
moneyed partner. Henry Demarest Lloyd was in sight. He was
a brilliant young journalist, employed on the Chicago Tribune.
More important, he had a rich father-in-law, Governor William
Bross, and might get the desired funds from him. He joined
me, without definite commitment, for a month or two, and then
we tearfully parted. The father-in-law would neither put up
nor come down, and again I was alone.

When my partners withdrew I assembled three or four bright
assistants. It was a day when every competent journalist was
expected to be a drunkard, and my staff lived up to such re-
quirements. Chicago had a notable reformatory for "habit-
uals " called the Washingtonian Home, and it was a poor week
for the institution when I did not have one or more of my staff
imprisoned there. When they were "sobered up" they proved
quite efficient.

One evening I was forced to dismiss one of our derelicts who
had exhausted my patience by his too-frequent lapses. He
was the brilliant son of a former governor of Missouri. Some-
what after midnight I was aroused from my bed at my home
several miles distant from the office. The man whom I had
discharged appeared with a carriage and told me that the boiler
upon which we depended for steam to run our press had ex-
ploded. He had been carousing in a neighbouring saloon at
the time and had hastened to notify me. I dressed hurriedly
and went with him. After surveying the scene of destruction
I drove to the house of a man who dealt in machinery, and
before daybreak had a portable engine installed and wis able to
print an extra edition giving the first news of the accident. This

FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST

[1876

was a hard blow, but gave us a reputation for enterprise, which
made the paper the talk of the town.

With the disappearance of Lloyd as a possible associate, it
became evident that I had neither the physical nor financial
strength to carry on the work alone.

Enter Victor F. Lawson

Then I turned to Victor F. Lawson. He and I had been
fellow students at the Chicago High School, and his father
being a partner in the firm publishing the Skandinaven, I was

Victor F. Lawson in 1876 Melville E. Stone in 1876

A Life Partnership Begun

brought into daily contact with him. He had a desk in the
office of his father's paper and was developing a business
career. He was a witness of my effort, my code of newspaper
ethics, and the measurable success that I was achieving. After
consideration he took over the interests of Meggy and Dough-
erty, and there began a partnership which lasted twelve years
and proved to be the happiest period of my life. He sym-
pathized fully in my views of newspaper responsibility and
approved of all the rules I had adopted for the governance
of the enterprise. He became business manager, and I was
free to devote my whole attention to the editorial depart-
ment,

i8t6] FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 6}

There never was the slightest trace of friction in our
most intimate relation. Out of it all grew a close friend-
ship, which has continued to the present
hour.

The Chicago Post a7idMail,owned by the
McMullen brothers, enjoyed the Associ-
ated Press privilege. Nevertheless, the Post
and Mail was daily pirating our news. No
sooner would a dispatch appear in our
early edition than it would be seized upon
by that paper. Mr. Flinn, who, as I have

said, was chief editorial assistant, set a

' r^, . r i i John J- F1,nn

trap. I he morning paper oi that day an-
nounced great distress in Servia. We framed a dispatch, and
published it in our noon edition on Saturday, December 2, as
follows :

SAD STORY OF DISTRESS IN SERVIA

London, Dec. 2. — A correspondent of the Times writing from
Servia, where he has spent many weeks, says that the country pre-
sents a gloomy picture to the traveller. The land is devastated and
the people are starving.

Everywhere he found men and women crying for food. He could
see in any large village hundreds of young women in a state of semi-
nudity. It has been a hard matter for the priests to keep the populace
under their control. Children are starving by thousands throughout
the country.

The men, young and old, go through the streets shouting for bread,
cursing the rich for not coming to their aid. A few days ago the
mayor of the provincial town of Sovik issued a proclamation ending
with the ominous words: "Er us siht la Etsll iws nel lum ctneht"
(the municipality cannot aid).

Upon reading this, the people, led by the women of the town,
organized a riot, in the course of which a dozen houses were pillaged
and over twenty persons were brutally murdered.

The three-o'clock edition of the Post and Mail for the same
day contained the dispatch word for word, the only change be-

64 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [1876

mg made in the caption, which appeared in the Post and Mail
as "Horrid Starvation in Servia."

The dispatch was dropped from the three-o'clock edition of
the News and it did not appear in the five-o'clock edition of the
Post and Mail, as some friend of the McMullens, who owned
that paper, called their attention to the fact that reading the
supposed foreign words backward, they became: "The Mc-
Mullens will steal this sure." It was too late, however, for
they had been decoyed by the item and the harm was done.

As the News did not issue a Sunday paper and as we wished
the widest publicity given to the hoax, we asked the Times
and the Tribune to reprint it with explanations on Sunday.
They did so, and the Post and Mail was literally laughed to
death. In less than two years we bought all that was left of it,
including its franchise in the Associated Press and its material,
for #15,000.

It was a great news year. Primarily the Hayes-Tilden
Presidential contest engrossed public interest. When the
Republican National Convention assembled at Cincinnati
we were able to touch high-water mark in enterprise by issuing
an extra announcing the nomination of Hayes before it was
declared in the Convention Hall. The process was very simple,
but then very new. As the balloting progressed we were keep-
ing tally, and when a sufficient number of votes to insure
Hayes's victory was reached the forms were sent to press, and
in a moment the papers were selling on the street. In that
day the performance was accounted something wonderful.

Then came the campaign, the indecisive election, and the
succeeding electoral commission. All this furnished excep-
tional opportunity for an enterprising newspaper. We ad-
mittedly took the lead in journalistic activities and maintained
it.

One of our competitors was the Chicago Evening Telegram,
owned by Wilbur F. Storey 'of the Chicago Times. Storey spent
money without stint and enjoyed great fame as a news gatherer.
But he found that we set a pace too swift for him, and he
abandoned the enterprise.

We were a happy lot. We had no "office politics." There

i8t61 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 6$

were no jealousies, no attempts to secure advancement by
undermining an associate. Each man sought to aid his fellow,
and all to make the paper decent, truthful, entertaining, and a
force for the right. I have great pride in the fact that all the
men who worked with me have throughout my later days been
abiding friends. We all struggled earnestly and never counted
the hours.

Story of "Ross Raymond"

In 1876 an attractive young fellow called on me and asked
for work as a reporter. He said his name was Ross Raymond,
and told me of his belief in his capacity and of the
work he had done. I employed him. He proved
an energetic and altogether competent employee.
As time went on he grew in favour and was ad-
vanced. I sent him to the State capitol to report
the Illinois Legislature. Suddenly he asked to
return to Chicago, and, without apparent reason,
tendered his resignation. He had overdrawn his

• n 1 , r 1, " Ross Raymond "

account a trifle, but that was ot small conse-
quence. His resignation was accepted, and he took his leave.
Some months later he turned up in Baltimore; wrote a play in
which I was made the hero. It had a short run, and there-
after I heard no more of him for a long time. Then one
day he appeared. He had been working, meanwhile, for the
Philadelphia Times and the New York Herald. He had served
the Herald at Elberon, N. J., while President Garfield lay
there dying. He had been married, but had deserted his
wife. He told me that the managing editor of the Herald
had treated him badly, had promised to pay him space rates
but had repudiated the agreement and had forced him to take
a weekly wage which was much less than he was fairly entitled
to. He wanted nothing, only called to pay his respects, and
went his way.

Next I heard that he had been arrested in New Orleans for
passing a draft upon the Herald, acceptance of which had been
refused in New York.

66 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [1876

There was another long period of silence. How he escaped
punishment in New Orleans I do not know. Then, one day in
September, 1882, 1 received a cable message from Cairo, Egypt,
advising me that a battle had been fought against the forces of
Arabi at Tel-el- Kebir; a victory won; and that the sender of
the message, who had been present, would like to wire me an
account. It was signed by Ross Raymond. I replied at once,
asking him to send the story. So it happened that the Chicago
Daily News, even before the London papers, printed a graphic
story of Wolseley's decisive battle. And again I heard no more.

Months later Raymond appeared in Chicago. He said he
had left us in debt to the office and would accept no payment
for his valuable message from Egypt. Again he disappeared.

Two years later he wrote me from Allahabad, India, where
j?\ he was editing the Pioneer, the paper on which Rudyard Kip-
ling had made a reputation. And again there was silence for
months.

Then I learned the reason for his sudden and mysterious
resignation while serving as my legislative correspondent at
the Illinois capital. He had met William J. Calhoun (then an
Illinois lawyer of note and later American Ambassador to
China), and had been recognized by him as an old-time fellow
pupil at a little school at Poland, Ohio, where William McKinley
also received his preparatory instruction. Calhoun knew Ray-
mond's history and Raymond feared he might betray it. His
real name was Frank H. Powers, not Ross Raymond. He was
born at Beaver, a few miles east of Poland, in Pennsylvania.
From there he enlisted in the Navy and later passed the re-
quired examination and was admitted to the Naval Academy
at Annapolis. He failed to pass his first semi-annual examina-
tion and was dropped from the rolls. He then, a "bilged
middy," began a criminal career.

"Powers, after leaving the Academy," writes Mr. James A.
Campbell, who knew him in the navy, "had no home and he
wandered about the country. He called on wealthy fathers
of his former classmates in the Academy and told them some
cock-and-biill story of having obtained leave to settle his
mother's affairs and running short of funds, and as he was able

,876I FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 67

to talk glibly about the Academy and the middies, he succeeded
in making a number of touches. His exploits were made public
after the victimized fathers had communicated with their sons
in the Academy, and by the boys were informed that they had
been swindled by the "bilged middy." Captain Charles King,
the well-known author of army novels and short stories of
fiction, based one of his stories on the exploits of the "bilged
middy.'

"In the early part of 187 1 the writer, still a naval apprentice,
was a member of the crew of the U. S. S. Richmond, flagship
of the Mediterranean squadron of the American fleet in Europe,
Commodore J. R. Madison Mullaney commanding. One day
when on shore leave at Naples, Italy, I visited the Royal
Museum and in the department devoted to relics of Pompeii
and Herculaneum, I met Powers. He wore the uniform of a
seaman of the British Navy. Her Britannic Majesty's ship
Monarch was in port and Powers was one of her crew, serving
under the name of Frank Palmer. We talked over old times
and parted, not to meet again until we encountered each other
in Philadephia some years later, when I learned that he came
to this country on the Monarch, when that vessel brought
home from Europe the body of George Peabody, the eminent
philanthropist, who had died abroad. I gathered the im-
pression that Powers deserted the Monarch after her arrival
in this country, and then blossomed out as Ross Raymond and
became a newspaperman."

He had been singularly successful in leading a dual life.
On one hand, under one alias, he was a brilliant journalist
commanding a high salary and always in demand. Under
another name he was an accomplished rascal, engaged in
swindling, blackmailing, forgery, and like offences. His
mysterious disappearances were due to the fact that he was
frequently taken into custody and sent to prison.

On one occasion he appeared under one of his many assumed
names at the Hotel Bristol, on the Place Vendome, in Paris.
It was the hotel at which the royalties visiting the French
capital were accustomed to stop. Raymond announced him-
self as the avant-courier of the Khedive of Egypt, who, he

68 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [x876

said, would arrive late that evening, accompanied by a large
suite of attaches. And, as it was the Khedive's birthday,
His Highness would desire to give a befitting'dinner to his staff.
Raymond engaged, with scrupulous care, rooms for his party,
and selected a menu of rare delicacies. Then, with perfect
nonchalance, he told the hotel manager that he must select a
suitable souvenir for each of the guests, and he asked that a
quantity of jewellery be sent for from which he might make
choice. The unsuspecting boniface hastened to comply. Ray-
mond indolently picked out thirty or forty pieces which he
wished put in the hotel safe to await the evening dinner, and
asked that the rest of the collection of valuables be returned to
the jeweller. Then he called a carriage and drove for an hour
in the Bois de Boulogne. Returning to the hotel, he had the
jewels he had chosen sent to his room that he might wrap them
and affix the name of the recipient to each. And now he quietly
slipped out of the place with his plunder and escaped to Eng-
land. He had no relation to the Khedive, it was not the
Khedive's birthday, and His Highness was not en route to
Paris. It was all a cunning and successful scheme of robbery.
It was not until years after that his identity was discovered.
And then he was in prison. He was never punished for the
crime.

Adopting once more his nom de plume of Ross Raymond, he
settled down quietly in London and found no difficulty in gain-
ing a handsome income by writing for American newspapers.
He made the acquaintance of Henry Irving and a number of
other notables, who years afterward assured me of his attractive
qualities and who had no suspicion of his real character.

In 1889 I spent a week-end in Manchester, England. Late
Saturday afternoon I read in an evening paper the story of the
arrest and arraignment of an American, under an obviously
assumed name, for swindling. He had called on Joseph Cham-
berlain, introducing himself as a New Jersey gentleman farmer
who made a specialty of orchids. As orchids were Chamber-
lain's weakness, he was, of course, interested, and gave his
visitor a hearty welcome. "He told me more about the
cultivation of my favourite flower than I had ever had the time

,8t6| FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 69

to learn," said the Birmingham statesman in forced admiration.

After having established suitable confidence Raymond
suggested that he had a bank check for one hundred pounds
sent him by the famous English journalist, George Augustus
Sala, and as he was a stranger, and for the moment a little
short of funds, he wondered if Mr. Chamberlain could arrange
to have the check cashed. Nothing could give Mr. Chamber-
lain greater pleasure. So Raymond pocketed the amount and
said "Good day!"

He called upon Pain, the fireworks man, in another guise,
and sold him another Sala check for a like amount. Both
checks were forgeries, cleverly executed. The police found
little difficulty in tracing the culprit, and when I was in Man-
chester it was he who was in jail in that city.

Although Raymond's name did not appear in the newspaper
story, I was convinced from the nature of the offence that it
was he. And if so, I determined to call on him and see whether
I could properly aid him. Sunday morning I saw the high
sheriff and told him of my belief that the man was a former
employee of mine, in jail under a fresh alias. He courteously
offered to go to the jail, see the prisoner, and, if my suspicion
was well founded, arrange for me to visit him. He saw Ray-
mond, who frankly admitted his identity, but said that while
he was grateful for my interest, he shrank from the ordeal of a
meeting. He said he was guilty and purposed pleading so in
court. He thought it better that he be sent to prison, because,
if by any chance he was permitted to go free, he knew he would
get into trouble again very soon. The next day he was sen-
tenced to ten years at hard labour in Dartmoor Prison. <

He took his punishment with singular stoicism. He picked
oakum uncomplainingly, and signified no wish for a release.
His faithful wife was living with relatives in the State of Nevada.
She believed, and I have no doubt rightfully, that her husband
was a victim of a peculiar form of insanity. So long as he
avoided alcoholic stimulants he led a perfectly orderly and
honourable life. But given one glass of intoxicant, he would
instantly set about swindling someone. His devices were most
ingenious and rarely failed. With the proceeds he would order

yd FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [1876

expensive suits of clothing, take a costly suite of rooms at a
leading hotel, order a supply of champagne of some priceless
vintage, and, all alone, indulge in an orgy. When his spree
was over he would return to his newspaper work and slave with-
out relaxation.

Later, as I was about to visit England, Mrs. Raymond and
a number of newspaper friends urged me to make an effort for
a ticket of leave. I presented the facts to the then Home
Secretary, Mr. Asquith, who said a release could probably be
arranged if I would take the prisoner to America and give an
assurance that he would never again set foot on British soil.
This, of course, was not possible. And, therefore, the term of
imprisonment was served. Raymond returned to the United
States, and for some time led an orderly life. He was appointed
city editor of the Philadelphia Times, and proved highly effi-
cient. Just as we hoped his reform was lasting, however, he
appeared in Milwaukee, posing as a colonel of distinction in
the British Army. He was accepted as a welcome guest of the
Wisconsin Club, and entertained the members with recollections
of his services for his "Queen and country."

Then he perpetrated one of his swindles, was arrested, and
sent to the workhouse. There was another period of sobriety
and hard work. And then another disaster. He went to
New Haven and called on President Hadley of Yale, represent-
ing himself as an Oxford professor temporarily visiting this
country. He was short of funds and was accommodated. He
paid a like visit to Mr. Seth Low, then president of Columbia
University, and finally to General Thomas L. James, president
of the Lincoln National Bank of New York. Once more he was
arrested. His wife asked me to visit him in the Tombs, and I
did so. His lawyer was with me. I said that I thought he
might be given a light sentence if insanity should be pleaded.
He turned on me in anger and said: "No, sir! Never will I
leave my wife as a legacy the memory of a crazy husband."
He was imprisoned at Sing Sing for about two years. While
there he edited the Star of Hope, the prison newspaper,
with great brilliancy.

On his release he and his wife took a little apartment in an

,8771 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 7/

inexpensive quarter of New York City, and he and she worked
together, upon a very small income, but for the first time in
years were really happy. He had no more escapades, but a
year or two later died.

He was a handsome, impressive person always. His ability
to pass for a clergyman, a college professor, a distinguished
soldier, or a scientist of fame was amazing. His stock of in-
formation on almost every conceivable subject was sufficient to
deceive any one.

Dick Lane, My Burglar Friend

After years of maladministration there was a reform govern-
ment in the city of Chicago. Not a Puritan government, but an
honest one. For a long time there had been whispers that the
police force was corrupt. And there was much reason for be-
lieving that the suspicion was well founded. The
plan of operation was very ingenious. There
was a conspicuous keeper of a gambling house.
He was also the chief Democratic "boss." He
had as a partner a lawyer who was noted as a
"jury fixer." Such a combination was almost
unbreakable. It owned the police, the prosecut-
ing officers, and even certain of the judges. The
situation was such that even a bank robber or a
house burglar was safe. He made his compact with the "boss."
He agreed to commit no depredations within the limits of the
city. It was arranged that he was free to operate in any out-
lying town. And then he was to run into Chicago, share his
plunder with the "boss," and if arrested was to be defended
by the lawyer partner. With the aid of the jury commissioner
it was always easy to secure one "safe" man among the twelve
in the box, and a failure to convict was certain.

In such circumstances the honest but stupid citizens were
easily cozened. They looked with pride upon their munici-
pality. There were no burglaries, no bank robberies in the
city. Indeed, there was little evidence of crime anywhere
about them. Therefore, the government of the place was

7a FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [i%77

admirable! But Chicago was an asylum for all sorts of crimi-
nals. This was a condition to be changed.

I learned that over in Michigan State Prison there was a
famous bank robber who felt that he had been unjustly con-
victed. He had been guilty of all kinds of crimes short of
murder, but not of the particular one for which he was incar-
cerated. He was said to be very sore against the Chicago
police. His name was Dick Lane. I went to the prison at
Jackson, Mich., and saw him. He "opened up" freely and
frankly. He told me, in detail, of the "criminal insurance"
plan of the Democratic boss and his lawyer partner. He told
me how bank robbers and house burglars were protected by the
Chicago police. He told me where I might find his burglar's
tools — one set under a haystack, fifty miles west of Chicago,
in DeKalb County, another in the hayloft of a Chicago detec-
tive's barn, and a third in a window box of his "girl's" place on
South State Street.

I returned to Chicago and reported the result of my journey
to the chief of police, a gentleman of unquestioned integrity.
It was Mr. Elmer Washburne, who later was chief of the United
States Secret Service at Washington. He and I set out to con-
firm Dick Lane's statements. We found the burglar's tools
in all the places he had indicated. Then, of course, there
were retirements from the police force. They were retirements
in disgrace. It could not be shown that there were criminal
offences by the city detectives, but there was a wholesome
measure of moral sanitation. After a while Lane was released
from prison. And one afternoon, as I was leaving my office,
I met him in the street in the custody of a policeman. He
appealed for help. In his long and efficient career as a veggman
(bank-safe man) he had had many exciting and dangerous ex-
periences. He had served more than half his life in jails of one
sort or another. In one affair he had lost an eye.

"Mr. Stone, I am in trouble," he quite unnecessarily explained.
"It was like this: Yesterday I broke my glass eye, and, needing
another, last night I opened the store of Doctor Walker, the oc-
ulist, over there on Clark Street. In the dark I couldn't pick
out one of the right colour to match my real eye, and so I had

,87?] FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 73

to take a trayful. I hadn't more than stepped into the street
when they pinched me. I told the cop that you were my
friend, and he came round here with me."

Experience with his natural enemies, the police, had taught
him that political influence was too often more valuable for the
accused criminal than any perfect legal defence. With him also
friendship was a cardinal virtue. He had proved his friendship
for me by squealing on the police when I asked him to. Now,
why should I not protect him when he was in trouble? It did
not occur to him that any moral element in the business de-
served consideration. And he regarded my suggestion that,
as he was admittedly guilty of theft, he should be punished, as
an inconceivable attitude for a real friend to take.

There was another phase of the case, however. He was
afraid that, having caught him, they might "railroad" him to
prison for a long term on a trumped-up charge in retaliation for
the disclosures he had made concerning the corruption of the
Chicago police force. They talked about his complicity in a
certain robbery. And of that he assured me he was wholly
innocent. I promised him that I would do what I could to pre-
vent any unjust punishment of him. The penalty for robbing
the oculist was light. I lost sight of him for a number of years.

Then one day he appeared at my office for a private interview.
He told me that he was tired of criminal life and wanted to
"go square." I laughed and frankly said I had no faith that
he could reform. "You do not want to pay the price neces-
sary to real reformation, Dick," said I. " It means hard work
at small pay, and I do not believe you have the strength of
character to persist in the effort."

"Will you try me?" he pleaded. "I have thought it all
over, and I want to quit this life that I am leading. There
isn't anything in it. I do a 'job,' get a little money, hurry to
town, square myself with the 'boss' and his lawyer, give a
bunch of money to a worthless woman who pretends she cares
for me, but who does not, and then I gamble away the rest.
In a few days I must go out and do another 'job' or starve.
Then I'm nabbed and sent up for a year or two. When I get
out of the penitentiary the thing is simply repeated. And I

74 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [1877

tell you I am tired of it. I will go straight if I can have a
chance."

I telephoned my friend, Mr. H. H. Kohlsaat, editor and
publisher of the Chicago Record Herald, and asked him to step
over to my office. He came, and I introduced my burglar
friend. I told him that Lane wanted to reform, and Kohlsaat
agreed to employ him as an assistant janitor at $5 a week.

Dick was delighted. He went to work. He proved faithful
and was promoted. He was converted in a mission Sunday
School and became active in religious effort.

More than twenty years passed, and Dick Lane lived in
Chicago until his death an orderly Christian life.

The Case 0] Judge Blodgett

In the publication of the Daily News, at a very early stage,
we took up the investigation of public wrongs. Perhaps the
first notable instance was the Blodgett case.

Henry W. Blodgett was the judge of the United States
District Court in Chicago. He had been a politician of many
years' standing, and his reputation was not altogether savoury.
A close scrutiny of his administration of the office led me to be-
lieve him an unjust judge. There were three young lawyers
in Chicago of very high character who shared my views. They
were John S. Cooper, John J. Knickerbocker, and Henry I.
Sheldon. After no little hesitation, in view of the responsibility
assumed, in 1877, we framed a petition to Congress, asking an
investigation with a view to Judge Blodgett's impeachment.
This was sent to Mr. Carter H. Harrison, a member of Congress
from Chicago, and he presented it. A sub-committee of the
Judiciary Committee of the House of Representatives, under
the chairmanship of J. Proctor Knott of Kentucky, was ap-
pointed to conduct the inquiry.

Blodgett had for some years been a railroad attorney and a
lobbyist on behalf of the railroads, and since Chicago was the
most conspicuous railroad centre in the United States, the
atmosphere of the place was murky with railroad influence.
The moment the attempt to impeach Blodgett was disclosed,

i877l FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 7$

a large coterie of the leading lawyers of Chicago, who had en-
joyed railroad practice, as well as the newspapers competing
with the Daily News, took up the cudgels, denounced the three
young men roundly and set out to defend the accused. It thus
happened that when Proctor Knott's committee arrived, even
before it began work, there was a round of wining and dining
for the members, and the whole accusation was stigmatized as
an outrage.

As the hearing went on, however, it was evident that it was
serious. It was clearly shown that there was a backstair in-
fluence which was wholly improper and which undeniably
affected Blodgett's judicial actions. It was shown also that he
had borrowed money from bankruptcy funds in the registry of
his court with which to speculate in Wall Street.

In the end Proctor Knott's committee found that the inves-
tigation was quite justified, but impotently reported to Con-
gress that it was so late in the session that no impeachment
proceedings were possible, and thus Blodgett escaped.

Several years elapsed and then the judge faced his deserts.

Judge Drummond, the United States Circuit Judge for the
Circuit, was in his declining years and about to retire. This
came to my knowledge privately in the spring of 1884. I
went to Washington at once and called upon General Arthur,
then President of the United States. I asked him to read the
record in the case as presented by Proctor Knott's committee.
He did so, and when I suggested that Blodgett would be a
candidate to succeed Judge Drummond, he very promptly
assured me that such an appointment would not be made.

But then there was a complication. General Walter Q.
Gresham, who had previously served with distinction as a
Federal judge, but had retired from the judicial office to enter
politics, was postmaster general under President Arthur. The
President knew that Gresham had tired of politics and would
like to return to the bench. But his name had been suggested
as a candidate for the Presidency against Arthur, and any
appointment of him as Judge Drummond's successor before the
meeting of the Nominating Convention might be construed as a
ruse to prevent his running as a candidate. President Arthur

76 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [1877

asked me to see him, find out how he felt, and if he still desired a
judicial office, to offer him Drummond's place, the appointment
to be made months later.

I called on General Gresham and we went for a long ride. I
told him frankly of the situation. He promptly and vigorously
denounced any effort on the part of his friends to make him a
Presidential nominee. "It would be disgraceful," said he,
"for any member of General Arthur's cabinet to try to run
against him for the Republican nomination after the splendid
administration he has given the country." I then told him that
I was commissioned to offer him the Circuit Court Judgeship
to be made vacant by Judge Drummond; but it must be under-
stood that the arrangement was to be held as confidential until
after the National Convention, to the end that it must not be
regarded as a political arrangement. This was assented to;
I reported the situation to the President, and went back to
Chicago.

I told Judge Drummond the whole story and he withheld his
retirement for some months and until the proper moment for
Gresham's appointment. Then, as I had anticipated, a peti-
tion for the appointment of Judge Blodgett for the post was
prepared and signed very generally by the railroad lawyers of
Chicago and backed by the corrupt forces. It was presented to
President Arthur, but was ineffective. General Gresham was
appointed.

In April, 1877, the Mayor appointed me as a member of the
Board of Education, a position in which I served three years
and then declined a reappointment because of my other duties.
There was no compensation attached to the office and I ac-
cepted only as a public duty. I started a campaign against the
teaching of German or any other language than English in the
primary grades. I was not successful at the time, but later
the seed sown came to fruition. I also urged the appointment
of well-trained teachers for the primary grades. It had been
the policy to hold purely scholastic examinations and to make
appointments upon the results thus disclosed. This meant
that the youngest children were given over to inexperienced
teachers with small pay but much knowledge of the higher

i877] FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST J7

branches, while the later grades were taught by splendid
elderly women, many enjoying the experience of motherhood,
but rusty in erudition. I was able to effect a change in this
business.

In the summer the great railroad strike and riot wave
reached Chicago. There were several days of bloody battle
between the officers of the law and an insensate mob. The
event was reported by the Daily News in a fashion that had no
precedent in the history of western journalism. A corps of
reporters, mounted on horseback, went through the riotous
districts and telegraphed or telephoned the situation hour by
hour, almost minute by minute. Some of them were even
disguised as rioters; and one at least fell into the hands of the
police because he was in the front ranks of the mob. Extra
editions of the paper were issued hour by hour and the circula-
tion ran up to over 70,000 copies a day.

Detective Journalism — The Spencer Case

All our fine theories would be of little avail unless we
could compel attention of the public. The admonition to
Sempronius did not in the least deter us. We set out to com-
mand success as well as to deserve it. We made the paper
sensational. Not, as I have said, in the ordinarily accepted
signification of that much-abused word. Not by parading
the noisome details of commonplace crime, nor the silly so-
called "human-interest stories" of cats born with two heads,
or like babble having no real value and only presented for the
purpose of pandering to the prurient taste of groundlings.
But in a larger and better sense. It is easy to edit a newspaper
if one does no thinking, has no initiative capacity. He then
labels all murders and suicides and hangings and prize fights
and chicken fights as news, and his task is a simple one. These
are the editors who, like the three Japanese monkeys, never
see, hear, or tell us anything. But the field of human activity
is quite large enough for better work — work which will give an
individual character to a paper, wake an echo, and conduce to
betterment of the readers.

78 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [1877

After this fashion the Daily News was sensational and in-
tensely personal. How we pursued public plunderers and
uncovered their misdeeds, and sent them to prison, constitutes
a chapter in the history of Chicago of which no one connected
with the paper has reason to be ashamed.

In 1877 there was no provision in the State of Illinois for
legal inspection or control of savings institutions. As editor
of the Daily News I began urging such legislation. That there
was need for such supervision was evident from the fact that
the three or four leading savings banks of Chicago were pub-
licly offering suspiciously high rates of interest for deposits.
But, preventive of any action, was a conspiracy of the officers
and directors of the involved concerns, including a considerable
number of the important people of the city. What with in-
fluence and money, they were able to stifle any move at the
State capital. The clamour of the Daily News was denounced
as improper and even disgraceful.

So it happened that public sentiment was with the culpable
bankers, and when the suspension of one bank after another
was announced there was amazement and almost a panic.
This was true on the 29th of August of that year, when the
State Savings Bank of Chicago, the largest institution of the
kind west of New York, suddenly closed its doors upon over
twenty-five thousand depositors, and with liabilities of many
millions of dollars. Of assets of value there were practically
none in sight. And the president of the bank, Mr. D. D.
Spencer, had decamped.

Then some leading citizens stepped into the breach, effected
an assignment to a co-conspirator, and named a protective
committee — designed to be protective, not of the deposit-
ors, but of the absent president and of his equally guilty
directors.

More than two weeks elapsed, and, although the city was
in a state of wild commotion, there was no move for the appre-
hension of Spencer. Then, it being obvious that the authorities
would do nothing, I took the matter in hand. The pursuit of
the fugitive bank president and his final location in Europe is
the story I have to tell.

i877] FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 70

Spencer left Chicago on Sunday afternoon, August 26th, on
a Michigan Central Railway train, accompanied by his wife and
adopted daughter. They left the car at some point in Canada.
Such was the information furnished by a Mr. Washburne of
Chicago, who was a fellow passenger of his. With this clue I
determined to find the fugitive and, if possible, to bring him to
justice.

The first step in the plan of pursuit was to learn definitely
Spencer's movements from the moment he left until he alighted
in Canada. It was known that the family took berths in a
sleeping car.

The books of the company were searched by the Chicago
agent, who learned that on the train in question there were
three sleepers, but one alone took through passengers. The
car was in charge of Conductor Humphreys, who remembered
the party. He helped them to alight at Hamilton; they took a
train for Toronto. The train had started, and he called to the
conductor to hold it, which was done, and he helped the people
aboard. In the hurry of this departure Spencer said he had to
leave his baggage, and he asked the local baggageman to for-
ward it to Toronto, giving him his checks.

This much was learned in Chicago. The rest was clear.
Go to Canada and follow the baggage from Hamilton and
Toronto. With a photograph of Spencer and a facsimile of
his signature, I set out. I went to Hamilton and was soon in
conversation with a bright young fellow who ran the baggage
room at that station. I showed him Spencer's picture and
asked if the original had passed that way recently.

"Do you remember," I asked, "a man who arrived here at
eleven-forty-five on the afternoon of August 27th, just as the
Toronto train was leaving, and who gave you his checks and
asked you to forward his baggage to Toronto?"

"Oh, yes, that's him; I remember it all now. He said they
were small pieces, and I have occasion to recollect it. He lied.
They were very heavy. Let me see. There were two canvas
covers and a Saratoga. Yes, I sent them to Toronto at three
that afternoon, double-checked to the Union Station. That's
where he wanted them sent.

So FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [,877

"Come here a bit," he continued after a pause, and, entering
his office, he opened his register and began searching the dates.
"There," he said when he reached the page on which the work
on the 27th of August was recorded, "these are the numbers of
the checks on those trunks — 442, 7,752, and 10,484. Now,
you go up to Toronto, stop at the Union Station, and ask Jim-
mie Foster, the baggage-man there, what became of that stuff.
He can tell you whether the trunks were sent to a hotel or
whether they went off on the Grand Trunk."

I took the next train for Toronto and called on Jimmie
Foster. He remembered the incident well. The party arrived
there on the one-fifteen train, intending to take the Montreal
boat at once, and was very much put out that the luggage
did not arrive until after the boat had gone. "They came from
Chicago, didn't they?" said he. "Chicago was stencilled on
the trunks, anyway. Let's go and see Duffy; he'll remember
them, I know."

Duffy was the baggage-man for the Grand Trunk Company
at the Union Station, Toronto.

When shown the photograph he thought he recognized that
face, but was not certain. Foster described the baggage, and
then it all flashed over him.

"Oh, yes," he said, "that party came in early in the afternoon
and stayed about the depot here until evening. He had a tall,
slim girl with him around the platform, and I think his lady
waited inside in the waiting room. He was going east. I
remember him for a foolish little eccentricity of his. I came out
here on the platform and found him picking the labels off of his
baggage. They were all covered with marks of the hotel and
railway and express companies into whose hands they had
fallen, and that seemed to annoy him. I saw him working
away at it and took pity on him, and went and got a sponge
and spent a good half hour with him, sponging the marks off
of his trunks. He was greatly pleased to see how well they
looked when they were cleaned.

"There," continued Duffy after a glance at his books,
"that's the party — three pieces of baggage on the afternoon
of August 27th, checked by myself through to 'Sixty-five over.'

i877l FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 81

'Sixty-five over' means across the ferry at Quebec. This party
was going to take an Allan Line steamship."

A clerk in the office of the Allan Steamship Agency, in
Toronto, remembered a visit from Spencer and his daughter on
the afternoon in question. Spencer there obtained a plan of
the Circassian, which was to sail on the following Saturday, and
promised to call again.

Having thus established his course beyond question, I set
out for Montreal. There I found they had spent the day and
taken a night train for Quebec. At daybreak on Wednesday,
August 29th, they landed at the depot at Point Levi. The
ferryboat was on hand, and they immediately passed to Quebec,
on the other side of the river.

While here, stopping at the St. Louis Hotel, Spencer, alias
Williams, read the announcement of his crime in the Quebec
Chronicle and afterward in the New York Herald, copies of which
he bought at a news stand in St. Louis Street. The party went
aboard ship on Saturday morning, and the boat steamed out
promptly at ten. There was no one present to see them off
or bid them God-speed.

Having thus made certain of their departure for Liverpool,
I set about overhauling them on their arrival. I immediately
telegraphed the information I had received to the superintendent
of police at Chicago, and he in turn sent the following cable-
gram:

Supt. Williamson, Scotland Yard,
England.
Arrest D. D. Spencer, absconding bank president from here; charge,
forgery and embezzlement, $1,000,000. Supposed to have gone from
Quebec, September first, on steamship Circassian, with young wife and
child, under assumed name. Full description by mail will reach you
Wednesday. (

M. C. Hickey
Chief of Police, Chicago.

Then there was a period of waiting — and disappointment,
for Spencer and his family had quietly left the boat at Moville,
on the north coast of Ireland, had slipped from the clutches of

82 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [1877

Scotland Yard, and had gone away, unchallenged, to, in present-
day phrase, "somewhere in the world."

It took time to renew the hunt. Then I set out again. I
went to Europe. I bore letters to the English, French, and
German police authorities. Nothing was to be learned in
London. In Paris, with the aid of the Secret Service, the city
was searched from end to end without result. Berlin was, as
ever, better organized. The Fremden list disclosed that a
person who was unmistakably Spencer had been there, had
witnessed the army manoeuvres, and had left.

When the search seemed hopeless I received a cable from
Chicago that Abner Taylor, the assignee of Spencer's bank,
and always suspected of aiding the runaway, had sailed on a
certain ship for England. I trailed Taylor, finally faced him,
and told him that he would be shadowed until his meeting with
Spencer. He promised to notify me when he found Spencer,
which he did. As a result a Daily News man walked in on
Spencer unexpectedly at Cannstadt, Germany, and obtained
a full confession. Later there was an adjustment of the crime
in Chicago and a dismissal of the indictment.

As a result of this exposure there was the passage by the
State Legislature of an act providing for the rigorous inspection
of savings banks, and Spencer and his coterie never figured in
the banking business again.

Such was our activity. As Dean Swift would have said, we
lived all the days of our life. This case was among the earliest
in which we resorted to detective journalism in the public be-
half. For years thereafter the detective methods of the Daily
News were notable and of great value to the community.

FOURTH DECADE

A Tour in Europe

IN AUGUST, 1878, as I began the fourth decade of my life,
the average daily issue of our paper reached about fifty
thousand copies, and we bought the Post and Mail, thus
securing a very good perfecting press, as well as the service of
the Associated Press. With this acquisition and the eclipse of
Storey's Evening Telegram, we felt that our permanency was
practically assured. Things were going so well in our business
and so ill in my own condition that a vaca-
tion in Europe was planned for me. I had
broken down from overwork, and developed
nervous prostration, with accompanying
melancholia. Utterly unfit for such a jour-
ney, I sailed from New York City in the
spring of 1879. I found myself without an
acquaintance on the boat, and before we
were a day out I was quite ready to jump
overboard and end my wretched, desolate
exsitence. As I was walking the deck, medi-
tating on the thing, a kindly woman, who divined my agony,
boldly introduced herself. I have no thought of hinting that
there was anything unwomanly in her manner. Quite the
contrary. As an angel of mercy might have done it, in
the gentlest fashion possible, she asked a question, told me
who she was, and suggested that we walk the deck. Then she
introduced her husband. I have no doubt she saved my
life.

She "mothered" me until, in London — a World's Congress
of Physicians being in session — she handed me over to a com-
pany of Chicago doctors, who took me in hand, trailed me over
the Continent with them, and enlisted my interest in the things

William H. Crane

B4 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [1879

about me. Out of it all Will Crane, the actor, and his wife were
numbered among my most valued friends.

I not only continued my search for Spencer, the absconding
banker, as I have already said, but was able to engage in other
work which proved of value in my after life.

I went to Ireland. I bore letters of introduction from
Colonel Forrest to a number of conspicuous persons. One of
these, addressed to the Lord Mayor of Dublin, Sir John Barring-
ton, resulted in a dinner in my honour at the Mansion House in
the Irish capital. One of the guests was old Doctor Shaw, the
famous professor of Greek at Trinity College, a school from which
years before an uncle of mine was a graduate. The doctor also
held the chair of editor of Saunders's News Letter, an important
daily of Dublin. I attended by invitation a number of his
lectures and wandered with him about the city and learned
much of the Home-Rule question then to the fore in the "dis-
tressful country."

• I went down to County Wicklow for a lawn party at a gentle-
man's demesne. I was presented to a young woman named
Lady Mary. What her real name was, or who she was, I have
never known. It was quite enough to be presented to Lady
Mary. We fell to talking. "You are from She-&<zy-go?" she
asked in a truly English drawl. "Yes," I replied. And then
one may imagine my consternation when she continued with:
"And is that anywhere near where the dear young prince was
killed?" meaning South Africa, where the Prince Imperial of
France had lost his life a month earlier.

A few weeks later, while coaching from Cork to the Lakes of
Killarney, we halted at a wayside shrine between Mallow and
GlengarifF. The usual group of barefooted beggars attacked
us. "Where are ye from?" asked a ragged old woman. "From
Chicago," I answered. "And how's it gettin' along since yer
fire?" she returned. It was not that she knew her geography
so well, but, in common with so many other Irish peasants, she
had relatives in our city from whom she had heard and in whom
she was interested.

At Cavan, my mother's birthplace, I met Captain Boycott,
the agent of Lord Erne. His brutal evictions won for him

18793

FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST

Charles Stewart Parnell

unenviable notoriety, and (because of the ostracism meted out
to him by the peasantry) fixed the word "boycott" in the
language.

I met Charles Stewart Parnell and told him of the Lady Mary
episode. I shall never forget the quizzical, cynical look he
gave me, nor how he fell to talking
of conditions in Ireland. There was
nothing of the emotional Irishman
about him. Rather he was the cool,
practical, analytical American type.

"I am not surprised," said he. "I
have no doubt the young woman could
have told you with whom the Queen
drove out yesterday afternoon. These
people live in the atmosphere of the
British Court. They know nothing
else."

He impressed me as a self-contained,
almost taciturn, person. The Home-
Rule movement was well under way, but he was not at
one with its leader, Doctor Butt. He had great respect
for him, but did not believe his methods could ever achieve
success.

I next met him in New York Harbour. He had come over
on the steamer Scythia with John Dillon to plead his cause be-
fore the people of the United States. I, in turn, had been chosen
as chairman of a committee to welcome the gentlemen to the
American shore. So it happened that I travelled to New York,
went down the Bay, and, on January 2, 1880, made a speech of
greeting to Parnell and Dillon. And so also it happened that
I came to be rather close to them and to those associated with
them thereafter.

I shall never forget the appeal they made. In simple phrase,
and without any attempt at eloquence, but much as Louis Kos-
suth had told the story of Hungary's wrongs years before, they
pleaded the cause of their downtrodden people.

The task was not easy. Irishmen in America were by no
means at one in respect to the steps that should be taken

86 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [1880

in opposition to government by Britain. Over here was a
large band of radicals grouped as the Clan-na-Gael, the Irish
Revolutionary Brotherhood, or Fenians, and Parnell was to
them a Conservative. They wanted physical warfare; he
believed in political methods. His visit had a twofold purpose,
namely, the collection of funds to feed the famished people of
Ireland, and the unifying, if possible, of the discordant Ameri-
can elements, to the end that he and his associates might be
able to rely on a solid and compact backing from American
sympathizers in the Irish cause. He faced two hostile classes,
the friends of England, who would have none of Home Rule,
and the hare-brained Irish, who had no faith in constitutional
methods, but wanted to use guns and powder and ball. How
he won was full of dramatic interest. There was an element of
tremendous surprise. And I think upon this fact his success
was largely dependent. Here was a Protestant Irish landlord
pleading with quiet dignity but great earnestness the wrongs
of the emotional tenantry against the crushing iniquity of land-
lordism. As he spoke "those who came to scoff remained to
pray." A leading anti-Home Rule journal of New York sud-
denly found itself forced to open a subscription in aid of the
starving people of Erin. And within a week the fighting men,
those who had talked in loudest terms against Parnellism, be-
gan to bend the knee.

Some of us took active measures to forward the public en-
thusiasm. The tour was an extraordinary success. Money
was contributed in surprising measure. Parnell and Dillon
were the idols of the hour. More than that, their cause became
the popular cause.

Yet their visit was not a long one. Indeed, they had scarcely
begun their work before they were called back to Britain by an
announcement of the dissolution of Parliament and a conse-
quent impending general election.

Parnell found himself confronted in Ireland by three hostile
classes: the Catholic bishops, who distrusted him as a Prot-
estant; the Orangemen and pro-British, who did not want
Home Rule; and the uncompromising radicals, who wanted to
try by force to create a wholly independent nation. All of the

,88o] FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 87

antagonists whom he had met in America were present at home,
but in larger measure.

Parnell went into the campaign undaunted. He was warned
of trouble when he landed at Queenstown, and he was mobbed
when he undertook to speak at Enniscorthy. Yet he stood as
a candidate for Parliament before three constituencies: Meath,
Mayo, and Cork City, and was returned by each. Then he
was formally chosen leader of his party, and his marvellous
career was fairly begun.

I had occasional letters from him, as well as a number of
cable messages, for publication in the Chicago Daily News.

While in the United States he had met a young woman whom
he had engaged to marry. At her instance the affair was
broken off. Very soon after his return to Europe he met Mrs.
O'Shea and fell desperately in love with her. Politically, he
was carrying on a terrific contest against the Clan-na-Gael
both in Ireland and in America; against the British and their
allies in Ulster, and against the followers of Isaac Butt, who
advocated an innocuous form of Home Rule agitation, and
all the while he was living over a social volcano ready to burst
into an overwhelming flood of scandal at any moment. It
was not surprising, therefore, that he should write me apolo-
gizing for not writing as frequently as he could have wished.

That he should make any headway, much less win, in such
an obstacle race gives proof of his marvellous capacity. Only
those who knew how he was surrounded by adverse, sinister,
and malicious opponents, ready to arrange pitfalls for him on
every side, can appreciate his fortitude as well as his cunning.
On one occasion a Chicago woman, the wife of a leader of the
American Clan-na-Gael, having knowledge of Parnell's liaison,
went to Paris, employed a courtesan of surpassing beauty, took
her to London, introduced her to the House of Commons and
to the "Uncrowned King" of Ireland, but without success. Her
object was blackmail.

Parnell was a hard master of his party. He brooked no
opposition in his own camp, and he treated every Briton with
undisguised contempt. Even Dillon and Davitt broke with
him for a while after the Kilmainham imprisonment and the

88 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [1880

Phoenix Park murders. Dillon, who had memories of 1848,
and his father's revolutionary campaign with John Mitchell
and Smith O'Brien, became restive under Parnell's cold-blooded
leadership, pleaded ill health, and came to this country to visit
his brother William in Colorado. On his way he stopped over
in Chicago and gave me the pleasure of a visit. He was a
bookworm. I took him to the greatest bookstore in the world,
then, as now, located in that city, and there he and I spent
some happy hours and days poring over the works of

". . . the dead but sceptered sovereigns who still rule our
spirits from their urns."

Davitt, too, came to the United States. He, like Dillon,
could not approve of Parnell's moderate methods. They had
suffered too much. Yet Davitt, while carried away for the
moment by Henry George's propaganda,
and burning with a desire for urgent and
drastic action, resented in terms which no
one might misunderstand any suggestion
of disloyalty to his chief.

All the while Parnell was plodding on.
He calmly refused to make answer to
"Buckshot Forster's" attempt to impli-
cate him in the assassinations of Burke
and Cavendish, saying that he declined to
appear as a defendant in any matter at
the bar of an English tribunal. Taunting ^ohn DaIon

and contemptuous ever of the Briton, he
enforced from the controlling government respect and even
deference. Always this man, by sheer force of character, and
alone, was making progress toward a recognition of the justice
of the cause of Ireland. He was the very embodiment of
courage.

Once only I saw him timorous. The celebrated Parnell
Commission was in session, investigating the accusations of the
London Times. He was impaled as an accessory in the Phoenix
Park murders, and the Piggot letters, incriminating him in no

i889] FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 89

uncertain fashion, had been offered in evidence. It was in the
summer of 1888. I was in London. Parnell and I had a meet-
ing. He was conscious of his innocence, he knew the Piggot
letters were forgeries, but, also, he knew the temperament of
England at the moment, and the consequent personal danger to
himself. A common friend, John Finerty, back in Chicago,
was publishing a paper, railing at the investigation and prac-
tically defending the assassination as an act of justice. "Does
this man know that he is putting a noose about my neck?"
asked Parnell in distress. And then he urged me to cable
Finerty to stop. Which I did.

Piggot was exposed, ran away to Spain, and committed
suicide. Parnell was exonerated. There was a fine reaction
in British sentiment. Gladstone and the whole Liberal party
made obeisance to Parnell, and Home Rule seemed assured. I
returned to America, and the following year a delegation of
Irish National leaders came over to plead their cause and to
collect funds for a final campaign. They reached Chicago in
the autumn and we were together night and day during
their visit to the city. In the delegation were T. P. O'Connor,
John Dillon, William O'Brien, T. D. Sullivan, and T. Harring-
ton.

Suddenly, as out of a clear sky, burst the storm. Captain
O'Shea had sued for a divorce, naming Parnell as co-respondent.
There was no defence; the divorce was granted. I shall never
forget the emotions aroused. On the one hand there was a
recognition of the measureless need of Ireland for relief and the
priceless value of Parnell's services for the cause; there was
gratitude for him and confidence in his matchless leadership.
On the other hand was the doubt that in the face of the O'Shea
disclosures there was further hope for usefulness from him.
Then came Gladstone's letter to Morley, dissociating himself
from Parnell, and all the great dream of so many years that
British misrule in Ireland — so graphically portrayed by Froude,
and so confessed by every English statesman — was about to
end, suffered a piteous awakening.

Parnell made a brief final struggle, met disaster, and died.
And Irish Home Rule still is not yet.

go FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [1879

Meeting Gambetta and Clemenceau

I went to Paris. I met Gambetta and Clemenceau. Both
were intimate friends of my cousins, the Crawfords. Gam-
betta was the godfather of Mrs. Crawford's only daughter,
Leona Crawford, a beautiful girl, who was accidentally drowned
in a Swiss lake while yet in her teens.

The dramatic story of Gambetta's tempestuous life had
rarely been equalled. The son of a small grocer of Cahors, in
the south of France, he was apprenticed by his father to a
watchmaker. Hating the occupation, and ambitious to become
a lawyer, it was said that he tore out an eye and unfitted him-
self for the business to which he had been assigned. A maiden
aunt helped him to take a course at the Sorbonne, in Paris, and
achieve his goal. As in the cases of Byron and the younger
Dumas, he awoke one morning to find himself famous. It
was in the days of the Second Empire, two years before the
Battle of Sedan and the downfall of Louis Napoleon. Gam-
betta was thirty years old. He had been known for a number
of years as a hare-brained radical, who mounted chairs in the
cheaper cafes and harangued the crowds in denunciation of the
Imperial Government. He was a briefless lawyer. He was
not punished for his treasonable indiscretions, because he was
thought by the authorities to be unworthy of notice. Finally,
however, his hour came. He was called to defend one of sev-
eral journalists who started a subscription for a monument to
Baudin, a deputy who was shot on the barricades of Paris at the
time of the coup d'etat of 1851. His speech was a masterpiece
of invective. In terms of measureless audacity he arraigned
the culprits who had destroyed the Republic of 1848 and erected
an autocracy upon the ruin. Thereafter he was a leading
figure among the Republicans of France.

When I met him he was at the zenith of his power. But a
few months before he had turned General MacMahon out of
the presidency and installed Jules Grevy. His challenge to
MacMahon and his consequent victory at the general election
established the Republic. Notwithstanding the suspicions
and misgivings born of his earlier radicalism, he proved a

i*79] FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST gi

great constructive force, and when, two years after our meeting,
he was killed, he left to his people a priceless legacy of orderly
self-government. When he was charged with responsibility
he made heroic answer to the accusation that he was a Com-
munard ; he showed himself a genuine Republican. He had a
great admiration for the American form of government, and,
had he lived, would certainly have striven to model the French
system much more closely upon our own.

Clemenceau and Gambetta worked to the same end, yet not
in the same groups. Clemenceau was a far greater radical,
and in the end the two were not at one as to either their aims or
methods. The "Tiger" was viciously uncompromising in his
urgency for an untainted democracy. He regarded the Re-
public as an experiment, well enough in its way, nevertheless
an experiment. He sturdily battled against colonial expansion,
because he felt that France needed all her strength to complete
the task of reconstruction — moral and economic — after the
debacle of 1870. A brilliant journalist and a master of parlia-
mentary tactics, he unseated one government after another for
years. And he did great things for his country. He, more
than any one else, made possible the impossible. He so stabil-
ized the democratic spirit of France as to keep the Republic
in existence and in growing efficiency for now half a century.

Emily Crawford also made me acquainted with Labouchere
and Horace Voules, his manager on Truth. So it happened
that the Associated Press was able to report the coronation of
King Edward in 1902 in a fashion theretofore unknown in
England. Our correspondents occupied a pew in the south
transept of Westminster Abbey, not far from a door. Sheet
by sheet their copy was smuggled out by a messenger, who
took it to Voules's house in a near-by street. There it was
telephoned to our main office and put upon the cable. Where-
fore the American papers had a much quicker service than the
journals of London.

Still another valued friend whose acquaintance I made
through the intermediation of my cousin was Percy Bunting,
for many years editor of the Contemporary Review, the great
Liberal periodica]. He was the grandson of the Rev. Jabez

92 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [,88o

Bunting, a famous Wesleyan Methodist preacher. I found
Percy Bunting of great assistance in determining my view of
British politics.

The European journey restored my health. On my return
to Chicago in the early fall of 1879 I resumed activity in the
Daily News office. It was again a case of "full steam ahead."

More Detective Journalism

One day the city was startled by the announcement that
Mr. Moore, a trusted citizen, had decamped, leaving a shortage
of several thousand dollars in his accounts as supervisor of the
West Town of Chicago. While he was in the full enjoyment of
a reputation which any one might envy, he was arrested at his
own house on a charge of embezzlement. The following day
the public was advised in one breath of the defalcation, the
arrest, and the sudden and mysterious flight of the prisoner
while under guard of a police officer. From that time, for
nearly a year, his whereabouts remained a profound secret.
Finding once more that the Police Department was doing noth-
ing, the Daily News again set on foot an inquiry. By a very
simple decoy it was learned that the man must be in Canada.
The investigation was pursued a little further, and he was
located in the oil-producing districts about Sarnia. I went
to Detroit, up the St. Clair River, and into Canada to hunt
until the man was found.

I left the boat at Sarnia and climbed up the bluff to the
hotel, a large, two-story frame struct are with a wide-spreading
veranda, overlooking the St. Clair River and the little city of
Port Huron on the opposite bank. I found landlord, clerk,
porter, and, indeed, every available employee busy in the
bar-room serving liquor in awholesale fashion, for a civic holiday
excursion from London, Ont., had thrown two dozen carfuls of
merry-makers into the town. While they were thus engaged I
ran back over the hotel register to see what Chicago people had
been there of late. When I reached the page devoted to the ar-
rivals of August 3d I was struck with a specimen of chirog-

i88o] FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 93

raphy which seemed very familiar. In plain characters, just
as I had seen it hundreds of times in Chicago, was: "A. Moou,
Petrolia, Ont"

I again turned the leaves of the book and found a similar
inscription on July 18th. I examined both signatures very
closely, and very soon was convinced that "A. Moore of Pe-
trolia" was none other than Mr. Moore, late alderman, school
inspector, and town supervisor of Chicago.

After journeying through a wild barren country I finally
reached Petrolia. I entered one of the two hotels which
flanked the railway station and laid down my valise. I then
took a turn about town, and at an apothecary's asked the
clerk if he knew Mr. Moore.

"A large man with gray beard who came over from the
States a few months ago?'" he returned.

"That's the man," said I.

"He's boarding at the Corry House. You will find him
there. Just ask for Mr. Moore."

I did so.

"He's up in his room," said the landlord. "Will you go
up?"

I thanked him, but would prefer meeting Mr. Moore down-
stairs, if he would be kind enough to call him.

Pretty soon, as I stood in the dimly lighted hall at the foot
of the stairway, I saw him descending, not the man who had
left Chicago so abruptly a year before, but wan and broken, his
well-worn clothes hanging close about his shrunken form, his
beard thin, and his whole appearance betraying all too plainly
the struggle he had undergone.

"Mr. Moore, I believe," I said, audibly, as he reached the
lower step, and looked inquiringly at me.

Then I was assigned a room, and, after some preliminary,
Mr. Moore came in and sat upon the bed, and told me the full
story of his misadventures.

"It was on the evening of Wednesday, the 6th of June, a
year ago," he began, "that my affairs in Chicago culminated.
I had then lived long in that city and had held several honour-
able offices, such as alderman, school inspector, etc., and I can

94 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [1880

say truthfully, and my record will prove it, that I was always
opposed to corruption, always voted against steals, always con-
ducted myself, both as a citizen and as a public officer, in an
honest and upright way.

"Along in the early spring I was taken sick. I don't know
what my disease was, but it was some trouble with my heart.
It so affected my head that at times I really had no command
of myself. Everything I had touched from the time of the
panic had gone against me; I had a family to provide for; one
of my daughters was, and is, an invalid — these things worried
me more than I can tell you. Things seemed to be going from
bad to worse. I have no doubt that my financial troubles
preyed upon my mind. I struggled along day after day and
got no better. I don't want to plead the baby act, and I sup-
pose a good many people wouldn't believe the facts; but I
tell you there were a good many days, along about that time,
when I know I was not morally accountable for all my acts.

"A good many times I went downtown and went through
the form of a day's work when I was physically unfit. But I
had to keep my head above water. Finally, I found my town
accounts $300 short, and I really had nothing with which to
make it good. I was in such a state of distress that I couldn't
sleep nights, nor keep a clear head during the day. I didn't
drink. I never drank. My habits were all good and I was
economical. But my health was such that I couldn't do any-
thing, and the accumulating misfortunes and prospects of mis-
fortune unmanned me.

"I went on 'Change' when I should have been at home in
bed. I did unaccountable things — things that I would never
have thought of doing when in my right mind and health.
Whereas before I had always bought and sold with extreme cau-
tion and in small lots, T now launched out as if I had been a
millionaire. The tide turned against me, as of course it would,
for I had bought and sold without the exercise of any sort of
judgment — bought and sold like an insane man.

"It is of no use to talk about it now, of course, but you can
see that if I had intended to play the villain, I should have
taken a very different course. Only a few months before —

,88o] FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 95

about the first of the year — I could have pocketed £33,000 and
come away to Canada and had enough to insure me a good liv-
ing the rest of my days. Instead of that I came away without
anything.

"When my situation burst upon me in its full force, broken
in health and short in my town accounts, I became despondent.
My doctor told me to quit business and rest. I could un-
doubtedly have adjusted my affairs, but my mental and physi-
cal condition was such that I didn't accomplish anything.
About that time I can only recollect that I, for the first time in
my life, seriously contemplated self-destruction.

"I went to bed more insane than sane. They came for me
at night when I was not looking for them. If it had been in
the daytime I should have gone right along and faced the issue
in court. But the thing burst upon me in such a way that I
couldn't endure it. The officer came in, and after we had
talked over matters a while, he left me in my bed and took a
seat in the parlour, and went sound asleep. I lay there turning
the situation over in my mind, and finally, when I couldn't
stand it any longer, I told my wife that I was going to get out
of there. She begged me not to. But I drew on my trousers
and slippers, and went out into the kitchen and got a hat, and
walked out of the back door.

"I went to the house of a friend, woke him up and got a bed.
When morning came, I sought the advice of a lawyer. My
friends thought I had better wait a while and see what turned

up;<

"That night, or the next, a carriage called for me and I was
driven to the house of another friend, where I stayed fourteen
days. During that time I saw the papers every day, and was
very much interested in the efForts which the police were mak-
ing for my apprehension. All the time I was in the hands of my
lawyer. I thought some arrangment of my affairs would be
reached. Finally, I was advised to go to Canada, where I could
recuperate my health and await an adjustment in personal
security.

"Acting upon that advice, nearly three weeks after my
arrest, I one day took a carriage, drove to a suburb, and took

g6 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [l88o

a train for Canada. I went first to Toronto and then to
Sarnia, where I met my present associate in business. He had
a good deal of experience in the oil fields. After investigation
I became convinced that, with the means I could control, the
chances for me were good, if not better than in any other busi-
ness I could enter."

The next morning we strolled out over the oil fields of Pe-
trolia, and I took advantage of the opportunity to inspect his
wells.

"You are doing finely," said I, at length.

"I run the engine," said the ex-alderman, "and since I have
been here I think I have made #800 to #1,000 over investment
and expense. At the same expense of running, had I the
money, our capacity would easily be doubled. It costs $450
to sink a well, and the cost of pumping additional holes, now
that we have the engine in, would be next to nothing."

"What is your notion as to your future?" I asked.

"Well, I don't know," he replied, slowly. "I am very anx-
ious to settle up my affairs in Chicago, and to that end would
be only too glad to bend all my energies for years to come.
But it is a very difficult case to adjust. The amount involved
is not so large, but I am tied up here and am practically power-
less. Now I have a little piece of property in Chicago. If the
town board would take that at its value and give me time to
work out the rest, I want to do so. With what my brothers
have put in here for my benefit, I think I could earn the balance
in a comparatively short time. But I can't tell, you know,
whether the town authorities could or would make an arrange-
ment by which I could get time to fix the thing up. If they
don't, of course, much as I would dislike to do it — self-preserva-
tion is the first law of nature, my duty to my family is impera-
tive— I shall be forced to give up Chicago and live and die
here. Now, mark you, that is not my wish. If they will give
me half a chance, I will earn and pay back every dollar I owe,
with interest, if it takes me ten years to do it in. All I ask is
the chance."

"What kind of a chance do you want?"

"I would like to have the town officers take my Chicago

i88o] FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST g7

property at a valuation, and then permit me to give my notes
for the balance, payable at such time as I can meet them. By
so doing, they stand some chance of getting their money. By
continuing the present policy, they are only postponing the day
of payment and they put me in such a position that I can never
make the restitution which I honestly desire to make."

"Have you made such a proposition to the town board ?"

"No; I tried to have it done. But my affairs have not been
managed as I wished."

"And now," said he, as he finished his story, and we were
about to part, "I may be all wrong, but it seems to me that I
am offering all the reparation for my offence that can be rea-
sonably expected of me. I have told you, and the books in
Chicago will prove my assertion, that if I had been disposed
to be a rogue my shortage would not have been $7,000, but over
$33,000. Put my offence in the very worst light : I took $7,000,
and am forced to live in Canada; the city treasurer of Chicago
took $500,000 and walks your streets unmolested. It may not
be delicate for me to say so, but I confess I don't see the justice
in such a course. I want to live and die in Chicago; I am an
American, and want to remain such; I want to pay, dollar for
dollar, every debt I owe; I will do these things if they let me."

I was on the train; it started, and the man went back to his
prison in the oil fields.

Convinced that, while overtaken in a fault, he was neverthe-
less inherently honest, I took up the matter and had it adjusted.
His shortage was repaid with interest and the indictment
against him dismissed. He returned to Chicago and lived
there for some years as an honoured citizen, and then went to a
distant city, where he held an important post for more than
forty years. After the event narrated his life was an unblem-
ished one.

It was worth as much to save Moore as to outlaw Spencer.

The Campaign of 1880

As we neared the Presidential campaign of 1880 it was
obvious that Blaine, whose candidacy of four years before had

q8 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST H88o

gone down in shame at Cincinnati, was to try his luck once more
and that his opponents were to present General Grant for a
third term. The General was back from his triumphal tour of
the world. He was to come to Chicago. I conceived the idea
of bidding him welcome in a souvenir issue of the Daily News.
I telegraphed to a great company of the leading men of the na-
tion, South as well as North, asking them to wire me for pub-
lication some word of greeting. I received a large number of
responses, and printed them on the morning of Grant's arrival
in our city. One only of the replies was ungracious. This
came from "Bob" Toombs of Georgia, who had a large share
in projecting the Civil War upon the country and who was
until his death a wholly unrepentant rebel. He wired as
follows :

Atlanta, Ga., Nov. 12, 1879.
M. E. Stone, Editor, Daily News, Chicago.

Your telegram received. I decline to answer, except to say, present
my personal congratulations to General Grant on his safe arrival to
his country. He fought for his country honorably and won. I fought
for mine and lost. I am ready to try it over again. Death to the
Union.

R. Toombs.

Then there was a reunion of the Army of the Tennessee in
honour of the returning chieftain. There was a memorable
banquet with six hundred covers and fifteen speakers. The
flow of eloquence surpassed anything theretofore known in
Chicago. Mark Twain contributed a side-splitting speech on
"Babies." Stephen A. Hurlburt, Colonel Ingersoll, and others
were all at their best. But the effort of the evening was that
of my cousin, William F. Vilas of Wisconsin. I sat at his side
at the speakers' table, and I shall never forget the thrill that
ran through the company as he, who was then comparatively
unknown, rose and, in well-modulated yet quite modest tones,
told the story of the first great tocsin call to victory, Grant's
"No terms but unconditional surrender," at Fort Donelson.

As the preconvention campaign progressed, a surprising
situation developed. A number of Illinois and Wisconsin

i88o] FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST gg

districts elected delegates favouring Elihu B. Washburne as a
candidate for the Presidential nomination. As Washburne had
been the avowed friend of Grant, this circumstance was inex-
plicable and caused more or less alarm to the Grant following.

Some weeks before the convention assembled, and prepara-
tory to the event, Roscoe Conkling, J. Don Cameron, and
John A. Logan gathered in Chicago to further the Grant in-
terests. They sent for me, called attention to the Washburne
move, and asked me to learn whether it was a friendly or an
antagonistic effort. So I called upon Washburne one evening
at his residence, on North La Salle Street, in Chicago. I sug-
gested that a campaign was on for his nomination as the Re-
publican candidate for the Presidency. I asked if he was to be
an opponent of General Grant. We met in the parlour of his
home. He rose in stately fashion and replied :

"Mr. Stone; everyone knows that I am a friend of the great
commander. It was I who in 1861 recommended him to
Governor Yates for his first army command. No one can
doubt my position."

"But," I answered, "the enemies of Grant are pushing you as
a candidate against him. Will you authorize me to say for you
that they are doing so without your consent or approval?"

"Ah," said he, "that I cannot do. You may say that I
am not seeking the place. But the office of President is one
neither to be sought nor declined."

And so I left him, and the delegates elected in his name voted
against Grant, an eventuality for which we were prepared.

While the convention was impending, there was a celebration
at Springfield on May 5th. In the parade which preceded the
ceremony Governor Collum rode with General Grant. And
he told the General of my interview with Washburne, and ex-
pressed solicitude as to the attitude of Grant's former friend.
Grant listened attentively and then said: "Well, Governor,
during the war I sometimes had interesting experiences. Per-
haps it was during the progress of a battle. Off on the horizon
I saw a body of troops marching, not in any direction contem-
plated by me in my plan of action. They were too far away
to permit me to identify the character of uniform they wore.

joo FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [1880

The thing puzzled me. Even with a glass I could not make
them out. I could not tell whether they were our troops or
the enemy's. But before the battle was over I found out."

This was the answer.

That day Washburne was also at Springfield. But about
noon, and before Grant made his speech, he quietly slipped
away, took a train, and left for the State of Maine. He pleaded
as an excuse that he was needed to look after the fences on
some property he owned in the distant state. The phrase
"looking after one's fences" thus took origin.

There were many things about the Presidential contest of
the year that were disturbing to any one born and bred a
Republican in the Illinois political school. Our State had
given to the war, for the maintenance of the Federal Union :
Lincoln, the immortal president; Grant, the unconquerable
general; Yates, the beloved war governor; Logan, the great
volunteer captain, and Oglesby, Palmer, McDowell, Baker,
Elmer Ellsworth, the brothers Wilson, James and Bluford, and
a long line of other heroes.

Lincoln and Grant had been nominated for the chief magis-
tracy in Chicago, and there, too, had been held the Copperhead
Convention of 1864, which in the midst of the contest declared
the war a failure.

But the Republican Party of 1880 was no longer that of
former days. It had drifted away from its moorings.

We had noted, to be sure, the tatterdemalion crew that met
in Cincinnati in 1872, called themselves Liberal Republicans,
and played a farce comedy ending in the nomination, defeat,
and tragic death of Greeley. But this only strengthened our
admiration for the "old commander." We appraised his
service in the White House as a worthy and altogether befitting
sequel to his service in the tented field. We minded how he
had, as president, taken hold of a chaotic South, and in his quiet
but effective way had reestablished all the functions of govern-
ment. We knew how during his administration scandals had
developed, and how some of them involved, his friends, but we
felt that his loyalty to his friends was a fine quality, and we
did not forget that in the midst of his perplexities he had

i88o] FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 101

coupled with his famous aphorism of his letter of acceptance
of the Presidential nomination of 1868, "Let us have peace,"
another equally sterling: "Let no guilty man escape." No
one ever dared to hint that his escutcheon was tarnished. And
so, in 1880, Illinois was for Grant. There was no alarm over
the clamour about the danger of a third term or the "man on
horseback." We knew that Grant was a private citizen, had
been out of office for four years, and had no political machine.
He was, to us, the last man in the world to seek a crown or
become an autocrat. So we did not share in any measure
Jefferson's fear of the danger of more than one term for our
chief magistrate.

What I Knew About Grant

My knowledge of Grant began before the Civil War. In
the fall of i860 my father attended the annual session of the
Rock River Methodist Conference, then held at Galena, and
he was billeted on Orville Grant. There he met the members
of the family, and on his return he told us of the high esteem
in which they held their brother, Captain Ulysses, who had just
come up from St. Louis to find employment in his father's
leather shop. Later Orville Grant came to live in Chicago,
and he and his sister, Mrs. Cramer, were frequent visitors at the
home of our neighbour, the Rev. Mr. Boring, the Methodist
presiding elder. So we followed the fortunes of the developing
soldier with unusual interest.

I was in the Crosby Opera House in Chicago in 1868 when
Grant and Colfax were nominated, and I was captain of the
"Grant Guards," a company of "Tanners," which led the
torchlight processions in the campaign of that year.

I was also present at the first great reunion of the Army of
the Tennessee, held in the same auditorium in December, 1868,
when Sherman, Sheridan, Thomas, Logan, Custer, and prac-
tically every surviving Union general, came to do honour to
their chief. It was then that Belknap delivered the stirring
address which made him Secretary of War.

In 1874 and 1875, when Grant was serving his second term

W2 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [1880

as President, and I was a newspaper correspondent in Wash-
ington, I was a frequent caller at the White House.

Throughout his entire career he seemed to give no evidence
at any time of personal ambition. At least there was never
any self-seeking. Even as to the contest of 1 880 it could hardly
be said that he was a candidate. He said in response to an early
appeal to him to disclose his attitude: "I will neither accept nor
decline an imaginary thing. I shall not gratify my enemies
by declining what has not been offered me. I am not a can-
didate for anything, and if the Chicago Convention nominates a
candidate who can be elected I shall be glad. All my life I have
made my decision when the time for the decision arrived. I
shall not depart from my usual course of action."

And later, yet also before the convention assembled, when
Washburne was seeking to induce him to issue a declination
of the honour, he wrote in reply:

There are many persons I should prefer to have the office than
myself. I owe so much to the Union men of the country that if they
think my chances are better for election than for other probable
candidates in case I should decline, I cannot decline if the nomination
is tendered without seeking on my part.

Such was his course of conduct in every emergency presented.
On one occasion we were talking quietly of physical courage in
battle. He said:

You newspapermen have given me credit for one thing for which I
am undeserving. You have spoken of my going off and smoking a
cigar during an engagement as if it was evidence of great bravery.
It was not so. I had brought all the intelligence of which I was cap-
able to bear on the situation, and, as I could think of nothing that had
escaped, I felt powerless to do more and could only leave the outcome
to fate. '

Of the unsolicited honours conferred upon me in my long life
I am most deeply sensible of two. Many years ago, when I was
still a young man, the Lincoln Memorial Association was
founded in Illinois, and I was amazed and gratified to find

,88o] FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 103

myself selected as one of something like a dozen men as in-
corporators. And after my removal to New York I was again
surprised by my selection as one of the trustees of the Grant
Monument. I think I am the only person thus placed. The
purpose of these two organizations was the same — the guard-
ianship of the ashes of Illinois' illustrious dead and the annual
remembrance of their birthdays.

The National Republican Convention assembled on May
20, 1880. The great hall was crowded to suffocation. The
Committee of Arrangements put me in charge of providing
seats for the members of the press. It was no easy task.
Somewhat over one thousand places were allotted. But, by
reason of an accident, the tickets were not delivered to me until
the morning on. which the body convened. As a consequence,
as frantic a company of journalists as one could imagine hunted
me out for the necessary means of admission to the hall. The
thing was likely to resolve itself into a riot when what seemed
to me to be a direct interposition of Divine Providence saved
me. As I was hunting for a place at which I could distribute
the tickets in an orderly and expeditious fashion, I met Mr.
George Starr, the one-time well-known publicity agent for
Barnum. The circus was in Chicago and exhibiting in a sub-
stantial building adjoining the Convention Hall. And there was
an ideal ticket office therein, behind solid stone walls. Thither
Starr led me with my precious cargo of cardboards, secured a
detail of husky policemen, formed my frenzied newspaper
friends in line, and in ample time everyone was provided for
and happy.

The Grant and Blaine forces were very equally balanced.
Three days w,ere spent in "jockeying for place/* and then the
naming of candidates for the Presidential nomination began.
James F. Joy of Michigan led off with a speech, which was a
model of stupidity, naming Blaine. With IngersolFs per-
fervid presentation of the "plumed knight" at Cincinnati in
1876 in mind, it seemed inexcusably dull. And he closed with
a grandiloquent flourish: "And now bearing the mandate of the
Commonwealth of Michigan, I offer as our candidate one whose
name is a household word throughout the world, the Hon.

W4 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [1880

James H. Blaine." Of course there was a great guffaw at this

blunder respecting Blaine's name. I don't think Joy saw it.

Then Conkling arose and electrified the great audience by

quoting from General Halpine's verse, in his opening for Grant:

When asked what State he hails from,

Our sole reply shall be,
He comes from Appomattox

And its famous apple tree.

His speech was full of fire and very effective. But it was
Garfield, who, in naming John Sherman (who never had a
ghost of a show), carried away the oratorical honours. At the
mention of either Blaine's or Grant's name the assembled
multitude had gone off into paroxysms of applause, lasting in
each case nearly half an hour. Garfield took the platform and
began his address quietly and in rather an appealing fashion.
His audience was tired from shouting and ready for repose.

Garfield touched a sensitive chord when he said :

As I sat in my seat and witnessed this demonstration it seemed to
me a human ocean in tempest. I have seen the sea lashed into fury
and tossed into spray, and its grandeur moves the soul of the dullest
man; but I remember that it is not the billows, but the calm level of
the sea from which all heights and depths are measured. . . .
Not here in this brilliant circle is the destiny of the Republic to be
decreed for the next four years. . . . But by 4,000,000 of Re-
publican firesides, where the thoughtful voters, with wives and
children about them . . . there God prepares the verdict.

It was an oratorical triumph. Garfield captured the con-
vention and was himself nominated for the Presidency. Ches-
ter A. Arthur (Conkling's chief lieutenant) was named as the
candidate for vice-president in an effort to placate the Grant
element.

There was measureless treachery throughout the whole busi-
ness. To begin with the composition of the convention : there
were the usual collection of unjustifiable contests for delegate
seats. In making up the roll call for the body these contests
were ruthlessly decided against the Grant faction. The merits

i88o] FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 105

of the cases did not count. Then, in New York and Illinois
and other states, there were a considerable number of delegates
who had accepted their places under pledge to vote for Grant,
but who had been "reached" and shamelessly violated their
instructions. And, to meet the case, the unit rule, which had
governed such conventions theretofore, was abolished so that
those betraying their trust might cast their votes and have them
counted. Finally, it was clear before the convention met that
the chances were against Blaine, and he and Garfield entered
into a secret agreement by which the Blaine vote should be
turned over to Garfield and assure him the nomination. This,
although Garfield appeared in the convention as the leader of
the Ohio delegation pledged to the support of Senator John
Sherman. And Sherman never forgave the betrayal. While
as a good sportsman he supported the nominee, there ever
rankled in his bosom a conviction that he had been betrayed.
As he put it in his autobiography:

When I proposed to him [Garfield] to be a delegate at large to
the Chicago Convention, he no doubt meant in good faith to support
my nomination. When his own nomination seemed probable, he
acquiesced in and perhaps contributed to it.

Following the nominations there was no assurance that
the ticket would be elected. The Democrats named General
Hancock as their candidate for the Presidency. He cut a sorry
figure. He was a fine soldier, but not all a politician. The
Sherman adherents were lukewarm and the Grant forces re-
calcitrant. And Garfield's personality was not all that could
be desired. Definite accusations of misconduct were numerous.
One of these was known as the De Golyer Paving Affair, with
which I was familiar: Under the administration of Governor
Shepherd there was a physical reconstruction of the national
capital. Among the things to be done was the paving of the
streets. A Chicago paving firm of my acquaintance, De
Golyer & Co., put in a bid and were anxious to secure the con-
tract. In that emergency they engaged Garfield as their attor-
ney to plead their cause before the government of the District
of Columbia. But Garfield at the moment was chairman

jo6 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [mk

of the Committee on Appropriations of the House of Rep-
resentatives and had practically a determining voice in the
appropriation by Congress of all the funds for all of the work.
Of course his appeal for the De Golyers was equivalent to a
command. His participation in the business for an attorney's
fee was inexcusable.

The exposure of this and other delinquencies was damaging.
To offset it a huge fund was provided and expended where, to
use the phrase of the day, it would do the most good. The
campaign was notoriously corrupt.

There was good fortune in the character of the opponents.
Near the day of election a letter purporting to have been written
by Garfield to one H. L. Morey of Lynn, Mass., and defending
the right of "individuals and corporations to buy labour where
they can get it cheapest " was published in facsimile form in the
New York Truth, a not altogether reputable daily paper issued
by a fine company of reckless journalists.

The letter, which was obviously a plea for the importation
of Chinese cheap labour, created a sensation. It was im-
mediately denounced as a forgery.

There was a judicial inquiry and two or three indictments.
One of the most active members of the staff of the Truth news-
paper was Louis F. Post, who in the Wilson Administration came
into prominence again as the Assistant Secretary of Labour, and
came into conflict with the Attorney General concerning the re-
lease of persons arrested as dangerous aliens. The Truth con-
fessed the forgery and claimed to have been imposed upon. The
indictments were dismissed. The thing proved a boomerang
of distinct benefit to Garfield.

Garfield was elected. On the popular vote he exceeded
the return for Hancock by less than 9,000 ballots.

Promptly on his accession to office he appointed Blaine
Secretary of State and proceeded to reward the delegates who
had betrayed their trust and violated their instructions in the
Chicago nominating convention.

Garfield's cruel assassination a few months later evoked
universal condemnation, and closed every critical mouth for
the time being.

,86i] FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 107

And now things were going so famously with us that Lawson
and I could not let well enough alone. We had established the
leading afternoon paper in Chicago. But this was not enough.

Founding the Morning News

So, on March 20, 1881, we issued the first number of the
Chicago Morning News, price two cents per copy. Again, as
six years before, we faced important competition, and again it
was imperative that, if we were to succeed, we must present a
new type of journalism. There were four existent and well-to-
do morning papers. We set out for a departure from their
methods of operation.

All of the rules which had proved so valuable for the six
years during which the Evening News had grown to success were,
of course, still observed. There was the same divorcement of
the editorial and business departments, the frankness with
respect to advertising, the publication daily of the exact paid
circulation of the paper, as indeed it has been to the present day.

In the editorial department, I still held to the view that there
were three functions: news gathering, editorial, and entertain-
ment. Or, if you choose: information, interpretation, and
amusement. The principal thing was the chronicling of events.
As I have said, in the Evening News, by the purchase of the
Post and Mail we acquired the evening dispatches of the Asso-
ciated Press. It was not so with the Morning News. And not
only were these dispatches indispensable, but to conduct our
morning paper without them involved serious complications.
By a rule then in force we were forbidden to patronize a news-
gathering concern in competition with the major organization.
The sword of Damocles hung over our heads. At a meeting
of the Associated Press, which I attended in virtue of the
rights of the Evening News, I was called to account because
the Morning News was doing business with a rival, the United
Press. My answer was that it was none of their business —
that I should continue to buy news wherever I could and
wherever I chose. But there was another rule forbidding us
to patronize any telegraph company other than the Western

io8

FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST

[1881

Union. I answered that I would bring my news by an ox
team if it suited me. There was no further attempt to enforce
these clearly illegal restrictions. Yet the receipt of the As-
sociated Press dispatches for our morning paper was desirable,
and I set out to get them.

They could only be had by consent of our Chicago com-
petitors. Such consent in like circumstances had never been
secured by any one. And I was assured that my quest was
hopeless. Nevertheless, it was well enough to try. And so I
did. For the first time in the history of the Associated Press I
succeeded. In less than a year after the
Morning News was founded we were able
to publish the desired dispatches, and,
on October 17, 1883, I was elected a di-
rector of the "A. P." We were now on
even footing, so far as news facilities
were concerned, with any of our com-
petitors.

This, however, was not enough. I
called to service a remarkable corps of
special correspondents. The Irish situa-
tion was still the exigent matter. Par-
nell wrote me that he was so occupied
that, much as he regretted it, he could not continue his tele-
grams. Then I employed William Dillon, brother of Parnell's
associate, and T. P. Gill.
They were prominent in
the Irish National Party
and sent me a series of
most illuminating mes-
sages. Grace Greenwood
1[] served us with specials
from Paris, while Joseph "^Up^
Hatton, in that day a fa-
mous journalist, was our
London correspondent,
William Eleroy Curtis, our representative at Washington, and
Dr. Albert Shaw, now of the Review of Reviews, was the North-

John Ballantyne

Joseph Hatton

William E. Curtis

i88i]] FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 109

western correspondent, located at Minneapolis. My former
schoolmate, John Ballantyne, was the efficient managing editor.
Out of it all I am sure that our news columns surpassed in
interest those of any of our rivals. But even chronicling
events was not all. We were living in a wonderful age.
There had never before been such progress in discovery and
invention. To make note of this and to inform our readers of
the developments in science was plainly important. There
was no attempt to usurp the functions of the technical or the
trade papers but we sought to present in popular form so much
of the dramatic march of the world in material advancement
as would be interesting and profitable to every reader. This
field included the amazing changes in electricity, mechanics,
surgery, medicine, sanitation, etc.

How to Edit News

We made no boast that we had all the news, as did many of
our contemporaries of that day. It was our business to have it
all, else there was no excuse for our existence. Having the
news and publishing it did not, after all, determine the char-
acter of the paper. It was too much like judging a man from
the fact that he was properly dressed. There must be some-
thing more to give individuality and standing to the journal.
We had another obligation. This was to edit the news so as to
give each item its relative importance and to save the time of
the reader. One day I was talking with a young man employed
on the Chicago Times. "What do you do?" I asked.

"Edit the telegraph," he replied.

"And how?" I returned

" By inserting the words which the correspondent eliminates
to save telegraph charges," he explained.

"Then," said I, "you do not edit at all. Your corres-
pondents do the editing."

Therefore our "desk men," who really edited, were quite
important. We made it a rule that the paper should never
exceed eight pages in size, and that only such matter
should be inserted as we believed would be of interest to a

no FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST jtlfc

majority of the readers. This very brevity turned out to be
popular.

For the editorial page I adopted certain methods which were
old in England but altogether new in the United States.
The usual custom with us was to employ three or four
"leader writers," who were expected to write intelligently upon
any subject assigned to them. Such editorial writers must
know everything about everything to be of real value to a
paper, for the daily newspaper should be prepared to discuss
editorially all of a myriad topics, any of which might at any
hour call for attention. But there were no such wonderful
writers existent. Wherefore the usual course was for the poor
wretch who must make his contribution, willy-nilly, to have
recourse to an encyclopedia, hastily cram on a subject and
then, in his article, do the best he could to disguise his ignor-
ance. Having often done this myself, I knew how weak was,
as a rule, the editorial page of an American daily. It was this
very weakness that made notable the vigorous, yet far from
scholarly, diatribes of our early-day journalists.

It was the second John Walter of the London Times who
followed the obviously correct course of conduct, and thereby
made his paper the great "Thunderer" of Europe. He went
out into the various fields of human interest and activity and
secured specialists in each line, and either employed them
steadily or kept them on call and paid them liberally for each
article. Delane, his great executive editor,
himself an Oxonian, was able to bring to
the service of the paper the best among
the scholars of England.

Here was an example which impressed
me. I engaged specialist editors to write
upon many topics. I employed Dr.
Frank W. Reilly, executive head of the
Illinois Board of Health, to cover sanitary,
medical, and surgical topics. He was a
f.w. Redly brilliant writer and a delightful per-

sonality. He surrendered his governmental office and devoted
his entire time to us. He was not only the recognized author-

,88i] FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST tit

ity on sanitation ; he was a student in many other departments
of science, and an exceptionally well-read man in classical
English literature. He set the whole office going over Chaucer,
Spenser, Addison, and all the mid-Victorian authors. He,
through his articles in the paper, began a campaign for a canal
to connect the Chicago and Illinois rivers. The sewage of
the city of Chicago ran into the little river that flowed through
the city, and thence was deposited in Lake Michigan. From
this lake we drew our drinking water. The plan for a canal
involved changing the current of the Chicago River so that,
instead of flowing into Lake Michigan, it should flow south
into the Illinois River and thence to the Mississippi.

Professor W. S. B. Matthews, admittedly the most com-
petent man in the West for such service, wrote upon musical
topics; Walter Cranston Lamed, author of several well-known
books on European architecture and painting, was art editor;
and Colonel Gilbert A. Pierce, who later was the distinguished
governor and United States Senator from North Dakota, made
a specialty of national politics; Mrs. Helen Ekin Starrett, who
wrote with a masculine pen, dealt brilliantly with almost every
conceivable topic; for pure literature we had William Morton
Payne, later the well-known editor of the Dial and having na-
tional fame as a critic. Payne was the author of a notable
hoax which created a great sensation in the world of journalism.

One day a charming young woman showed me some verses
written by a young Chicagoan. They dis-
closed such genuine merit that I sent for
the young man and took him into the service
of the paper. He was a very efficient dra-
matic critic for a while. It was Harry B.
Smith, the famous librettist of comic opera.

Prof. James Laurence Laughlin of the
Chicago University wrote upon finance, and
Prof. Richard T. Ely of the Wisconsin
University on sociology. Among the other
graduates of the Daily News office were
Col. George Harvey, now the American Ambassador to
Great Britain. He came to us when he was nineteen years old,

112

FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST

[1881

Slason Thompson

and displayed such capacity that he was later taken to the New
York World and finally became its managing editor. George

#Ade, the well-known playwright
and author of " Fables in Slang,"
joined the Daily News staff very
soon after his graduation from
Purdue University in Indiana,
and he and JohnT. McCutcheon,
the caricaturist, another gradu-
ate of the same school, won
fame by their work on the paper.
Slason Thompson, author of the
Life of Eugene Field and of the
J J A plays "M'liss" and "Sharps and
<? NX Flats," and compiler of "The
cobaei Harvey Humbler Poets," served with great efficiency and
distinction as an editorial writer upon general topics. Finley
Peter Dunne (Mister Dooley) served a term as reporter on
the paper. And there was Henry Guy Carleton, poet,
dramatist, and former officer in the United States Army. He,
among other things, contributed editorials upon military topics.
He was a very brilliant fellow and subsequently became man-
aging editor of Life. Morgan Bates and his talented wife,
Clara Doty Bates, and
Mr. and Mrs. Alexander
Sullivan were members of
the staff.

And for pure entertain-
ment we had Eugene
Field and Bill Nye, as
well as Thomas E.
Powers, the caricaturist.
James Whitcomb Riley,
Kate Field, and other
equally well-known authors furnished contributions. Alto-
gether, it was a great newspaper staff. Indeed, I think it was
the greatest in point of ability ever assembled in this country.
As in the case of the Evening News, it was our plan that the

'Bill" Nye

George Ade

,88i] FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 113

paper should be cheap in nothing but its price. It was the
farthest removed from "yellow journalism," alike in matter,
policy, and typography. It favoured ardently civil-service
reform, and I was elected president of the Chicago branch of
the league. While not advocating prohibition, it was out-
spoken in its opposition to the saloon and the malign influence
of the pothouse in politics and social order.
It was independent of party control,
but supported vigorously the candidates
who seemed most deserving. Regardless
of the fact that its constituency was
naturally — because of its price — very
largely composed of the working classes,
it strenuously insisted that trades unions
must stand by their contracts as honestly rg^i u *
as must employers. W /

In the phrase of the London bobbies, John T- McCutcheon
the rule of the office was to "keep on movin\" We were never
idle. We were always doing something. If it was not the
publication of the sensational news of the day, it was a thrilling
detective story provided by our own activity and clearly of
value to good government, or some interesting disclosure in
the field of science, or some side-splitting presentation in the
field of entertainment.

The routine of the day was about like this: We, the chiefs of
the editorial departments, reached the office about half-past
ten in the morning. After a short delay, for the purpose of
caring for our morning mail, we assembled for a conference
about eleven. Eugene Field called it the "Senibodi." Every-
one came surcharged with suggestions. We had no "office
politics." Everyone was ready to help his fellow. No one
was striving to supplant his fellow. Everyone was proud of his
connection with the paper. No one felt that he was liable to
be asked to write something which he did not believe to be true.
As I have said, we were yokefellows, and it was never a case of
master and man. One day Slason Thompson said he was en-
titled to an increase in salary.

"And why?" I asked.

114

FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST

[1882

"Because," he replied, "I am the man in the editorial con-
ference who is always ready to say that you do not know what
you are talking about." His salary was promptly increased.
And, as I look back through the years, I think Thompson's
judgment was quite often better than mine. Anyhow, I am

Eelily,

Shackelford.

Stona.

BalJantyne-

Thompson.

,^.^Sy,»w^^ fyv^kdbULA^iKi*^. ©£.?

The Senibodi in the Daily News Office

(Drawing by Eugene Field)

Field.

convinced that it is not the man who always acquiesces in your
opinion who is most helpful.

Our first effort at these morning meetings was to try for a
proper perspective of the newspaper interest of the day. We
had a theory that the mind of the reader centred primarily on
some one thing. It might be an event in Chicago, or it might
be an event in Senegambia. And the second day's story of
the event usually meant more to the reader than the first day's.
We set out to gratify his curiosity, to answer any question about
the event that he was likely to ask.

When we had traversed the news field, and determined how
we should deal with it, we turned to our preachments. This

i882] FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST f#j

meant the editorial guidance of our constituency, so far as we
felt qualified to undertake it. And I am bound to say that
we were not at all modest as to our offerings. We had views,
and we did not attempt to disguise them. Our very frank-
ness, as a rule, was gratifying to our readers, for I believe
that, whether they agreed or disagreed with our opinions,
they believed us to be honest and also recognized that we
were considerate of the people whose minds were not at one
with ours.

We devoted ourselves to entertainment and earnestly sought
for something worth while. If it was to be fun, it must
be real fun and not stupid buffoonery to make the unskilful
laugh and the judicious grieve. There was no department of
humour in the paper, no compulsory comic page. There was
no crying aloud: "This is funny," any more than was there
any shouting as to the growth of circulation or vaunting of the
number of advertisements in a given six months. The reader
was quite likely to find a gem worthy of Douglas Jerrold
or Voltaire buried in an out-of-the-way corner, anywhere on
the sheet. It paid him well for buying the paper, and the next
day he bought it again. And he continued to buy it.

We were always doing novel things. For instance, on the
occasion of Henry Irving's arrival on his first American tour,
I engaged four of the leading clergymen of Chicago to write
signed criticisms of his opening performance.

After the editorial conference we went over to a Viennese
pie shop, Henrici's, and bought luncheon and dyspepsia I am
not sure that Henrici's pies did not in the end kill poor Field.
And we bowled at Tom Foley's. Back to the office and our
work. Home to dinner. To a theatre in the evening and
thereafter back to the office for our proofs. We cut them
ruthlessly, so that out of the matter we gleaned the best.

We established the "Saints and Sinners Corner." It was in
an unpartitioned department of McClurg's bookstore; reserved
for the sale of rare books. Here there gathered a notable
company of bibliomaniacs. Among those who frequented the
place were: Eugene Field, Slason Thompson, Doctor Reilly,
Frank Lamed, and others of our own staff, as well as the Rev. Dr.

u6 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [1882

Frank W. Gunsaulus, Bishop Frank M. Bristol, the Rev.
Melancthan Woolsey Stryker, dear old Dr. Robert Collier and
the Rev. Father Hogan. Also a number of non-residents re-
sorted to the "Corner." There was Paul du Chaillu, Dr. W.
F. Poole, the famous librarian, Henry Ward Beecher, Charles
Dudley Warner, Francis Wilson, the comedian, John H. Fin-
ley, the famous educator, Joe Jefferson and Sol Smith Russell.

The meetings in the " Corner " of a late afternoon continued
for a number of years and enduring friendships were established.
Now and then we had a formal evening, at which it was my
duty to preside. For one such occasion Eugene Field wrote
his well known poem of "Dibden's Ghost," which he recited in
low voice and in a dim religious light.

My forte was " sleuthing." My exploits in detective journal-
ism created a great sensation in the West and prompted me to
further attempts. And, Heaven knows, there was field enough.
If editors could only see that they are the eyes of the citizenry,
as well as the mentors, the gossips, and the grinders of moving-
picture cameras, they would do more good, achieve greater
fame, and make more profit. In a popular government it is all-
important that someone shall play sentinel, watch the sleeping
tents where lie the well-meaning but inactive sovereigns, and
prevent the invasion of corruptionists and revolutionists. Eter-
nal vigilance must not be expected from the man who is busy
with selling his needles and pins. And if we are to maintain
our liberty someone must be on guard, not to chatter about
duty in editorials, but to go out, discover offences against the
law, and bring the offenders to justice. Detective work
always requires a painstaking examination of all the known
facts and, from these, careful, intelligent deductions. A puzzling
case is as fascinating as a chess problem. You have only to
follow the footsteps of Sherlock Holmes to be led to an agree-
ment with my view.

Origin of a Famous Phrase

In 1882 Clarence Dresser was a free-lance reporter in the city.
He was one of the offensively aggressive type — one of those

i882] FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST u7

wrens who make prey where eagles dare not tread. Always
importunate and usually impudent. Such reporters are not
the best. And Dresser had, because of his tireless audacity,
proved a failure as a news gatherer and been employed and
speedily dismissed by all the papers. Then he became a "free
lance."

He prowled among the railroads, gathered what he could,
betrayed confidences generously, and sold his output at some-
thing an article. His situation was precarious, but railroad
officials were afraid of him and they fed him liberally with annual-
and trip-passes, and one way or another he made a living.

One evening Mr. William H. Vanderbilt arrived with some
friends. He was on his private car which was side-tracked in
an out-of-the-way corner of the Michigan Central yards.
Dresser learned of his whereabouts and posted off for an inter-
view. Vanderbilt was at dinner. But it was useless. Dresser
forced his way in and cheerily accosted the magnate. Intru-
sion of this sort was not uncommon with him. He was noth-
ing abashed when Vanderbilt said sharply: "Don't you see,
sir, that I am engaged?"

" I want an interview," replied Dresser.

"Well, sit down at the other end of the car until I have
finished dinner, and I will talk with you," pleaded the victim.

"But it is late and I will not reach the office in time. The
public "

This was too much for the infuriated Vanderbilt, who in-
terrupted his tormentor with the ejaculation: "The public be
d d; you get out of here!"

Dresser scurried off to the Daily News office, told in great glee
the story as I have recalled it, and wanted to sell an article
based on Vanderbilt 's phrase which he had extorted: "The

public be d d." But our night editor would have nothing

to do with it. Instead, he roundly denounced Dresser for the
whole business.

Then Dresser went off to the Chicago Tribune and, cau-
tioned by his experience at the Daily News office, avoided any-
suggestion that he had aroused Vanderbilt's anger, and made a
sale.

ji8 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [1883

The result was a publication which did the whole railroad
business incalculable damage and, as much as anything, led
to the war on transportation companies which followed.

About this time my attention was engaged by another rail-
road man, one Charles T. Yerkes. I was in Philadelphia for
a few days. I left the city for Chicago on an evening train.
"Bill" Singerly, owner of the Record and a friend of mine, found
me in a Pullman car. "You can't stay here," he said. "There
is a crowd of good fellows, some of them friends of yours, in a
private car ahead. We have a vacant drawing room and you
must occupy it." I accepted his invitation. I found myself
in the company of a band of as jolly a lot of "highbinders"
as one might care to see. Among them was "Charley" Yerkes.
They were going to Chicago to make a raid on our traction
lines. There was no secret about their purpose. How they
expected to do up the guileless Chicagoans was made plain.
There was much drinking, much Bacchanalian singing, some
dancing, and little or no sleep throughout the night.

And so they came to the city of Chicago. Everything was
ripe for their plucking. The street-car systems were primitive
in their methods, the public officials were incorrigibly corrupt
and zealously corruptible, and the citizens were asleep. Very
soon the accomplished craftsmen from Philadelphia were in full
swing in our burg.

I was watching the onslaught with interest. When the
bribery of officials became an open and unblushing business, I
opened fire. I published Yerkes's record, including his term
in prison. He threatened to kill me, but I went on. And
finally life in Chicago became unbearable for him and he moved
to New York. It must in fairness be said that, with all his
misconduct, he really did a great service in improving the tran-
sit facilities of the city.

Acquaintance with Diaz

My acquaintance with General Diaz of Mexico began in the
spring of 1883, when he came to Chicago. I happened to be on
the citizen's committee of entertainment and was thrown into

i88j]

FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST

119

relation with him. He was accompanied by his wife and his
father-in-law, Sefior Romero Rubio.

The General was then in the full vigour of life, a perfect type
of stalwart manhood, firmly knit, swarthy of complexion,
hardened by service in the tented field, but betraying singular
intellectual strength withal. Senora Diaz presented a sharp
contrast to her masterful husband.
He, from top to toe, was an Indian.
She was a Spaniard, who might have
passed for a Castilian. There was
no Mexican strain visible in her.
Perhaps Andalusian, but surely and
undeniably Spanish. Adorned with
a mantilla, and wearing a crucifix
she was obviously a Catholic. He
a Mason; she a faithful daughter of
the Church.

But, after all, the father-in-law,
Romero Rubio, was in some respects
the most interesting of the party.
He was a member of the Cabinet of President Diaz — Minister of
Gubernacio. His ethical standards were not those of his distin-
guished chief, who, whatever errors may be attributed to him,
will for ever live as an example of unimpeachable probity.
Romeo Rubio was not above making the most of his official
position. A good story is told of him. At a time when from
purely patriotic motives General Diaz was striving to enlist
capital from the United States for the development of Mexico,
and was granting concessions for railroad building, gold- and
copper-mining, and like enterprises with a free hand, certain
Americans called upon Romero and being advised of his thrifty
character offered him fifty thousand dollars for some sort of a
license to do something, I have forgotten what. They assured
the Minister he could accept the bribe without danger of
exposure. "You say you will give me $50,000 and will tell no
one/' he replied. "Make it $100,000 and tell everybody."

His career was a brief one. Diaz got rid of him.

Early in 1896 I went to Mexico and called upon the Chief

President Diaz

120 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [1883

Executive at his palace. We talked at length and with in-
timacy of the outlook for Mexico and of his purposes in respect
of his country. His frankness was delightful, his perceptions
remarkable, and his sterling integrity beyond question. He
was a great patriot and a great statesman. "I wish my country
to profit by its proximity to yours," he said. "We have many
things to contend with. Our peons are a good people, well
meaning but densely ignorant, and our intelligensia are for the
most part of the easy-going Spanish type. We can gain much
from an infusion of the intelligence and the energy of the United
States." To him this did not mean the slightest personal ad-
vantage, but solely a contribution to the welfare of the Mexican
people.

I ventured to speak of what seemed to me the two crying
needs of his country: first, such a division of the great haciendas
as would give homes to the peasantry; and second, education
for the common people. "Yes," he replied, "and if I live to
do it, I intend to see the land divided and compulsory education
enforced." But, even then, he was an old man and not equal
to the task he had set for himself. He was an Indian with all
the forceful characteristics of his race; he was wholly unselfish,
he was highly resolved to leave a monument of acknowledged
well-doing; yet it was not to be. His life had been one of never-
ceasing battle, he had drawn upon his strength in a measure of
which he little dreamed, and in the end was surrounded by
associates having little sympathy with his purposes and little
capacity to aid him in the undertaking.

As evidence of his simple-mindedness, on one occasion a
thirty-third degree Mason from New York City arrived. To
Diaz free masonry meant much. It represented the element
which in a Latin country contested the political field with the
Roman Catholic Church. And Diaz was a Mason. As he
jocularly told me, "My wife is a good Catholic and goes to
Church and to the Sunday bull-fights, while I am a Mason and
stay at home on Sunday." When the distinguished Mason
from New York arrived, Diaz gave him a state dinner at Chapul-
tepec. Later, he was much chagrined to learn that his guest
was a New York hack driver.

,883] FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 121

For the succeeding years Diaz and I corresponded fre-
quently. Then came the revolution and his departure for
Europe. And comparative poverty for him, with the deluge
for his country. There were vicious rumours that he had made
a fortune and had gone to Paris to live in luxury. This was a
wicked falsehood. He died in Paris, July 15, 191 5.

On February 27, 1919, with M. De la Bara, one-time President
of Mexico, I called upon Senora Diaz, the widow of the great
President. I found her living in quiet seclusion at 16 Rue
Leonardo da Vinci and in moderate, not to say humble, cir-
cumstances in a third-story apartment in a remote corner of
Paris. She had selected the location because a few steps away,
in the Church of Saint-Honore d'Eylau, rested the remains of
her beloved husband. She had grown older than when I had last
seen her. But she had all of the grace, all the charm, all of the
intellectual brilliancy of her earlier day. With tears and love
for Mexico, and love and tears for her dead hero, she awaits
with dignity and patience the hour when she may be freed from
her grief.

An Invitation from New York

I received the following letter from the General Manager of
The Associated Press :

The New York Associated Press, No. 195 Broadway, New York,

March 12, 1883.
Dear Mr. Stone: —

Do you and Lawson want to undertake a newspaper enterprise in
New York ?

If so, you can make an arrangement with Cyrus W. Field for the
Mail and Express, not requiring payment of money except as you
make it out of the concern.

Yours truly,
William Henry Smith.

Some time after I was in New York and called on Mr. Field.
He offered to sell us a half interest in his paper at a satisfactory
price and to permit us to pay him out of the profits that we

122

FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST

[1883

should make from our interest. He did not even ask us to give
up the conduct of the Chicago Daily News. It was an attrac-
tive and quite flattering tender. But, I asked him, who was to
^ mmm own the other half

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of the property?
When he said he was
to be our partner, I
said I must decline
his proposition —
that his ownership
in and control of the
elevated railway sys-
tem of New York
made it impossible.
He could hardly un-
derstand my atti-
tude and was plainly
grieved. Later he
sold the paper to
Colonel Elliott F.
Shepard.

On the day of my
refusal of Mr. Field's
proposal, and im-
mediately after I
had left his office, I
ran into Joseph
Pulitzer on Broad-
way. He asked me to go with him to the Astor House.
We sat down in a corner and he told me that he had that
morning bought the New York World from Jay Gould. He
invited me to share in the purchase, taking either the editorial
or the business department. It would involve so much that
I felt again forced to decline with thanks.

Both Field and Gould had learned the lesson that the owner-
ship of a newspaper cannot successfully serve to aid in the
management of a public utility.
It became evident that the Chicago Tribune was gaining

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The William H. Smith Letter

i884] FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 123

much fame from its foreign service, a good share of which was
pirated from the Daily News. A trap was set. Matthew Ar-
nold had just made a tour of the United States, had lectured in
Chicago, and had returned to England. As everyone knew,
he was an acrid critic. Perhaps the reader remembers the
story of Robert Louis Stevenson, if it has ever been told in
print. I am not sure.

Stevenson lay out in Apia, in the Samoan Islands, nearing
his end with tuberculosis. The death of Matthew Arnold was
announced.

"Ah," said Stevenson, faintly, between paroxysms of cough-
ing, "that is too bad. He won't like God ! "

With Arnold's temperament in mind, we saw an opportunity
to deal with the Tribune. After talking the matter over, I shut
William Morton Payne up in a room and he prepared what
purported to be a cable message from London, quoting an ar-
ticle, on his visit to Chicago, contributed by Matthew Arnold
to the Pall Mall Journal. It was admirably done.

Whitelaw Reid joined me in the scheme. I sent him Payne's
"dispatch." He caused it to be printed in one copy of the New
York Tribune, which found its way into the hands of the New
York correspondent of the Chicago Tribune. The corres-
pondent, acting under instructions, telegraphed the whole
thing to his Chicago paper, and the next day it was printed and
created a sensation in our city.

We of the Daily News assumed that it was genuine and inter-
viewed those whom Arnold was credited with having roundly
scored for bad manners and undeniable ignorance in the Pall
Mall Journal. The men whose names were mentioned in
Arnold's alleged article spoke back bitterly. The Tribune on
its editorial page chimed in with the denunciators of the caustic
British critic. The thing went on for two or three days, and,
after everyone had had his say, I cabled Arnold a full personal
explanatory message, and of course received from him a reply
to the effect that he had made no such communication to the
press. This I published, adding that there was no such paper as
the Pall Mall Journal, and indeed exposing the whole business.

The Chicago Tribune was not merely convicted of having

124 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST {m4

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stolen the "dispatch," which was not worth stealing, but of
adding humbug and deluding the readers.

Founding the Fast Mail Train

Our morning paper had been going about a year when we
struck a snag. The Chicago Herald, which had been founded
as a Republican Party organ at two cents a copy, within a week
of the date when our own sheet began issue suddenly became
involved in a serious libel suit and was forced to change owner-
ship. Mr. John R. Walsh became the chief factor in the new
proprietorship. At the same time he was at the head of the
Western News Company, which for years had controlled the
distribution of all of the Chicago dailies in the out-of-town
districts. It was the practice of the news company to collect
in the early morning from each paper as many copies of the
sheet as they had orders for, to assemble these in packages, and
send them by express to the country dealers. It had been
cleverly arranged that the express companies should refuse to
carry a package for less than ten cents. This resulted in giving

i884] FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 125

the news company a monopoly, and as Mr. Walsh, our im-
mediate competitor, was president of the news company,
discrimination against us was easy, and the situation became
intolerable.

At the time General Arthur was President of the United
States, Judge Timothy O. Howe of Kenosha, Wis., was Post-
master General, and Frank Hatton of Burlington, Iowa, First
Assistant Postmaster General. They were all friends of mine,
and Judge Howe and Frank Hatton, being from cities adjacent
to Chicago, were easily made acquainted with my predicament.
After deliberation with them, we devised a plan to circumvent
the manifestly unfair methods of Walsh. The mails for China,
Japan, and other Oriental countries passed through Chicago.
At that point they were divided among the various trans-
continental railroads. Tom Potter, general manager of the
Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad, was called into con-
sultation and agreed that, if given enough of this mail for the
Orient to compensate him, he would run a fast train to leave
Chicago about three o'clock in the morning and reach Omaha
at two o'clock in the afternoon. This was the first fast mail
train in the United States. There was no increase of expense
to the Government, but, as these trains became general, they
greatly expedited the delivery, not only of newspapers, but of
all first-class mail. It was a notable reform. The morning
papers of Chicago, which theretofore had left the city by express
at eight in the forenoon, now reached their subscribers in middle
Iowa, 300 miles distant, about that hour. We were freed
from Mr. Walsh's control, our distribution costs markedly re-
duced, and not long after the Chicago Herald, unable to profit
by such unfair methods, was offered for sale.

Days with Eugene Field

They were rollicking, happy days — those that I spent with
Eugene Field. As I have said, I met him first in October, 1873.
Not long after, he and his brother Roswell went to the St. Louis
Journal and I frequently called upon them. Gene, for every-
one so called him, had hardly begun to betray his extraordinary

126 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST! [1883

genius. His environment was not such as to awaken him. He
plodded, writing well but not brilliantly. Then, dissatisfied,
he went to Kansas City and St. Joseph, Mo. At "St. Joe,"
the home of his wife, he felt more at ease. There he wrote
"Little Boy Blue," that tender, heart-racking verse which has
brought comforting tears to the eyes of so many thousands of
bereaved mothers. There, too, finding as his editor-in-chief
Major Bittinger, a brave old fire-eater, he began the pranks
which ever after delighted his soul.

There, too, I fear, he for a brief period indulged in the flowing
bowl, and earned a reputation which altogether quite unjustly
followed him through his after life. They tell a story of him
that he owed an account at a saloon. He always owed an
account. On this occasion the debit was written on a slate and
hung upon the wall. One evening he entered the place. The
proprietor felt that whatever the indebtedness, Gene's de-
lightful society had furnished ample compensation, and forth-
with wiped off the score and with some degree of pride
announced to his debtor that the bill was settled.

"Indeed," said Field, nothing abashed, "I believe that it is
the rule here when a man pays his shot, you treat the house;
is it not so?"

"Yes," reluctantly and dubiously replied the saloon keeper.

"Then," said Field, "everybody will step up to the bar and
have a drink on the house."

In each place he became famous. What Gene had done,
what he was doing, and above all what he would do next —
these were the topics that absorbed all interest. He was doing
something, and that something was always original. He might
write a story or a poem; his composition might be exquisite in
diction, classical in construction, or it might be clothed in what
the French happily call the argot of the street, or in the rich
dialect of the western plains. In any case, it was faultless of
its kind. Or he might tell a story, or recite, or play a practical
joke, or, indeed, preach a sermon. His versatility was beyond
comparison. His life was a veritable kaleidoscope, and each
new picture was startling and full of interest. All the while he
was a hard, conscientious student. His power of absorption

i883]

FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST

127

was marvellous. If he had not been a writer, he could easily
have become an actor or a painter. He was for ever drawing
pen-and-ink sketches of himself and others.

His school days were few; some months at Williams, a year
at Knox College at Galesburg, 111., and a short course at Co-
lumbia, Mo. — graduating nowhere and
hardly a creditable pupil anywhere.
Yet I dare say he entered upon his life
work with a better mental equipment
than 90 per cent, of varsity men. He
read everything and remembered every-
thing he read. In Denver he wrote
the "Tribune Primer." It was not a
great thing and did not compare with
his later work. But it attracted wide-
spread attention and served notice that
a new humorist was born to the world,
one ranking above Artemus Ward, Josh
Billings, Nasby, and Bill Nye, and
worthy a place beside Dean Swift or
Charles Lamb. It revealed a quality
of mind theretofore unknown on this

_ 1 r .1 Eugene Field by Himielf

continent and gave promise 01 the

greatest possibilities. It was not mere horseplay. It was not
a mere jester who had come among us with cap and bells and
humped back and motley — it was something better and worthier.

Early in 1883 William Eleroy Curtis, the well-known news-
paper correspondent, and I took our wives for an outing in the
West, having as our destination a visit to the wonderful Zuni
Indians in Arizona. On the way we stopped over at Denver,
and one evening went to Taber's Opera House to hear Emma
Abbott. I went out for a stroll between the acts. When I
returned who should be sitting in the back row but my old-time
friend Eugene Field.

He had tired of " St. Joe " and had gone over to Kansas City
and back to St. Louis and had finally taken leave of the effete
Middle East and landed in Denver. He joined O. H. Rothaker
and F. J. V. Skiff, two of the most brilliant editors of their day,

128 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST \%m

in the conduct of the Denver Tribune. Here Field made his
paper and himself famous by the publication of certain beauti-
ful verses, and by certain characteristic practical jokes which
set everyone aroar. He wrote his charming poem, "The
Wanderer" — the moan of a sea shell far from its home on a
Colorado mountain top — and issued it as from the pen of Hel-
ena Modjeska, the actress. He went out to Ouray, made the
acquaintance and the undying friendship of Daniel Day, editor
of the Solid Muldoon, a fine type of the editorial cowboy, and
penned at Gold Hill, under the shadow of the peaks of the
Rocky range, in a primitive frontier tavern, "Casey's Table
d'Hote." Then back in Denver, when Oscar Wilde was an-
nounced for a lecture, he dressed his associate Rothaker in
velveteen jacket and knickerbockers and decorated him with
a huge chrysanthemum, drove through the Denver streets
and received the plaudits of the citizens, who thought him the
host of the veritable Irish poet. Here, too, he sent for Bill Nye,
then editing the Laramie (Wyo.) Boomerang, and gave him a
dinner which has not been forgotten to this day. And he tilted
his lance at "Brick" Pomeroy, who at the moment was a Den-
ver editor.

When I met him the Tribune was about ready to quit. To
this end he had contributed his full share. The field was too
small and the times were too strenuous for him. I asked him to
come to Chicago and take a place on the Daily News. We left
the theatre, walked the streets for an hour, and his engagement
was settled. That is, if upon reflection he should conclude that
he would like to join me. There was no contract. Neither of
us wanted one. The only indenture was the amusing letter
which follows:

Denver, April 26, 1883.
Dear Mr. Stone —

Had I supposed you were going to be in Denver a day longer
I should have tried to have another talk with you and I believe
we could have settled the question of my coming to Chicago. I
repeat that I was much pleased by the way you talked relative to my
casting my lot with the News, and I want to assure you once more that
when I go to you it will be with the intention of staying. As I in-

i883] FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 129

timated to you while you were here, I cannot leave the Tribune people
in the lurch. I have a contract with them till August 2, and, while
I could get out of that contract, I would prefer abiding strictly by it.
Would it suit you as well, providing we agree as to other details, that
I delay my coming to you till September 1 ? I will contract with you
for two or three years, to do the work you specify, for $50 per week
the first year, $50.50 per week the second year. If you choose to
contract for three years, I shall want $55 the third year. The reason
I tack on the 50 cents for the second year is to gratify a desire I have
to be able to say I am earning a little more money each year. This is
a notion I have happily been able to gratify ever since I began report-
ing at $10 a week.

Will you people allow me $100 for the expense of breaking up house-
keeping here and removing to Chicago? I am a deucedly poor man
or I would not suggest the thing. An attempt at honesty in the
profession has kept me gloriously hard up, with a constantly increas-
ing family. However, as you are not running a charity enterprise,
I beg you will not consider this last suggestion if it seems an improper
one. I trust to hear from you at your earliest convenience.

Yours very truly,
Eugene Field.
To Melville E. Stone, Esq.

The very engagement was characteristic. He wanted to
join me, he was tired of Denver and distrustful of the limitations
upon him there. But if he was to make a change he must be
assured that it was for his permanent good. He was a news-
paperman, not from choice, but because in that field he could
earn his daily bread. Behind all, he was conscious of great
capabilities. Not vain, nor by any means self-sufficient, but
certain that by study and endeavour he could take high rank
in the literary world and win a place of lasting distinction.

Then he came to Chicago and an intimacy of twelve years,
duration began. There was no stipulation as to the precise
sort of work he was to do, but we were both anxious that he
should have the largest opportunity. After talking it over, we
agreed that he should have a column of his own. He wished it
so that he might stand or fall by the excellence of his work.
Salary was less an object than opportunity. And so it hap-
pened that the "Sharps and Flats" column of the Chicago

i3o FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [1883

Morning News was established, and Field wrote practically
every line that appeared in that column from its beginning
until his death. The title was borrowed from the name of
a play — "Sharps and Flats" — written by Slason Thompson
of the Chicago News staff and played with notable success
by Robson and Crane. Field was given the utmost liberty
of action. To fill his own column meant that he should
write something like two thousand words a day. But this
he could easily do. He was the most prolific writer I have
ever known. How day after day and year after year this
column laughed and wept, how it sparkled and crackled with
jollity, how it swept the tenderest chords of the human soul,
needs no word of explanation.

No sooner had Field arrived in Chicago than he began his
pranks. He came in the early fall. A month later we reached
Thanksgiving Day. It was our custom to give each married
employee of the paper a turkey on that occasion. But not for
Field. He would have none of it. A day or two before the
holiday I received a formal letter, written in his inimitable script
suggesting that if it was all the same to me he would prefer a
suit of clothes, as he had no particular use for a turkey. The
state prison was forty miles away and the warden was a personal
friend. From him I obtained a suit of "stripes" that would fit
my petitioner, and when Thanksgiving Day arrived, the "suit
of clothes" was presented in a package which when opened
surprised and delighted him beyond measure. He was tall,
slender, smooth-shaven, almost bald, the little hair he had
being cut very short.

The home of the Daily News was a primitive place. As the
paper grew, we rented adjoining buildings and connected them
by doors cut through the walls. I converted the top floor of
one of these structures into editorial offices. It was really a
loft. There were three small offices in front and rear where the
light could be secured and between was a long hall practically
vacant. To heat the place — there was no steam — there was an
old-fashioned "cannon stove."

Now and then a country editor would call and I would assign
a reporter to show him over the establishment. In his wander-

(Drawn by Himself)

I3I

i32 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [l883

ings he would reach this loft. While the conducting reporter
dilated upon the wonders of a metropolitan newspaper, the
door of one of the petty dens would open and a tall, gaunt
creature, almost bald, and smooth-shaven, in prison stripes
and an old pair of carpet slippers, would step out, seize a poker
and proceed to shake down the ashes in the stove. This done,
he would set about sweeping the floor and raising a cloud of
dust that would choke a behemoth. The visiting editor, gasp-
ing, would ask what this meant. With well-simulated em-
barrassment, the reporter would reply that he was afraid to
explain. This was the skeleton in our closet. It was the one
thing about the place that all the employees disapproved of
but did not dare to discuss. In strictest confidence, however, he
would tell. The editor of the paper was a friend of the warden
of the penitentiary, and took advantage of that fact. "The man
before you," he would say, "is a life convict. He is a trusty.
To save expense, Mr. Stone has induced the warden, Major
McClaughry, to let him have this poor wretch to serve as
janitor for the Daily News office. It is all wrong, but, you can
well understand, we cannot afford to open our mouths about
it." The editor would join with the sympathetic reporter in
denouncing the outrage, while Field, the wretched convict,
was chuckling over the prank. In one case, a week later, down
in Central Illinois, a weekly paper appeared with an editorial
pouring out its vials of wrath upon McClaughry and myself
for this shameless performance.

Correcting Some False Ideas

Not only did Field write every line that appeared in the
"Sharps and Flats" column, but practically everything that
he wrote after 1883 appeared at one time or another in that
column. His books, which have had such general circulation,
and have given the public as much of pleasure and of exquisite
pain, are simply selections from his work for the Chicago
Daily News.

In the opening lines of his admirable little book, "The
Eugene Field I Knew," Francis Wilson says: "There were many

£wm, &AA xrrJuj ~bc3) L(JkiA~y

A Dedication from Eugene Field

President Arthur

i885]

FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST

'33

Eugene Fields. Like the Apostle, he was ail things to all men
and much to many." I think I may add in justice that very
many people do not know, nor ever have known, what the real
Eugene Field was and that to this too widespread misconception
of his character Field himself was unconsciously, yet very
largely, responsible. In a certain sense he was his own worst
enemy. He so enjoyed a good story that he quite frequently
invented one — not to give offence to others — at his own
expense.

He never took any pains to deny a story concerning himself,
although the story may have done him a rude injustice, pro-
vided only that the story was a good one and had a point. I
know that people imagine from stories they have heard that he
was a high, liver, if not, indeed, addicted to stimulants. As a
matter of fact, he was a man of most simple and exemplary
habits, and during my entire and very intimate acquaintance
with him, was, in fact, although not by profession, a teetotaler,
nor did he smoke. I have never seen him drink so much as a
glass of claret.

It is also true that a great many stories of an unpublishable
character have been given currency by crediting them to
Eugene Field. All of this, as I have said, did him great in-
justice, and those who knew him best naturally resent it.

The Puritan Strain

It is true, nevertheless, that he was a many-sided ch
Au fond, he had a profound religious, even spiritual,
The Puritan strain of his ances-
try frequently cropped out in his
daily life. He had a secret
fondness for Cotton Mather and
Jonathan Edwards and all the
other sturdy captains of the
Church Militant. Yet over all
there spread the warm, mellow
rays of a human sympathy
which prompted some of the fold at Work

aracter.
nature.

1)4 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST \ms

sweetest and most pathetic verse of our language. He sounded
all the depths of tender emotion and voiced the agonized cry of
bereaved motherhood and sisterhood and childhood with the tone
and timbre and tempo of a master. What grief-stricken maternal
heart is there that has not wept itself to consolation with reading
" Little Boy Blue"? What sobbing bosom has not found com-
fort and relief in "The Singing in God's Acre " ? What unruffled
hero, "grunting and sweating under a weary life," has not
felt his burden lifted on reading "Father's Way"? Would one
stand in that field where both eyes weep, the one for joy, the
other for grief, then let him read "Casey's Table d'Hote" or
"Two Opinions." Or would one laugh and laugh alone, then
let him read "Cafe Molineaux," or "Mynheer of Kalverstraat."
Either for tragedy, comedy, history, or pastoral, as old Polonius
said, his muse was attuned.

Practical Jokes

Is it the man behind the pen that one would know? Well,,
those who knew him best quite often felt that they did not
know him at all. He was genial, fraternal, affectionate; yet as
much as any one I ever knew, he was a victim to the isolation of
greatness; he impressed us that he was in the world but not of
it. He sometimes seemed to have been dropped out of another
and a former generation. He had nothing whatever in common
with the hustling workaday life of the great city in which he
spent his latter days. The mighty forces making for material
progress meant nothing to him; he lived and moved in another
world. Books were his companions, and day by day he worked
with the old masters and the old minstrels and heeded not the
things about him. It may surprise those who have heard so
much about his quips and pranks to be told that he took life
very seriously. He worked very rapidly, yet with scrupulous
care. Often a manuscript would lie for months in his drawer
awaiting a final revision which should render it acceptable to his
keenly critical eye. The mechanism of his verse was ever
perfect. He was a close student of words and knew their value
to a nicety. His success was not achieved without constant

i88sJ FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST ij$

and earnest toil. From this labour his active mind found
relief in the humorous pranks which endeared him to his
friends and which have, in a measure, given the public a false
idea of him. He was tireless in his efforts at a practical
joke.

A room adjacent to Field's was occupied by the society editor.
She was a modest little person, the very pink of propriety. Her
duty required her to attend an evening party, return to the

Inscription in a Book by Eugene Field

office about midnight, write her "copy," hand it to the city
editor, and go home. With his impish instinct, Field waited
one night until she had gone and then, with a bit of chalk,
he traced a man's footprints from the street up three flights
of stairs to her room and all the way down again. And the
next morning I received a formal note of complaint from

him charging that Miss was receiving callers in her office

at an unseemly hour; that she was not a discreet person, and
as damning evidence he asked me to make note of the foot-
prints on the stairs.

There was a public celebration. I do not remember the
reason for it. But while the procession was marching by,
with beating drums and waving banners, my office door opened

j36

FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST

[1886

and there entered Eugene Field and his three children
"Trotty," "Pinney," and "Daisy." The youngsters were in
rags, patches on their garments and their toes bursting from
old borrowed shoes. "I must have an increase in salary,"
said our joker as he pointed at the example of abject poverty
he had carefully prepared.

We went to the theatre. They were playing "The Mikado,"
with Roland Reed as Koko. We sat well down in front. Sud-

brrr AMjyuAst

How toKvtt^VwvtuaJMWfe^

9 6wM««M»t jiKUUfuA^undi **4L*w ,o*d jk»»*W«^*^ aJuHU.,

Field Bursts into Song

denly while Reed was singing one of his best lines Field, who
was an actor of great ability, screwed his face into unspeakable
shape and poor Reed was forced to stop and begin all over
again. Often if there was a child in the seat back of him, Field
would turn and make a face which would set the infant bawling.
The mother, having no idea of the cause, would search in vain
for an offending pin, while Field's sides were shaking with de-
light. Yet again, he and I were seated near the stage, and
"East Lynne" or some equally tear-forcing play was being

i884] FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST ij7

produced. At the moment of high tension, when there was
profound silence throughout the house there burst out a loud
"Ha! ha! ha!" and then Field turned to a quiet old gentleman
seated by his side and silently denounced him with a look of
amazement and condemnation. The audience took it up and
all recognized the poor old fellow as the culprit. He blushed
and, when the curtain fell, quietly took his hat and slipped out,
and did not return. Field, who was almost a ventriloquist,
was the real offender.

One day he gave a very elaborate luncheon in honour of
Dr. Edward Everett Hale. Among the guests were F. Hopkin-
son Smith and Thomas Nelson Page. The menu was most
carefully prepared. The list of toothsome viands presented for
his friends was as follows :

Blue Points on the Shell.
Consomme Royal. Sauterne Chateau Yquem,

Bottled at the Chateau.
Terrapin a la Maryland.
Canvasback Duck.
(Hominy Balls).

Old Madeira, rich and rare.
Camembert and Roquefort.

Champagne, Perrier Jouet et Cie.
Coffee. Cigars.

Suitable glasses for each wine were provided, and under in-
structions the waiters, with bottles clothed in napkins, poured
out, with great dignity, cold water for each as a beverage. And
the actual food was corned-beef hash, pork and beans, soda
biscuits, and apple pie.

At another time my wife and I were entertaining Madame
Modjeska at a formal dinner. Paul du Chaillu, Edward S.
Willard, the English actor, and Major Moses P. Handy were
there. And, of course, Field. It was a cold winter night.
As a delicacy hot-house strawberries were served. Field
promptly refused them on the ground that they would spoil his
taste for prunes.

I had a place in the country to which he was always welcome,

far -d-td-bj ^okam^jO 1viaj ZujkZJuf
\)«y \Ju*vJb' 'nJa 'Zus<ju ' St>J£ <fcfto <i*<y G~.ynj

'TWfrcrw stow -fotdlJLM -fooufrJt* '
JUj, txJit -toAxs -hjUx, — &«**/ t*-u*» *JL<nsuu ( "

A Field Appreciation
138

1887]

FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST

139

Casey'* of Table d'Hote Fame

invited or uninvited. He would throw himself on my bed and

write by the hour. Also, if he was short of anything, he did not

hesitate about helping himself from my wardrobe. One day

he called on me in the city,

carrying a bundle under his

arm. This he deposited

with:

"There is something my

wife told me to bring you. I

don't quite know what it is.

I believe there's a shirt, and

I know there's a pair of socks

of yours, that have spoiled

our wash for three weeks."

Then he turned and walked out.

In the spring of 1895 he went to California for a vacation.

His health was not good. He tired of the continuous chatter

about the "glorious climate." A cousin lived at Alameda.

Eugene went
to visit him.
One morning,
at breakfast,
his cousin be-
ing absent, he
began thus to
his cousin's
wife:

"I had a
horrid dream
last night.
Yet now that
I think of it, it
was not so bad.
I dreamed
your husband
was dead.
And he ap-

Field Invite. Himielf to My Country Home prOached the

J40

FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST

[1887

pearly gate. St. Peter was on guard. Edwin [that was the

cousin's name] tried to enter, but Peter stopped him to find

if his name was in
?&&■,' the book. 'Who are
you?' asked Peter.
'Mr. Field,' replied
Edwin. 'Ah,' said
Peter promptly,
'Mr. Eugene Field,
walk right in. You
are welcome.' 'No/
replied Edwin, 'not
Eugene Field, but
Edwin.' 'Then,' said
Peter, 'I must
examine my book.'
He did so and Ed-
win's name was not
there. So Edwin
was told to go below.
At the gate of the
infernal regions was
another guardian
with cloven hoof and
forked tail. And he,
too, had a book.
Edwin attempted to
enter, but was not
enrolled and was
again turned away.
I heard him cry in

anguish : 'Great heavens, must I go back and live in the glorious

climate of California ? ' "

Appeal for a Small Loan
(Drawing by Field)

Eugene Field died in his sleep, November 4, 1895, aged forty-
five years.

When all too young, and much before his time, he died, there
passed from us one who, though he had done much, and not a

i883] FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 141

little that will endure, was surely at the threshold of a very
great career.

Emory Storrs and His Tailor

One day, in 1883, it was announced that Baron Cole-
ridge, grand-nephew of the poet, and Lord Chief Justice of
England, who was visiting the
United States, would come to
Chicago. He was engaged in what
the Thomas Cook people would call
a personally conducted tour, and
Col. Elliot Shepard, Vanderbilt's
son-in-law, was his courier. Then
there were great doings to arrange
a befitting reception and a high-
class banquet for his lordship. The
Chicago Bar Association took the
matter in hand, but, wishing to
make it really a memorable occasion,
they widened the scope of their
undertaking and invited certain citizens to participate. So it
happened that I was asked to serve on the "Committee
on Speakers" for the feast, and actually became chair-
man.

For years Emory Storrs had been the prize orator for such
occasions. He was a brilliant lawyer. I think he had a better
concept of the fundamentals of jurisprudence than any member
of his profession whom I have ever known. But in his per-
sonal character, he was, to say the least, peculiar. He was not
a teetotaler. His standards, in respect of conventional morals,
were angular. In his commercial relations he was a Dick Swiv-
eller. At the moment he was my attorney in one or two rather
important cases. Despite this fact, I was unwilling, because of
his well-known delinquencies, that he should represent the Bar
of Chicago and make the speech of the evening. And I frankly
said so. My committee agreed with me. We selected Mel-
ville W. Fuller, who later was Chief Justice of the United

142 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [l883

States Supreme Court. He acquitted himself with credit, as
one might have expected.

A day or two after our committee meeting and our decision,
Storrs called upon me. He knew what had happened. He
knew that he was not to be the spokesman at the great feast
and he knew that I was responsible for the fact.

Nothing abashed, however, he presented himself. "I have
a favour to ask," he began. "The public dinner to Coleridge is
to occur on Wednesday evening. You have chosen Fuller to
speak for the Chicago Bar. I do not complain. Your selection
is all right and quite fitting. Now I have arranged to give a
dinner on my own account to his lordship on Thursday night
at the Leland Hotel. I am here to ask you to be one of my
guests. You must not refuse. You and I are long-time friends,
and I insist upon your acceptance."

I demurred, but after some pleading on Storrs's part, yielded.

The public dinner went off with appropriate eclat. There
was a very large and representative attendance, the cuisine and
wines were good, and the speeches all that could be desired.
Storrs was conspicuously absent. As his coup had been pretty
well noised about, we all looked forward with interest to the
succeeding evening. We knew that he would strive to outdo
in the matter of decorations, cuisine, and general appointments.

Late in the afternoon I went home to dress. I had hardly
entered my house when there was a call upon the telephone.
It was from my office. My astonishment at what followed
may be easily imagined. I was advised that a certain tailor,
named Walsh, to whom Storrs was indebted, had gone into
court, sued out an attachment, and a sheriff's officer was on
his way to the Leland Hotel to levy on the forthcoming
feast.

It was a pretty kettle of fish. Without delay I telephoned
to the hotel and asked for Storrs. He promptly responded. I
told him what had happened and said that, if he wished, I
would go down and sign his bond and release the attachment.
He laughed and said he would be grateful if I would come at
once and attend to the matter.

I hurried down, but on my arrival found that Samuel Allerton,

i883] FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST i43

a wealthy pork packer, had dropped in by accident, given bail,
and relieved our host from his dilemma.

No one could have been in a happier mood or better form
than was Storrs that evening. There were about fifty guests,
including many of the most distinguished citizens of Illinois.
I do not think any one at the table, except Storrs, Allerton, and
myself, knew of the attachment episode. Storrs's speeches were
brilliant, and everything went off with such spirit that I doubt
if Lord Coleridge enjoyed a more notable entertainment during
his American visit.

After the company had assembled and participated in an
informal reception, and about as we were to pass to the dining
hall, Storrs took my arm and whispered in my ear: "There was
only one thing that annoyed me about that Walsh matter this

afternoon, and that was the sacrilege of that d d sheriff's

officer, that he should think of laying his unholy hands on the
Lord's Supper!"

The Campaign of 1884.

The campaign of 1884 was what Sir Edward Creasy might
have called one of the decisive political contests of our Republic.
It was momentous because a dominant party, voicing the
sentiment of the victorious North, was beaten finally by a
party burdened by a former advocacy of human slavery, by
an attempt to destroy the union of states, and by a more recent
history of twenty years in which it had been stupidly opportun-
ist, passing from one futile campaign of negation to another.
The campaign was notable because a long-time leader in the
field of American politics, brilliant, forceful, and supported by
a vast company of personal devotees, was defeated by a man
new to public office, with no reputation as a speaker or writer,
modest, even taciturn, and scarcely known beyond the limits
of the state in which he lived. It was decisive, because the
general sentiment of the electorate was distinctly changed,
and the spiritual being of the nation took on a new birth.

Mr. Lincoln's great task in the four years of storm and stress
was really to conquer the whole North and to free the whole

144 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [1884

South. And he had not finished the work when he died.
Therefore it happened that after Lee's surrender we forced the
rule of carpet-bagger and contraband upon the subjugated
South. We trusted no rebel. With the best of intentions,
and for reasons which at the time seemed obvious and compel-
ling, the right of suffrage was given to the former slaves. Many
of our leaders were camp followers who either had fought badly
or had not fought at all in the Civil War, but who were now
widely clamorous for revenge.

The real soldiers, footsore and weary, went quietly from the
battle-field to their homes, and left the conduct of affairs to
those who from their shouting one might suppose had done
all the fighting. As someone has said, our national affairs
went off into a witches' dance. Scandal followed scandal in
quick succession, such as the Jayne-Sanborn contracts, the
Black Friday episode, the Whisky-Ring exposure, the Belknap-
Post-Tradership transactions, the Spencer-Arms jobbery, the
Credit-Mobilier rascality, the De Golyer Paving Affair, and the
Star-Route robberies. And in the South the rapacity of the
Northern mercenaries allied with the ignorance and incapacity
of the Negro vote, sustained by the Federal arms, begot a con-
dition altogether insupportable. Matters were not helped by
the struggles of the Southern people for relief. The Ku-Klux
manifestations and similar acts of reprisal were worse than vain.
They merely stimulated the North to renewed measures of
repression, which produced a solid South. Following the
theory of Alexander Hamilton, who once declared to John
Adams that he believed the safety of the Republic depended
upon corruption, high protective tariffs were imposed, with an
unwritten but no less distinct understanding that in return for
these special privileges those benefited by them should con-
tribute liberally to the Republican Party purse. The Presiden-
tial campaign of 1880 had been notoriously corrupt. The
phrase " Blocks of Five," referring to the purchase of voters in
Indiana in that year, has passed into the literature of American
politics.

So it happened that, as the campaign of 1884 was approached,
the question uppermost in the minds of the electorate was

i884] FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 14$

political purity. Not that this question of corrupt politics
was entirely new. As early as 1866 James G. Blaine and Roscoe
Conkling, both members of Congress, engaged in a bitter debate
bearing on a public expenditure. As the years went on, the line
of cleavage between the two widened, and there grew up within
the Republican Party two factions, with these men as leaders.
The Blaine partisans never doubted his integrity, while the
Conkling followers never believed in Blaine's honesty. A num-
ber of official acts, which his best friends characterized as "in-
delicate," stamped Mr. Blaine as a man with whom Conkling
was unwilling to affiliate. His marvellous personality and un-
deniable magnetism, however, carried Blaine through contest
after contest, and the loyalty of his followers remained un-
shaken. At Cincinnati, in 1876, Colonel Ingersoll drew his
portrait as that of a "plumed knight walking down the halls of
Congress and throwing his shining lance full and fair against
the brazen foreheads of the defamers of his country and the
maligners of his honour."

But the Conkling followers would have none of Blaine, and
Colonel Ingersoll, after Conkling's death on April 8, 1888,
eulogized him before the New York Legislature. In that
memorial address he said, with sinister design, as he once con-
fessed to me:

Roscoe Conkling was an absolutely honest man. He was the
ideal representative, faithful and incorruptible. ... He made
no bargains. He neither bought nor sold. ... He neither sold
nor mortgaged himself. He was in Congress during the years of vast
expenditure, of war and waste — when the credit of the nation was
loaned to individuals — when the amendment of a statute, the change
of a single word, meant millions, and when empires were given to
corporations. ... He had the taste of a prince and the fortune
of a peasant, and yet he never swerved. No corporation was great
enough or rich enough to purchase him. His vote could not be
bought for all the sun sees, or the close earth wombs, or the profound
seas hide. His hand was never touched by any bribe, and on his
soul there never was a sordid stain. Poverty was his priceless crown.

Yet, with the distinct merit of probity, Conkling had weak-
nesses which chilled the ardour of many and put serious limits

146 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [1884

upon his strength as a leader. He delighted in stinging sar-
casm, and frequently used it in inexcusable fashion. He was
arrogant and pompous to a degree that was ludicrous.

In the campaigns of 1876 and 1880 Blaine, as an aspirant for
the Presidency, was subjected to merciless attack. The
nomination of Garfield, a Blaine partisan, in 1880, was offset,
as a compromise, by the selection of General Chester A. Arthur
for vice-president. But Garfield's administration had not
fairly begun when he was assassinated, and Arthur became the
chief executive. It was inevitable that he should be regarded
with no small degree of suspicion by those who know little of
his real character. The descendant of a long line of rugged
Scotch-Irish ancestors, the son of a Vermont Baptist minister,
from boyhood he had been an ardent Abolitionist. After the
war broke out, he gave up a fairly lucrative law practice to
become quartermaster general of New York State, and in less
than four months, by his admirable management, he clothed,
uniformed, and equipped, supplied with camp and garrison
equipage, and transported to the seat of war, sixty-eight
regiments of troops. In 1871 he was appointed collector of the
port of New York by President Grant, and held the office for
over six years. An effort was made to remove him by the
Hayes administration. The accusation was that both he and
Alonzo B. Cornell, the naval officer, had been too active in
politics and that their offices had been used for partisan pur-
poses. The Secretary of the Treasury pleaded with Arthur to
resign, accompanying the request with an offer of an important
foreign diplomatic mission. General Arthur not only refused
to resign, but presented indisputable evidence that during the
six years he had managed the office the yearly percentage of
removals from all causes had been only 2f per cent, against an
annual average of 28 per cent, under his three immediate prede-
cessors. He also showed that in making promotions, the
uniform practice had been to advance from the lower to the
higher grades, and that the expense of collecting the revenues
had been greatly reduced. Nevertheless, Hayes nominated a
successor, whom the Senate refused to confirm. After a two-
years' struggle both Arthur and Cornell were displaced, but

i884) FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 147

at the succeeding state election Cornell was elected governor
of New York by a substantial majority, and Arthur became
the leading candidate for United States Senator, an aspiration
checked by his nomination for the vice-presidency.

Putting aside all factional spirit, Arthur ceased to be a
partisan, and moved carefully forward in an effort to carry
out faithfully Garfield's announced policies. The Pendleton
Civil Service Reform Bill was passed, and the first national
commission, composed of men of the highest character, was
appointed; oppressive internal taxes were abolished; and there
was a first, though not altogether satisfactory, scientific revi-
sion of the tariff by a special commission; the fast-mail service
was established; domestic letter postage was reduced from
three to two cents; the national indebtedness was reduced by
$500,000,000; wooden warships were discarded, and a new navy
of steel vessels begun. The annual River and Harbour Bill,
which for years had been the object of widespread and justifi-
able criticism, was vetoed, and in its stead a proper method for
the protection of the Mississippi River levees was urged.

In the late summer of 1883, after nearly two years in the
White House, President Arthur visited Chicago, and on that
occasion I asked some two hundred of the leading men of the
country to give expression to their judgment respecting his
administration, the same to be published by me in the Daily
News. In responses from clergymen, college presidents,
literary men, and politicians, from those who had opposed his
nomination, from Democrats who had opposed his election,
there came a virtually unanimous declaration of approval and
confidence. About the only qualifying word came from Mark
Twain, who replied:

Melville E. Stone, Editor Daily Ntwsy

Chicago, 111.
I am but one in the 55,000,000; still, in the opinion of this one-fifty-
five-millionth of the country's population, it would be hard indeed to
better President Arthur's administration. But don't decide till you
hear from the rest.

Mark Twain.
Hang the Telegraph — it would be a year getting there — I send by mail.

148 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [1884

In his demeanour as well as in his official acts Arthur was an
ideal chief executive. I had personal knowledge of the poign-
ancy of his grief at Garfield's assassination, and of his patient
suffering under the malignant accusation that he was indiffer-
ent. No man could have had a keener sense of the dignity or
responsibilities of the Presidential office. He was at all times
kindly, even a model of urbanity, but he never ceased for a
moment to betray a punctilious regard for the proprieties of his
position. It was once reported that in an after-dinner speech,
where jocularity was pardonable, he had discussed campaign
contributions freely; spoken rather approvingly of the corrupt
use of such funds, because, 2fter all, it was only "fighting the
devil with fire"; and that, as he stood washing his hands in
invisible water, he had said that "while there was life there was
soap." He assured me that the whole story was a reporter's
invention, which offended him very greatly. Though he had
shared in the rough-and-tumble of practical politics, he was un-
willing to suffer any loss of dignity or to yield in any measure his
devotion to the highest ideals.

Toward the end of Arthur's term the Republican conven-
tions of state after state adopted flattering resolutions, calling
for his reelection. So when the Republican National Con-
vention met in Chicago on June 3, 1884, the candidates were
Arthur and Blaine.

Ten years before I had been a correspondent at Washington,
when, in the Forty-third Congress, Blaine was speaker, and
like virtually all of the men who represented newspapers at the
national capitol at that time, I distrusted him, and if for no
other special reason, I favoured Arthur.

General Arthur's interests were put in direct charge of half a
dozen men, several of whom were not delegates. Among these
were George H. Sharpe and Elihu Root of New York, Omar D.
Conger of Michigan, Frank Hatton of Iowa, and Benjamin F.
Butterworth of Ohio. On the opening day the situation was
uncertain. A substantial majority of the delegates were
opposed to Blaine's nomination, but were so divided in their
preferences that he was undeniably the favourite. The first
skirmish was over the temporary chairman. Of this Senator

AsUXtZZ u-^~~ "V~-2~° . „
(ffJWfivff/rwrift*.

President McKinley

Mr. Kaneko

i884] FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 140

George F. Hoar in his autobiography [Vol. ii, p. 61] says, speak-
ing of John R. Lynch of Mississippi:

I was the means of procuring for him a national distinction which
very much gratified the men of his colour throughout the country. The
supporters of Mr. Blaine in the national convention of 1883 had a
candidate of their own for temporary presiding officer. I think it
was Mr. Clayton of Arkansas. It was desired to get a Southern man
for that purpose. The opponents of Mr. Blaine also desired to have
a candidate of their own from the South. The coloured men were
generally Blaine men. I advised them to nominate Lynch, urging
that it would be impossible for the Southern coloured people, whatever
their preference might be as to a candidate for the presidency, to vote
against one of their own colour. Lynch was nominated by Henry
Cabot Lodge, afterward my colleague in the Senate, and seconded by
Theodore Roosevelt and by George William Curtis.

It would be difficult to frame a paragraph more inaccurate.
The truth is that Senator Hoar had nothing whatever to do
with the selection of Mr. Lynch. During the convention, I
took a room at the Grand Pacific Hotel in the city. Next to
it, and communicating, was a room occupied by James D.
Warren of Buffalo, N. Y., an active friend of General Arthur.

A day or two before the convention assembled the National
Republican Committee met and agreed upon the nomination
of General Powell Clayton of Arkansas as temporary chairman.
I had had some experience with Clayton, and felt it was im-
portant that he should be beaten. As far back as July 30, 1883,
he had written me a letter in which he said :

Mr. Arthur's accession to the presidential office was under circum-
stances of the most difficult and trying nature. Many people, an-
ticipating failure, stood ready to proclaim their criticisms. If any
official of his has afforded them that opportunity, I am not aware of
it. Should the same wisdom, care, and fidelity mark his course to the
end, I think history will place his administration among the very best
the Republic has been blessed with.

" Not for Forty Nominations!"

Some months later, and within a few days of the national
convention, I was at the White House. In the course of con-

i$o FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [1884

versation with the President, he told me he was puzzled at the
attitude of the Arkansas delegation. It had been elected as an
Arthur delegation, and he had had a letter of personal assurance
from General Clayton. Notwithstanding this, however, the
New York Tribune, the leading Blaine organ of the country,
persisted in crediting the fourteen delegates from Arkansas
to Blaine. General Arthur handed me a letter he had re-
ceived from Clayton, and asked me to see him on my arrival
in Chicago which I did. Clayton told me that, while he
was personally devoted to President Arthur, he was embar-
rassed by the attitude of his colleagues. He said there was a
widespread feeling that the southwestern territory should be
recognized in some important way, and that the members of
the Arkansas delegation, with certain men from Texas and
adjacent states, eighteen in number altogether, had concluded
to vote for Arthur if he was willing to promise, if elected to
appoint Clayton as postmaster general. I replied that I had no
authority to encourage such a hope, but would submit the
matter to General Arthur himself.

Leaving Clayton, I went at once to the Palmer House and
sent a cipher message covering the case to Fred Phillips, Ar-
thur's private secretary. Scarcely a moment elapsed when an
answer came back in plain English : "Not for forty nominations."

The next day I informed General Clayton that the proposed
arrangement could not be carried out, and thenceforward he
and his delegates were open and avowed Blaine men.

When General Clayton was proposed for temporary chair-
man, General Arthur's friends, knowing the facts as I have
recited them, were naturally exceedingly anxious to accomplish
his defeat. On the night of June 2nd, Mr. Warren and I were
sitting in our rooms discussing the matter. I think Mr. H. G.
Burleigh, an Arthur delegate from Whitehall, N. Y., was
present and took part. Very likely General Sharpe was also
there. My recollection is very clear that I suggested that
there was one way to meet the issue, and that was by the
nomination of a coloured man. I did not believe that the
convention would dare to defeat such a candidate. The plan
was agreed to.

i884] FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 151

The first name offered was that of Blanche K. Bruce, who had
been a member of the United States Senate, and seemed to us
the logical person. We found he was living in a remote part
of the city, and hurried a messenger with a carriage to him. He
arrived at our rooms about three or four o'clock in the morning.
As the convention was to meet the next day, there was no
time to lose. We presented the matter to Bruce with all the
earnestness we could command, but were unable to induce him
to enter the contest. After he left, some one suggested Lynch's
name. It was nearly dawn when he arrived. He was an
original Arthur man, and it therefore took little entreaty to en-
list him in the enterprise.

I do not know who communicated the matter to Mr. Lodge
and his associates, but the following afternoon, when the
convention was called to order, Mr. Lynch's name was pre-
sented as a candidate against General Clayton, who was pro-
posed by the national committee, and on the call of the roll,
Lynch secured a majority of forty votes.

As I have said, the situation in respect of a nominee for the
presidency was uncertain. The two leading candidates were
Arthur and Blaine, but the balance of power was held by a
contingent of reformers, real or pretended. In a number of
cases, as in that of General Clayton, personal reasons un-
questionably played a controlling part. The Massachusetts
delegation was under the leadership of Senator Hoar. He had
quarrelled with President Arthur over the appointment of
Worthington as collector of the port of Boston, and as he said
frankly in his autobiography, his opposition to Worthington
grew out of the fact that the latter had supported Ben Butler
in Massachusetts, and Butler in turn had woefully defeated
Hoar's brother when the latter ran as a bolting Republican
candidate for Congress in 1876. "But for the indignation
caused by this appointment," wrote the Senator, "I think the
delegation from Massachusetts would have supported Mr.
Arthur for reelection. There would have been no movement
for Mr. Edmunds, and but for that movement, Mr. Arthur
would have received the Republican nomination." One of the
New York delegates at large, who was open in the denunciation

i52 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [l884

of Blaine, yet helped to make his nomination certain by sup-
sporting Edmunds against Arthur, also had his personal rea-
sons. This was Theodore Roosevelt. It was his father who,
in 1879, had been nominated as Arthur's successor for collector
of the port of New York, and refused confirmation by the Sen-
ate.

Out of it all, Blaine was nominated for the Presidency with
General John A. Logan as running mate. A platform was
framed with great care to meet the peculiar situation. Natur-
ally Blaine's friends made an earnest effort to put the tariff
to the fore as an issue. They had no stomach for a revival of
the charges of corruption that had been freely discussed for the
eight preceding years.

But a storm of protest broke throughout the nation. I do
not think any newspaper corresponden't who served in Wash-
ington while Blaine was Speaker ever thought of voting for him.
I met one of them, General Henry V. Boynton, the dean of the
corps, in Chicago after the convention, and asked him what he
proposed to do. He was a Republican, and for years had been
a leading political writer for his paper, the Cincinnati Gazette.

"I do not know," he replied; "I am a poor man, and depen-
dent upon my work for a livelihood. One thing I know I shall
not do; I shall never write a line in advocacy of Mr. Blaine.
That probably means that I must resign my position and look
for something else to do." He did tender his resignation, but
was given a vacation for the campaign.

A great number of conspicuous Republicans declared they
would not vote for the nominee. Among them were such
men as Henry Ward Beecher, George William Curtis, Thomas
Wentworth Higginson, Carl Schurz, Wayne MacVeagh, Moor-
field Storey, Sherman Hoar, and the Rev. James Freeman
Clarke. These recalcitrants formed what was known as the
"Mugwump" contingent. I was among the earliest of the
number in the West. The name had been applied in derision
by the-New York Sun. In 1877 it had originally been used to
stigmatize General Logan by Isaac Bromley, an amusing edi-
torial writer on the New York Tribune. When the epithet
was revived, in 1884, General Horace Porter, on being asked

i884] FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 153

what it meant, replied that a Mugwump was "a person educated
beyond his intellect." When the Chicago Daily News was
asked the same question, I replied that a Mugwump was "a Re-
publican with a conscience."

The Republicans having made their nominations, all eyes
turned to see what the Democrats would do. At that time I
happened to visit New York, and one day called on Mr. Conk-
ling, who was out of politics and practising law. The interview
was an amusing one. Although we were alone, he struck his
familiar senatorial attitude, and proceeded to deliver himself
of an oration. He had parted company with Arthur almost
immediately after the latter's accession to the Presidency be-
cause his former lieutenant would no longer do his bidding. He
therefore felt little regret at Arthur's failure to secure the
nomination. But his hatred of Blaine survived, and was his
absorbing interest. He closed his grandiloquent and distinctly
didactic effort by turning to me and saying: "Well, there will be
a funeral, and you and I will at least have the consolation that
neither of us will ride in a front carriage."

The National Democratic Convention assembled at Chicago
a month later, and of the presidential possibilities Grover
Cleveland was the most conspicuous. In some respects he bore
a resemblance to General Arthur. As I have said, Arthur was
the son of a Baptist minister. Cleveland's father was a Pres-
byterian minister. Both were born in rural parsonages. To
both was left the priceless legacy with which the American
minister of the gospel is usually able to endow his offspring: a
sound moral training, a limited education, and no wordly
estate. Each was a lawyer of no mean ability, but of dis-
tinctly local fame. Each had the taste of an amateur for
politics, which he indulged freely, but without reaching the
height of a recognized boss. The integrity of neither had ever
been questioned.

On the other hand, no two men ever differed in greater mea-
sure than Blaine and Cleveland. Beginning his political career
early in life, Blaine had been a conspicuous figure through a long
term of years, and from his youth he had always been in trouble,
but he'd "turn a corner jinkin', an' cheat auld Nickieben."

i54 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [1884

Cleveland, on the other hand, was a village Hampden. In
his earlier years his progress was slow, and gave no promise of
a notable future. After his admission to the bar he served
for a short time as assistant district attorney of Buffalo. Some
years later he left the practice of his profession to become sheriff
of his county. He had been defeated once for the office of
district attorney. This made up the measure of his public
service until 1881, when he was suddenly nominated for mayor
of Buffalo. Unlike Blaine, his motto had ever been that of the
Prince of Wales: "Ich dien"

Two rather interesting coincidences marked the careers of the
two men. In their young manhood both had served in the
same year as teachers in institutions for the blind — Cleveland
in New York City, and Blaine in Philadelphia. Both of them,
also, had been drafted into the army during the rebellion, and
both had paid for substitutes. Cleveland's substitute did
his duty, and Cleveland's two brothers enlisted and served with
distinction, while Blaine's substitute deserted at the first
opportunity.

The nomination for mayor of Buffalo came to Cleveland al-
together unsolicited; but with his sense of duty he had no
alternative. His speech of acceptance was the only personal
appeal made by him during the campaign. In that, how-
ever, he used a phrase which later passed into an apothegm,
and became inseparably connected with his whole public career.
He said: "We consider that public officials are the trustees of
the people." He was elected mayor by a fair majority, and
began service on January 1, 1882, without any formal in-
augural ceremony. He promptly struck out for an administra-
tion in which the sentiment that "a public office is a public
trust" became the watchword. He vetoed one corrupt ordi-
nance after another, and within six months was "recognized
as one of the strong, virile figures, both of his city and of his
state."

Then there was an election for governor of the State of
New York, and a number of the party managers turned their
eyes toward him. The leader of these was Daniel Manning
of Albany. It was wholly characteristic of Mr. Cleveland

1884]

FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST

*55

Grover Cleveland

that by no hint or sign did he attempt to better his own fortunes.
The Democratic State Convention met at Syracuse on Septem-
ber 22, 1882. Mr. Manning asked Cleveland to go to Syracuse
to meet the delegates, to whom he was personally almost en-
tirely unknown. Cleveland reluctantly
accepted the invitation and then for the
first time he was introduced to Mr.
Manning and the others who were
championing his cause. He was nomi-
nated, and two weeks later, in his
letter of acceptance, made a strong plea
for economy, efficiency, and integrity
in the public service. During the cam--
paign he wrote no other public letter
and made no speeches. He was elected
by the unparalleled majority of 192,000.
He went quietly to Albany the day
before his inauguration, and assumed office without ceremony
on January 1, 1883.

The national convention of his party the following year
found him at once the idol of those who believed in honest
government, and a bitter object of hatred to the machine
politicians. The delegation from his own state was unin-
structed, and its attitude for some time was in grave doubt.
Tammany Hall was solidly against him, and such men as John
Kelly, Bourke Cockran, and Thomas F. Grady openly asserted
that he could not carry New York, and without it he could not
be elected. Then sturdy General Bragg of Wisconsin took the
floor and made a short speech which electrified the Convention.
His phrase, "We love him most for the enemies he has made,"
became the shibboleth of his followers and made his nomination
certain.

During the canvass, there was a striking difference in the
attitude of Blaine and Cleveland. Blaine, true to his instincts,
kept himself constantly in the public eye. Cleveland wrote
his letter of acceptance and made two speeches. Soon all
attempts to discuss public questions such as the tariff, civil-
service reform, etc., were abandoned, and the contest resolved

156 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [riftf

itself into a round of crimination and recrimination. It was the
most intensely personal campaign we have ever had.

All the charges against Blaine's misuse of his official relations
for personal profit, which had been effectively used in 1876
and 1880, were reenforced by fresh disclosures, and proved most
damaging. Joseph Keppler, the cartoonist, pictured him week
after week, as the "tattooed man," a characterization that in
the end became as famous as Thomas Nast's cartoons of Tweed.
The New York Independent, Harper's Weekly, and other leading
journals, which had always been sturdy supporters of the
Republican Party, revolted.

A number of important newspapers, including the New York
Tribune, Chicago Tribune, and Cincinnati Commercial, which
in 1876 had led in the campaign against him, suddenly changed
front, and because they disclosed no reason for the change, did
neither Blaine nor themselves any good.

The election was close, and for days after the polls closed the
result was in doubt. On the final count, it was admitted that
Cleveland had carried New York, the pivotal state, by a narrow
plurality, and was therefore elected. A number of reasons were
assigned. It was said that Blaine was defeated because of an
indiscreet remark by the Rev. Dr. Burchard, who in an address
to Blaine a few days before the close of the contest had said the
constituent elements of the Democratic Party were: "Rum,
Romanism, and Rebellion." It was said that extensive frauds
in Queens County had deprived Blaine of enough votes to
change the result. It was said that heavy rains in Jefferson
and St. Lawrence counties, Republican strongholds, had made
it impossible for the farmers to get to the polls, and therefore
Cleveland had won his victory. On the other hand, a large
number of New York City Democrats bolted their party and
voted for Blaine. All of these things doubtless contributed,
but the vital fact remained that, whether justly or unjustly,
Blaine was the recognized candidate of and apologist for corrup-
tion, and that from his defeat there followed a change in the
moral tone of the nation which was of great moment, and
made for better government. That this did not persist, and
that it did not lead on immediately to perfection, is true.

,884] FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 157

Nevertheless, there can be no such triumph without some last-
ing influence. So it was in this case.

The Famous Mackin Case

In 1884 the "Mackin Case" was of moment in Chicago and,
indeed, throughout the nation. Upon its issue depended
important things. When the presidential contest was over an
interesting situation arose in Illinois. The election took place
on the 4th of November. For two weeks the result, both in
state and nation, was in doubt. There were 204 members of
the Illinois Legislature on joint ballot.
And that legislature was to elect a United
States Senator. And one vote would
determine whether the senator would be
a Democrat or a Republican. Also, the
United States Senate was so evenly-
balanced between the two leading parties
that a single new Democratic member
would tie the body politically. In these
circumstances, to the amazement of every-
joieph c. Mackin onCj fa was announced that the Demo-

crats had carried, for the office of state senator, a district which
was notoriously Republican and which, indeed, for every other
office than state senator, was admittedly and overwhelmingly
Republican. For State Senator Rudolph Brand, a well-known
and reputable brewer was apparently chosen over Henry W.
Leman an equally well-known and reputable lawyer. And
Leman had apparently run 200 votes behind every associate
upon his ticket, while Brand had seemed to run an equally
astonishing number of ballots ahead of his fellow candidates.
Here was a how-de-do.

Immediately there was a charge of fraud. It was before the
Australian ballot had come into use. The party tickets, which
in presidential elections contained the names of a large number
of nominees, were printed from peculiar type and were held in
the greatest secrecy until the morning of the balloting, to
prevent counterfeiting. After the polls closed they were

i$8 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [1884

strung upon thread, and, with the tally sheets, were sealed and
deposited in the custody of the county clerk to await the in-
spection and decision of a canvassing board.

When, under the law, they were opened by the returning
board it was evident that the Second Election Precinct of the
Eighteenth Ward of Chicago presented matter for considera-
tion. It was here that Brand had seemingly run away ahead to
everyone and Leman had, with like unaccountable reason, run
behind. And yet everything was technically proper in the
returns. The tickets, as strung upon the thread, appeared
perfect in form, and the tally sheet corresponded with the count
of the tickets and seemed undeniably correct.

In an effort to prove rascality, the Republican managers
secured affidavits from many more of their partisans than were
credited with votes for Leman, that they had voted for him.
But to this the Democrats laughingly made answer that these
people had not closely scanned their ballots on Election Day
and, therefore, had unwittingly voted for Brand.

Several weeks went by and I paid no heed to this clamour,
because I thought it the usual cry of a defeated and disap-
pointed company of partisans. Then, on Thanksgiving Day,
sitting alone in my office, it occurred to me that, in the light
of the fact that my newspaper had supported Cleveland, I was
rather bound in honour to make an investigation. I called a
reporter and asked him to get a specimen of the genuine Re-
publican ticket as it had been voted at the .polls. Very soon,
from the Evening Journal office, in which the printing had been
done, he brought me an original of the desired ballot. I
scanned it closely and found several styles of type that were
clearly uncommon. Then, looking over the list of type found-
ers and type-founders' agencies in Chicago, I sent the reporter
out to them to learn who, if any, of the printers in the city,
had recently, or since the election, ordered the rare kinds of
type in question. He returned after a couple of hours and
reported that the job-printing firm of P. L. Hanscom & Co.
had made such purchases. I next, by a liberal wage offer,
took into my employment a lad who served as "devil" in the
Hanscom shop. He disclosed the fact that a Mr. Wright, a

i884l FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST i59

junior partner in the concern, had kept the boy up throughout
a night ten days after the election to assist in the printing of
certain tickets. And then the youngster brought me the
"tympan sheet" used in the work. Every printer knows what
the "tympan sheet" is, but others may not. In "making
ready" for the use of such a press as was utilized on this occa-
sion, the type is fastened in a frame, technically called a chase,
on one jaw of the machine, and on the other jaw is fixed a pad
of paper, the "tympan," against which the type presses. The
top sheet of this pad was the "tympan sheet," and it bore a
facsimile of the ticket which Wright had produced.

Meanwhile, excitement was running high, and a grand-jury
inquiry had been instituted in the Federal Court in Chicago.
This forced the county clerk to present the tickets and tally
sheet in his custody awaiting inspection by the Canvassing
Board. I took advantage of this to have these documents
photographed. It was fortunate that I did so, because after
their examination by the grand jury the Judge ordered them
sealed up again and forbade any one to see them in advance of
the official count.

Now my course of action was clear. I promptly swore out a
warrant for the arrest of the printer, Wright. One Wednesday
evening I took "Long" Jones, who in that day was the famous
United States marshal for the Northern District of Illinois, for
a ride. We drove to Wright's house, and I asked for him. His
wife said her husband was a Methodist and had gone to prayer
meeting. Jones and I said we would sit in the parlour and
await his return. Finally he came, and the following con-
versation ensued. Disclosing my name and vocation, I
said:

"Mr. Wright, a crime has been committed, and I have rea-
son to suppose that you have been an innocent participant in
the business. I have evidence that since the recent election
you printed certain tickets which were imitations of the Re-
publican ballots voted in the Second Precinct of the Eighteenth
Ward, but upon which the name of Rudolph Brand was placed
instead of that of Henry W. Leman. These tickets so printed
by you have been substituted for the real ones voted and are

160 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [1884

now held as the genuine ones by the county clerk. I am here
to ask you for whom you did this work."

"I do not recognize your authority to ask me any question
respecting my business," said Mr. Wright.

"Quite true," I replied. "I assumed that you were a good
citizen and that you would be glad to aid me in uncovering the
fraud that has been attempted. As a precaution, however,
I have sworn out a warrant for your arrest, and the gentleman
here with me is the United States marshal. He will now take
you in custody."

Mr. Wright was staggered, but there was no escape for him,
and Jones and I bundled him into our carriage and took him
to jail and saw him safely locked in a cell. The next morning
he changed his mind. He sent for me and told me that he had
printed the tickets upon the order of one Joseph Mackin, a
well-known Democratic saloon keeper and ward heeler of the
city. I had Wright taken before the grand jury, and he testi-
fied that he had delivered his fraudulent ballots to Mackin.
I then swore out a warrant for Mackin and caused his arrest.

The forged tally sheet now demanded attention. I had, as
I have said, a photograph of it. I set about an effort to find
the man who had produced it. I secured specimens of the
chirography of every well-known Democratic politician. The
letter G upon the forged tally sheet proved important.
Wherever it appeared it was written thus: G. For instance,
the word Chicago was like this: ChicaGo. Here was a clue.
One William J. Gallagher was a Democratic city employee, and
in executing a receipt for his weekly salary wrote G in the sin-
gular fashion spoken of. I followed up the matter and found a
saloon loafer who had seen Gallagher at work upon a tally sheet
several days after the election. I then swore out a warrant for
Gallagher and had him locked up.

By this time public attention was thoroughly aroused. A
meeting of the leading citizens was held and funds were sub-
scribed for the employment of competent counsel to aid the
Federal district attorney. Chief of these was General I. N.
Stiles, who for many years was known in Chicago as "the
People's Lawyer." The Democratic bosses were also at work.

i884] FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 161

They furnished bail for Mackin and Gallagher and employed
eminent lawyers to defend them. Of these United States
Senator Turpie of Indiana was leader. We were now in for a
fight.

When the trial came on I produced my evidence, which
seemed unanswerable. I offered two outstanding facts, which
seemed conclusive. First, as a practical printer, I directed
attention to the palpable difference between the genuine and
the fraudulent tickets. The type was, to the casual observer,
the same, as was the paper. But a careful measurement of the
size of the two ballots necessarily betrayed the crime. As
printers would understand, the paper in each case was dam-
pened. So it happened that the genuine ticket shrunk, and
when it was used by Wright he measured this dry and shrunken
ticket, set his type to provide for shrinkage of the damp paper
he must use, but did not calculate well, and his product was
therefore longer than the original.

Again, in the list of presidential electors upon the ticket was
the name of Judge Humphrey, who was later the presiding
Federal judge of the Southern District of Illinois. His name
was originally Otis Humphrey, but for reasons of his own, early
in life, he adopted the letter "J" as an additional and first
prenomen. In the genuine ticket his name was printed pro-
perly, J Otis Humphrey, there being no period after the J.
But Wright naturally supposed this to be an error and affixed a
period.

Other differences noticeable only to the eye of the trained
printer betrayed the inexactness of the counterfeit ballot.
The engraved caption, placed under a microscope, was clearly
printed from a "reproduced cut," and the titles, "For Lieute-
nant Governor," "For Secretary of State," etc., on close in-
spection presented unlike appearances. Wright had been
unable to duplicate the type used in printing the genuine ticket,
and had obtained the closest imitation he could find.

All seemed to be going well with the trial until the State
rested its case and the defense began. Then some startling
things happened. A self-confessed "tramp" printer named
Sullivan took the witness stand and swore that just before the

162 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [1884

election he had secured a copy of the Republican ticket from a
fellow "jour" who, working with the company having the
official contract for the printing, had stolen a specimen ballot
and, attaching it to a brick, had thrown it to Sullivan from a
window into an alley. Then, said Sullivan, he had rented an
unheard-of little printing shop from one Titman and there had
produced the facsimiles. Titman appeared and swore that he
had rented his place to Sullivan, and a political "handy man"
testified that he had received the tickets from Sullivan on the
morning of the election and had peddled them all the day at the
polls. When Sullivan had finished his direct evidence, at my
suggestion, General Stiles asked leave to defer cross-examina-
tion. I had gone out and obtained a warrant for the arrest
of the witness for perjury. So, when he left the court room,
he ran into the arms of a deputy marshal, who took him to jail.
The "gang" did not dare to bail him out, and at daybreak,
after spending fourteen of fifteen hours behind the bars, he sent
for me and "squealed." He had been coached by Mackin and
his lawyers. I am not sure that Senator Turpie had guilty
knowledge of the business, but he never escaped suspicion.
When court opened, General Stiles called Sullivan for cross-
examination.

"Sullivan," said Stiles, "you testified that you received a
copy of the genuine Republican ticket before the election. What
did you do with it ? "

"I didn't do nuthin' with it," replied the tramp, sheepishly.

" Didn't do nothing with it ? " queried the lawyer. " But you
swore that you did. Was that a lie ? "

"Yes," said Sullivan.

"And was all of your story about printing facsimile tickets
in Titman's place a lie ? "

"It was."

And thus the carefully prepared defence of perjury was ex-
ploded. Senator Turpie at once pledged his honour that he
had no part in the affair, but he narrowly escaped an attempt
at disbarment.

Mackin and Gallagher were promptly found guilty. The
verdict was set aside on a technicality, but ultimately both

,885] FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 163

were sent to the penitentiary and served adequate terms. Mr.
Leman's title to his seat in the State Senate was established,
and as a result a Republican, General John A. Logan, was
elected to the United States Senate.

The Case of McGarigle

After the inauguration of President Cleveland in 1885 I
called on him at the White House, and we briefly considered his
policy. I told him of a rule of self-conduct which I had early
established in my newspaper career and which I had never
broken; namely, that I should seek no favours at the hands of a
public officer. Nor should I sign any petition or write any
letters seeking an appointment from a public officer. I told
him that I should be glad to be of any service to his Adminis-
tration, and that at any time he desired to know anything
respecting the fitness of any applicant in Illinois and chose to
make any inquiry of me, I should endeavour to aid him by
telling him the truth.

It happened, therefore, that one day long after, when I was
with him at the White House, he told me there was a vacancy
in the office of the United States marshal for the Northern
District of Illinois and that he thought of appointing a certain
William J. McGarigle to the place.

McGarigle was an active Democrat and had been an accept-
able chief of police of Chicago, but with a change of the local
administration had become warden of the County Hospital.
It was within my knowledge that as warden he had become
corrupt. A new hospital had been built and required furnish-
ings and McGarigle and one or more of his intimates had been
paid commissions upon these. An unsuccessful bidder had
"squealed" to me. I told the President that I regarded the
applicant as wholly unfit. He challenged my judgment and
said that McGarigle was a fine-looking fellow, that he had come
recommended by practically every banker, railroad president,
politician, and clergyman in Chicago. I certainly must be
prejudiced. I replied that if he would take the contract to
appoint McGarigle as marshal, I would undertake to move his

164 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [l88S

marshal's office to Canada within six months. I had been
busy with other investigations, but should take up McGarigle's
case very promptly. Mr. Cleveland was altogether unhappy
at this declaration, but the next day he sent for Senator Logan,
an ultra-Republican, asked him respecting the character of
another applicant for the marshalship, a former Union soldier
named Marsh, and upon being assured that Colonel Marsh was
an honest man, promptly sent his name to the Senate.

Then I took up the McGarigle case. With the aid of the
always efficient prosecuting attorney, Mr. Julius Grinnell, the
evidence was secured. A prominent firm of merchants, who
had sold curtains and bedding for the hospital and paid Mc-
Garigle a commission, called on me at the Daily News office
and protested strongly against being forced to go before the
grand jury and confess their misconduct. They even threat-
ened to withdraw their advertising from the Daily News if I
should push the matter. This, of course, was amusing but not
effective. An indictment was promptly found and McGarigle
was arrested.

The sheriff, one Canute Matson, who was not over bright,
served the warrant; but upon McGarigle's plea that he would
like to go to his home and tell his wife of the happening, the
sheriff entered McGarigle's home and was seated in the parlour
while the culprit went upstairs to break the news. After sitting
there some time Matson found that the bird had flown.

There was a great sensation in Chicago and, of course, severe
condemnation of Matson. I took up the investigation and
found that on the evening of the arrest McGarigle had been
spirited away by some of his friends to a boat lying in the har-
bour and controlled by a Doctor St. John. On this boat he had
set out for Canada. I immediately took train for the Straits of
Mackinac and chartered a small boat to intercept the fugitive.
My movements were betrayed by a rival newspaper, and Mc-
Garigle escaped. The story of this betrayal is told, in his
interesting autobiography recently issued, by the offending
reporter, Charley Chapin, who is serving out his sentence in
Sing Sing prison for wife murder. If I could have caught him
at the time, I should have been tempted to kill him, and might

,88S) FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 165

myself be the "lifer" to-day. Not long after, however, I
located McGarigle in Canada safe from extradition, and
supported by a Chicago merchant named Lehmann. The dis-
closure of his whereabouts and exposure of Lehmann's connec-
tion produced a situation which was intolerable for them.
Latter McGarigle felt forced to come back to Chicago and face
the music. The power of their political friends and the mer-
chant's co-partners was sufficient to influence one of the judges
to arrange for a secret return and hearing, a plea of guilty and a
fine of the ridiculous sum of a thousand dollars.

As I have said, Mr. Cleveland was nettled at my prompt
assertion concerning McGarigle. But his annoyance soon wore
off and when, in 1887, he was passing through Chicago, en route
to Milwaukee, he asked me to join him on his private car. There
was a vacancy in the office of Chief Justice of the United States,
owing to the death of Mr. Waite, and Mr. Melville W. Fuller
of Chicago had been recommended for the position. He asked
my opinion of Mr. Fuller, and laughingly suggested that he
hoped I had no such prejudice as I had in McGarigle's case. I
commended Mr. Fuller highly and he was appointed.

Organizing the Linotype Company

Early in 1885 Mr. William D. Eaton, a well-known Chicago
journalist, called my attention to a new device for mechanical
type-setting. Otmar Mergenthaler, a young German inventor
in Baltimore, was at work on it. Eaton suggested that I look
into the matter. On my way to Washington I stopped at Balti-
more, and in a little upper room found the machine and the
inventor. The invention impressed me very greatly.

I had spent more or less time and study upon the subject and
had investigated the machine in which Mark Twain was inter-
ested and in which he lost so much of his fortune. Here was some-
thing new and something which obviously would do the work.

Mergenthaler had been financed by certain residents of
Washington, but they had reached the limit of their ability and
more money was needed. I invited a number of friends to meet
me in Baltimore for a further examination of the machine.

166 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [l88S

Among the number were Whitelaw Reid of the New York
Tribune, William H. Rand of the firm of Rand, McNally &
Company, and William Henry Smith, general manager of the
then existing Associated Press. They were impressed, as I was.

On March 14, 1885, an agreement was entered into on be-
half of the parties in interest, Mr. Stilson Hutchins, then
proprietor of the Washington Post representing Mergenthaler
and the Washington group of earlier financiers, and I represent-
ing the group of associates whom I had enlisted in the matter.

The original syndicate was somewhat modified, Messrs.
Richard Smith, Haldeman, and New dropping out and being
replaced by others. The patents were examined and certain
defects discovered. I found that what has been known as the
"justifying" apparatus had been in use before and was covered
by a patent to a Mr. Shuckers, who had been experimenting
with a device not altogether unlike Mergenthaler's. Shuckers
had been the private secretary of Salmon P. Chase, the illustri-
ous Chief Justice of the United States. He was living in
Atlantic City for the time being, and thither I went and nego-
tiated with him for the purchase of his patent.

That done, on behalf of the syndicate which I had organized
I paid Mergenthaler something more than #300,000 for the
control of the company. As Mergenthaler said in his autobio-
graphy, it was doubtless the largest payment ever made in this
country for an incomplete invention.

I became the first chairman of the Board of Directors, and
the first twelve machines when completed were placed, at my
suggestion, in the office of the New York Tribune, and the
second twelve in the office of the Chicago Daily News.

It was Mr. William H. Rand who gave the machine the name
of " line-o-type," which was abbreviated into "linotype."

Before the organization began to make any profit, I sold my
entire interest to my partner, Mr. Lawson, at precisely what it
had cost me. To-day the device is in universal use.

Convicting the Chicago Anarchists

At the same time I was active in the famous anarchist case.
With the amazing development of the Middle West the drift

iS86J FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST i67

of immigration to Chicago was inevitable. The great fire of
1 871 increased the tide. In the rebuilding of the city un-
numbered thousands of labourers and adventurers were at-
tracted to the city from Europe. And it was observed that
they did not come from northern Europe in the same proportion
as formerly. The Germans and the Scandinavians, who had
in the earlier days constituted the bulk of the immigrants and
had enriched the population of Chicago by their industry, in-
tegrity, and general good citizenship, were now replaced by a
less acceptable class from more southerly latitudes. Germany
was beginning her period of unexampled prosperity following the
war of 1870-71 and the unification of the Teutonic states, and
there was a noticeable tendency on the part of her people, for
the time being, to withstand the temptation of foreign adven-
ture.

As a result of this change in the population of Chicago there
grew up great colonies of uneducated newcomers. They had
little of the underlying spirit of American institutions. They
brought with them and preserved their hatred for all forms
of governmental restraint. They were peculiarly fitted to yield
to the influence of the demagogue. After the extraordinary
period of activity occasioned by the rebuilding of the burned
city there was left a considerable body of discontented working-
men ripe for trouble. The railway strike of 1877 betrayed the
condition; there were several days of bloody struggle with
the angry mob, few of whom had any real or direct interest in
any of the points at issue, and the police.

It was natural under such circumstances that every possible
panacea should have been offered, and for three or four years
the city was filled with advocates of social and political reform.
George Jacob Holyoake, the famous English agitator, appeared
upon the scene and a futile attempt was made to establish such
a system of cooperation as had proved so successful in the Mid-
land counties of England.

As early as March, 1876, a small group of people had at-
tempted to establish a social democratic party and later had
named one Albert R. Parsons for alderman in one of the wards.
But his defeat was overwhelming and the plan attracted little

168 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [xm

attention. Following the railway strike, however, the Socialist
Party nominated a candidate for mayor, a Doctor Schmidt, who
polled 12,000 votes, and from that time on the movement was
one to be reckoned with. Doctor Aveling and his wife, who was
a daughter of Karl Marx, the great German state socialist, came
over from England, advocated anarchy, and precipitated a
division in the ranks of the Chicago socialists. There was
thereafter marked activity among those who advocated revo-
lutionary socialism as opposed to political socialism, and who
became open and avowed anarchists.

Two daily papers were established as organs of the militant
faction, the Arbeiter Zeitung, in German, edited by August
Spies, and the Alarmy in English, edited by Albert Parsons.
The advocates of state socialism weakly attempted to maintain
themselves, but finally dwindled into insignificance, while the
revolutionary anarchists grew more aggressive with each suc-
ceeding month. The bitterness between the two factions be-
came very great. Finally, in October, 1884, the National
Federation of Labour Unions met in Chicago and decided upon
May 1, 1886, as the day upon which an eight-hour system
should be introduced throughout the country. At first the
anarchists displayed little interest in the movement, but as
the agitation progressed they seized upon it as a means for
furthering their propaganda.

At this time, while editing the Daily NezvSy I was deeply
interested in what was transpiring. Mr. Carter H. Harrison
was mayor of the city. While an avowed Democrat, he was
essentially a politician whose chief motive and largest capacity
lay in the direction of gathering votes. In some respects he
was an amusing character. It was his habit to attend the
gatherings of each of the foreign elements and plead for popu-
larity by claiming himself as their particular and only friend and
spokesman. A dangerous situation arose. Mayor Harrison
made no effort to check the anarchists in their excited and
revolutionary movement. His attention was frequently called
to it and to the possible result, but he ignored every warning.
Finally in March, 1886, the leaders of the anarchist movement
grew so bold as to solicit from me the publication of an inter-

i886] FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 169

view, and I sent a reporter to see August Spies and George
Schilling. They gave him a long statement in which they
announced that they intended to join in the demands of the
trades-unions on the first of May for an eight-hour law and that
if strikes resulted and the police interfered they proposed to
give battle.

The statement went on to say that the anarchists had fully
arranged their plans. They were to place dynamite bombs in
the manholes of the sewers and explode them. As a tangible
evidence of their purpose they sent me by the reporter one of
the bombs which happily had not been charged with explosives.
I subsequently presented this to the Chicago Historical Society,
but for some time it remained upon my desk, although nothing
was necessary to remind me of the danger of the situation.

Upon the receipt of the statement I was greatly perplexed
as to what course I should pursue. On the one hand, I knew
that Spies, Parsons, and the rest were anxious for the advertis-
ing which a publication of the interview would give them and
their cause. They fattened on notoriety, and every boastful
statement of theirs when made public tended to attract to them
the unthinking labour element. On the other hand, it was
most important that I should do everything in my power to
arouse the law-and-order element, and particularly those
charged with the administration of the city government, to
the menacing condition of affairs. The mayor of the city must
be made to act if it were a possible thing.

It was my belief that at no time was there danger of any
general social upheaval in the city; it was a developing com-
munity with unlimited material possibilities. While there had
been a temporary check in certain undertakings, such as the
erection of buildings, the population of the back country was
growing apace and this meant consequently increasing wealth
for the metropolis. On the other hand, the unbridled clamour
of a band of anarchists, though small in numbers, was very
likely to lead to mischief.

I spent some hours upon the interview and finally printed
about one half of it. It served to awaken the public mind to
the danger, but Mayor Harrison made no sign. As the weeks

i7o FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [1886

went on incendiary meetings continued to be held by the
leaders of the anarchists with inflammatory speeches.

Warfare in Earnest

The first day of May finally arrived, and with it the strikes.
These occurred wherever the eight-hour day had not been
accepted, and included most of the larger industries of the city.
A repetition of the Paris Communal riots was freely predicted,
and there were many small battles between the strikers and
those employed to fill their places. At one time a wild rumour
spread over the city that the butchers of the stockyards were
marching on the city in a body.

One of the most important strikes occurred at the McCor-
mick Harvesting Machinery Works, and a battle took place be-
tween the police, who stood guard over the "scabs," and the
strikers. A few shots were fired and some of the strikers in-
jured, though probably no one was killed. In the rioting in the
stockyards district the members of the mob pillaged every drug
store and drank everything that looked at all like liquor. As
a result there was much suffering and perhaps some fatalities.

During all this time the anarchists were goading the strikers
on to desperation. They espoused the cause of labour merely
to secure the support of the workmen and used them and their
troubles for their own ends. Forty thousand men were on
strike in Chicago alone at this time, and many of these, aroused
to a frenzy by the anarchists' leaders, were armed and prepared
to make resistance. The anarchists announced that six of the
strikers had been killed by the police in the riot at the Mc-
Cormick works, and sought by this announcement to arouse the
strikers to further violence. It was to protest against the
killing of these men and to take measures for avenging their
deaths that the anarchists called a meeting for the night of
May 4th at Haymarket Square.

I was living in West Adams Street at this time, and on the
night of May 4th was at home with my family when, a little
after eight o'clock, we were startled by the noise of an explosion
which did not appear to be very far away. And this was

,886] FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST i7t

shortly followed by the noise of heavy wagons hurrying west on
Adams Street. These were police patrol wagons filled with
wounded policemen. I at once called my office by telephone
and learned of what had happened. A dynamite bomb had
been hurled into the midst of the police at the Haymarket
Square meeting, and many had been wounded.

Words Can Kill

The meeting had been held on Desplaines Street near the old
Haymarket, and within one hundred yards of a police station,
where the anarchists knew a large force was waiting to interfere
if any provocation should arise. A wagon was improvised as
a speakers' stand, and from it August Spies was the first to
address the meeting. During the course of his remarks he
shouted that it was the duty of the strikers to hang McCormick
and all other employers, and some one in the crowd had cried :
"Let's hang them now."

Parsons, who spoke next, asked the strikers in the names of
their wives and children to arm themselves and stand firmly
against the law.

The end of Samuel Fielden's speech, which followed Parsons's,
was reported in shorthand as follows:

You have nothing more to do with the law than to lay hands upon
it and throttle it until it makes its last kick. It turns your brothers
out on the wayside, and has degraded them until they have lost the
last vestige of humanity, and they are mere things and animals.
Keep your eye upon it. Throttle it. Kill it. Stab it. Do every-
thing you can to wound it, to impede its progress. Remember, be-
fore trusting them to do anything for you, prepare to do it yourself.
Don't turn over your business to any one else. No man deserves any-
thing unless he is man enough to make an effort to lift himself from
oppression. Is it not a fact that we have no choice as to our existence,
for we can't dictate what our labour is worth ? He that has to obey
the will of any one is a slave. Can we do anything except by the
strong arm of resistance? Socialists are not going to declare war;
but I tell you war has been declared on us, and I ask you to get hold of
anything that will help to resist the onslaught of the enemy and the

i72 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [188*

usurper. The skirmish lines have met. People have been shot.
Men, women, and children have not been spared by the capitalists and
minions of private capital. They had no mercy, so ought you?
You are called upon to defend yourselves, your lives, your future.
What matters it whether you kill yourselves with work to get a little
relief or die on the battlefield resisting the enemy? What is the
difference ? Any animal, however loathsome, will resist when stepped
upon. Are men less than snails and worms ? I have some resistance
in me; I know that you have too. You have been robbed and you
will be starved into a worse condition.

As Fielden uttered these last sentences the mob showed signs
of becoming unmanageable; they had gradually been worked
up to a high pitch of excitement and the police were summoned.
One hundred and eighty men, under Inspector Bonfield, ap-
peared upon the scene, and as they halted before the wagon on
which the speakers had stood, Police Captain Ward raised his
hand and shouted in a loud voice: "I command you, in the
name of the people of Illinois, to immediately and peaceably
disperse.'' Fielden had barely shouted back a reply: "We are
peaceable," when there was a flash, followed by a terrific
explosion. Someone from the sidewalk had hurled a bomb
into the midst of the platoon of policemen. One was killed
and sixty-six injured, seven of whom subsequently died.

The wagons which passed our house were taking the wounded
to the Cook County Hospital in West Harrison Street. The
facts which I could get from my office were for the moment very
fragmentary, but they were sufficient to convince me that it
was a time for immediate action. What we had feared for so
long had at last come to pass.

Hunting Down the Guilty

I called up Mr. William Pinkerton, of the great detective
agency, at his house, and asked him if he had a number of
reliable operatives on call, and when he assured me that he
had, I instructed him to put shadows over August Spies, Albert
Parsons, Samuel J. Fielden, and such other of the anarchist
leaders as could be reached, at the earliest possible moment.

FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 173

Their names were well known to us, for the same little coterie
had been preaching anarchy for months.

Early the next morning I hurried to my office, and shortly
afterward a messenger came with an urgent request that I go at
once to the court house to confer with the prosecuting attorney,
the city attorney, and the coroner. A very few minutes later
I joined them in the basement of the court house, where the
coroner was anxious to discuss the form of verdict to be rendered
over the body of Police Officer Mathias J. Degan, who had died
the night before. Julius S. Grinnell, the
prosecuting attorney, and Fred S. Win-
ston, the city attorney, had been discussing
with Mr. Herz, the coroner, various ques-
tions of law concerning the case when I
joined them. They were in trouble. No
one knew who had actually thrown the
bomb, and they both felt that this was
important in the conduct of the case. I
at once took the ground that the identity
of the bomb thrower was of no conse- JuIiu$ s- Grinnea

quence, and that, inasmuch as Spies and Parsons and Fielden
had advocated over and over again the use of violence against
the police and had urged the manufacture and throwing of
bombs, their culpability was clear. It seemed to me that there
was a well-settled principle of law which governed the case and
I cited certain decisions which seemed to me to have a bearing.

I finally went to a standing desk in the room and wrote out
what I considered to be a proper verdict for the coroner's jury
to render. In terms it was something like this: that Mathias
Degan had come to his death from a bomb thrown by a person
or persons unknown, but acting in conspiracy with August
Spies, Albert Parsons, Samuel J. Fielden, and others unknown.

After some more discussion my draft was accepted by Messrs.
Grinnel and Winston, and Coroner Herz hurried away to hold
his inquest. Parenthetically, it may be said that such verdicts
are usually dictated to juries. It was really a question of giving
them the law on a case and not dictating as to their opinions.

There now remained nothing but to cause the arrest of the

i74 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST fr886

guilty. Mr. Pinkerton notified us that Spies, Fielden, and
some others were under shadow, and soon warrants were issued
and they were lodged in jail charged with murder in the first
degree. Parsons had disappeared. Scores of suspects were
arrested and released for want of evidence, but the following
ringleaders of the movement were held : August Spies, Michael
Schwab, Samuel Fielden, Adolph Fischer, George Engel, Louis
Lingg, and Oscar Neebe. It was understood that one Schnau-
belt had actually thrown the bomb, but he could be found no-
where. Years after he was located in Germany and confessed
his guilt.

The trial began on the 14th of July and lasted until the 20th
of August. Joseph E. Gary presided, and Julius S. Grinnell
and William P. Back were, respectively, the representatives of
the State and the defence.

Throughout the various campaigns which we carried on
against grafters, ballot-box stuffers, and anarchists, I was
able to maintain a singularly personal relation with the men I
was seeking to punish. In Mackin's case, after he had served
something like two years in the State prison, I signed and cir-
culated a petition for his pardon, which the governor of the State
granted. I felt that the punishment imposed was adequate.
And when I caused the arrest for corruption of the brother of
the Democratic boss of the city, and while I was striving to
see that he should be given a term in the penitentiary, both
brothers said they really liked the Daily News because it al-
ways fought "face front."

While the anarchists were plotting I had in my employ cer-
tain of their number who wrote nightly reports, addressed them
to me confidentially, and mailed them in out-of-the-way parts
of the city. Not only that, but Joe Greenhut, a German
socialist reporter, and George A. Schilling, who wrote the lives
of the conspirators, frequently called at my office and told me
of the progress of "the impending revolution."

As I have said, Parsons made his escape on the night of the
Haymarket meeting. He went to Wisconsin, where he was in
hiding for some time. Finally, as the trial began, he came back
to Chicago and, with his wife, appeared at my office to ask me

i886] FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST ir,

to surrender him to the court. It happened that I was not in
my room at the moment, and they went to Captain Black, the
leading counsel for the defence, and he performed the office.

The trial was a memorable one, and while it lasted the most
intense excitement prevailed in Chicago; some further demon-
strations by the anarchists were to be expected. They had
threatened to blow up the court-house and to kill everyone who
was influential in the prosecution. Menacing letters written in
red ink, symbolic of blood, were sent to my wife, and the wives
of Judge Grinnell and Judge Gary were warned that their
children would be kidnapped and their homes destroyed by
dynamite.

Finally the case closed with a verdict of guilty. There was
an appeal, but in the end Judge Gary's view of the law was
sustained, and the verdict was confirmed. The sentence to
hang applied to seven men. Lingg secured a dynamite cart-
ridge and, inserting it between his teeth, exploded it and com-
mitted suicide.

Tense Days

As the day for the execution drew near the situation in
Chicago became very tense: there was a marked evidence of fear
that something desperate was about to occur, this something
to be by way of revenge by the advocates of anarchy. The
atmosphere seemed surcharged with trepidation. The nth of
November, 1887, a year and a half after the explosion of the
bomb at the Haymarket, was the day fixed for the hanging.
On the preceding Sunday I received a message from Parsons
asking me to visit him in the jail. Accompanying the request
was a note written in pencil, as follows :

I made haste to comply with the request. On my arrival I
was admitted to Mr. Parsons's cell and took a seat at his side

jj6 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [1887

upon the prison cot. He at once began an appeal. He urged
me to intercede with the governor for a commutation of his
sentence. We talked for two or three hours. I had no doubt
then, as I had had no doubt from the beginning, of his honesty
of purpose.

As we sat talking in his cell I told him of my belief that the
only safety of society lay in the maintenance of law and that I
could not arrange a commutation or a pardon unless he was
ready to admit his error. It was a very trying situation. I
longed for some chance to help him, and it was heartbreaking
that our minds could not meet. It was
inevitable that my respect for him was
greatly increased by his steady refusal to
yield in the slightest degree. But my
sense of duty was equally compelling.
Finally a fit of desperation seized him.
He cried out that he could never leave
his children a legacy of dishonour; that
at least he was not a coward, and that I
was responsible for his fate, and that all
that was necessary to save him was that I
Albert r. Parsons should make an effort. When I replied that

greatly as I grieved over it, I must follow the path which seemed
to me to be right, he suddenly became violent and made an
attack upon me. At that instant the door of his cell opened
and a bailiff entered and seized him while I withdrew. His
paroxysm of rage lasted but an instant. The bailiff followed
me into the corridor and locked the cell door.

The next day a Mr. John Worthy called upon me. He was
the owner of extensive stone quarries and was a well-known
citizen of Chicago. Samuel Fielden had been a teamster in his
service. He told me that Fielden had been a local Methodist
preacher in England, that he loved to make a speech, that he
became intoxicated with his own verbosity, that he was not a
man of evil intent, but one, to use Mr. Worthy's phrase, who
set his mouth to going and then went off and forgot it. He
was anxious to save Fielden's life, and he wanted me to in-
tercede for him with the governor of Illinois. I said precisely

,887) FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 177

the things that I had told Parsons, that penitence must precede
pardon, and that unless Fielden was ready to admit his error
I could not lift a finger in his behalf. He asked me to have a
talk with Fielden, and I said that I was quite ready to do so if
Fielden desired it. I saw Fielden and he wrote a letter of abject
recantation. Schwab heard of it, asked an interview, and wrote
a similar letter. Spies solicited an interview, was told of Fielden's
and Schwab's action, but like Parsons, stood his ground.

I took Fielden's and Schwab's letters to Springfield and pre-
sented them to the governor. He made haste to commute the
sentences of Fielden and Schwab to life imprisonment, but
declined to interfere in any of the other cases.

Over a quarter of a century has passed, and I am unable to
see how I could have taken any other course. I had no reason
to believe that in the circumstances I could have saved the
lives of either Spies or Parsons. Nor can I see that it would
have been right for me to attempt to do so unless they were
ready to recant. They were engaged in an effort to destroy all
law, and under our form of government, which I then believed
and still believe a necessary and proper institution among men,
they were not justified in asking the governor, a law officer, to
exercise the power which he derived from the law to save them.

The fateful Friday having arrived, threats of assassination
were by no means infrequent. There was a widespread expec-
tion that the jail would be destroyed by dynamite. A cloud of
apprehension lowered over the city. There was a hush, and
men spoke in whispers. Everyone awaited the hour for the
execution of the dread mandate of the law with solicitude, in-
deed with fear. I have never experienced quite the like condi-
tion. Then, at the appointed hour, four men were hanged. The
announcement went out, and as by the wind of the morning,
the cloud lifted and the business of the great city moved on in its
wonted way. The tragedy was over. And it was a tragedy.

Punishing Corrupt Public Officials

At this time it was evident that corruption was running riot
in the affairs of Cook County, in which Chicago is located. My

i7S FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [1887

attention was directed to the Board of County Commissioners,
and it was evident that there should be a house-cleaning. Julius
Grinnell, the prosecuting officer, and I were working together.
One F. W. Bipper, a butcher who supplied meats under contract
to the various charitable institutions, had grown rich in an
amazingly short time. His shop had taken on palatial propor-
tions. We also found that the county was paying for more
meat for the charitable institutions than it was possible for the
inmates and employees to consume.

One evening Grinnell and I wandered into Mr. Bipper' s
place and in true Russian fashion demanded that he give us
his books of account. He did not dare to refuse. We found
that we had become possessed of a gold mine.

Then Bipper offered to turn State's evidence. He said that
he had been paying each of the county commissioners, as well
as the supervising attendants of the county institutions, several
thousand dollars a year. He furnished us the evidence to con-
firm his confession. I took him, a willing prisoner, put him in
charge of Harry Wilkinson, one of my reporters, and sent him
off into a neighbouring state — this to prevent the "boodlers"
from either bribing or assassinating him.

Our disclosures created great excitement, and my personal
safety was threatened. One of the commissioners named
Wasserman kept a saloon which was the place of resort for the
accused. One evening he came to my office to kill me. He
found me alone, but was so drunk that he was easily disarmed
and sent about his business. One or two of the other commis-
sioners, notably "Buck" McCarthy, who was the political boss
of the stockyards, brought libel suits against the Daily News.
McCarthy, who was a giant in stature, also encountered a
Daily News reporter, Paul Hull, and beat him so badly that he
was sent to a hospital, and his life was in danger for some time.

I was surprised one day to receive a call from this ruffian.
I did not dare to refuse him admission to my office. My sur-
prise was increased when he said he wanted to "get rid of that
damned libel suit." He was very mild and wholly tractable.

"Well, McCarthy," said I, "you have charged me with being
a libeller. Are you willing to acquit me of that offence ? If you

i887] FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 179

will write a letter, which I will prepare, saying that the Daily
News has not libelled you in any way, I will consent to a dis-
missal of the case."

He said he would, the letter was written and published, and
the case summarily dismissed. His lawyer, the notorious Al-
fred S. Trude, met me the evening after the publication and
was very angry because I had, as he expressed it, made a
"monkey" of his client. "The poor fool didn't know that
he could dismiss his libel suit without your consent," said
Trude.

The case of the corrupt public officials came to trial, the
evidence was ample, and on August 5, 1887, eleven county
commissioners and one warden of the insane asylum, were found
guilty. Eight of the culprits were sent to the penitentiary
for two years, and four were fined a thousand dollars each.

Retiring from Journalism

I trust that the patient reader has not reached the con-
clusion that my activities as the editor of a daily newspaper
were wholly confined to thief catching. It is undeniable that
such a view would be measurably natural. The Daily News,
however, was not simply a detective agency. The exposure of
crime and the punishment of criminals were of great value to
the community and gratifying to the business office of the
paper, because they created sensations, made us notable, en-
larged our circulation, and filled our coffers. If commercial
success was all there was to journalism, our progress left noth-
ing to be desired. We had grown from nothing to fame and
fortune and there was great promise for the future. As I have
said, I had a staff of unequalled capacity. But — and there was
the rub — I alone was unequipped. Our very success was
embarrassing. I was prematurely prominent. I had reached
a dizzy and dangerous height. In the phrase of an anonymous
writer, I found it impossible to impersonate my reputation.

One day a Vermont school of which I had never heard, the
Middlebury College, to my utter amazement, made me an LL.D.,
in absentia. I felt as might one who had stolen the sacred relics

180 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [l888

from the altar of a Roman Catholic church. I had no educa-
tion justifying such distinction. Day by day there was borne
in upon my consciousness the conviction that an editor of an
American newspaper should, in the old Latin phrase, be fitted
to treat de omni re scibili et quibusdam aliis — that is, of every-
thing that was knowable and of certain other matters. The
fact that I had both initiative and industry was not enough.
And so, when in May, 1888, my partner, Lawson, to whose per-
sonality I was devoted, and for whom I had the largest respect,
was ready to buy my interest, I jumped at the chance. I felt
like a prisoner to whom freedom was suddenly possible.

The "better half" of our household had some misgiving about
my retirement from an enterprise so promising, but she was of
New England origin and had the Yankee sense of thrift, while
the Irish blood which controlled my veins was naturally finan-
cially profligate.

There was no trafficking as to price. We agreed without
difficulty. Lawson gave me an extra #100,000 for a stipulation
that I would keep out of newspaper work in Chicago for the
ensuing ten years. And one memorable evening I invited my
staff to a dinner and broke the news. I was out. And in the
Daily News, the following morning, appeared my valedictory
and Lawson's salutatory:

Upon the issuance of this number of the Daily News, I retire from
its editorship and from all participation in its management. I have
sold my entire stock interest to my long-time friend and business
associate, Mr. Victor F. Lawson, and he now becomes sole proprietor,
editor, and publisher.

As it may gratify some measure of curiosity to learn the reason for
this step, the following facts are made public:

From the day on which I founded the Daily News, in December,
1875, until recently, I have been engaged almost without remission in
the work incident to the editorial service. How arduous such labour
is only those who have struggled to found a metropolitan daily news-
paper can ever know. Taking the years together, it has impaired my
health. A few weeks ago I offered to sell my shares in the paper to
Mr. Lawson, and, after reflection, he reluctantly accepted my terms,
and the transfer has been effected. I leave the paper in the hands

,888] FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 181

of a gentleman concerning whose good character there can be no
question — whose purposes are the very best, whose judgment and
ability I esteem most highly. The public may rest assured that
under Mr. Lawson's editorial control the earnest endeavour of the
Daily News will be in the future, as in the past, to make for those
things which are true and honest and just and pure. The editorial
staff, admittedly without rival in the West for brilliancy or efficiency,
will continue unchanged.

And so, not without a goodly share of regret because circumstances
thus force me to abandon the one ambition of my life and to sunder a
thousand ties which seem well-nigh unbreakable, but with a clear sense
of duty to my family and myself, with a sincere acknowledgment of
the great debt of gratitude which I owe the people of Chicago and the
Northwest for a more than generous support, I bid the readers of the
Daily News a final farewell.

Chicago, May 16, 1888. Melville E. Stone.

Life is measured not so much by years as by achievement. To
have exercised the responsibilities of the editorial conduct of the Daily
News from its first issue to the present time and to have seen that
responsibility steadily widen in its application until it touches a daily
constituency the largest, with a possible single exception, in America,
may well fill the measure of one man's ambition, and as well discharge
one life's duty. In his withdrawal, therefore, from the exacting
cares of journalism Mr. Stone only claims his well-earned right to
much-needed rest and recovery of health. And yet Mr. Melville E.
Stone is too young a man to long face a purposeless future, and that
new interests will in proper time engage his efficient abilities may not
be doubted; but it may well be doubted whether any most successful
future accomplishment on his part can add, except by way of a con-
sistent endorsement, to the reputation of the founder of the Daily
News.

The confidence which Mr. Stone so generously expresses touching
the management which now continues its responsibility, in undivided
measure, for the conduct of the Daily News, shall be at least so far
assured as sincerity of purpose and faithfulness in endeavour may
contribute. The Daily News will continue to be an impartial, inde-
pendent, American newspaper, whose highest ambition shall be to
give its million-a-week constituency all the news, and to tell the
truth about it.

Chicago, May, 16, 1888. Victor F. Lawson.

182 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [1888

My bonds were broken. And I had left the paper in the
hands of one who shared in the largest measure all of my views
as to an editor's responsibility, whose integrity was beyond
question, and whose fidelity to the public weal was assured.
I was too proud to confess, either at home or to the public, the
real reason for this sudden and surprising abdication. I had
been forced to become something of a poseur, and hadn't the
courage to admit my lack of learning. And so I pleaded ill
health.

I found this quatrain, in Eugene Field's inimitable penman-
ship, in my mail the next day:

I am a light of other days,

A quenched and scattered fire,
Or, to adopt a finer phrase,

An old and broken lyre.

FIFTH DECADE

A Sentimental Journey

AFTER selling my interest in the Daily News, I made
L\ haste to set out upon my "sentimental journey." In
Jl \> a little more than a month I was on the ocean, chanting
the old Gascoigne roundelay :

Viva la joia!
Fidon la tristessa!

Did any one ever know a happier hour? Such a fortune as
fully satisfied all of one's dreams of avarice, care free, and in
the family treasure chest three beautiful and brilliant children.
And so we sallied forth.

On the British steamer they celebrated the Fourth of July.
Judge Daly of New York presided, and the Reverend Doctor
McArthur, famous pastor of Calvary Baptist Church of New
York, and I delivered the usual chauvinist speeches. Our
English fellow passengers were most considerate, so that we
got off with our lives.

On March 9th of this year, the old Kaiser died, and on June
15th, while we were about to sail, his son, "Unser Fritz" passed
away and William II became German Emperor.

Some weeks of sightseeing for the children in London and
then off for the Continent. We made our way by easy stages
to Geneva, Switzerland, and found an anchorage at the Chateau
Bellerive, some five miles out of John Calvin's city. We made
no mistake in choosing this as an abiding place. Built away
back in the early days of the fourteenth century by the Duke
of Savoy, it was ancient enough to interest any one of the
newest of new America. It was on the shore of the wonderful
Lake Geneva, in full view of Mont Blanc on one side and the
Jura Mountains on the other. A fraction of an old moat

183

184 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [1888

guarded one angle and a row of protecting poplars another.
It had come down from its lordly creator with few changes, and
relics of Bourbon days and Napoleonic days and all the days
that followed were at your hand in every quarter. The Byron
cottage, where George Gordon and Shelley spent some happy,
if not altogether reputable months, was at our door. So, also,
was the home of Dreyfus, the wronged. Here was obviously
the place of our quest, and here we made our foreign home for
over two years. Not that we spent much time there; it was a
haven of rest, but one from which to roam.

This is not to be a detailed story of our journeyings in Europe.
What with the inexpensive personally conducted tours, "tra-
velogs," and moving pictures, interest in a traveller's printed
descriptions of foreign scenery and customs has ceased. So it
follows that a reader would not, or at least should not, waste
his all-too-limited time on any travel recollections which I could
recount. Save a few things perhaps.

Our peregrinations reached from the Cataracts of the Nile
to the North Cape, and east as far as Nizhni Novgorod in Rus-
sia. It was over two years of vagabond life. We visited every
country in Europe except Spain and Portugal, which we saved
for a future journey.

In Goethe's phrase, we made all of our journeys "without
haste and without rest." Mr. John J.
Knickerbocker of Chicago, an eminent
lawyer, came over to travel with us. He
didn't stay long. On his return to Chicago,
being interviewed by a newspaper and
asked why he had gone abroad, he replied,
"For a rest."

"You travelled with Mr. Stone, did you
not? Why did you come home?"
"Again for a rest," said he
We were not at all like the American girl
who was asked how long she, her father, and her mother, had
spent in Florence. "One day," said she. "My father saw the
shops and restaurants; my mother the churches, and I the gal-
leries." We aimed to do more than the ordinary tourists did.

i886] FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 185

I had been interested, from my boyhood, in the activities of
Bonaparte, and, as we wandered, seized the opportunity to visit
and study almost every one of his battlefields from Italy to
Egypt and Germany and Russia, winding up at Waterloo.

We set out early in the winter of 1888-89 for the Levant. It
was perhaps as instructive a portion of the earth as we could
have turned to. And it was, I doubt not, a most edifying hour
for our visit. The world was preparing, all unconsciously,
yet with certainty, for the contest of the ages. The struggle
between the missionary spirit and the mercenary aim of man-
kind was on. As we viewed the scene, the admonition of Paul
to Timothy, that "the love of money is the root of all evil,"
had a new meaning. Before I reached Europe, William II
had ascended the German throne and begun his disastrous
career.

We went to Egypt. The year 1888 touched high-water
mark in the appropriation of African territory by the Christian
nations of western Europe. There had been protests against
these invasions, but they had been ineffectual. In 1882 Arabi
Pasha, foreseeing the predatory attitude of the so-called civil-
ized powers, had opened a campaign for "Egypt for lthe
Egyptians." In his suppression Britain took the lead. Lord
Charles Beresford bombarded the rebels at Alexandria, and Sir
Garnet Wolseley with his guns and his disciplined troops, won
the battle of Tel-el-Kebir. Arabi's forces were massacred and
he was sent in exile to Ceylon.

Britain thus added Egypt to her African conquests. Then
the other European states set out for their share of the plunder.
They worked so assiduously that five years later Bishop Arnett,
of the African M. E. Church, said at the great Parliament of
Religions in Chicago:

Every foot of land and every foot of water in Africa have been appro-
priated by the governments of Europe. If it please God, He may
raise up, not a Washington, not another Toussaint l'Ouverture, but
one who, with his sword will, at the head of his people, lead them to
freedom and equality. He will form a republican government whose
cornerstone will be religion, morality, education, and temperance,

186 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [iStt

acknowledging the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man;
while the Ten Commandments and the Golden Rule shall be the rule
of life and conduct in the great republic of redeemed Africa.

Up in the north, in Turkey, another sort of missionary
spirit was forcefully at work trying to impose the Moslem faith
upon the Christians of Asia Minor by fire and sword. Between
these extremes lay Bethlehem, Gethsemane, and Calvary, with
all the memories of two thousand years, enjoining the gentle
doctrine of the Golden Rule, the promises of the Beatitudes, the
new commandment, and "On earth peace, good will toward
men."

The cupidity of the European nations impressed me as
quite as malign as the ferocity of the Mohammedans. And so
it has seemed to me through all the years that have succeeded.
We Christians who have been ruthlessly encroaching upon the
rights of our weaker fellows, by the partition of Africa, of Asia,
and of South America, cannot hold ourselves blameless. War
after war has resulted, and the end is not yet. It will not do
to say that our merciless creation of an overlordship over a
powerless people is always justified by the spread of our civiliza-
tion. The "white man's burden " is far too often the burden of
a wholly unjust course of conduct which is certain to cause a
violent yet quite proper reaction. The Boer War and the
Boxer rising were perfectly equitable appeals to the Lex Talionis.
Even the great World War, which has just closed, was born of
the feeling on the part of the Germans that they had not been
given their share of the world's loot. So far as it is possible to
see, we are to go on sowing dragons' teeth.

Enterprising men go to China or Mexico, or where you will,
and secure a concession. At first they find no difficulty. But
the instant they, by modern methods, reap a large reward, the
native population feel that a birthright has been sold for a
mess of pottage, and trouble ensues.

And our missionaries, who deserve all honour for their self-
denying labours, are, after all, engaged in a service which does
not go hand in hand with these mercenary efforts. Komura
a Harvard graduate, who became a leading statesman of Japan,

,888] FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 187

once said, when he and I were talking of the unhappy differences
thus caused and of the possibilities in store:

I do not think your missionaries have made many converts among
our people. Yet they have done us great good. They have brought
with them doctors and nurses and hospitals, and taught us how to heal
the sick and to prolong life.

Wherefore, in the recent past, while we have been engaged
in predatory incursions upon the Asiatics and the Africans,
we have at the same time been building them up physically
and fitting them to give us battle. Meanwhile, we have just
sent to their death something like ten millions of the very flower
of western civilization. And the birth rate of Europe and
America is notoriously declining.

But this is wandering afield.

When we reached Egypt, Britain, as I have said, was in
control, and Sir Evelyn Baring, later Lord Cromer, was on the
throne, although the Khedive was the titular sovereign. Cro-
mer was a great constructive statesman, but at the moment of
our visit had not really begun his beneficent work. Later in
his life I came to know him and to esteem him very highly.

In the winter of 1888-9 tne marauding spirit of Drake and
Clive and Warren Hastings had not become altogether extinct
when dealing with "the white man's burden." We saw poor
blind Egyptians cut across the face with a kurbash by arrogant
British officers. The corvee (enforced unpaid labour on the
government work) was still exacted. Torture to compel
confession of crime was still resorted to, and the purchase of
girls as slaves was not uncommon, although clandestine. I
do not mean that any of these practices were approved by the
British authorities. They were not. On the contrary, for
some years there had been an effort at reform. But the chief
business of Sir Evelyn Baring was to look after the payment of
the Egyptian debt, and it was not until some years later that he
was able to reform, not only the methods of the native govern-
ment, but the conduct of some of his own countrymen.

A party of thirteen was arranged, and we set out for a camp-

188 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [xm

ing tour through Palestine. No railroads had yet been
constructed in the Holy Land, and, therefore, we travelled by
carriage or on horseback. Our stay in Jerusalem was the more
gratifying because we encountered a number of friends from
Chicago. Among these was the Methodist Bishop, Charles
H. Fowler. He was not alone one of America's most eloquent
pulpit orators; he was as well a travelling companion of most
agreeable character. He knew his Palestine as well as Baede-
ker, and was far more at home in its historical interest. In
common with all visitors to the hills of Judea, we were woefully
disillusioned. To find the Holy Sepulchre and the scene of
the Crucifixion under a single roof was enough to tax our
credulity to the utmost. But everywhere the rule of an Amer-
ican shop applied : "If you do not see what you want, ask for it."
And to ask meant to receive.

We went down to Hebron to see the Cave of Machpelah,
where Abraham and Jacob were buried. On the way we were
pelted with stones by hostile Moslems, and on our arrival were
permitted to see no more than the walls inclosing the alleged
tombs. The way to the Jordan was infested with brigands,
but we greased the palm of an Arab sheik and got through
safely to Jericho and the Dead Sea.

After visiting the massive ruins of Baalbek and going again,
like St. Paul, to Damascus, we wandered away to Smyrna, and
the Temple of Diana. We met King Milan of Servia, who
shared our visit with us.

We turned to Greece, and at Athens were entertained by Mr.
Schliemann, the famous archaeologist. He greeted us with
singular cordiality, chiefly because of his pride in the fact that
he was an American citizen, having been naturalized long before
in California. His father-in-law asked me innocently enough
if I knew anything about the Pennsylvania Railroad in my
country. When I said I did, he wanted to know if I thought
it well managed, because, he said, he was the largest individual
stockholder in the corporation. And he had never been in the
United States. On my return to America I found his statement
fully confirmed.

Mr. Oscar Straus was the American Minister at Constant!-

1888] FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 189

nople. He gave us a most cordial welcome. My friend,
"Sunset" Cox, had preceded him as our envoy. When I
knew Mr. Cox in Washington, some years before, he had been
a persistent critic of the American diplomatic officers because
of their alleged extravagance. It was somewhat amusing to
find that Mr. Straus had at his disposal a legacy from Mr.
Cox's incumbency in the shape of a fine fast-going yacht. On
it we had a delightful journey up the Bosphorus to the Black
Sea.

At Constantinople we also encountered Dr. Andrew D. White
of Cornell University, and established a friendship that lasted
as long as he lived.

Thence we journeyed on to Budapest and Vienna, halting
leisurely for some days at each city.

Days with Andrew D. White

One morning, as we were breakfasting at our hotel in Vienna,
Doctor White's card was presented. On it was written: "I am
here and lonely; let's get together." And so we had another
visit with this most attractive gentleman. His brain was a
perfect storehouse of valuable information. And we enjoyed
many things in common. I had long been interested in the
story of the French Revolution and the career of Bonaparte.
I had visited and studied a great number of the Corsican's
battlefields. Doctor White had a like penchant.

Years after, when he was for the second term our ambassador
to Germany, I was in Paris. I received a telegram from him
asking when I expected to be in Berlin. I answered it, and a
few days later arrived to find that he had cancelled an engage-
ment to go for an outing with Mrs. White on the island of
Riigen, and had taken a suite for me next to his own at the
Hotel Kaiserhof. We had a great week together. We went
down to Wittenberg and lived with the memories of Martin
Luther. I believe it was largely at my suggestion that Doctor
White wrote his exceedingly interesting " Recollections." He
had passed his seventieth year and had grown quite deaf. And
Roosevelt had hinted to me that he wanted the Berlin Em-

igo FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [1888

bassy for another friend. I told the doctor of the situation.
He resigned and went to the Italian Riviera and completed his
life story.

The Diedrichs Affair.

While I was in Berlin at a later date, Baron Richtofen, the
German Minister of Foreign Affairs, gave me an interesting

account of the famous Diedrichs epi-
sode at Manila. This wasi his ver-
sion: After Dewey's victory there
was a period of a year and a half in
I which the American people were in
doubt as to what should be done
with the Philippine Islands. The
United States was not a colonizing
nation and not a few American citi-
zens felt that we had a white ele-
phant on our hands. Doctor White,
then American Ambassador to Ger-

Baron Richtofen , i i * • r\ i

* many, shared this view. Une day
he called at the Foreign Office and asked Richtofen why Ger-
many would not take the Islands and relieve America of her
burden. The German Minister was surprised at the suggestion
but said that he would confer with the Kaiser and let the ambas-
sador know the result. After some delay Doctor White was
notified that Germany would accept his suggestion as a so-
lution of the problem. Thereupon the ambassador cabled to
the State Department at Washington a recommendaton in ac-
cordance with his plan. He received a summary reply rejecting
the whole proposition. Meanwhile, however, Admiral Died-
richs had been ordered to the Philippines.

I breakfasted with Prince Henry of Prussia, and while he
confirmed Baron Richtofen's story, he said he thought he had
some responsibility in the matter. He was at Hong Kong when
Diedrichs sailed and he approved the expedition, not alone
because it was supposed to be in accordance with the American
desire, but also because there were a number of German mer-

1898] FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 191

chants in Manila who desired protection at the hands of their
government.

Richtofen's account was fully confirmed by at least two
former attaches of the American Embassy. Then one day when
talking with the Kaiser he asked me to make no use of the ex-
planation given by Richtofen as coming from Germany because,
as he said, it would be arousing the unpleasant incident afresh,
and if the explanation was credited to them, would be regarded
as an attempt to excuse an impropriety. "You can doubtless get
the facts from Washington on your return to America," he said.

I came to America and saw Judge Day, who had been Secre-
tary of State under President McKinley. He remembered the
incident and the cable message from Doctor White, but thought
it was in the nature of a personal message which had never been
placed in the files of the State Department and that therefore
it was impossible to be secured textually. In his autobio-
graphy Admiral Dewey treated the subject, but his explanation
was wholly at variance with the accounts published at the time
in the newspapers. He said the differences with Diedrichs
grew out of a misunderstanding upon Diedrichs's part as to his
rights, that Diedrichs said: "I am here by order of the Kaiser";
that later when the subject was fully discussed Vice Admiral
von Diedrichs was able to understand Dewey's position and
that a difference of opinion about international law had been
adjusted amicably. When Dewey returned to Washington
and at a dinner at the White House on October 3, 1899, Presi-
dent McKinley mentioned the newspaper statements respecting
the friction. McKinley said: "There is no record of it in all the
files." Thus confirming fully Mr. Justice Day's statement to
me. Later, Doctor White, in talking with me, vigorously denied
any statement that he had offered the Philippines to Germany.
He said that his conversation with Richtofen was a purely per-
sonal and not in any sense an official communication. It seems
probable, however, that Diedrichs was sent to the Philippines
with the understanding that the American Government would
be glad to give Germany possession of the Islands.

I remember that about this time while riding on a train
with Senator John C. Spooner, he said that he proposed to

i92 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [1888

introduce a bill in the Senate to give the Philippine Islands to
the three nations which had shown a capacity for colonizing —
England, Germany, and France — and thus settle the problem.
This he never did.

The whole question of the final disposition of the Philippines
hung in suspense until the evening of October 9, 1 899. Chicago
was celebrating the anniversary of the great fire of 187 1. There
was a banquet at the Auditorium with something like one
thousand participants. I presided, and among the speakers
were President McKinley, Premier Laurier of Canada, and Vice
President Marescal of Mexico. It was at this dinner that the
President announced our purpose to hold the Islands for an
indefinite period. He had come fresh from the conference of
a week earlier, with Admiral Dewey.*

We set out for the North Cape by way of Hamburg and
Christiania. When near the Lofoton Islands, we encountered
the German Kaiser, we on a Norwegian boat, he on his im-
perial yacht, the Hohenzollern. It was early evening. To
do him honour, we dipped the Stars and Stripes and fired a
shot. In white sailor's costume, he mounted the bridge of his
vessel and sailed all about us, firing as he went, I should say,
fifty guns at least. He was not to be outdone in politeness.
We saw the midnight sun five nights in succession and were
exhausted for lack of sleep. He was less than forty miles away,
but, clouds intervening, never saw the midnight sun at all.
This was my first sight of a man whom later I came to know
with some degree of intimacy.

One journey to the North Cape, if the midnight sun is visible,
will suffice any one. It is a very trying expedition. Bishop
Charles H. Fowler and his wife were on our boat. He was asked
to preach one Sunday to the passengers, and suggested that I
give him a topic. "Why," I replied, "do you not take as
your text the 25th verse of the 21st Chapter of Revelations,
which declares, descriptive of heaven, that 'there shall be
no night there' ? " "They would throw me off the boat," he
answered.

*01cott's Life of McKinley. Vol. II, p. 96.

i888) FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 193

He always had an uncontrollable sense of humour. One
day he was presiding at the Methodist General Conference.
The Reverend Doctor Buckley of New York, who also loved a
bon moty sought the floor for a couple of hours, but was denied
recognition. Finally, when he got the floor, he opened with
great solemnity: "Beware of the snare of the Fowler!" and the
Bishop instantly finished the quotation from the 91st Psalm:
"and the noisome pestilence!"

We toured the land of the Vikings in carioles and then went
by way of Stockholm and Helsingfors to St. Petersburg. The
American charge d'affaires at the moment was John Martin
Crawford of Cincinnati, the brilliant translator of the Finnish
Saga, "Kalevala," from which Longfellow derived "Hiawatha."
We were made guests of Czar Alexander III at a review of
60,000 household troops at Tsarskoe Selo. It was an amazing
sight. The Czar improvised a staff" for the occasion, inviting
Nicholas, the hereditary Prince of Montenegro, the American
general, Daniel Butterfield, and the Crown Prince, later Nich-
olas II, to accompany him. We also witnessed a review of the
Russian monitors off Kronstadt. These were a reproduction
in modified form of Ericsson's famous boat. It was curious to
note how they moved along. They were from time to time
lowered until their decks were awash, a process which ultimately
led to the submarine.

We visited the famous fair at Nizhni Novgorod, whither the
people of Turkestan, Siberia, and almost every Asiatic country,
came in droves to sell their wares. On the Volga River we saw a
Mississippi River steamboat, which had been moved from St.
Louis to do duty in central Russia.

I took the treatment at Carlsbad, where in my daily walks
I was associated with Mr. William M. Evarts and Senator
William E. Chandler of New Hampshire. Mr. Evarts was
practically blind and Senator Chandler and I took turns in
guiding his footsteps and enjoying his brilliant observations.
We rose each morning at six o'clock, paid our visits to the
particular springs to which we were directed by our doctors,
and then went off for a five-mile walk before breakfast. It did
not worry me. I had learned how to walk before breakfast

194 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [i8$8

in the days when I was a carrier for the Chicago Tribune. This
was long ago, yet to-day, whenever the weather permits, I take
my morning walk. The lure of the fields at daybreak is one
which, to those who have been caught by it, will endure. It is
a most stimulating practice, both from a mental and a physical
point of view.

There was a visit to the Paris International Exposition, at
once amusing and edifying.

Then it was necessary to come to America on a business
journey. I left my family in Geneva. On my arrival in New
York I found the papers filled with alarming accounts of the
prevalence in Geneva of a new disease, "La Grippe." There
were something like 20,000 cases. As a result my family
hastened away, first to Munich and then to Dresden.

In Chicago on January XI, 1890, 1 was honoured with a pub-
lic dinner arranged by a committee of well-known citizens.

I set out for a return to Europe, taking with me my father
and my mother. We met the family at Dresden and spent
some months in the cities of Germany.

Then off to the British Isles and particularly to Ireland. We
went to my mother's birthplace, Rice Hill, adjoining Cavan.
It pleased her greatly to see the spot where she had spent her
early girlhood. The old barn where John Wesley had preached
was still standing. Down at Clara in King's County was the
ruin of the old castle which had been for centuries the seat of
the Fox family of Kilcoursey, from which my mother's mater-
nal line had descended, while at Galtrim House, very near the
Hill of Tara, we visited "The Fox," the living chief of the
ancient sept. We went down through Wicklow, stopping at
Bray for an hour with Michael Davit and calling at Avondale,
the home of Parnell.

Banking and Other Activities

We sailed for home from Queenstown in the early summer
of 1890. My holiday must end. It was requisite that my
children be educated in the United States. Herbert, our older
son, began "tutoring" and entered Harvard College that fall;

,890] FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST i95

Melville Edwin, the younger son, entered Phillips at Andover,
and later went to Harvard.

I bought some thirty-five acres at Glencoe, twenty miles
north of Chicago, and built a country home. The land was
on the shore of Lake Michigan, eighty feet above the water
level, beautifully wooded, and through it ran the famous boule-
vard, the Sheridan Drive. We lived here in the summer, and
at the Virginia Hotel, in Chicago, in the winter.

Back in Chicago, with nothing to do, I proposed a "lazy
men's club," and suggested that I would be a candidate for its
presidency, but this was not to be. After a few months with-
out my initiative two or three gentlemen set out to organize a
new national bank. They invited me to take some stock.
Then, much to my surprise, I was asked to become president.
I declined on the ground that I had no experience to justify
such an undertaking, but said I would accept the vice presi-
dency if a suitable chief officer could be secured, with the
understanding that if all should go well within a year and then
I should feel justified and the directors should concur, I might
become president. With this understanding, Mr. O. D.
Wetherell, a wealthy lumberman and former city treasurer of
Chicago, was made president and I took second place. Thus
the Globe National Bank began its activities. In a year Mr.
Wetherell and I changed places.

Very soon after the trustees of the famous Drainage Canal
unanimously elected me as their treasurer. I accepted on con-
dition that no compensation be attached to the service. I
marketed many millions of dollars of their bonds and thus
financed the business, purely as a public service. It was in
the construction of this canal that the contractors learned the
way to dig the Panama Canal a quarter of a century later.

Fresh opportunities and responsibilities crowded upon me in
quick succession. I found myself busier than I had ever been
before. I had not been a banker for a year when I was elected
president of the Bankers' Club of the city.

The presidency of the Citizens' Association, an organization
looking to the guardianship of the civic weal, and of the Civil
Service Reform League, and the vice-presidency of the Union

i96 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [l892

League Club, followed. Also membership in the Commercial
Club, a select body of fifty of the leading citizens of Chicago.
And a member of the board of governors of the Chicago Club.
I received the following letter:

Mayor's Office, Chicago, March 30, 1892.
Hon. M. E. Stone, City.

Dear Sir:

The law requires that in the month of July next the mayor must
appoint seven members upon the School Board, to fill vacancies
occurring at that time.

It will afford me great pleasure if you will permit me to send your
name to the Council as one of the seven members whom I must ap-
point in July next. Your long, active, and unselfish efforts in behalf
of public morality and good government render you especially qualified
for this position, and I should esteem myself fortunate if you will
accept this nomination, inasmuch as it is my desire to place upon this
board only men whose positions in this community are such as to
become a guarantee that its affairs will be ably, honestly, and im«=
partially administered.

Trusting I may receive a favourable reply, I remain, with great
respect,

Your obedient servant,

Hemp Washburn, Mayor.

I was forced to refuse the offer.

I was more than "mentioned" for mayor of Chicago, and if
I had not declined the nomination I might have been elected.

More important, Judge Gresham, who had retired from the
bench in 1893, when he was appointed Secretary of State in
President Cleveland's second term, died in 1895, ana" "then a
ridiculous effort was made in Chicago, entirely without my
knowledge or approval, to induce President Cleveland to ap-
point me as his successor. There was a two- or three-day stir
about the matter, and then it died out as it should have done,
and Richard Olney, of Boston, was appointed. While the
tempest was brewing in the teapot in Chicago, however, there
was room for an amusing incident. Although I had been a
Mugwump in the campaign of 1884, and although Mugwumps
were anathema in the Union League Club of Chicago, they had

,893] FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 197

done me the honour of electing me vice-president. One morn-
ing as I entered the club a somewhat distinguished judge, who
was a close personal friend, but always a rabid Republican,
accosted me with, "I see, Mr. Stone, they have presented you
as a candidate to succeed Judge Gresham as Secretary of
State." I laughed in a stupid apologetic fashion as I replied
that I hoped the President had sense enough to appreciate that
no such appointment should be made, that I was not an aspir-
ant for the place, and added that I had great confidence in
Mr. Cleveland's wisdom. I am certain the Judge had no idea of
the malapropos nature of his reply when, with all seriousness
he said, "Well, I don't know, Mr. Stone, Cleveland has done

a lot of d d strange things."

At the unveiling of a statue to Franklin in Lincoln Park, the

orator, Henry Estabrook, said: (

He [Franklin] was elected alderman, assemblyman, postmaster,
and the president of more things of a public and quasi-public char-
acter than Melville E. Stone ever thought of.1

This was a time in which, however, I was occupied with
serious matters; as John Morley said, "like many another man
of grave [or dull] temperament, I sought snatches of relief from
boredom by clapping on a fool's cap at odd moments."

Before my return from Europe, Congress had passed an act
providing for a world's fair to commemorate the 400th an-
niversary of the discovery of America, and had chosen Chicago
as the city in which the fair should be located. A number of
organizations were set up for the entertainment of our guests.
A large houseboat was moored within a breakwater off" the lake
shore and fitted up as a club to be resorted to on hot summer
nights. There was a quaint "hole in the wall" in a back
alley, a veritable chamber of horrors, bedecked with coffins,
human skulls, a bit of rope on which a culprit had been hanged,
and a hundred other mementoes of crime. It was the "White-
chapel Club" where a band of jolly Bohemians made merry
with the truly conventional Uitlander.

'Estabrook's Speeches, p. 85.

iq8 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [1893

There was the famous Fellowship Club which for some years
gave a series of winter-season dinners of a most elaborate sort.
Badinage and repartee ran riot. There were only fifty mem-
bers, but these were carefully chosen.

The first great dinner was on the evening of October 20, 1892,
following the dedication of the Fair. Some six hundred guests
were present. There were: the Vice-President of the United
States, many members of the Cabinet, the Chief Justice and
most of the associate justices of the Supreme Court, Cardinal
Gibbons, several Episcopalian and Methodist bishops, twenty-
nine governors of states, and other notables too numerous to
mention. Mr. James W. Scott presided and there were several
toast-masters. It was my duty to introduce a man who later
became president of the nation, William McKinley, Jr., Gover-
nor of Ohio.

Eugene Field and I wrote topical songs to popular airs for
these dinners. When the president, James Scott, died in 1895,
I was chosen as his successor. And when I left Chicago, the
club ceased to exist. I was sovereign at a Twelfth Night frolic
where the literati of our really cultivated city assembled.

A number of eminent artists came to arrange the decoration
of the buildings for the Great Fair. Among them were Frank
Millet, Hopkinson Smith, Elihu Vedder, and Walter Crane,
with all of whom we soon became friends. Conan Doyle was
with us for a short time. He had been writing the Sherlock
Holmes adventures and we had frequent interesting talks on
detective methods. George W. Cable, Charles Dudley Warner,
Edmund Clarence Stedman, Edward Everett Hale, Mr. Ho-
wells, and Mark Twain were also of our visitors. There was
Paul du Chaillu, the famous African traveller — Friend Paul.
He was always full of good cheer, entertaining us with his won-
derful tales of Ethiopia and the Land of the Vikings and Russia.
And Paul Blouet, "Max O'Rell." He was a fellow of infinite
jest. I found him one day at the Union League Club. He
was tearing mad. "What troubles you?" I asked.

"That scoundrel, Mark Twain," he snapped out. "He is at
least no gentleman. I wrote a serious paper on the United
States, giving my impressions of this great country, as many

l89SJ FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST igg

other foreign literary men have done. I noted certain aristo-
cratic tendencies, and remarked upon the large number of per-
sons studying their geneological tables to learn whether they
were qualified for membership in such societies as the Sons of
the American Revolution or the Colonial Dames. They all
seemed to be trying to find out who their grandfathers were
and what they had done, I said. Now, how do you think Sam
Clemens commented on this perfectly proper observation. He
said I was quite right in all I said, and that the only difference
between France and America was that every Frenchman seemed
to be trying to find out who his father was."

My most intimate friend was George Royal Peck, who had
come from Kansas to Chicago to become general counsel of the
St. Paul Railway. I think of all the men I have ever known,
he knew more about more things. His fund of information
upon literary topics was marvellous. I think he was the one
man who had ever declined a gubernatorial appointment to the
United States Senate. I had met him back in 1884 when as
a delegate to the National Republican Convention, he had
ardently favoured the nomination of Arthur, while his co-
delegates were for Blaine. He was a brilliant orator.

One day Senator Thurston of Nebraska, and Henry Watter-
son were sitting as Tarn and the Souter were wont to do.

"Oratory is a thing of the past," quoth "Marse" Henry.
"The days of Webster and Clay and Calhoun are gone forever.
There are only three great orators, you and I and George Peck,
to-day."

"Why lug in Peck, he isn't here?" retorted Thurston.

While living at Topeka, Peck and his friend Rossington,
another eminent lawyer, went to Europe. It was their first
ocean voyage.

They were stout, hearty fellows, full of fun, and their journey
in Europe was a veritable lark. They paid tips with lavish
hands, and did all of the regulation things that "first-timers"
are wont to do when visiting Europe. They returned, and
one evening in a Topeka club, were relating their wonderful
experiences. "But,* said Peck, "we Americans are fools to
buy our clothes of English tailors simply to save a little money.

200

FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST

I1893

They never give a good fit." He wore at the moment a Lon-
don-made suit.

"What is the trouble with the garments you have on?" asked
some one.

"They are too small. Can't you see," replied Peck.

"Well," came the quiet retort, "you should bear in mind,
Mr. Peck, that you were not nearly so big a man in England as
you are in Kansas."

And there were almost daily luncheons and dinners in honour
of the distinguished visitors to the World's Fair. This "keen
encounter of our wits" was enjoyable but exacting.

Visit of W. T. Stead

In the fall of 1893 WilliaYn T. Stead cam^ to Chicago, and
I enjoyed an interesting, and in some respects, amusing in-
timacy with him. He was an amazing
zealot in respect of any mission to which
he felt that duty called him. One night
as we "philosophized" before a blazing
hearth he broke out with this exclamation :
" Stone, there is this difference between
us : you are a journalist first and reformer
thereafter, while I am a reformer first and
a journalist thereafter."

However candid was his personal thrust,
there can be no doubt of the accuracy of
his self-estimate. He was a great journal-
ist, but before that he was even more
than a reformer. He was an evangelist.
In his work, all his life, he had a pro-
found contempt for anything like conservatism. He was
nothing if not militant. When he enlisted in a cause he stopped
at nothing to gain his end. The suspicion sometimes raised
by the very sensational character of his exposures, that he was
a reformer for notoriety and profit, was wholly unjust. He
was undeniably sincere. He would cheerfully sacrifice every-
thing for a conviction.

W. T. Stead

i893] FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 201

So it was when he made his attack in the columns of the
Pall Mall Gazette on London as "The Modern Babylon." One
may in fairness doubt the wisdom of certain things he did, but
no one should doubt either his honesty or his courage.

After his retirement from the editorship of the Pall Mall
GazetUj and his release from a three-month term of imprison-
ment, early in 1886, he floated about, doing desultory writing,
and then founded, first, the English Review of Reviews, and
soon thereafter, in partnership with Dr. Albert Shaw, who had
worked for me on the Chicago Daily News, the American
review bearing the same name. Both enterprises were success-
ful, but they by no means filled the time of the energetic Stead.

He had been told, as had many others, that of all places on
earth, Chicago was undeniably the wickedest, and therefore it
was obviously the fittest spot for an evangelist's missionary
effort.

He had not been in the city a week before I received a note
from him, reading as follows :

Chicago, December 8, 1893.
M. E. Stone, Esq.,

Dear Sir:

Mr. McClaughry, late chief of police in Chicago, told me that there
was no one who had more information about Chicago as it is, and
better judgment as to what ought to be done there, than yourself.
What he said naturally made me anxious of having an opportunity of
meeting you, if only for half an hour. I shall be glad to wait upon
you at any hour that may suit your convenience.

W. T. Stead.

I may say in passing that Mr. McClaughry was a Christian
gentleman who enjoyed the esteem of every good citizen, and
whose service as chief of police had contributed in large measure
to make Chicago a well-governed city.

I invited Stead to dine with me, and he came. I tried
to tell him frankly the story of the place, which in some
aspects had no counterpart anywhere on earth; how in a man's
lifetime it had grown from a petty Indian trading post into a
great metropolis with a million of inhabitants; how men well

202 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [1893

under middle age had accumulated great fortunes, not by
speculation, but in legitimate commerce; and how all this had
made for an inordinate devotion to dollars; and yet how there
was a countervailing public spirit and civic pride which a few
months before had found expression in the great Columbian
Exposition, which for artistic beauty and real dignity had
never been equalled, and it was difficult to see how it ever could
be surpassed. And, as for the morals of the place, it was
rather better than worse than other like cities of the world. Its
faults were many, but its virtues plenty.

This was unconvincing to a man who had come four thou-
sand miles to see the modern counterpart of the "cities of the
plain." So thanking, but all the time doubting me, he went his
way. He went to find the seamy side of things, and, of course,
he found what he was looking for. Because it was there, as
it always is in any large agglomeration of human beings.

He took up his residence in a little room over a disreputable
saloon and consorted wholly with the lost souls of the under-
world. All this, be assured, for a high and holy purpose. He
was in the mire, but not of it. He wallowed for a month. Then
he came out and wrote his sensational book: "If Christ Came
to Chicago." It was an honest effort, but its author had seen
but one side, and it was therefore grotesquely unfair.

Quite satisfied with his work, Stead came again to see me.
He bore a letter from his partner, Doctor Shaw. It seemed that
he had written Shaw, telling him the work was done and asking
advice as to his future movements. And the reply puzzled
him. He came to me as a common friend, to solve the riddle.

Doctor Shaw, who greatly respected Stead, but had little
sympathy with his bizarre methods of reform, wrote some-
thing like this:

You say you have finished your work in Chicago, and you ask what
I think you should do now. My reply is that you should fix a very
early date for your sailing to England, and should bend all your
energies to that end.

Poor, sincere Stead did not at all see the fun of Shaw's reply,
and when I burst into laughter, he was offended.

i893] FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 203

And yet he had a sense of humour. When Albert Edward
of England went down to visit the Wilsons at Tranby Croft
and have a game of baccarat, and Lady Brooke told of Sir
William Gordon-Cumming and the charge of cheating at cards,
and there was a national scandal, Stead quietly said of it:

Let us study the power of prayer. Edward was born in November,
1841; even before his birth there were prayers that the heir to the
throne would prove a worthy Christian sovereign. And there were
so many hundreds of thousands of churches in the world offering this
prayer. They have offered it morning, noon, and night through all
the years. Compute it and you will find that untold millions of such
prayers have gone to heaven. The "baccarat scandal" is the net result.

It was more impressive than Tyndall's famous prayer gauge.
Yet Stead was not sacrilegious. On the contrary, he was a
devout Christian, as he understood Christianity.

After he had written his book about Chicago, after he felt
the power of sin in that pioneer western city, he wondered if
it was not his duty to spend his life there in a work of reforma-
tion. And he came again to me to consult about the matter.
We spent an evening together. I frankly told him of a burning
hope that I might again edit a paper in the place and do some-
thing of value in the city in which I had lived from childhood.
But I also spoke of a call to print a paper in Boston. The next
day he wrote me the following letter:

January 8, 1894.
My dear Mr. Stone :

I left your hotel last night with a sense of relief — of having come out
into the light. I do not think you will start that paper in Boston.
I think you will start it here in Chicago, and I am right glad. Glad for
public reasons, because you are the only man to do it. My suggested
weekly would be a miserable pis aller compared to your daily, and glad
for selfish, personal reasons of my own, because with one so im-
measurably more competent than myself in the field, there will be no
longer any imperative demand for the sacrifice of my home life and
English work, which, but for your stepping into the breach, I was
beginning to fear would be exacted from me.

In the English-speaking world there are only two centers — London

204 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [1893

and Chicago. If the immense possibilities of leadership in Chicago
seemed to summon me from London, they will not let you dream of
Boston. If I can help you in any way — not that I think you are in the
least likely to need any help — you can rely upon my loyal and enthus-
iastic support, either here or in London, where perhaps in the future
I may be able to serve you in some way or other at present not clearly
revealed to me.

I am extremely glad to have had that talk last night.

1 1 am,
Yours very sincerely,

William T. Stead.

And so we parted.

I told him in our conference of a new type of newspaper of
which I had dreamed, to be in tabloid form, with small pages
and many of them. He went back to London, tried it, but
without success.

After that we frequently wrote each other. But I never saw
him again. H*e intended to give me the pleasure of a visit,
when he went down on the ill-fated Titanic, bound for New
York.

Evolution of News Gathering

Less than a year after I became a bank president I was
called to the Associated *Press. A crisis had developed in the
affairs of the organization.

*The business of news gathering and news publishing, as we
know it, is wholly an American idea, having taken its rise in this
country in the early years of the last century. There were
coffee houses in London and New York, where the men had been
accustomed to gather to exchange the current gossip, and
letters on important topics had occasionally been published;
but before this time no systematic effort had been made to keep
pace with the world's happenings. Then came the newspaper,
supplanting the chap book, the almanac, and the political
pamphlet.

In the new development half a dozen men were notable.
Samuel Topliff and Harry Blake were the first news-mongers.

*From articles on "The Associated Press," Century Magazine, 1906,

i827] FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 205

Topliff established a "news-room" in Boston, where he sold
market reports and shipping intelligence; and Blake was a
journalistic Gaffer Hexam, who prowled about Boston Harbour
in his rowboat, intercepting incoming European packets, and
peddling out as best he could any news that he secured. Both
became famous in their day.

Later, in 1827, Mr. Arthur Tappan, the merchant, philan-
thropist, and reformer, founded the Journal of Commerce in
New York to combat the growing influence of the theatre,
which he regarded as pernicious. But the playhouses proved
too strong for him, and within a year he sold the paper to David
Hale and Gerard Hallock, two young Boston journalists. They
were familirr with the work of Topliff and Blake, and promptly
transplanted their methods to New York. They discarded
the rowboat, and built a handsome seagoing yacht, which
they named the Journal of Commerce, and ran twenty or thirty
miles beyond Sandy Hook to meet incoming vessels. There
had previously been a small combination of New York papers
to gather ship news; but the building of the Journal of Commerce
incensed the other members, and they promptly expelled Hale
and Hallock, who replied in a card, which was printed in their
newspaper on October 9, 1828, as follows:

Yesterday our new boat, the Journal of Commerce, went below for
the first time, fully manned and equipped for service. We understand
that her rival, the Thomas II. Smith, is also in readiness for similar
duty. An opportunity is now afforded for an honorable competi-
tion. The public will be benefited by such extra exertions to procure
marine news, and we trust the only contention between the two boat
establishments will be, which can outdo the other in vigilance, per-
severance, and success. In one respect, and in one only, we expect
to be outdone; and that is, in collecting news on the Sabbath. This
we shall not do, and if our Monday papers are, as we trust they will
not often be, deficient in giving the latest marine intelligence, we must
appeal to the candour and moral principle of our subscribers for a
justification. " -

Hale and Hallock also erected upon the Highlands, near
Sandy Hook, a semaphore telegraph, to which their schooner

206 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [1827

signalled the news, and which in turn transmitted it to Staten
Island. Thence the news was carried to the publication office
in New York City. In this way they were able to outdistance
all competitors. They also introduced to American journalism
the "extra edition." The scenes about the office of the Journal
of Commerce in those days aroused great public interest, and
before long the proprietors enjoyed a national reputation.

Not content with outdistancing their rivals in European news,
they also established a pony express from Philadelphia, with
eight relays of horses. By this means they were frequently
able to publish Southern news twenty-four hours in advance
of their competitors. This system worked so successfully that
the Federal Government took it over; but Hale and Hallock
extended their express to Washington, and thus maintained
their supremacy. They frequently published official news
from the capital before it had been received by the Government
officers in New York. In one instance a Norfolk paper, pub-
lished two hundred and thirty miles south of Washington,
copied the Washington news from the New York Journal of
Commerce, which it received by sea before it had any direct
advices. In time this enthusiasm waned, but with the advent
of James Gordon Bennett and the New York Herald it revived,
and the zeal then displayed has never been surpassed.

The battle royal which was carried on between General
James Watson Webb of the New York Courier and Enquirer
on the one hand and Bennett of the Herald and Hale and
Hallock of the Journal of Commerce on the other, is historic.

When the war with Mexico broke out, Mr. Bennett was able,
through his system of pony expresses, to publish accounts of
battles even before the Government despatches were received.
He also had a carrier-pigeon service between New York and
Albany for the annual messages of the Governor, which he
printed ahead of everyone. The Cunard liners ran between
Liverpool and Boston, and Bennett, with characteristic energy,
instituted a scheme for hurrying the news by pony express
from Boston to New York.

Topliff and Blake had been succeeded by D. H. Craig, who
established himself as an independent news collector and ven-

FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST

2Q-J

der at Boston., and displayed extraordinary alertness. As the
Cunard boats approached the harbour, Craig met them and
received on his schooner a budget of news
from the incoming vessel. Then by carrier-
pigeons he communicated a synopsis of the
news to his Boston office, frequently releas-
ing the birds forty or fifty miles from port.
Meanwhile, Professor Morse was strug-
gling with his invention of the magnetic
telegraph. In 1838 he completed his ma-
chinery and took it to Washington on the
invitation of President Van Buren; but it
was not until 1843 that Congress appro-
priated $30,000 to build an experimental line,
to construct this between Washington and Baltimore, and it
was not until the latter part of 1844 that it proved of any service
for the transmission of news.

D. H. Craig

It took a vear

The First Associated Press

With the advent of the telegraph Craig determined to make
use of this novel agency in his business, but encountered the
hostility of those hav-
ing a monopoly of
Morse's patents, who
desired to control the
news business them-
selves. There was a
sharp contest. The New
York papers joined'
forces with the tele-
graph people, and in
1848 organized the As-
sociated Press, with Mr. Hallock as president and Dr. Alex^
ander Jones as manager.

Its membership was limited to the proprietors of the six
or seven New York dailies, and its purpose was to gather news
for them only. Later, other newspapers in the interior arranged

Gerard Hallock

Alexander Jones

208 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [l8s2

ffor exchanging news with it, and thus the enterprise developed
into one of great importance.

A hundred interesting stories are told of the experiences of
Manager Jones. Because of the excessive cost of transmitting
messages by the imperfect telegraph lines of that day, he
devised a cipher, one word representing a sentence. Thus the
word "dead" meant, in the Congressional reports, "After some
days' absence from indisposition, reappeared in his seat."
When they desired to convey this information respecting Sena-
tor Davis of Massachustts, they wired, "John Davis dead."
But the word "dead" was not recognized as a cipher by the
receiving operator, and all the papers of New York and Boston
proceeded to print post-mortem eulogies, much to Davis's
amusement.

When the Whig convention of 1848 assembled at Philadel-
phia, Jones planned to score a great "beat." The wires did not
cross the river at Jersey City, and therefore he arranged for a
flag signal across the Hudson River. If General Taylor should
prove to be successful, a white flag was to be waved. Un-
fortunately, another company was also signalling by white flags
on another subject, and so Jones was misled into announcing
Taylor's nomination before it happened.

Jones was a better general manager than prophet. In the
light of to-day, the following declaration, which he published in
1852, is interesting:

All idea of connecting Europe with America, by lines extending
directly across the Atlantic, is utterly impracticable and absurd.
It is found on land, when sending messages over a circuit of only
four or five hundred miles, necessary to have relays of batteries and
magnets to keep up or to renew the current and its action. How is
this to be done in the ocean, for a distance of three thousand miles ?
But by the way of Behring's Strait the whole thing is practicable, and
its ultimate accomplishment is only a question of time.

Craig, against whom the efforts of the association were
directed, did not, however, surrender. As the Liverpool boats(
touched at Halifax en route to Boston, to this point he turned
his attention. He had a synopsis of European happenings

i860] FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 209

carefully prepared in Liverpool and placed in the purser's
hands; and, on the arrival of the vessel at Halifax, the purser
sealed this budget in a tin can, which was thrown overboard
and picked up by Craig's representative, who hurried it on to
Boston and New York by pony express, completely outstripping
all rivals. The New York and Boston newspapers then char-
tered a steamer to express news from Halifax to Boston, with
the idea of telegraphing it from Boston to New York. But
Craig was equal to the emergency. Putting a pair of his best
carrier-pigeons in a basket, he travelled by the land route to
Halifax in season to take passage on the press express boat for
Boston; and when the steamer approached the shores of Massa-
chusetts his pigeons, heavily freighted with the European news,
were sent off from a window in his state-room. This was so
adroitly done that, long before the express boat landed, Craig's
pigeons had reached the city and the news they brought had
been published. His opponents then gave up the fight, and
elected Craig their general manager.

For the ensuing forty years they had no rival worthy of
note. Hallock retired in 1861 and Craig in 1866. David M.
Stone succeeded as president and James W.
Simonton as general manager. In 1882
there came a change.

The Associated Press had grown to be
all-powerful in its field, and an offensive
and defensive alliance had been formed
with the great Reuter News Agency, which
had meanwhile grown up in Europe; but
the Association was owned by seven New
j.w.'simonwn York papers, which gathered such news as

they desired and sold it to the newspapers
of the inland cities. Important subsidiary associations, such
as the New England Associated Press and the Western Asso-
ciated Press, had been organized. They bought the news of
the New York association and made payment in money, as
well as a contribution of the news of their own localities; but
they had no voice in the management. The Western Associa-
tion finally revolted. There was a short-lived contest that

2io FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [1882

ended in a compromise. The West was admitted to a partner-
ship in the direction of the business. Two Western men,
Richard Smith of Cincinnati and W. N. Haldeman of Louisville,
joined Whitelaw Reid and James Gordon Bennett in an ex-
ecutive committee; Charles A. Dana was added as a fifth mem-
ber and chairman; and William Henry
Smith, who had served the Western as-
sociation as manager, was appointed gen-
eral manager. The compact ran for a
term of ten years.

All this while the Association had con-
fined its energies to the gathering and
distribution of what is known among
newspapermen as "routine news" — ship-
ping, markets, sporting, Congressional re-

William Henry Smith J ^1 <<L L >> r J >

ports, and the bare bones or a day s
happenings. The owners of the great metropolitan dailies who
controlled it preferred to hold the management in leash so that
they might display enterprise with their special reports of the
really interesting events. The smaller papers, which were wholly
dependent upon the Association for general news, could not
afford extensive special telegrams, and therefore desired the or-
ganization to make comprehensive reports of everything.

In the earlier days telegraphic facilities were so limited and
the cost of messages was so great that it was necessary to report
everything in the briefest form. It was enough that the facts
were disclosed, and little heed was paid to the manner of
presentation. Moreover, a great majority of those writing
the despatches were telegraph operators destitute of literary
training.

The advantages of an Associated Press newspaper were very
great. It was scarcely possible for a competitor to make head-
way against the obstacles which he was compelled to face. Not
only was the burden of expense enormous, but the telegraph
company which was in close alliance with the Association
frequently delayed his service, or refused to transmit it at any
price. It followed that the quantity of news which an editor
was able to furnish his readers became the measure of his enter-

1884] FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 211

prise and ability. It was his proudest boast that his paper
printed " all the news." James Gordon Bennett, Sr., of the New
York Herald, and Wilbur F. Storey of the Chicago Times, set
the pace, and won much fame by lavish expenditures for
telegrams, which were often badly written.

During Mr. Smith's administration substantial improve-
ments were effected. Arrangements were made with the
telegraph companies for leased wires, which were operated by
the Association itself. There was also not a little display of
real enterprise.

The Western papers which had been admitted to a share
in the management demanded more enterprise and a report
of more varied character. The policy of limiting the field
to "routine news" was abandoned, and the institution began
to show evidence of real journalistic life and ability. It startled
the newspaper world by occasionally offering exclusive and
well-written items of general interest. When Mr. Blaine was
closing what promised to be a successful political campaign in
1884, it was an Associated Press man who shattered all prece-
dents, as well as the candidate's hopes, by reporting Doctor
Burchard's disastrous "Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion"
speech. This was then an unheard-of display of enterprise.

Two years later the same reporter scored again. He had
been sent to Mount McGregor with many others to report
General Grant's last illness. He was shrewd enough to arrange
in advance with the doctor for prompt information of the final
event. A system of signals had been agreed upon and when,
one day, the doctor sauntered out upon the veranda of the
Drexel cottage and drew a handkerchief from his pocket and
wiped his hands, the reporter knew that the General was
dead and telegraphed the fact throughout the world. For
months afterward it was spoken of with wonder as the Asso-
ciated Press "scoop."

A Masterpiece of Reporting

Then came the Samoan disaster, in 1885, and with it a dis-
closure that an Associated Press man might not only be capable

212 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [1885

of securing exclusive news, but might also be able to write it in
a creditable way. Mr. John P. Dunning of the San Francisco
bureau happened to be in Apia when the great storm broke over
the islands. In the roadstead were anchored three American
war vessels, the Trenton, Nipsic, and Vandalia; three German
warships, the Adler, Olga and Ever; and the British cruiser
Calliope. All of the American and German ships were driven
upon the coral reefs and destroyed, involving the loss of one
hundred and fifty lives. The Calliope, a more modern vessel
with superior engines, was able to escape. As she pushed her
way into the heavy sea, in the teeth of the hurricane, the jackies
of the Trenton "dressed ship," while her hand played the British
national anthem. It was a profoundly tragic salutation from
those about to die.

Mr. Dunning's graphic story, which will long be accepted
as a masterpiece of descriptive literature, was mailed to San
Francisco, and a month later was published by the newspapers
of the Associated Press. It was a revelation to those who had
long believed the organization incapable of producing anything
more exciting than a market quotation. It was also an in-
spiration to those who were to succeed Mr. Smith in the ad-
ministration of the burden. It revealed the possibilities in
store for the Association.

Unfortunately, however, too many of the employees were
chosen because of their familiarity with the technical side of
the telegraph business, and were incapable of writing the news
in interesting fashion. In addition, the organization was
loosely planned, or perhaps it would be more accurate to say
was not planned at all. It had grown up through constant
compromises by more or less conflicting interests, and the special
concessions which were constantly being made led to a very
considerable degree of friction. Many of the papers in the
association enjoyed an exclusive right to the service, and it was
almost a cardinal principle that no new paper could be ad-
mitted to its privileges without the consent of all Associated
Press papers in the city of publication. As the country grew,
such a plan made a rival organization inevitable. There was a
close alliance, offensive and defensive, between the Associated

i88s] FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 21 j

Press and the Western Union Telegraph Company, by the
terms of which the Association was given special advantages,
and it in turn refused to patronize any rival telegraph company.

From time to time enterprising men founded new papers
which, under the rules, could not gain admission to the Asso-
ciated Press. Rival telegraph companies also appeared in the
field and established rival news services. Owing to the great
strength of the Associated Press, these rival concerns struggled
against heavy odds, but constantly grew in importance, until
finally there were enough papers which had been unable to
secure admittance to the Association and enough telegraph
companies contesting the field with the Western Union Com-
pany to organize a formidable competitor — the United Press.
Behind it the two most important papers were the Boston
Daily Globe and the Chicago Daily Herald, both of which were
enterprising and financially strong. In London also there
was established a rival to Reuter, called the Central News
Agency, not very formidable, to be sure, yet sufficiently enter-
prising to furnish a fair summary of the world's news. It had
a distinct advantage in the fact that the five hours' difference
in time between London and New York enabled it to glean
from the London morning papers the most important happen-
ings in time to transmit them to America for publication in
contemporaneous issues.

It was one of the rules of the Associated Press — both of the
parent organization and of all the tributary associations — that
a member should not traffic with any rival association; but the
rules were so loosely drawn and so ineffectively enforced that
the United Press was able to sell its report to a large number of
papers. In many cases members of the Associated Press
bought the United Press report, paying a considerable weekly
sum for it, simply in order to prevent its use by a rival news-
paper. All of this gave the United Press a considerable revenue
and an important standing. Finally, it menaced the supremacy
of the older organization.

Then an unfortunate compromise was effected. Those in
the management of the Associated Press privately purchased a
controlling interest in the stock of the United Press, and made

214 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [1893

a secret agreement that the two associations should work in
harmony. The existence of this private arrangement was
disclosed in 1892, as the ten-year alliance between the New
York Associated Press and the Western Associated Press was
about to terminate. It created great commotion. The West-
ern Associated Press refused to go on under such an agreement.
Finally, the New York Associated Press was absorbed by the
United Press, and the Western Associated Press set out to
operate independently. There was a period of attempted com-
promise, and, all such efforts having failed, my friends in-
corporated on December 13, 1892, as "The Associated Press"
of Illinois. Then I was invited to become general manager.
I had been a member of the Board of Directors and of the
Executive Committee of their former organization during the
years that I had edited the Chicago Daily News, and I was
reasonably familiar with the business.

One evening, having attended a theatre, I returned to the
Virginia Hotel, where I was living for the winter, and found two
gentlemen awaiting me. They — Colonel Frederick Driscoll
of the St. Paul Pioneer Press and Mr. Charles W. Knapp of the
St. Louis Republic — represented the Executive Committee of
the Associated Press. They told me that at a meeting of their
organization a resolution had been unanimously adopted asking
me to accept the office of general manager, and they had called
to secure my acceptance. All I could say was, in the phrase
of the young lady, that their proposal was "rather sudden."
There were things to think of.

Their outlook was certainly not inviting. Against them
was arrayed the wealth of the entire Eastern journalistic field
and they had apparently been cut off from all relation with the
foreign news agencies. There were but sixty-three members.
None was very rich and several were not even well-to-do.
And three or four were under well-grounded suspicion of dis-
loyalty. Then, also, there was my responsibility to the bank
of which I was president.

On the other hand, the business of banking had never greatly
appealed to me, although I had been undeniably successful
in the enterprise. I had a secret longing to return to the

,893] FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 215

printers' craft. And much more controlling than any personal
interest was the question of public duty. My friends of the
press and I talked it over. And this is the way we reasoned:

The United Press was controlled by three men, only one of
whom was a journalist. These men were William M. Laffan,
of the New York Sun; John R. Walsh, president of the Chicago
National Bank and the Western News Company; and Walter
P. Phillips, general manager of the United Press. My friends
felt it unsafe to leave so important a business under a
privately owned, money-making control. We took it for
granted that the need of an intelligent, well-informed electorate
in a self-governing people must be admitted. Through all the
days from Gutenberg and his invention of printing there had
never been an hour when the first aid to autocracy had not been
the placing of the press in leash. And it was equally true that
there had never been an effort to break the bonds of tyranny
that had not turned at the outset to a struggle for untrammelled
printing. For ages freedom of opinion had been forbidden and
the army of martyrs who had gone to the stake was large.
Freedom of communication of opinion by printing was even
more often anathema. Hand in hand, free government and a
free press had come to us through the centuries.

It was quite true that control of the press was wrested from
governments at the beginning of our Republic. The first
amendment to our Federal Constitution did this. It forbade
any attempt in the United States to stop free speech or a free
press. But, unhappily, this was not sufficient. Government
might not enchain the press, but private monopoly might. The
people, for their information — indeed, for the information upon
which they based the very conduct of their daily activities —
were dependent upon the news of the world as furnished by the
newspapers. And this business of news gathering and purvey-
ing had fallen into private and mercenary hands. Its control
by three men was quite as menacing as that of the governmental
autocrats of the ages agone. There could be no really free press
in these circumstances. A press to be free must be one which
should gather the news for itself.

A national cooperative news-gathering organization, owned

2i6 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [1893

by the newspapers and by them alone, selling no news, making
no profits, paying no dividends, simply the agent and servant
of the newspapers, was the thing. Those participating should
be journalists of every conceivable partisan, religious, economic,
and social affiliation, but all equally zealous that in the busi-
ness of news gathering for their supply there should be strict
accuracy, impartiality, and integrity. This was the dream we
dreamed.

The directors of the bank were impressed, and they said:
"Go ahead." So, for something like five years, I held both
offices.

I assumed the duties of general manager of the Associated
Press in March, 1893. Twenty-four hours later I was on my
way to England to see what could be done in the foreign field.
I spent one week in London, made a contract with the great
group of foreign agencies, and was back in Chicago in less
than a month.

We were ready for a fight. It seemed a very unequal one,
a sort of David-and-Goliath affair. Our little band seemed no
match for the terrible "army with banners" arrayed against
us. Yet we were not in the least downhearted. We had right
and justice on our side, and with this consciousness we had
faith in our ultimate success.

Suddenly, in the first week of May, the National Cordage
Company failed, and a financial panic resulted. Walsh had
no stomach for a Press Association war at that moment. He
began to bluff.

"You and I must attend to our banks," said he to me one
day.

"Not at all," I replied. "I have no concern about the
panic."

"But," he added, "what will you do if they start a run on

you

Then I laughed at him. And I explained: "As treasurer
of the Drainage Canal Board, I have several millions on de-
posit in yours and the other banks of the city. I will withdraw
this, deposit it in my own bank, and pay on demand."

"Oh," he said in alarm, "we can't stand that."

i893) FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 217

Then we arranged a truce and devoted ourselves to the
financial situation. The World's Fair was with us, bringing
an enormous volume of cash to the city, and we weathered the
storm with ease.

It did not surprise us that in a few months the United Press
violated the truce. Such a course was to be expected. In
August we concluded to "have no more nonsense" about the
business, and on September 7th the war was on. The contest
lasted for four years, and was waged with great bitterness.
Mr. Victor F. Lawson, my former partner in the ownership of
the Chicago Daily News, was elected president and devoted
himself with great persistency and disinterestedness to the
upbuilding of the organization. He and I set out for New
York, where we began a prolonged missionary effort. It
happened that Mr. Horace White of the New York Evening
Post, Mr. Joseph Pulitzer of the New York World, and Mr.
John Cockerill of the New York Commercial Advertiser, were all
Western men who had been long-time friends of mine, and it
was not difficult to convince them of the wisdom of our plan of
organization.

When I called upon Mr. White I found him busily writing
an editorial. Scarcely pausing in his work he said: "I am with
you. I do not believe in an association which is controlled by
three or four men. The Evening Post will join your company.
But I am under pledge to make no move in the matter without
consulting my friends of the New York Staats-Zeitung and the
Brooklyn Eagle.'* Very soon the Evening Post, the Staats-
Zeitung, the World, the Morning Advertiser, and the Commercial
Advertiser of New York, as well as the Brooklyn Eagle, aban-
doned the United Press and joined us. The fact that we re-
tained the name — "The Associated Press" — which for over
forty years had been a household word in the United States,
was of great value, editors, as a rule, recognizing the desirability
of advertising (as they had done for many years) their con-
nection with the Associated Press rather than their alliance
with the United Press. The title "The Associated Press" was
a most valuable trade-mark.

In time the Philadelphia papers, certain New England pa-

218 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [1893-7

pers, and a number of journals in central New York also
abandoned the United Press and joined the Associated Press.
The contest resulted in placing a heavy burden of expense upon
both organizations. The normal revenues of neither were
sufficient to maintain its service at the standard of excellence
required by the competition. The members of the Associated
Press promptly assembled and subscribed to a large guaranty
fund to provide for the deficits, while the four or five New York
papers behind the United Press were compelled to contribute
in like manner in order to hold their clients to any degree of
allegiance. Month by month and year by year the converts
to the Associated Press grew in number and the burden of
expense upon the New York papers became heavier.

All through the days when I was sharing in the Press Associa-
tion contest I was equally busy with other things. I not only
piloted my bank through the panic of 1893, I was a member
of the Clearing House Committee, and we were forced to look
after a number of "lame-duck" banks which required our finan-
cial aid to save them from failure.

The Campaign of i8q6

The Presidential campaign of 1896 was fought over measures
rather than men. As I have said, the issue, bimetallism, was
not a new one. In 1526, more than three centuries before,
Nicolas Copernicus had offered a plan to reform the currency
of the Russian provinces of Poland, and in it had declared
against the possibility of maintaining a double standard of
money. A few years later Sir Thomas Gresham of England
had repeated the axiom, which thereafter was known as the
incontrovertible "Gresham Law" of finance. When Alexander
Hamilton, in 1795, opened a mint for the United States, he
fixed a standard of 15 \ to 1 between silver and gold, and
thought it would work. But in 1834 gold had disappeared from
circulation because, in confirmation of the Gresham Law, the
ratio of 15 \ ounces of silver to 1 ounce of gold made silver the
cheaper and more popular metal. Then a new effort to adjust
the matter resulted in fixing the ratio at 16 to 1. But in 184S

1896I FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 219

gold was discovered in California, and three years later in
Australia, and again, as always, a statutory enactment proved
futile as against the immutable economic law of supply and
demand.

It was only necessary to read Benton's "Thirty Years' View,"
which was easily accessible, to convince one that bimetallism
was a dream that could never be realized. In these circum-
stances it seems incredible that the issue should again come
to the fore. But it did.

In February, 1896, 1 was on my way, with my wife and daugh-
ter, to Mexico. We were halted five hours at El Paso, until
the connecting train on the Mexican Central Road was made up.
My daughter was urgent to cross the border to the foreign land,
and, of course, had her way. So we set out for Juarez to while
away the time. We climbed into a little street car, drawn by
a donkey, and trundled along over the bridge which crossed
the Rio Grande. My family very soberly seated themselves
within the car, while I lighted a cigar and stood on the rear
platform. In a few moments a man came from the interior
of the car and, calling me by name, introduced himself.

"I am Mr. William Jennings Bryan," said he. "I was a
congressman from Nebraska, and I met you in your office when
you were editor of the Chicago Daily News."

Then I remembered him, and we fell into a conversation.
He joined us for our visit to Juarez. This was my first con-
scious acquaintance with Mr. Bryan. I say "conscious ac-
quaintance" because, in fact, I had met and known him years
before when he was a law student in Chicago in the office of
Lyman Trumbull, and later when he was a congressman from
Nebraska and made a remarkably able speech for tariff reform,
with which I fully sympathized ; but all this I had forgotten.

However, this meeting on the quaint little car en route to
Juarez was agreeable, and the visit of that day a pleasant one.
We went to the Mexican cathedral, or maybe it was only a
church, and after that to see Fitzsimmons, the prize fighter,
who had rented a small shop on the main street and was in
training for a forthcoming contest with Maher. He gave a
private exhibition of boxing for us, and I remember that Mr.

220 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [1896

Bryan was greatly interested in "speckle-faced Bob's** cub
lion, and held him in his arms as I did in mine.

Well, we had our visit, and I went my way to Mexico City.
Mr. Bryan had gone to the Mexican Republic to study the silver
question, and I believe had completed the inquiry in the five
hours we spent together.

Time crawled on, and I next met him in Chicago. The St.
Louis Convention had been held and McKinley had been
nominated as the Republican candidate for the Presidency.
There were some interesting things concerning this. The
"Major," as we called McKinley in those days, was a friend.
Four or five days before the St. Louis Convention he had asked
me to come to his home at Canton, and I went there. We
sat for a long afternoon on the porch of his cottage. He
had received at the hands of Mr. Robert W. Patterson, manag-
ing editor of the Chicago Tribune, a proposed plank for the
platform to be adopted at the St. Louis Convention. It
referred to the monetary question and declared in a modified
way for bimetallism. I was president of the Globe National
Bank of Chicago at the time, and he did me the honour to ask
my view of Patterson's proposal. I promptly told him that
there was no such thing as bimetallism possible. I used the
well-known illustration of the yardstick, and assured him that
two yardsticks of different length could not be. In truth,
Major McKinley had no settled opinion in respect of the mat-
ter, and he said he was convinced that the financial question
would, after all, not be the issue of the coming campaign. I
challenged this view, and, having in mind some things that had
happened, said that neither he nor the National Convention
could determine the issue, and that the people would in the
end do this. Finally, he told me that Charles Emory Smith
was drafting the platform, and he asked me to see him in St.
Louis and try to settle the matter.

The thing that had happened, and which forced me to be-
lieve that the silver question and not the tariff was to be the
issue, was the action of the Peoria Convention of the Democratic
Party in Illinois, which had already been held. The con-
trolling force in that convention was a very astute politician,

1896I FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 221

Governor John P. Altgeld of Chicago. He had thrust the
issue of bimetallism into the Peoria Convention and secured
the passage of a resolution declaring for a 16-to-i standard.
But for the fact that he was born in Germany, and therefore
ineligible to the office of President of the United States, it is
not unlikely that he would have been the national Democratic
candidate that year.

The story of the adoption of the gold-standard plank at the
Republican National Convention has frequently been told, yet
not always accurately. When I arrived in St. Louis I found
a good deal of confusion. I was called into a conference of
Major McKinley's friends. Those present were H. H. Kohl-
saat, editor of the Chicago Record-Herald, ex-Governor W. R.
Merriam of Minnesota; the Hon. Myron T. Herrick of Ohio;
Senator Redfield Proctor of Vermont; the Hon. Henry C.
Payne of Milwaukee, and Mark Hanna. As manager for the
McKinley forces, Mr. Hanna found himself in a difficult posi-
tion. Several Western states were earnestly for free-silver
coinage. Mr. Hanna, therefore, while personally a gold-
standard man, was unwilling to take the responsibility of
actively participating in the fight against a declaration for
bimetallism. After repeated conferences a resolution com-
mitting the Republican Party to the gold standard was agreed
to. The most urgent and uncompromising advocate of a gold
plank was Mr. Kohlsaat. My only part in the framing of the
plank was to write in the word "inviolable" in the pledge to
"maintain [inviolable] the obligations of the United States at
the existing standard."

After the wording of the resolution had been finally agreed
upon it was necessary to submit it to Major McKinley. A
long-distance telephone line between the Southern Hotel in
St. Louis and the McKinley cottage in Canton had been
established, and Mr. Hanna and I went to the St. Louis end
of the wire in the basement of the hotel to read the plank to the
waiting candidate at Canton. It was a new experience for Mr.
Hanna, and he could not make himself heard. I therefore read
the resolution. Major McKinley asked if that had been fully
agreed upon by his friends, to which I replied that it had. Re-

222 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [1896

luctantly he acquiesced in it, but asked if it was not possible to
introduce a modifying phrase pledging the Republican Party
to promote an international agreement for the free coinage of
silver. In obedience to this suggestion such a phrase was
introduced, and the plank was later adopted by the Convention.

Mr. McKinley's campaign, carried on from his cottage at
Canton, was a remarkable one. Although he had never given
the financial question very serious consideration, and certainly
had no adequate conception of the business when nominated,
he delivered speech after speech of such cogency as to com-
mand the attention and admiration of every student of finance.

Then the Democratic National Convention assembled in
Chicago. Here also there was great confusion respecting the
financial question. The New York and Massachusetts dele-
gates were pronouncedly for a gold standard, but a number
of the Western states were again advocates of bimetallism.
One morning as I was going to the Convention Hall, which was
located at some distance from the centre of the city and reached
by the Illinois Central Railway line, I encountered Mr. Bryan.
We rode together to the Convention. Naturally we discussed
the probabilities. He said that he did not know what the
Convention would do, but logically he should be the nominee.
I sat within a few feet of him while he delivered his famous
"Cross of Gold" speech. It was, of course, a remarkable
forensic effort. Then the balloting for a nominee began, and
we witnessed a sight the like of which I think had never devel-
oped in a national party convention before. The Ohio delega-
tion was pledged to John R. McLain, and McLain himself was
chairman of the delegation. On each roll call he rose and
announced the vote of Ohio as solidly for John R. McLain.
On the final ballot he personally withdrew his name.

He retired to a room under the platform which had been set
apart for newspaper work and sent a request for me to come to
him. Bryan had been nominated for the Presidency, but the
Convention was to adjourn for the night before nominating a
vice-president. McLain asked me if I would see Bryan during
the evening and ask him if it would be agreeable for McLain to
be nominated as vice-president. "Bryan is poor," §aid Mc-

1896I FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 223

Lain, "and I can finance his campaign." That night I called
upon Mr. Bryan, who was lodged at a small hotel called the
Clifton House. I bore McLain's message to him and asked
him how he felt about it, making no recommendation or sug-
gestion. He at once and with no little vehemence said that he
would not run on a ticket with McLain at all. The next
morning I carried Bryan's answer to McLain and he disap-
peared from the contest, while Mr. Sewall of Maine was nomi-
nated.

During the campaign party feeling ran so high that I was
charged by both of the campaign managers with bias. Each
was convinced that I was using the Associated Press to further
the interest of the opposing party. At the close, however,
McKinley and Bryan voluntarily sent me the following letters :

Canton, Ohio, Nov. 5, 1896.
My dear Sir: — It gives me pleasure to acknowledge (and I sincerely
thank you for) the enterprise displayed by your great association in
reporting and transmitting so fully the news from Canton during the
campaign just closed. I desire to thank you especially for the faithful
and efficient services of Mr. George B. Frease, whom you detailed to
take charge of this arduous and exacting work.

Very truly yours,

W. McKinley.
Mr. Melville E. Stone,

General manager, the Associated Press,
New York.

Mr. Melville E. Stone, General Manager, Associated Press,

Chicago, 111.
My dear Sir: — Now that the campaign is over, I desire to thank you
for the fairness and thoroughness with which you have reported my
speeches and also to express my appreciation of the correspondents
whom you have detailed to travel with our party.

Yours truly,

W. J. Bryan.

Collapse of the United Press

The final coup de grace to the United Press was given by a
fellow "Mugwump" of the campaign of 1884 — Mr. Haskell of

224 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [1896

William Mc Kinlcy .

Letter from William McKinley

1896]

FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST

32$

the Boston Herald. This was particularly gratifying, because
my experience in the long contest seemed to disillusion me

Letter from William Jennings Bryan

"sairly" respecting New England. Through my youthful days
I had conceived a passionate love for the Yankees. Faneuil
Hall was to me the cradle of liberty. I thought we should

226 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [1897

have no difficulty in inducing the New England editors to
shake off the chains that bound them to our mercenary enemy.
Instead, I found them more interested in their shekels than in
their shackles. Daniel Webster had said that Massachusetts
needed no encomium. She got none from me.

On April 8, 1897, Mr. Charles A. Dana of the New York Sun,
as president of the United Press, applied to the courts of New
York City for a receiver and the service of his organization was
abandoned. A large number of United Press newspapers
applied for admission to the Associated Press. The sharp
competition between the two rival associations had resulted in
heavy losses on both sides. Each of the parties to the contest
was carrying a substantial indebtedness. We had been fre-
quently notified by the managers of the United Press that if
they should finally triumph, the members of the Associated
Press would be taxed to pay all these liabilities, and the condi-
tions of adjustment would be far from agreeable to the un-
fortunate papers which should continue faithful to our associates
up to the time of the final triumph. None of these threats,
however, seemed to justify any departure from our purpose to
take into membership the United Press papers free from any
attempt at reprisal or punishment.

A small number of papers still found it impossible to join,
and formed another association, which grew into "The Pub-
lishers' Press" organization, serving many papers, chiefly after-
noon issues, with a creditable report.

At the annual banquet of the Associated Press in Chicago, on
May 19, 1897, a silver set was presented to Mr. Lawson and a
loving cup to me. Mr. St. Clair McKelway, on behalf of the
members of the organization, made the presentation. He said :

Mr. Stone has only friends around this board or in journalism out-
side it. He has confirmed the regard of those who know him, and he
has conquered the regard of those who misunderstood him. He
found a world of interest in the war of news. He has made it a con-
cert of powers on behalf of general intelligence and the just diffusion
thereof. He has conquered peace with honour, and when we ask him
for his enemies he does not have to reply, as did the boastful road-agent

,8971 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 227

in California, who told the shriving priest that he had no enemies, be-
cause he had killed them all.

A Princely Offer

No sooner was the contest with the United Press ended than
Joseph Pulitzer came at me with a proposition that I take the
editorial management of the New
York World. He was urgent. He
sent old Mr. Merrill of his staff to
Chicago to try to persuade me. I
said the offer was most flattering
but I feared the work would be more
strenuous than I cared to engage in.
Merrill returned to New York, re-
ported to his chief, and then I re-
ceived the following telegram:

Washington D. C, May 2, 1897.
Melville Stone,
Chicago, 111.

■^ . i«ii 1 Joseph Pulitzer

Lxtremely desirable and important
because I am perfectly sure you overestimate difficulties and time
required. Please telegraph exactly what day you will be in New
York. Will go over.

J. P., Calumet Place, Washington.

I saw him at Washington and at Bar Harbour. As an in-
ducement, the compensation he named was princely, and, to
ensure my absolute control of the property, he said he would
enter into a hard-and-fast contract for five years, go away
on his yacht to the China Sea, and leave me undisturbed.
Still I hesitated. In the fall I received the letter which follows:

Bar Harbor: 2 September, '97.
My dear Mr. Melville Stone,

With September I am beginning to make plans for the fall and
winter. I wonder whether you can let me know exactly when you
will be back here. I need not say that I am looking forward to see
you with pleasure.

228 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [1897

I wish you would make it before the middle of September, because
we are apt to have a rainy spell at that time and I do not want your
stay to be more tiresome than is absolutely necessary. Rain here
means a great deal of confinement.

Very faithfully yours,

Joseph Pulitzer.

In the end, as it seemed to me that the work I was engaged
in was a public trust which I should not desert, I definitely de-
clined Mr. Pulitzer's proposition.

I do not think Joseph Pulitzer ever quite forgave me. At
least we were never again quite as good friends. I was not a
little surprised, after his death, to find that he had named me
in his will as a member of the advisory board for the conduct of
the School of Journalism which he had provided for at Columbia
University.

Reporting the Spanish War

It was in the war of 1898 that the Associated Press of which I
was general manager achieved its first notable success. Al-
though by the terms of the existing compact the field of opera-
tions, both in the Caribbean Sea and in the Philippines, was
territory which the French agency had engaged to cover, early
preparations were made for an American service. In the Cuban
insurrection special correspondents were stationed at various
points of interest and did creditable work. Neither of the con-
testants desired publicity, and following midnight marches and
early morning raids, and transmitting news to New York by
surreptitious means, were efforts which taxed the courage and
ingenuity of the best-trained men. When General Weyler was
in command at Havana he forbade all newspaper work. Never-
theless, thrilling accounts of the horrors attendant upon his
reconcentrado system were smuggled out by Associated Press
men at imminent risk of being shot for their pains. It was
an Associated Press story of the destruction of the United
States battleship Maine in Havana harbour that was published
exclusively throughout the world the morning after that un-
happy event.

1898J FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 229

But the work of these correspondents ended when the United
States and Spain joined issue. A new plan of campaign was
then organized. The situation presented serious problems.
Land battles had been reported many times. But this must be
a naval contest, and prompt newspaper reports of battles upon
the high seas were unheard of. It must be remembered that
wireless telegraphy had not been developed. The outlook was
made more unpromising when all the ocean cables touching
Cuba were cut. But the Federal Government was reasonable,
and lent its aid. A capable reporter was installed upon the
flagship of each of the squadrons, and both Sampson and Schley
gave them every facility to enable them to do their work. A
number of fast sea-going despatch-boats were chartered and
sent to the Cuban coast. The whole service was placed in
charge of my assistant, Colonel Diehl, who managed it wisely
and succeeded in making a new record in the business of war
reporting. A splendid staff of correspondents was landed at
Santiago with General Shafter's army, and their copy, as
well as that of the men at the flagships, was carried by the
despatch-boats to the cable stations on the Jamaican or Haitian
coast.

When Hobson sank the Merrimac at the mouth of Santiago
harbour, four men wrote a composite story which was so skil-
fully interwoven that the reader thought it all the work of a
single pen. In the actions before Santiago the Associated
Press men showed great courage and transmitted reports
which, for descriptive power, accuracy, and comprehensive-
ness, have never been surpassed. The story of the fateful en-
counter with Cervera's fleet cost, for cable tolls alone, more
than #8,000, and the total expenditures for reporting the war
exceeded $300,000.

It was dangerous work. Menaced by innumerable forms of
tropical disease, exposed to death on the firing-lines as often
as any trooper, braving the horrors of a Caribbean hurricane in
a wretched little vessel, or taking the chance of being sunk at
any moment by either friend or foe, our men performed gallant
service; and happily, all came out alive. It was a cruel fate
that compelled them to write anonymously, while much less

230 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST L1898

capable men were written into temporary notoriety by the
newspapers which employed them as "specials." The public
never heard of these Associated Press men, but in newspaper
offices and in army and navy circles they have always been
recognized as the real historians of the war. Poor Lyman,
one of the most conscientious of them, contracted a disease
from which he afterward died. "Ned" Johnstone and "Nat"
Wright became newspaper managers. Collins is the London
manager for the Associated Press. Roberts is chief of the
Paris office. Goode, who served on Sampson's flagship, is now
Sir William Goode of England. It was Thompson who wrote
the story of the dramatic surrender of Cuba from the position
of a prize of war of the United States, to self-government, and
by a unanimous and voluntary act of Congress his account
was made a part of the Congressional Record.

Leonard Wood's Protege

At the close of the Spanish War of 1898 one Major Bellairs,
who seemed to bear adequate testimonials, was appointed by a
subordinate of mine as Associated Press cor-
respondent at Santiago, Cuba. At the moment
General Leonard Wood was the commander at
that post and was actively engaged in cleaning
up the city. Bellairs's work seemed excellent
for a time, but soon it was observed that there
was a departure from the imperative rule of
impartiality in his despatches. He had evi-
dently become a protagonist of the commanding
officer. This defect was believed to be chargeable to his lack of
experience in the Associated Press organization. His telegrams
were edited so as to remove any partisan colour, and he was
cautioned respecting his obvious favouritism. Not that there
was the slightest antagonism in our organization to the efficient
officer referred to, but there was an earnest purpose to keep
the service free from bias.

Later the General was transferred to Havana to succeed
General John Brooke, and Bellairs was assigned to accompany

1898] FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST ajt

him. Once more there seemed to be insidious references in
his service which caused remark. Then I received a letter
from Florida suggesting vaguely that I look into Bellairs's
record. I set out to do so, when the general appeared on the
scene and vouched for the man's character in unmistakable
terms. He assured us that Bellairs was the victim of malice
and was wholly trustworthy.

Finally, there was a transference of both men to the Philip-
pines, and again apparent fulsome praise of his friend on the
part of the correspondent was noted. Then the charge against
Bellairs was renewed in more definite shape, and I renewed my
investigation. To my amazement I found he was a notorious
criminal. His real name was Charles Ballentine, but he had
used many aliases in his checkered career. Perhaps the best
known were Ernest Allaine Cheiriton, E. Elaine, and E. A.
Cameron. He was of British birth, his father being a clergy-
man of Norfolk, England. He entered Cheltenham College,
England, in 1876, when but fifteen years of age. He began
at once a career of swindling, which he followed for years.
While at school he made a book on the principal English
races as shrewdly and as profitably as the most expert gambler.
His schoolfellows paid dearly for his acquaintance.

On leaving college he set out to live on his wits. He visited
almost every country on the globe, and his victims were in-
numerable. He proved a successful society confidence man.
His first professional operation was at Dieppe, the famous
French watering place, where he appeared as an English swell,
spent a month in riotous living, and left a large number of
victims. In 1886 he ran a notable course in swindling in
Australia. He was arrested in New York in 189 1 on a charge
of forgery in Florida; was extradited on a requisition of Gover-
nor Fleming of Florida; tried, convicted, and sentenced to
seven years' imprisonment in the State prison at Chattahoo-
chee.

On learning of his true character he was promptly dismissed.
It is fair to say that his case was a unique one in our service,
and for his employment or retention I do not think any one
blamable. He was so clever that one might easily have been

232 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [,898

deceived. Later, in 1910, I saw him in Tokio, where he was
in the employ of the London Times.

A Rascal Named Smith

Based upon the good name of the Associated Press and the
silly vanity of some of the multi-millionaires of the country, a
number of shrewd swindlers have been able to gather in con-
siderable sums of money. One day, after I had entered the
Associated Press service, Marshall Field, the well-known
merchant, called me to account in the Chicago Club for what he
was pleased to say was a very unworthy course of conduct on
my part. Then he told me how he had been victimized. A
fine-looking young fellow had called upon him as from our
organization and told him that we were engaged in a very
proper work which he thought would interest Mr. Field. The
fine young fellow's explanation of the "very proper work" ran
about as follows: "Mr. Field, my name is Smith.
I have been commissioned by the Associated
Press to call on you. You know how anxious
our people are that every statement of ours shall
be accurate. To that end we want to write an
appreciation of the work of every really great
American citizen, a copy of which is to be placed
on file in the office of each of our leading papers for
use in an emergency, as for instance, if the subject
of the sketch should be honoured in any way, or if unhappily
he should die. We have in mind to issue copies of these appre-
ciations to one hundred of our most important papers, the idea
being that the smaller papers will reprint them when they
appear. For this service the Associated Press has fixed the
nominal price of $10 a paper, or #1,000 for the one hundred."

Of course it was a clear case of swindle. And I reminded
Mr. Field that before paying his money, or criticizing me,
perhaps it would have been wiser to telephone our Chicago
office to ask if Mr. Smith's statements were true. In that
case he would have learned that we were engaged in no such
scheme of petty blackmail; he would have saved his money,

1898] FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 233

and he might have put us in the way of catching and punishing
the rascal. But this had not occurred to him.

Thus put upon notice, I awaited further news of Smith's
activities. I did not wait long. He turned up in Detroit
and called on General Alger, former Secretary of War. The
General manifested interest, but was slow in making up his
mind and asked the fellow to call again the next day, fixing an
hour. Then our Detroit office was asked about the business.
There was an exposure, and when Smith called the next day he
was arrested. I hastened to Detroit and seized his trunk at
a hotel. In it I found a most interesting mass of paraphernalia.
He had taken great pains to prepare for his enterprise. He
was operating both in the name of the Associated Press and
that of our rival, the United Press. He had laboriously gath-
ered facsimiles of the signatures of forty or fifty well-known
men, and had them reproduced and printed upon a form of
address commending his undertaking "to whom it might con-
cern." One of these approved the "proposed action" of the
Associated Press; the other the "proposed action" of the
United Press. He also had secured the visiting cards of a
number of notables and had numerous packages of lithographed
reproductions of them. He had also learned where the not-
ables kept their individual bank accounts; had obtained blank
checks of these banks, and had filled in each with an order to
pay a thousand dollars to himself, and affixed a forged facsimile
signature of a notable. When he approached General Alger
he sent in what seemed to be a genuine visiting card of Chaun-
cey M. Depew's, on which was written: "I approve this work.
C. M. D."

Smith escaped conviction in Detroit because he had been
arrested before obtaining any money there and because the
various facsimiles in his possession did not legally constitute
forgery, since he had only exhibited and had not uttered them.

Some weeks later he turned up in New York City and found
a score of victims. Then I caught him. One of the Seligman
family had paid him $3,000, being one thousand for one hundred
Associated Press papers, another thousand for a like number of
United Press papers, and still another for a second hundred of

234 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [I900

the members of the Associated Press. I secured his indict-
ment and he was tried, convicted, and sent to the penitentiary.
His real name was Benjamin C. Smith; he belonged to a reput-
able family of Litchfield, 111.

In the campaign for the relief of the legations at Peking in
1900, the organization won fresh laurels. Messrs. Collins,
Kloeber, and Egan were sent to China. The Pacific cable had
not been laid, and the messages were carried by Chinese run-
ners from the army headquarters before Peking to Tientsin,
and cabled thence, via Chefoo and Shanghai, the Indian Ocean,
and the Red Sea, to London, and across the Atlantic Ocean to
New York. Even following this tortuous line, they came as a
rule a day ahead of the special telegrams to the London papers.

SIXTH DECADE

Forming a New Associated Press

MEANWHILE serious trouble developed for the Asso-
ciated Press of Illinois. As early as January, 1898,
the Chicago Inter-Ocean, having suffered a suspension
of its news service for a violation of the by-laws of the organiza-
tion, filed a bill in chancery to compel a restoration of its privi-
leges as a member. There were hearings in the lower courts
and the action of the Association was sustained, but on appeal
to the Supreme Court of Illinois a decisive adverse decision
was rendered. It was held that because of certain provisions
of its charter, the Associated Press was so affected with a public
duty that it must serve its news to any applicant. A com-
pliance with this extraordinary judgment meant a destruction
of the fundamental right of the members to unite for the
collection, by their own agencies, of the news for their own
exclusive use.

I resigned the position of general manager, and in common
with certain members set out to organize a new association
which should be free from the organic defects that had been
disclosed. We sought the opinion of a number of the leading
lawyers of the country, and finally incorporated a new Asso-
ciated Press under the law of the State of New York. It took
some months to perfect the details, and then in September,
1900, we began business. The Illinois Corporation was left
in such condition that it ceased activity.

Mr. Frank B. Noyes was unanimously elected president of
the new organization and from that time to this has been re-
elected unanimously year by year. He is a man of sterling
integrity, rare breadth of vision, and the highest sense of justice.
I have felt myself singularly fortunate in my association with
him. We have worked together as yoke-fellows without a trace

'35

236 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST (i9oo

of discord. I have found him at all times more than generous
in our personal relation, and the contribution he h s made
to the success of the organization has been very great.

And as to the Board of Directors, both of the Illinois organi-
zation and the New York association, they have without ex-
ception worked earnestly, loyally, and without compensation
for the upbuilding of the institution. No one could have been
more fortunate than I in their companionship and in their
effort to maintain the highest standard of excellence in the
service.

In speaking of my associates in the work of the Associated
Press, I find it impossible to do simple justice. Where every-
one, associate officers, directors, and co-workers have so loyally
worked to a common end, and where all have been so kind, so
considerate, discrimination is impossible. It would take not
one chapter, nor one volume, but several to give expression to
the sense of gratitude I feel. Our relation has been one of un-
disturbed but growing affection throughout. *

It is this New York corporation which for the last twenty-one
years has been known as the Associated Press. As its name
indicates, it is an organization of newspapers for the purpose of
gathering news on joint account. It is purely mutual in its
character, and in this respect is unique. The other news-
supplying agencies of the world are proprietary concerns. It
issues no stock, makes no profit, and declares no dividends.
It does not sell any news to any one. It is a clearing-house for
the interchange of news among its members only.

Each of the newspapers whose proprietors are members of
the Association is obliged to give the representative of the
Associated Press free access to its news as soon as received.
Many times a day the Associated Press man calls at every
newspaper office in the large cities and is given the latest local
news. If it is sufficiently important, he instantly puts it upon
the leased wires, and in a few seconds it is in the hands of
hundreds of telegraph editors throughout the country.

For the purpose of administration the country is divided into
four grand divisions, each controlled by a superintendent acting
under the direction of the general manager. The Association

19o6! FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST , 237

leases over sixty thousand miles of telegraph wire, and ex-
pends over fifteen thousand dollars a day in its work. These
leased wires, which are worked by its own operators, stretch from
Halifax, by way of Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore,
Washington, Pittsburg, Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago, St. Louis,
Kansas City, Denver, and Salt Lake City, to San Francisco,
San Diego, and Seattle; they radiate from New York through
Albany, Syracuse, and Rochester to Buffalo; from Washington
through the leading Southern cities to Atlanta; from Chicago
south, by way of Indianapolis, Cincinnati, and Louisville, to
Nashville, Atlanta, and New Orleans, as well as to Memphis,
San Antonio, and the City of Mexico; and from Chicago north,
by way of Milwaukee, to St. Paul and Duluth. They also ex-
tend from Philadelphia through the interior of Pennsylvania,
and touch, by an extension from Kansas City, the interior cities
of Nebraska and Iowa on the north, and Kansas and Oklahoma
on the south. Thus every city of consequence is reached by the
wire system of the Associated Press.

Three of these leased wires are operated between New York
and Chicago at night and two by day. The volume of Asso-
ciated Press report thus served daily to a morning newspaper in
Philadelphia or Baltimore, through which cities the three night
wires are extended, exceeds sixty thousand words, or forty
ordinary columns. The telegraph operators are men of ex-
ceptional skill, and receive higher salaries than are paid by the
telegraph or railway companies. To expedite their work, they
use automatic sending-machines, which greatly exceed hand
transmission in speed, and employ a system of abbreviations
which can be sent with surprising rapidity. The receiving
operators take the letters by sound and write them upon a type-
writer, and since no one is able to manipulate a Morse key as
swiftly as he can operate a typewriter, there is a corfstant effort
to hasten the sending in order to keep pace with the ability of
the receiver. The following example will illustrate the system
of abbreviation. A message is sent thus:

t scetus tdy dodd 5 pw f potus dz n xtd to t
pips, ogt all pst cgsl xgn q sj is uxl.

238 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST {1900

And it is rendered thus by the receiving operator:

The Supreme Court of the United States to-day decided that the
power of the President of the United States does not extend to the
Philippines, on the ground that all past Congressional legislation on
the subject is unconstitutional.

In the larger cities, where many copies of the messages are
required, a sheet which has been immersed in wax is used in the
typewriter. When written upon it forms a stencil, which is
placed upon a rotary cyclograph operated by an electric motor,
and as many as three hundred copies of the message may be
reproduced in a minute. One of these is thrust into an en-
velope bearing the printed address of a newspaper and shot
through a pneumatic tube to the desk of the waiting telegraph
editor in the newspaper office. Even this almost instantaneous
method of delivery is too slow, however, for news of a sensa-
tional character. A bulletin wire connects the Associated
Press office with every evening newspaper in New York, and
the bulletins are flashed over it by operators of the highest skill,
in emergencies. When the result of a great race arrives, the
receiving operator shouts the news through a megaphone,
and every sending operator in the room flashes it over his
circuit.

A storm is a serious thing, and there is hardly a day in the
year which is free from a storm somewhere in the vast territory
covered by these leased wires. The expedients then resorted
to are often interesting. During the great blizzard of 1888, in
which Senator Roscoe Conkling lost his life, all communication
was cut off between New York and Boston, and messages were
sent from New York by cable to London, thence back to Canso
on the Nova Scotian coast, and from Canso to Boston. In
1902 every wire between Boston and Philadelphia went down,
and then special messages were sent by train with the Asso-
ciated Press telegrams. In the winter of 1905 the wires be-
tween New York and Utica were swept away along the Hudson
River. Then messages were transmitted by way of Baltimore
to Chicago, and back to Utica by way of Buffalo,

I9ool FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 239

To meet the expense, each member is assessed a sum which
is paid weekly in advance. In making up these assessments,
an equitable system is followed, which provides that the heavi-
est tax shall fall upon the larger papers.

Annually the members gather in general convention in New
York and elect a board of directors of fifteen members. By
common consent, the members of this board are chosen from
different parts of the country, so that each important division
is represented. They are trained newspapermen who bring
to the discharge of their duties an intimate knowledge of the
business and a high sense of responsibility. The Board of
Directors in turn elects a president, two vice-presidents, a
secretary and general manager, an assistant secretary and
assistant general manager, and a treasurer, and designate
from their own number seven members to serve as an ex-
ecutive committee.

Wireless Telegraphy

Our first use of wireless transmission was in the case of the
international yacht races off Sandy Hook. Stations were
erected on Long Island and the coast of New Jersey, and a
fast-going yacht, equipped with Marconi apparatus, followed
the races. A running story, transmitted through the air to
the coast, was instantly relayed by land wires to the main
office of the Associated Press in New York, and thence dis-
tributed over the country. Such a report of a race cost over
£25,000.

As the years have gone on this process has been so developed
that during the World War and the succeeding Peace Con-
ference we were able to transmit thousands of words daily for
both morning and evening services. The method was not
always reliable because of interference, but steadily improved
and is destined to become of great value. It is now quite easy
to send a message from the Eiffel Tower in Paris to a station in
the United States. While in London, sitting talking with
William Marconi in his office, we called up by telephone the
master of his yacht, which was standing at sea, off the port of

240 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [1901

Santander, Spain, several hundred miles distant, and talked
with him with perfect freedom.

The Assassination of President McKinley

On the afternoon of September 6, 1901, worn out by a long
period of exacting labour, I set out for Philadelphia, with the
purpose of spending a few days at Atlantic City. When I
reached the Broad Street station in the Quaker city I was
startled by a number of policemen crying my name. I stepped
up to one, who pointed to a boy with an urgent message for me.
President McKinley had been shot at Buffalo, and my presence
was required at our Philadelphia office at once. A message
had been sent to me at Trenton, but my train had left the
station precisely two minutes beforethemessage arrived. Hand-
ing my baggage to a hotel porter, I jumped into a cab and
dashed away to our office. I remained there until dawn of the
following morning.

The opening pages of the story of the assassination were
badly written, and I ordered a substitute prepared. An in-
experienced reporter had stood beside President McKinley in the
Music Hall at Buffalo when Czolgoz fired the fatal shot. He
seized a neighbouring telephone and notified our Buffalo corres-
pondent, and then pulled out the wires, in order to render the
telephone a wreck, so that it was a full half hour before any
additional details could be secured.

I ordered men and expert telegraph operators from Washing-
ton, Albany, New York, and Boston to hurry to Buffalo by the
fastest trains. All that night the Buffalo office was pouring
forth a hastily written but faithful and complete account of
the tragedy, and by daybreak a relief force was on the ground.
Day by day, through the long vigil while the President's life
hung in the balance, each incident was truthfully and graph-
ically reported. In the closing hours of the great tragedy
false reports of the President's death were circulated for the
purpose of influencing the stock market, and, to counteract
them, Secretary Cortelyou wrote frequent signed statements,
giving the facts to the Associated Press.

I9o2] FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 241

Prince Henry's Visit

In February, 1902, Prince Henry of Prussia arrived at New
York, and on the evening of Washington's Birthday gave a
small dinner on the Hohenzollern, the Kaiser's yacht. I was
invited. The acquaintance thus begun grew to some degree
of intimacy, not alone with him but with General von Plessen
and Admiral von Tirpitz, who accompanied him. During the
evening the Prince took me for a stroll over the boat and
pointed out his brother's famous cartoon, "The Yellow Peril."
Something, I do not know what, justified
a compliment upon his English. He spoke
with no trace of German accent. "Oh," he
laughed, "everyone knows that I like the
English language better than the German."

A few days later a great newspaper dinner
was given the Prince at the Waldorf Hotel.
It was under the auspices of the New
York Staats Zeitung. Whitelaw Reid pre-
sided. Someone moved that I send a mes-
sage of greeting to the German Emperor. To my telegram
I received the reply reproduced on page 242.

The Prince commissioned me to forward his cable messages
to Europe. I received two daily during his journey over the
country. I am betraying no confidence in saying that those
to his Imperial brother were in German and exceedingly formal,
while those to his wife, Princess Irene, were in English, most
informal and affectionate.

The Martinique Disaster

On the night of May 2, 1902, a brief telegram from St.
Thomas, Danish West Indies, reported that Mont Pelee, the
volcano on the island of Martinique, was in eruption, and that
the town of St. Pierre was enveloped in a fog and covered with
ashes an inch deep. Cable communication was cut off". The
following morning I set about securing the facts. We had two
correspondents on the island, one at St. Pierre and the other at

242 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [1902

Fort-de-France, nine miles away; but clearly neither of these
could be reached.

Fortunately, investigation disclosed that an old friend, a
talented newspaperman, was the United States consul at

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Guadeloupe, an island only twelve hours distant. I instantly
appealed to the State Department at Washington to give him
a leave of absence, and, when this was granted, I cabled him to
charter a boat and go to St. Pierre at once, and secure and
transmit an adequate report. The Associated Press men at
St. Vincent, St. Thomas, Porto Rico, Barbados, Trinidad,
and St. Lucia were instructed to hurry forward any information
that might reach them, and to endeavour to get to Martinique
by any available means. St. Thomas alone was able to respond
with a short telegram, three days later, announcing the destruc-
tion of the Martinique sugar factories, which were only two
miles distant from St. Pierre. The despatch also reported the
loss of one hundred and fifty lives, and the existence of a panic

1902] FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 243

at St. Pierre because of the condition of the volcano, which was
now in full eruption and threatening everything on the island.
Mr. Ayme, the consul at Guadeloupe, found difficulty in
chartering a boat, but finally succeeded, and, after a thrilling
and dangerous night run through a thick cloud of falling
ashes and cinders, arrived before the ill-fated city. The ap-
palling character of the catastrophe was then disclosed. Thirty
thousand people, the population of the town, had been buried
under a mass of hot ashes; one single human being had escaped.
It was enough to make the stoutest heart grow faint.

But Ayme was a trained reporter, inured by long experience
to trying scenes; and he set to work promptly to meet the
responsibility which had been laid upon him. Our St. Pierre
man had gone to his death on the common pyre, but Mr.
Ivanes, the Associated Press correspondent at Fort-de-France,
survived. With him Mr. Ayme joined effort, and, with great
courage and at serious risk, they went over the blazing field
and gathered the gruesome details of the disaster. Then Mr.
Ayme wrote his story, returned to the cable-station at Guade-
loupe, and sent it. It was a splendid piece of work, worthy of
the younger Pliny, whose story of a like calamity at Pompeii
has come down to us through two thousand years. It filled
a page of the American newspapers on the morning of May
1 ith, and was telegraphed to Europe. It was the first adequate
account given to the world.

Mr. Ayme returned to Martinique and spent three weeks in
further investigation, leaving his post of duty only when the
last shred of information had been obtained and transmitted.
As a result of his terrible experience, his health was impaired,
and, although he was given a prolonged leave of absence, he
never recovered. It cost the Associated Press over #30,000 to
report this event.

Extension of the Foreign Service of the Associated Press

Students of American history long ago observed that al-
though we had established our political independence by the
wars of 1776 and 18 12, our literary and social dependence upon

244 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [1902

England had never been fully broken. Our cousins overseas,
in the persons of such recognized censors as Gifford of the
Quarterly Review, had sneered at our novelists; Tom Moore had
condemned our democratic institutions; and Charles Dickens
had accused us of bad manners. We, on the other hand, had
not been free from blame. We had taught our children a
history of England which related little more of her than the
fact that she had fought us in two wars, and we made no
account of her splendid record in the development of the
world's best civilization. All of these things made for un-
friendly relations. And, all the while, we suffered London to
dictate our opinion respecting every other nation. From its
beginning the Associated Press had only one foreign agency,
and that was located in the British metropolis. It was from
a British news agency or through the English despatches that
we derived all our European news. True, there were interest-
ing letters from the continental capitals, but long before their
arrival or publication the story of any important event had
been told from London and had made its impress upon the
American mind — an impress which it was not easy to correct.
The fact that the British views were presented in the English
language obviously made them easier of access and gave them
wider currency in this country. Thus British opinion, in large
measure, became our opinion.

With the Spanish War of 1898 our vision was suddenly
widened. Then the ambassadors from the European con-
tinental nations at Washington began to urge that the time
had come for the United States to look at their peoples through
American eyes. M. Jules Cambon, the French ambassador,
was particularly perturbed because all of the news respecting
France came through London and took on a British nuance.
It did not follow that such reports were inaccurate, but they
were written to supply what the English people were presumed
to want, and the London point of view, as Lowell said, is:

"Whut's good's all English; all thet isn't, ain't."

There was evidence of a strong desire on the part of European
powers for pleasant relations with the United States; they were

1902] FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 245

very anxious that the Associated Press should name its own
competent correspondents, who should reside in the different
continental capitals and should study each country as Amer-
icans. An unkind phrase respecting the United States in an
altogether inconsequential German paper, when printed in the
Associated Press despatches in this country, was likely to cause
great friction. Although the character of the paper was un-
known, it was assumed to voice German sentiment because it
was a German paper. This led to a distinct protest on the
part of our German-American newspapers against the char-
acter of that service, and an urgent demand that we establish
a bureau at Berlin.

I explained to M. Cambon the reasons for the existing
method. It had been our experience that if an Associated
Press correspondent in any of the smaller cities of France should
file a despatch for the Associated Press, it would be hung on a
hook by a stupid clerk in the Government telegraph office.
They would then send all the Government messages they had,
and all the death messages, and all the commercial messages,
and then they would take the Associated Press message from
the hook and send it forward, but on its arrival in Paris it would
suffer a like delay. The consequence was that it took us from
six to seven hours to get a despatch through. On the other
hand, we had found that we could obtain this news in Paris,
send it by long-distance telephone to London, and there put it
on the cable and forward it much more rapidly. To send a
message from New York to Rome and secure a reply usually
required twenty-four hours. I suggested that if the French
Government could see its way clear to expedite our service,
and if it would throw open all departments of the Government
and give us the news, I should be very glad to establish a bureau
in Paris and take all our news respecting France from Paris
direct.

M. Cambon asked me to go abroad and take the matter up
with his government, and after some delay and some discussion
of the subject, I agreed to do so. I was able to reach the
business in the autumn of 1902. The only preparation made
was that Ambassador Cambon reported to the French Foreign

246 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [1902

Office on the desirability of some change, and explained to
them my wishes.

On my arrival in Paris I called on M. Delcasse, the Minister
of Foreign Affairs. He received me cordially, was fully advised
of the situation, and evinced much interest. He said that while
it was a rather serious business, and one which he must take up
with his confreres, particularly the Minister of Telegraphs, he
sincerely favoured my views. He invited me to breakfast in the
palace of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. There I met two or
three of the other ministers. I told them that our people must
be absolutely free, that there must be no attempt to influence
them. While, in order to be useful, the representative of the
Associated Press accredited to any capital must be on friendly
terms with the government at that capital, he must not be a
servile agent of that government; we could not deny ourselves
the right of free statement, and anything we might do must be
done with the distinct understanding that the Government
would not influence the character of the service as to its im-
partiality.

I found that there was likely to be a good deal of delay, and,
after laying the matter before the French minister and telling
him what I desired, and receiving an expression of his purpose
to work it out as best he could, I left him.

My interview with M. Delcasse was in his private room in
the palace set apart for the Department of Foreign Affairs.
He called my attention to an old mahogany table at his side,
which, he said, had served three times to affect the fate of the
American Republic. On it was signed the convention which
Benjamin Franklin and Silas Deane made with the French
Government to secure funds for the United States in its strug-
gling days. On it were also signed the Treaty of Peace follow-
ing the War of 1812, and the Treaty of Peace with Spain in 1898.

I returned to New York, and a month later M. Delcasse
presented his plan. The French officials would give the
representative of the Associated Press all proper information.
They would answer any questions that might be of interest to
this country, and they would do all in their power to expedite
the service. They issued three forms of telegraph blanks: one

1902] FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 247

bearing across its face, in red ink, the words "Associated
Press"; the second form, the words "Associated Press, tres
presse"; and the third form, the words "Associated Press,
urgent." These they issued to us, to be used at our discretion
and subject to a general order of the French Government, sent
to all telegraph employees throughout France, which provided
that when the first form was deposited in any French telegraph
office, the operator should send forward all Government mes-
sages and then the Associated Press message should be trans-
mitted immediately thereafter; if the second form, "Asso-
ciated Press, tres presse" was used, the despatch should follow
the Government message then on the wire and precede any
other Government message; and if an "Associated Press,
urgent" message should be presented, the operator should
immediately stop the outgoing Government message and for-
ward the press despatch immediately. This arrangement was
put into force. After that our despatches from France, long
and short, averaged about twenty-one minutes. We estab-
lished an adequate bureau in Paris, and employed a large
number of subordinate correspondents throughout the country,
in some cases Frenchmen and in others Americans, and our
service proved highly satisfactory. It was no more expensive,
the rate from Paris direct being precisely the rate from London
direct, so that we saved the transmission from Paris to London
for which we had formerly paid. The office expenses were
increased somewhat, but, in compensation, we reduced the
office force in London.

I had suggested that Paris, and not London, was the natural
point of concentration for our despatches from the Latin
nations, and M. Delcasse, having that in mind, invited me to
confer with the Italian and Spanish governments. I therefore
went abroad again. The French Foreign Office was pleased
with the experience they had had. They issued a formal letter
of instructions to M. Barrere, French ambassador at the
Quirinal, to take the matter up with the Italian Government,
with a view to inducing that government to expedite our
service from Italy to the French border, where the messages
would be forwarded by the French administration and rushed

248 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [1903

on to New York. I went to Rome and, after paying calls on the
American ambassador, saw M. Barrere, who had received his
instructions, and who entered upon the work enthusiastically.
He desired to secure the concession distinctly on behalf of the
French Government ; while he was glad to receive the coopera-
tion of the American ambassador, he wished to make it his own
special work. M. Barrere spoke English perfectly.

Audience of the Italian King

The American ambassador, Mr. Meyer, gave a luncheon in
my honour, at which were present Signor Prinetti, the Italian
Minister of Foreign Affairs, and M. Barrere. The subject was
talked over in detail with Signor Prinetti and I was then com-
manded to an audience with the King. Going to the Quirinal,
I entered a small anteroom at noon, where two aides were in
waiting. His Majesty received me in an adjoining room, I
found him dressed in the costume of an officer of the Italian
army — dark-blue blouse and light-blue trousers with black
stripes. He greeted me cordially, and asked me to be seated.
He sat on a sofa, while I was given a chair, and we entered into
a lively conversation. He said he knew the purpose of my
visit, having been informed of it through Prinetti. He was glad
that we were disposed to take up the matter of a service from
Rome direct, assured me that he would do everything that could
be done, and thought there would be no difficulty in meeting
our wishes; I could rest assured of his loyal effort in the matter,
and that it would be pursued without delay.

We talked at some length about Marconi, in whose work he
displayed a deep interest, and of the relations between Italy and
the United States. I suggested the difficult position in which
an Associated Press representative would find himself in Rome
because of the contest between the Vatican and the Quirinal.
I found, however, that while officially affairs were strained,
personal relations were not unkindly. Leo XIII was Pope.
The King spoke most kindly of the Holy Father, and while, of
course, they never met, there was no bitterness manifested
on either side. I told him that ordinarily it would be necessary

I9o3l FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 249

for me to appoint two representatives, one for the Vatican and
one for the Quirinal, but that I had a man in mind whom I
thought persona grata to both sides. I had talked of this man
with Prinetti, who had expressed the highest confidence in him.
The King said he thought it would be quite unnecessary to
appoint two representatives if the Vatican were disposed to
go half way; with one man there would be less danger of
friction.

The King expressed his high appreciation of the work of the
Association, and called attention to the fact that a number of
his own ministers were newspapermen, and that his American
ambassador at that time, Signor Mayor des Planches, was an
old-time journalist in whom he had great confidence. He
said, in speaking of the relations between the United States
and Italy, that he trusted that they would always be cordial.
The Italians felt that, through Columbus, they had given
America to the world, and that they had a peculiar interest,
therefore, in the United States. He also said that while Italy
was spoken of as a kingdom, it was in fact a republic in disguise,
having the same parliamentary freedom that existed in Eng-
land and the United States. He said he was greatly pleased
because a large number of the emigrants who went to the
United States perfected themselves by their sojourn there,
learned American methods, and then came back to Italy and
applied these methods in their home life. He said that the
percentage of Italians who emigrated to the United States and
remained there was much smaller than was generally supposed.
He added that it was the practice of many emigrants to go to
the United States for work during the summer season, and
then return to Italy and spend their surplus earnings in ac-
quiring lands and bettering their condition. He expressed
the hope that Italian subjects would be found to be good citi-
zens of the United States. They were law-abiding and eco-
nomical.

William H. Taft and Archbishop Ireland of St. Paul were
housed at the Hotel Quirinal where I put up and we spent
many delightful evenings together. Mr. Taft and I wandered
about through the ruins of the Eternal City and lived over our

250 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST foq

studies of Roman history. Out of it all an abiding affectionate
regard has grown year by year.

Audience of Pope Leo XIII

I also had audience of the Pope. It, too, was held at noon.
I drove to the Vatican, and was received by a secretary. At
every turn of the stairway were members of the Swiss Guard
in their brilliant uniform. On my arrival at the residence
floor a member of the Noble Guard greeted me and received
my wraps. I was then taken through a long series of rooms
until I arrived at the throne-room. There I met a French
cardinal, who greeted me, and then I entered the anteroom
of the papal reception-hall. A door was opened, and I was
admitted to the presence of the Holy Father. The room was
perhaps twenty feet by thirty. At one end, on a slightly raised
dais, sat the Pope. The surroundings formed a striking picture.
The venerable prelate was dressed in the cream-white garb of
his office. His face was the colour of parchment, and not differ-
ent from the tone of his vestments. A "dim, religious light"
came in from the high window. On each side of him down
the hall were ranged seats at a lower level.

As I entered, I bowed with formality, and in a faint voice
I heard him call my name. He reached out his hand and asked
me to approach. Grasping my hand, he requested me to sit
at his side, though on a lower level. There was no one else in
the room. He took my right hand in his and covered it with
his left, and during the hour that I talked with him, he held it
thus in an affectionate, parental way.

I said that I was afraid he could not comprehend all I had
to say in bad French. To which he replied, "I am an Italian
and speak French with an Italian accent, and if we speak very
slowly we shall be able to understand each other."

He was most anxious that the United States should ac-
credit an ambassador to his court. "I am told," he said, "that
there are political difficulties about it, but I cannot see why
there should be. Germany, which is a Protestant nation,
sends an ambassador to my court as well as one to the Quirinal.

1903J FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 231

Russia, which is heretical and believes its own emperor the
vicegerent of God, also sends one. Why cannot the United
States? I should be very happy if I could close my long career
by establishing relations with this young republic through their
sending an ambassador to my court." Three or four times he
referred to the subject with great earnestness. It seemed
very near to his heart.

The Pope at the time had shown wonderful capacity in deal-
ing with the Philippine question. He had been very prompt
in his decisions, and I took the liberty of saying to him that he
was almost an American in the energetic way in which he had
dealt with the subject. He laughed and replied: "Yes, yes;
but, after all, what is time to the Church? What is yesterday,
or to-day, or to-morrow? The Church is eternal." Some-
thing was said about the Quirinal. I cannot tell what led to it,
but I shall never forget the dramatic incident. He was leaning
over his chair. "Yes, yes," he said, faintly; "I am nearly
ninety-four years old. I am a prisoner, but I am a sovereign."

You cannot leave the presence of royalty until dismissed;
you must receive your conge. As he was holding my hand and
talking on in a kindly, gentle way, I saw no prospect of a dis-
missal. Finally I ventured to say, "I am afraid I am fatiguing
you." He turned and said, "You will come and see me
again?" "Unfortunately, your Holiness," I replied, "I must
start for Paris at ten minutes to three to-day." "Yes, yes,"
he said; "I know you go to Paris to-day; that was the reason I
fixed the audience at twelve o'clock. But you will come again ?
Come any time within ten years and I shall be glad to see you."

I called on Cardinal Rampolla, and had a long talk as to our
representative, and I named the gentleman whom I had in
mind. He said he had a very great regard for him, and that,
while he thought his sympathies were with the Quirinal, he still
thought he would be just in all questions pertaining to Roman
news. I appointed the gentleman, Mr. Salvatore Cortesi,
and during a quarter of a century's service he has proved very
acceptable to both sides.

At a dinner Signor Prinetti had said that he had had a
conference with his colleagues, and that he would be able to

252 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [1903

meet our wishes. Then he turned to me and said: "I have
something which may interest you. Some time ago the Italian
Government issued, in twenty-five or thirty parts, facsimiles
of all the known reports and letters of Christopher Columbus —
every known document bearing his handwriting and signature
— and sent them to the royal libraries throughout Europe. I
think we have one copy left, and I shall be very glad if you will
permit me to present this one to you." I expressed my pleasure
and gratitude.

Three or four days after this dinner I went to the hunt outside
of Rome. On my return I learned that Prinetti had, while in
audience of the King, suffered a stroke of apoplexy. I left
my card at Signora Prinetti's and wrote a letter of condolence
to his chief assistant. I received a reply expressing Signora
Prinetti's appreciation and adding, "I think you will be in-
terested to learn that the last official act of Signor Prinetti,
before he was stricken, was to sign an order to deliver the copy
of the Columbus books to our consul general in New York, to
be forwarded to you."

Next day my business with the Italian Government was
arranged, and after that our despatches came from Italy in less
than half an hour. When the Pope died we received the
bulletin announcing the fact from the Vatican, two miles
distant from our office in Rome, in nine minutes, and retrans-
mitted it to Paris, Berlin, and London, giving them the first
news.

Dinner with the Kaiser

I went to Berlin, where I was "commanded" to an Ordens-
festy and to dine with the Kaiser. It occurred on a Sunday.
The Ordensfest was an annual reception given by the Imperial
family to all persons who had been decorated during the pre-
ceding year. The most distinguished men of Germany were
present to the number of several hundred. At noon, in the
chapel of the Schloss in Berlin, all those entitled to admission
assembled. I drove to the Schloss, presented my card, and
mounted the stairs to the chapel. At the chapel door I was

i9o3J FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 253

escorted by a court marshal to a seat, where I watched the
company gather. There were generals and admirals and
many distinguished men. Facing the pulpit was a space re-
served for the Imperial family, three tiers of seats deep. After
I had been sitting for some time Baron von Richthofen, of the
Foreign Office, came up and said, "This is not the seat for you;
you are misplaced. A seat has been reserved for you." Then
he led me to a seat immediately behind the Imperial family.

When the chapel was filled the master of ceremonies, with his
mace in hand, rapped, and the Imperial party entered. Every-
one rose as the Emperor and the Empress appeared and passed
to the seats reserved for them. Four pages carried the Em-
press's train. Prince Henry and Princess Irene, his wife;
Prince Leopold and Princess Leopold; and Prince Eitel, the
Emperor's second son, followed. The Emperor sat at the
extreme end of a row, with the Empress at his side, and next
to Prince Henry, Prince Leopold, and their wives. Behind
them were the younger members of the Imperial family and the
court attendants.

The form of service of the Lutheran faith began, and at the
proper times the Emperor rose first, and all others followed his
action. When he sat, everyone else followed. At the close
of the service the Imperial party withdrew, and Baron von
Muhlberg led me to the great White Hall, where a one-o'clock
dinner was served. I was seated directly opposite the Kaiser.
There were two long tables, one slightly raised on a platform,
and in front of this another, at which I was seated. Herr
Sydow, postmaster-general, sat on my right, and Doctor Becker,
president of the Reichstag, on my left. There were about
twenty at table, including the Imperial family. After those
at the lower table had assembled there was a warning of some
sort, and we all rose while the Imperial party, with the Emperor
leading, entered.

They came in at the end of the hall and marched across and
took their appointed places, everybody standing until the
Emperor was seated. At the Emperor's left sat the Empress,
and at his right, Prince Leopold. Farther along sat Prince
Eitel and Prince Henry and Princess Irene. The Crown Prince

254 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [1903

was not present. The dinner proceeded without incident.
When it had ended the Emperor rose and offered the health of
his guests, and then with a martial air turned and marched out,
the Imperial family following, while we at the lower table re-
mained standing in our places. Then the Hofmarschall, gorge-
ously arrayed in the gold-braided costume of his office, came
up and asked me to follow him. We went through a long
series of halls and came to one where there were two doors with
soldiers guarding them with crossed bayonets. As we ap-
proached, the guards raised their rifles, and we entered. I
found myself in the presence of the Imperial family of Germany.
The Emperor stood at the farther side of the room, by a
mantel, and standing about were the Empress, Prince Henry,
Princess Irene, Prince Eitel, and Prince Leopold. Nobody else
was in the room. I was presented to the Kaiser. He greeted
me very cordially, and spoke in English of my mission to Berlin,
and expressed his pleasure at the prospect that the people of
the United States would be able to see Germany through
American eyes. He said freely and at some length that he bore
our people in affectionate regard, and assured me that he would
give the necessary orders to put the Associated Press in a
satisfactory position in Germany. Finally, turning to Prince
Henry, he said: "Here is a gentleman whom you know." The
Prince was standing by his side and greeted me, adding: "I
want you to know my wife." He then presented me to Princess
Irene. She was cordial, speaking of her English ancestors and
the delight she had in meeting one who spoke her mother-
tongue. Meanwhile, several hundred people had gathered in
the hall outside, awaiting an audience. The Hofmarschall
approached and said that the Empress was ready to receive me.
She was very gracious and said: "I hope you will enjoy yourself;
we want you to know you are welcome." General von Pies-
sen, who had visited the United States with Prince Henry,
entered the room and greeted me cordially. As Von Plessen
began talking, a young fellow came up — a splendid, stalwart
boy — and, clicking his heels together, said: "I am Eitel; and I
want to thank you for the courtesies you extended to my Uncle
Henry while he was in America. It was very kind of you, and

1903] FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 25$

we all appreciated it." I said it was a pleasure for which no
American deserved thanks. He was delightfully diffident.
"Do you like yachting?" he asked. "Have you seen the
Meteor 7" "Yes," I replied; "she is a fine boat." He an-
swered: "I hope to have a sail in her. I am sorry that my
brother, the Crown Prince, is not here. He has gone to Russia.
He will be greatly grieved because he is not here. I know you
return to Italy. How long will you be in Italy? My brother
and I are going to Italy, and if you will do me the honour to
call on me there I shall be pleased."

By this time the doors of the great hall opened, and the
Emperor and the Empress went out among the waiting people.
The Emperor walked up on one side of the hall and the Empress
on the other, an improvised avenue being arranged for each.
Baron von Richthofen presented me to a number of ambassa-
dors. Prince Henry came up in a most informal way and said :
" I know you will forgive me if I am not as attentive to you as
I should like to be, because this is the one time in the year when
everyone in Germany who has been decorated has the right to
command our attention. But," he continued, "I hope you will
enjoy yourself. We want to make you welcome. You will
meet here many of the most distinguished men in Germany."
The Hofmarschall signalled me to the presence of the Empress.
Beside her was standing a little old man to whom she presented
me. It was Menzel, the artist. He had just painted a picture of
Frederick the Great, which he had dedicated to the people of
the United States, and I congratulated him on the splendid
work. Then I drifted to the other side of the hall as the Kaiser
was coming up. He stopped and said: "I think you will find
this an interesting ceremony. Every man who has been
decorated within the year comes here, and we hold this recep-
tion. This man," he added, pointing to one obviously of the
peasant class, "is a letter-carrier. He has been decorated.
Back there is a locomotive-engine driver. A man may be
decorated for courage or for skill. They all come here on this
occasion."

The reception lasted until four o'clock, when the Imperial
family withdrew.

256 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [1903

I met Postmaster-General Sydow. We talked over the French
plan for expediting our telegrams. I said I thought a simpler
way could be adopted. We finally agreed upon a small red
label bearing the word "America. " Pasted on a despatch any-
where in Germany, it meant that the despatch must take first
place on the wires.

I had now concluded arrangements of a most satisfactory
character with the French, Italian, and German governments,
and they all went into effect about the 1st of January, 1904.

A year later I was again invited to dinner by the German
Emperor, and had an hour alone with him. He said he was
greatly pleased with the better understanding which had
developed between Germany and the United States, which he
was good enough to attribute in large measure to the presenta-
tion of a just view of German events and German motives by
the Associated Press. He freely declared his desire to cement
the friendly relations existing between the two nations, not
because of any immediate political consequences, but in the
larger interests of the world's peace and progress. He made no
secret of his impatience over the hypercritical, not to say cen-
sorious or malignant, tone of a number of journals of both
countries, and said he believed that only harm could result from
their utterances. His manner was wholly unrestrained, cordial,
and democratic. He was greatly gratified at the reception
accorded to his brother, Prince Henry, but hoped that no citizen
of the United States would imagine that the visit of the Prince
meant more than a sincere desire to foster good-fellowship
between the two peoples.

He had a sense of humour which one could not fail to enjoy.
He seemed like a boy who loved to "talk big," to rattle his
sword and to swagger, but who, on the other hand, could
"scuttle away" pretty rapidly when there was danger of real
trouble. He boasted alike of having maintained the peace of
Europe and of what he was to do in Weltpolitik.

We discussed the obvious friction between England and
Germany. "Do you know," he said, "the first note of antago-
nism between Germany and England came from the English
side? England's policy toward the continental powers has

1904J FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 257

always been that of dividing and conquering. And they have
always attached a moral side to every contest. In the days of
Bonaparte he was, in their view, a very wicked man; although
he was doing no more nor less than their own generals had done
for centuries. After Waterloo, Alexander of Russia became
the leading figure. Germany, Austria, Italy, and France,
were all negligible because they were wrecked. Thereafter
Russia, as the dominant power on the Continent of Europe,
was the object of British hatred and continued so for years
until, in the Crimean War of 1856, it was defeated. It was
strange enough that a Christian nation like England should
consistently support Turkey against Russia, but it did. When,
in 1870, the German Empire became a strong nation, the
first note of discord, as I have said, came from England. A
book called the 'Battle of Dorking,' discussing a problematic
invasion of England by Germany, was published and created
a great sensation. It was the popular book of the day."

The Kaiser told me that his first two acts after ascending the
throne were to stop duelling in the German army, and to insist
upon greater comfort for the coal miners. He was amazed
to find these acts made the subject of ridicule by the British
newspapers.

"The trouble with England is 'mig'," said he. His eyes
twinkled as I replied that I did not understand him. "It is
'mig'," he repeated. "Well," said I, "I know I am stupid, but
I don't follow you." "It is 'mig,'" he said with increased
emphasis. "M-I-G — 'Made in Germany' — one very Solingen
razor sold in the Strand of London! That is what hurts
England! It is our competition!" And then he branched off
into a discussion of the dignity of labour in Germany, as com-
pared with England.

"The English technical schools are all gone. She has
made too much money. She is drawing interest on her loans
from almost every country, and is now happy in playing golf
and cricket. In Germany, on the other hand, everyone works
— even the agent of the great German electrical works in Tokio
is the son of a German nobleman."

We talked of Russia and the Czar.

25S FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [1904

"Poor chap," he said, speaking of Nicholas. "I think he is
likely to lose his throne. He takes too much counsel of the
women of his household. Nick lives in daily terror of assas-
sination. I invited him here to visit me and he accepted.
I wanted him to come to Berlin or to Hamburg. He picked
out Wiesbaden but he would not go there during the season.
I sent Von Grumme, my personal aid, to see what could be done
to make Nicholas's visit agreeable, and he reported that the
question of personal security was uppermost in the Czar's
mind. So, when we went to Wiesbaden, I drove all the in-
habitants off the street, out of the doorways and out of the
windows, off the roofs and out of the side streets, and lined
the street through which we drove with troops. Poor little
Wiesbaden! I would have ridden down the street on horse-
back, and every man, woman, and child would have greeted
me cordially! But Nicholas and I rode down as if we were
going to a funeral! And then, on his return to St. Petersburg,
he wrote me a letter acknowledging my hospitality and
closed it with the phrase that he 'was particularly pleased with
the disposition of the troops'."

The Death of Pope Leo XIII

The illness and death of Pope Leo XIII in July, 1903, consti-
tuted an event which called for news-gathering ability of a high
order. Preparation had been made long in advance. Con-
ferences were held with the Italian officials and with the author-
ities at the Vatican, all looking to the establishment of relatious
of such intimacy as to guarantee us the news. We had been
notified by the Italian Minister of Telegraphs that, because of
the strained relations existing between his government and the
Papal Court, he should forbid the transmission of any telegrams
announcing the Pope's death for two hours after the fatal
moment, in order that Cardinal Rampolla might first notify the
papal representatives in foreign countries. This was done as
a gracious act of courtesy to the Church.

To meet the emergency, we arranged a code message to be
sent by all cable-lines, which should be addressed, not to the.

i903l FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 239

Associated Press, but to the general manager in person, and

should read: "Number of missing bond . (Signed) Monte-

fiore." This bore on its face no reference to the death of the
Pontiff, and would be transmitted. The blank was to be
filled with the hour and moment of the Pope's death, reversed.
That is, if he died at 2:53, the message would read:

Melstone, New York. Number of missing bond 352. (Signed)
Montefiore.

The object of reversing the figures was, of course, to prevent
a guess that it was a deception in order to convey the news.
If the hour had been properly written, they might have sus-
pected the purport of the message.

When, finally, the Pope died, although his bed was completely
surrounded by burning candles, an attendant hurried from the
room into an anteroom and called for a candle to pass before the
lips of the dying man, to determine whether he still breathed.
This was the signal for another attache, who stepped to the
telephone and announced to our correspondent, two miles away,
that the Pope was dead. Unfortunately, the hour of his death
was four minutes past four, so that whichever way it was
written, whether directly or the reverse, it was 404.

Nevertheless, the figures were inserted in the blank in the
bulletin which had been prepared, it was filed with the telegraph
company, and it came through to New York in exactly nine
minutes from the moment of death. It was relayed at Havre,
and again at the terminal of the French Cable Company in
New York, whence it came to our office on a short wire. The
receiving operator there shouted the news to the entire operat-
ing-room of the Associated Press, and every man on every
key on every circuit out of New York flashed the announcement
that the Pope had died at four minutes past four; so that the
fact was known in San Francisco within eleven minutes after
its actual occurrence.

The Reuter, Havas, and WolfF agents located in our office in
New York retransmitted the announcement to London, Paris,
and Berlin, giving those cities their first news of the event. A
comparison of the report of the London Times with that of

260 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [1903

any morning paper in the United States on the day following

the death of the Pope would show that, both as to quantity and
quality, our report was vastly superior. The London Times
had a column and a half; the New York Times had a page of the
graphic story of the scenes in and about the Vatican. The
New York Times story was ours. This was so notable an
event that it occasioned comment throughout the world.

During the illness of the Pope I ordered a number of the best
men from our London, Paris, and Vienna offices to Rome to
assist our resident men. The advantage of such an arrange-
ment was that the London men were in close touch with Church
dignitaries of England, while our representatives from France
and Vienna had their immediate circle of acquaintances among
the Church dignitaries of those countries. The result was that
Mr. Cortesi, the chief of our Rome office, was perfectly familiar
with the local surroundings and was on intimate terms with
Doctors Lapponi and Mazzoni of the Vatican as well as with the
other resident officials of the Church, and was always able to
command attention from them. Besides, he had not only the
advantage of their acquaintance. We were enabled day by
day to present an extraordinary picture of the scenes at the
Vatican, and day by day the bulletins upon the condition of the
Holy Father were transmitted with amazing rapidity. The
death-bed scenes at Buffalo, when President McKinley was
lying ill at the Milburn House, were reported with no greater
degree of promptness and no greater detail. The funeral
scenes were also covered in a remarkably ample way and with
astounding rapidity. Then came the conclave for the election
of a new pope. It was to be secret, and every effort was made
to prevent its proceedings from becoming public. A brick wall
was constructed about the hall to prevent any one having
access to it. But, to the amazement of everyone, the Asso-
ciated Press had a daily report of all that happened. One of
the members of the Noble Guard was an Associated Press man.
Knowing the devotion of the average Italian for the dove, he
took with him into the conclave chamber his pet dove, which
was a homing pigeon trained to go to our office. But Cardinal
Rampolla could not be deceived; he ordered the pigeon killed.

I9o3j FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 261

Other plans, however, were more successful. Laundry lists
sent out with the soiled linen of a cardinal, and a physician's
prescriptions sent to a pharmacy, proved to be code messages
which were deciphered in our office. We were enabled not
only to give a complete and accurate story of the happenings
within the conclave chamber, but we announced the election
of the new pope, which occurred about 11 A. M. in Rome, so
promptly that, owing to the difference in time, it was printed
in the morning papers of San Francisco of that day. We were
also enabled to send the announcement back to Europe before
it was received from Rome direct, and it was our message that
was printed in all the European capitals. The Italian authori-
ties did not interfere with these messages.

The Removal oj the Russian Censorship on Foreign News

Satisfactory relations had been arranged between the Asso-
ciated Press and France, Germany, and Italy, but obviously the
place of chief interest was Russia. It had often been sug-
gested that we station correspondents at St. Petersburg, but
apparently the time was not ripe. It was the last country in
which to try an experiment. Wisdom therefore dictated a
delay until it could be determined how the agreement with
other continental powers would work out. Moreover, it was
important that the St. Petersburg bureau, in case one should
be established, should be conducted by a correspondent of
singular tact. With this possible course in view, I put in train-
ing for the post a gentleman from our Washington office in
whom I had great confidence. He was a graphic writer and
a man of wide information and rare discretion. He studied
French until he was able to speak with reasonable freedom,
and devoted himself to the study of Russian history.

The situation at the Russian capital was peculiar. Every
conceivable obstacle was put in the way of the foreign journalist
who attempted to telegraph news thence to any alien news-
paper or agency. The business of news gathering was under
ban in the Czar's empire. The doors of the ministers of
state were closed; no public official would give audience to a

262 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [1903

correspondent. Even subordinate government employees did
not dare to be seen in conversation with a member of the hated
guild, and all telegrams were subject to a rigorous censorship.

Count Cassini, the Russian ambassador at Washington, was
friendly, and desired me to act. While I still had the matter
under consideration, an agent of the Russian Government
urged me to go at once to St. Petersburg. I sailed in Decem-
ber, 1903, and by arrangement met the Russian agent in
London. To him I explained that we were ready to take our
news of Russia direct from St. Petersburg, instead of receiving
it through London, but, to do that, four things seemed essential:
First, the Russian Government should accord us a press rate
that would enable us to send news economically. Second, they
should give us such precedence for our despatches as the
French, Italian, and German governments had done. Third,
they must open the doors of their various departments and give
us the news. And, fourth, they must remove the censorship
and enable us to send the news. If we should go there at all,
we must go free to tell the truth. Obviously we could not tell
the truth unless we could learn the truth and be free to send it.

The agent said that, acting under instructions, he would
leave London immediately for St. Petersburg, in order to have
a week there before my arrival, so as to lay the matter before
the ministers in detail. Meanwhile, I went to Paris. At my
suggestion, the French Foreign Office wrote to their ambassa-
dor at St. Petersburg, instructing him to use his good offices
with the Russian Government, the ally of the French Govern-
ment, in an attempt to secure for the Associated Press the
service that was desired. They assured the Russian Govern-
ment that they believed the best interests of the world and of
Russia would be served by granting my request, which they
regarded as very reasonable. I went to Berlin, and the German
Foreign Office advised the German ambassador at St. Peters-
burg in the same manner. On my arrival in St. Petersburg,
therefore, I had the friendly intercession of the ambassadors
of both these governments, and the support of Count Cassini,
as well as the influence of our own ambassador, Mr. Mc-
Cormick.

1904] FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 263

An audience with Count Lamsdorff, the Russian Minister of
Foreign Affairs, was arranged, and Mr. McCormick and I laid
the subject before him. He was perfectly familiar with it,
as he had received the report of the government agent and had
also received favourable advices from Count Cassini. The
minister assured me that he would do everything in his power
to aid in the movement, because he felt that it was wise; but,
unfortunately, the whole question of the censorship and of
telegraphic transmission was in the hands of the Minister of
the Interior, M. Plehve. Count Lamsdorff said that, the day
before our call, he had transmitted their agent's report to
Plehve, with an urgent letter advising the Russian Government
to meet the wishes of the Associated Press. He told me that I
could rely on his friendly offices, and I left him.

The reply of Count Lamsdorff, and later that of M. Plehve,
disclosed the anomalous condition of the Russian Government.
The ministers of state were independent of one another, each
reporting to the Emperor, and frequently they were at. odds
among themselves.

Ambassador McCormick and I called on Minister Plehve.
We found him most agreeable. I studied him with some care.
A strong, forceful, but affable gentleman, he impressed me as a
man charged with very heavy responsibilities, quite mindful
of the fact, and fearful lest any change in existing conditions
might be fraught with danger. He said, frankly, that he was
not prepared to abolish the censorship. To his mind it was
a very imprudent thing to do, but he said he would go as far as
he could toward meeting our wishes. As to a press rate, un-
fortunately that was in the hands of the Minister of Finance,
and he had no control of the subject; and as to expediting our
despatches, in view of the entirely independent character of
each minister, it would be beyond his power to stop a govern-
ment message, or a message from any member of the Imperial
family, in our favour. Beyond that he would give us as great
speed as was in his power. He would be very glad, so far as his
bureau was concerned, to give such directions as would enable
our correspondent to secure all proper information.

As I have said, no newspaperman at that time could expect

264 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST ^

to secure admission to any department of the Government.
Indeed, a card would not be taken at the door if it were known
to be that of a newspaperman. The consequence was that the
correspondent would write his despatch and drive two or three
miles to the office of the censor. The restrictions put upon
foreign correspondents had been so great that they had virtually
abandoned Russia; and when I arrived there, with the exception
of our men who had preceded me, no foreign correspondent
was sending daily telegrams from St. Petersburg. The thing
was retroactive. Because the government would not permit
despatches to go freely, no despatches were going. The cen-
sor's duties, therefore, had been so lightened that the govern-
ment had added to his work the censorship of the drama, and
the chances were that when the correspondent called he would
have to run around to some theatre to find the censor; and
he might be sure that between midnight and eight o'clock in
the morning he could never see him, because a censor must sleep
some time, and he would not allow anybody to disturb him
between those hours, which for the American morning news-
papers were the vital hours.

It happened that M. Lamscott, the censor of foreign des-
patches, was a very reasonable man. But he was a subordinate
of a subordinate in the Ministry of the Interior. He was a
conscientious, well-meaning person, disposed to do all that he
could for us, and he personally was opposed to the censorship;
but he could not pass a telegram that would be the subject of
criticism by a minister or important subordinate in any de-
partment of the government, or by any member of the Imperial
family. And since he was liable to be criticized for anything
he might do, his department became a bureau of suppression
rather than of censorship. He could take no chances. Certain
rules had been adopted, and one of them provided that no
mention whatever of a member of the Imperial family should ap-
pear in a despatch after the censor had passed upon it. If, by
any chance, the correspondent succeded in securing information
and writing it in such fashion that it would pass the censorship,
he drove two miles to the telegraph bureau and paid cash at
commercial rates for his despatch. It then must wait till all

1904] FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 26$

government and commercial business had been cleared from the
wires.

Under such a rule, it must be obvious that the business
of sending despatches from Russia was impracticable. The
mere matter of paying cash, which at first sight would not seem
a great hardship, meant that, in the event of some great hap-
pening requiring a despatch of length, the correspondent must
carry with him several hundred roubles. He could not trust a
Russian servant with this, but must go in person. There were
over two hundred holidays in Russia every year, when the banks
were closed and cash was not obtainable. The obstacle pre-
sented by that fact, therefore, was a very serious one.

Such were the conditions. After my audience with M.
Plehve, the case seemed nearly hopeless, and I was delaying
my departure from Russia only until I should receive a definite
statement that nothing could be done, when the following
Sunday morning the American ambassador called me on the
telephone and said that I was to be commanded to an audience
with the Emperor. Ambassador McCormick thought it best
to keep in touch with him, since I was liable to be summoned
at any moment. During the day I received the command to
an audience on Monday.

After seeing M. Plehve I had a talk with the censor. M.
Lamscott spoke English perfectly. He said that if his opinion
were asked respecting the censorship, he would be very glad to
say that he disapproved of the whole thing; but he was not at
liberty to volunteer his advice. I also, by suggestion of M.
Plehve, had a conference with M. Dournovo, his chief subordi-
nate, the Minister of Telegraphs. Dournovo was an ex-sailor,
a hale, rough-and-ready type of man. He had spent some time
in San Francisco while in command of a Russian vessel, spoke
English perfectly, and proved a most progressive spirit. He
was ready to do anything that he could, and assured me that
by adopting a certain route via Libau he would be able to give
our despatches the desired precedence. He said he would
also issue orders to the Transsiberian lines, so that we could
rest assured that our despatches would not take more than an
hour from Port Arthur or Vladivostok to New York.

266 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [J9H

We were making progress. We had succeeded in securing
rapidity of transmission, a satisfactory press rate, and an
arrangement to make a charge account, so that it would not
be necessary to pay cash. Meanwhile, successful efforts had
been making for the appointment of an official in each minister-
ial department who would always receive our correspondent
and aid him in his search for information if it fell within the
jurisdiction of his department. General Kuropatkin, who at
that time was Minister of War; Admiral Avelan, head of the
Navy Department; and M. Pleske, the Minister of Finance, each
appointed such a man. Finally, I was "commanded" to an
audience of the Emperor.

A private audience of the Emperor of Russia in the Winter

aura.

a^^&^2^^e^ !

"Command" to audience of the Czar

Palace is an honour which must impress one. I was notified
upon a slip accompanying the formal card of command what
costume I was expected to wear — American evening dress,
which, in the court language of Europe, is known as "gala"
garb. At half-past three on the afternoon of February ist
I presented myself. A servant removed the ever-present
overshoes and overcoat, and a curious functionary in red court

!9<hJ FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 267

livery, with long white stockings and a red tam-o'-shanter cap
from which streamed a large white plume, indicated by pan-
tomime that I was to follow him. We ascended a grand stair-
case and began an interminable march through a labyrinth of
wide halls and corridors. A host of attendants in gaudy ap-
parel, scattered along the way, rose as we approached and
deferentially saluted. In one wide hall sat a company of guards
who clapped silver helmets on their heads, rose, and presented
arms as we passed.

I was shown into an anteroom, where the Grand Duke Andre
awaited me. He introduced himself and chatted most agree-
ably about American affairs, until a door opened and I was
ushered into the presence of His Imperial Majesty. The room
was evidently a library. It contained well-filled bookshelves, a
large work-table, and an American roll-top desk. Without
ceremony and in the simplest fashion the Emperor fell to a
consideration of the subject of my visit. He was dressed in the
fatigue uniform of the Russian navy — braided white jacket and
blue trousers. The interview lasted about an hour.

I represented to His Majesty the existing conditions, and
told him of the difficulties which we encountered, and the desire
on the part of his ambassador at Washington that Americans
should see Russia with their own eyes, and that news should
not take on an English colour by reason of our receiving it from
London. I said that we felt a large sense of responsibility.
Every despatch of the Associated Press was read by one half
the population of the United States. I added that Russia and
the United States were either to grow closer and closer or
they were to grow apart, and we were anxious to do whatever
we properly might to cement the cordial relations that had
existed for a hundred years.

His Majesty replied: "I, too, feel my responsibility. Russia
and the United States are young, developing countries, and
there is not a point at which they should be at issue. I am
most anxious that the cordial relations shall not only continue,
but grow."

When assured, in response to an inquiry, that the Emperor
desired me to speak frankly, I said: "We come here as friends,

268 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [,904

and it is my desire that our representatives here shall treat
Russia as a friend; but it is the very essence of the proposed
plan that we be free to tell the truth. We cannot be the mouth-
piece of Russia, we cannot plead her cause, except in so far as
telling the truth in a friendly spirit will do it."

"That is all we desire," His Majesty replied, "and all we
could ask of you." He requested me to recount the specific
things I had in mind.

I told the Emperor that the question of rate and speed of
transmission had fortunately been settled by his ministers, and
that the two questions I desired to present to him were those
of an open door in all the departments, that we might secure
the news, and the removal of the censorship.

"It seems to me, Your Majesty," I said, "that the censor-
ship is not only valueless from your own point of view, but
works a positive harm. A wall has been built up around the
country, and the fact that no correspondent for a foreign paper
can live and work here has resulted in a traffic in false Russian
news that is most hurtful. To-day there are newspapermen
in Vienna, Berlin, and London who make a living by peddling
out the news of Russia, and it is usually false. If we were free
to tell the truth in Russia, as we are in other countries, no self-
respecting newspaper in the world would print a despatch from
Vienna respecting the internal affairs of Russia, because the
editor would know that, if the thing were true, it would come
from Russia direct. All you do now is to drive a correspondent
to send his despatches across the German border. I am able
to write anything I choose in Russia, and send it by messenger
to Wirballen, across the German border, and it will go from there
without change. You are powerless to prevent my sending
these despatches, and all you do is to anger the correspondent
and make him an enemy, and delay his despatches, robbing the
Russian telegraph lines of a revenue they should receive. So it
occurs to me that the censorship is inefficient; that it is a cen-
sorship which does not censor, but annoys."

During the conversation, to illustrate the existing difficulties,
I remarked that on the preceding Sunday we had received a
cable message from our New York office to the effect that a

1904] FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 269

very sensational despatch had been printed throughout the
United States, purporting to come from Moscow, and alleging
that, during the progress of certain army manoeuvres under the
direction of the Grand Duke Sergius [assassinated February 17,
1905], a large body of troops had been ordered to cross a
bridge over the Moscow River, and by a blunder, another order
had been given at the same time to blow up the bridge,
and thus a thousand soldiers had been killed. This despatch
came to us on Sunday evening, with the request that we find
out whether it was true. There was no way to ascertain. No-
body could get any information from the War Department;
nobody would be admitted to ask such a question; and I told
the Emperor the chances were that, in the ordinary course of
things, this would happen: three or four weeks later the false
despatch would be sent back by post from the Russian Legation
at Washington, and there would be a request made on the part
of the Russian Government that it be denied, because there
was not a word of truth in it; but the denial would go out a
month or six weeks after the statement, and no newspaper
would print it, because interest in the story had died out. Thus
nobody would see the denial.

It happened in this case that we knew a man in St. Petersburg
who had been in Moscow on the day mentioned, and when he
saw the telegram he said at once: "I know all about that story.
Two years ago the Grand Duke Sergius, at some manoeuvres,
did order some troops to cross a bridge, and a section of it
was blown up and one man was killed." I said to His Majesty:
"In this instance we were able to correct the falsehood; but
it is most important that a correction of this sort should follow
the falsehood at the earliest moment, while the thing is still
warm in the public mind."

We talked of other things: of the negotiations pending at
the time with Japan. He said over and over again that there
must be no war, that he did not believe there would be one,
and that he was going as far as self-respect would permit him in
the way of meeting the Japanese in the matter of their differ-
ences. And of the internal affairs of Russia he spoke with
great frankness. I suggested in a jocular way that there

270 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST {l9H

seemed to be some room for improvement in the Russian
method of government.

He said in reply, frankly and with unmistakable sincerity:
"You say there are some things which might be done better
than they are; but you do not know our conditions. The
problems presented to us are unlike those of any other govern-
ment in the world. When I tell you that 126,000,000 of our
people are illiterate, and that the great majority have only
just emerged from barbarism, while of many even that could
not be said, you can understand some of our difficulties. We
have found in experience that if we take young men without
fortune and put them in universities and graduate them, give
them the higher education, but no means of applying their
knowledge or of earning a livelihood, they become unhappy,
discontented, and revolutionary.

"We consequently have adopted a plan which we think bet-
ter. Every year we draw as many as possible into the army,
not for war, because the world knows well that I desire peace,
but for education. We require everyone in the army to learn
at least to read and write, to have the rudiments of an educa-
tion, before he can gain freedom from military duty. If he can
attain this in three years, well and good; if not, he is compelled
to remain for four or even five years. And it is our experience
that when we have given him this elementary education and the
discipline of army life we have done a great deal toward making
him a good citizen.

"It is my desire to give Russia a constitution, and to create
a government upon the British model. I am perfectly familiar
with that. My mother, as you know, is an Englishwoman,
my tutor was an English clergyman, and English is the language
of my home life. There are many obstacles in my way. There
is the illiteracy of the Russian people and the fact that the
intelligentsia are so few. I do not know whether they will let
me live to give them a constitution. My grandfather sought
to give them one, and on the very day he attempted it he was
assassinated."

I was then given my leave by His Majesty, who courteously
suggested that he should see me at the court ball which was to

,904] FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 271

take place that evening. Three or four hours later I attended
the ball, and he came to me and reopened the conversation in
the presence of the American ambassador, and was good enough
to say to Mr. McCormick that he had had a very interesting
afternoon.

Later in the evening Count Lamsdorffcame up and expressed
his gratification at the interview I had had with the Emperor.
He said that the Emperor had told him of it, and Count Lams-
dorflF added: "I think it of great value to Russia, and I want to
thank you for having told the truth to His Majesty, which he
hears all too rarely."

While chatting with the Emperor at the ball I asked how I
should transmit the memorandum referred to in the afternoon's
interview, and he told me to send it through Baron de preede-
ricksz, Minister of the Palace.

The next day I prepared the memorandum for transmission,
and then it occurred to me that it would be befitting the dignity
of the Imperial office if it were neatly printed, and I set out to
find a printer who could do it in English. I drove to the Credit
Lyonnais, and called on the manager, whom I knew, and asked
him if there was a printing-office in St. Petersburg where
English could be printed. He gave me a card to the manager
of a very large establishment located in the outskirts of the city.

The manager was a kindly old German who spoke French.
I told him what was wanted, and he said he would be delighted
to do anything for an American: he had a son, a railway en-
gineer, at Muskegon, Michigan. He said he had no composi-
tors who understood English, but he had the Latin type, and,
as the copy was typewritten, his printers could pick it out
letter by letter and set it up, and then I could revise the proof
and put it in shape. He asked me when it was needed. I re-
plied that I must have it by noon of the following day. He
said that would involve night work, but he would be very glad
indeed to keep on a couple of printers to set it up.

As I was about to leave he glanced at the manuscript and said
with a startled look: "This has not been censored."

"No," I replied, "it has not been censored."

"Then," lie said, "it must be censored; there is a fine of five

272 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [1904

hundred roubles and three months in jail for setting one word
that does not bear the censor's stamp. I should not dare,
as much as I should like to accommodate you, to put myself in
jeopardy. "But," he added, "you will have no trouble with
it. It is now six o'clock. I will have the engineer stay and
keep the lights burning, and have the two printers go out to
dinner, and you can go and have it censored, in the meantime,
very much more quickly than I can. Return here by eight
o'clock, and we can work on it all night, if necessary."

I drove at once to M. Lamscott, he being the censor who had
passed upon our despatches, and presented the case to him. His
countenance fell at once.

"I hope you will believe that if it were in my power to help
you, I would do so," he said; "but, unfortunately, my function
is to censor foreign despatches only, and I have no power to
censor job-work. That falls within an entirely different de-
partment, and my stamp would not be of any use to you what-
ever. But I may say to you, as a friend, that it is hopeless.
If Minister Plehve, in whose department this falls, sought to
have a document like this censored, it would take him a week to
have it go through the red tape which would be necessary. And
the very thing which makes you think that this should be easy
to censor makes it the most difficult thing in the world, because
no censor would dare to affix his stamp to a paper which is in
the nature of a petition to the sovereign until it had passed step
by step through all the gradations of office up to His Majesty
himself, and he had signified a willingness to receive it. Then
it would have to come back through all the gradations to the
censor again; and it would be two or three weeks before you
would get the document in shape to print it."

I laughed, and said a petition to remove the censorship re-
quired so much censoring that it was actually amusing.

He replied: "The only thing you can do is to write it."

So I took it to the American Embassy, had it engrossed, and
transmitted it to the Emperor, and then waited for some word
from him.

I received an invitation to the second ball, which the Emperor
had assured me would be a much more agreeable function than

i9Q4l FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 273

the first, because, instead of thirty-three hundred people, there
would be only six hundred present. This second ball was to
occur a week later.

On Wednesday I transmitted the memorandum to His
Majesty. On Thursday evening, at a reception, I encountered
Minister Plehve. He said he knew of my audience with the
Emperor and had seen the memorandum which I had left with
him; and while he was desirous of doing everything in his power,
I must remember that he was responsible for the internal order
of Russia, and he could not bring himself to believe that a step
of this kind was wise. It was almost revolutionary in its char-
acter, and he wanted to know whether there could not be some-
thing in the nature of a compromise effected.

"All your other requests have been provided for," he said;
"the only question that remains is the censorship, and I want
to know if you would not be content with an arrangement
by which I should appoint a bureau of censors at the central
telegraph office and keep them on duty night and day, with
instructions to give you the largest possible latitude. I can
assure you there would be virtually nothing but a censorship in
form so far as you are concerned."

I replied that I was sorry that I could not see my way clear
to do the thing he asked. "I am not here, Your Excellency,"
I added, "to advise you as to your duties. That is a question
which you must determine for yourself. Neither am I here to
say that I think the suggestion you make an unwise one. I do
not know. It may not be wise for you to remove the censorship.
That is a question which I am not called on to discuss. I am
here at the instance of the Russian Government, because it
desired me to come. It desired us to look at Russia through
our own eyes. Obviously we cannot do that unless we are
absolutely free. Anything less than freedom in the matter
would mean that we should be looking at Russia, not through
our own eyes, but through your eyes. So, without the slightest
feeling in the matter, if you do not see your way clear, I shall
take myself out of Russia, and we shall go on as we have
done for so many years — taking our Russian news from
London."

214 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [1904

"Oh, no," said he in a startled tone; "that must not be. I
would not have you understand me as saying that your wishes
will not be met. I believe His Majesty has given you assur-
ances on the point, and of course it is in his hands, and he will
do whatever he thinks best about it."

The Minister then suddenly saw, in another part of the room,
a lady to whom he desired to speak, and we parted. Later
in the evening he drew close to my side and asked in a whisper
if I had heard the news.

"What news?" I asked. It was at a moment when the whole
world was waiting breathless for Russia's last reply to Japan.

"The reply to Japan went forward to-night," he replied;
"and I thought you might want to know it."

"Indeed," I said; "and when?"

"At seven o'clock."

He then quietly drew away, and I sought out our correspon-
dent and communicated the fact to him. Going to the censor,
he had his despatch censored and forwarded it. About an
hour later, after twelve o'clock, the French minister said to me,
"You know the news?"

I regarded Minister Plehve's information as confidential and
asked: "What news?"

"I think you know very well, because Plehve told you," he
answered.

"Yes," I said; "the answer has gone to Japan."

"No, not to Japan," he replied; "but to AlexiefF, and it will
not reach Baron Rosen, the Russian minister at Tokio, until
Saturday or Monday."

I was naturally startled, because the despatch which had been
sent to New York had reported that the answer had gone to
Japan. Twelve o'clock had come and gone, there was no op-
portunity to secure a censored correction, and an inaccurate
despatch was certain to be printed in all the American papers
the following morning, and I was apparently powerless to pre-
vent it.

Mr. Kurino, the Japanese minister, was anxious to know the
news. I did not feel at liberty to communicate it to him, and
he turned away, saying, "Well, I think this is a very unpleasant

,904) FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 275

place for me, and I shall take my departure." So he and his
wife left me to make their adieux to the hostess.

I also took my leave and drove at once to the telegraph office.
Now, they did not censor private messages. I entered the
telegraph bureau and wrote this despatch:

Walter Neef, 40 Evelyn Gardens, London:

Howard was slightly in error in his telegram to-night. The docu-
ment has been telegraphed to the gentleman in charge in the East,
and will reach its destination Saturday or Monday.

I signed my name and handed in the message, which was
delivered promptly in London to Mr. Neef, the chief of our
London office, who at once sent a correction to the United
States, and the despatch appeared in proper form in the Amer-
ican papers.

Plehve was, I believe, a sincere man — one who felt that all
the repressive measures he had adopted were necessary. He
was not a reactionary in the fullest sense. He was a progres-
sive man, but his methods were obviously wrong. He thought
that "if the lines were loosed the horses would run away." I
did not gain the impression that he was an intriguer or that
he was sinister in his methods. He seemed direct and con-
scientious. He belonged to the number who believed that the
greatest good must come to Russia by easy stages but by
repressive measures. He did not believe in the press; he did
not believe that the best interests of the people were to be
served by education; he did believe in the Autocracy, with all
that it implied. The impression left on my mind was that he
was afraid the censorship would be abolished over his head,
and he wanted terms less dangerous from his point of view.

I received a telegram asking me to go to Berlin and dine at
the American ambassador's house, the Kaiser to be present.
This was to occur on the night of the 1 ith of February, and
through the good offices of our ambassader to Russia (I having
said I should remain in St. Petersburg to await His Majesty's
pleasure) I asked leave to go to Berlin, and it was granted.

On my return I was in a dilemma. The war with Japan was
on. I had given my word to the Emperor that I would await

276 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [1904

his pleasure, but I was aware that his mind and heart were full
of the disasters that had befallen the Russian arms in the East,
and that he probably had had no time to give thought to
my mission. There was a fair prospect of waiting indefinitely
and without result. Before going to Russia I had been warned
by a number of friends, in sympathetic tones, that my visit
would be a failure; that it was well enough to go to St. Peters-
burg in order to learn the conditions; that the journey would
probably be worth the trouble involved; but that any effort
to remove the censorship on foreign despatches would be sheer
waste of time.

William T. Stead had gone to Russia a year before on the
same mission, and had had the advantage of the personal
friendship of Plehve. Stead was known as the most active
pro-Russian journalist in the world. He had had a personal
audience of the Czar at his country place in Livadia, and had
signally failed. I felt, therefore, that these prophecies of evil
were likely to be fulfilled, and I determined to leave as soon as
I could do so with propriety.

I asked Ambassador McCormick if he would call on Count
LamsdorfF and say frankly to him that I knew how occupied
the attention of all the officials was, and I thought it perhaps
an inopportune time to pursue the matter, and would, therefore,
if agreeable, take my leave. Mr. McCormick called at the
Foreign Office that afternoon on some official business, and,
before leaving, told Count LamsdorfF of my predicament, and
asked his advice.

Count LamsdorfF replied in a tone of surprise: "The thing is
done."

"I do not follow you," said Ambassador McCormick.

"Mr. Stone left a memorandum of his wishes with His
Majesty, did he not?" said Count LamsdorfF. "Well, the
Emperor wrote 'Approved' on the corner of the memorandum,
and all will be done. There may be a slight delay incident to
working out the details, but it will be done."

"Would it not be well," asked Mr. McCormick, "for Mr.
Stone to call on Minister Plehve and talk the matter over with
him as to the details?"

President Roosevelt

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1904] FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 277

"There is nothing to say," said Count Lamsdorff; "it is
finished. Mr. Stone has no occasion to see Plehve or any one
else. It will all be done as speedily as possible."

Mr. McCormick reported this conversation to me, and I
determined to depart, at once* leaving the matter entirely in
the hands of the authorities. I wrote, and despatched by hand,
letters thanking Count Lamsdorff and Minister Plehve for their
courtesy and for what they had done, and indicating my pur-
pose to leave by the Vienna express on the following Thursday.
Count Lamsdorff made a parting call, and Plehve sent his card.
I left St. Petersburg on Thursday evening.

On my arrival in Vienna I received the following from Mr.
Thompson, chief of our St. Petersburg office:

I know you will be gratified to learn that on my return to the office
from the station after bidding you adieu, and before your feet left the
soil of St. Petersburg, we were served with notice that the censorship
was abolished so far as we were concerned. But Count Lamsdorff
feels that it is a mistake, and that we shall be charged with having
made a bargain, and any kindly thing we may say of Russia will be
misconstrued. He thinks it would be much wiser if the censorship
were abolished as to all foreign correspondents and bureaus, and de-
sires your influence to that end.

I wired back at once that I fully agreed with Count Lams-
dorff's views, and certainly hoped that it would be abolished as
to the correspondents of the English, French, and German press
at once; and forty-eight hours after the restriction was removed
from the Associated Press, it was removed from everybody.

After my departure from St. Petersburg, not only our corres-
pondents, but all foreign correspondents, were as free to write
and send matter from any part of Russia, except in the terri-
tory covered by the Russo-Japanese War, as from any other
country in the world. We found ourselves able to present a
daily picture of life in Russia that was most interesting and
edifying, and even in the war district the Russian authorities
gave the largest possible latitude to our correspondents. They
turned over to us in St. Petersburg, daily, without mutilation,
the official reports made to the Emperor and to the War Depart-

278 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [1904

ment, and the world was astonished by the frank character of
the despatches coming from Russia. Ninety per cent, of the
real news concerning the war came in bulletin first from St.
Petersburg, and later in detail from the field; and there was
no attempt on the part of the Government to influence the
despatches, or even to minimize their disasters, when talking
officially to our correspondents, who made daily visits to the
War, Navy, Foreign, and Interior offices, and were given
the news with as much freedom as in Washington.

Until Port Arthur was invested, we found that we were able
to receive despatches with extraordinary speed. On one occa-
sion a despatch sent from New York to Port Arthur requiring
a reply occupied for transmission and reply two hours and
forty-five minutes; and on the occasion of the birth of the son
of the Emperor at Peterhof, twenty-eight miles from St. Peters-
burg, we received the despatch announcing the fact in exactly
forty-three minutes after its occurrence.

The foreign governments were as well pleased as I was
with the improved intercommunication. Royal decorations
rolled in upon me in rapid fashion. I was made an officer of
the Legion of Honour, a commendatore of Italy, and something
or other of Russia, Germany, Sweden, Japan, and Belgium.

The Russo-Japanese War

There were numerous occasions, during the progress of the
Boer War and of contests in Venezuela, in which brilliant
exhibitions of courage and enterprise were presented, but it
was in the Russo-Japanese struggle of 1904 that the service
reached a very high level of excellence.

Long before the troubles between Russia and Japan had
reached a critical stage, I ordered Mr. Egan, then of our New
York office, a gentleman of wide experience and rare ability,
to Tokio to establish an independent bureau. I went to St.
Petersburg, and was there when diplomatic relations with
Japan were broken off and the war begun. I engaged a number
of Russian correspondents, who set out at once for the Far
East

1904] FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 279

One of them, Mr. Kravchenko, was received in private
audience by the Czar before his departure. I cabled directions
to my assistant at New York, and he sent a corps of men to
Tokio to act under Mr. Egan's orders.

We were enabled to place correspondents at every point of
possible interest, and their telegrams were transmitted much
more rapidly and safely than if sent by the long lines through
the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea. The great newspapers of
London and New York promptly engaged the ablest special
correspondents available and sent them to the front. Among
these were a number of war reporters of long experience and
international fame. It soon became apparent, however, that
no special service could successfully compete with the Asso-
ciated Press alliance. For months the special men were held
in a courteous imprisonment at Tokio, while the Associated
Press men at the Russian headquarters and at points of vantage
in China and Korea were forwarding daily stories of surpassing
interest at each step in the contest. In the end, nearly all
the special men were ordered home, and the work of reporting
the war was left to the press agencies.

A number of our American and English representatives were
welcomed at Russian headquarters. Among these were Mr.
Middleton, one-time chief of the Associated Press bureau at
Paris, who died of disease at Mukden. He was buried with
military honours, but, later, at my request, Viceroy Alexieff
sent the remains through the lines, and a second burial took
place at Chefoo.

Mr. Kravchenko waited three nights and three days on
the bluffs about Port Arthur for the sea fight which Admiral
MakarofF was certain to have with Admiral Togo. He was
rewarded by a sight of the tragic destruction of the Petropav-
lovsky which he described in a telegram so graphic that, by
common consent, it was held to be the best specimen of war
reporting during the conflict.

Mr. PopofF, a young Russian known by his now. de guerre
of "KirilofF," was wounded at the battle of Liao-yang. He
had completed on the battle-field a well-written pen-picture of
the Japanese attack upon Stakelberg's corps when a shot

28o FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [1904

pierced his lung. He had ridden to a battery on the firing line
and found that, out of sixty gunners, forty were killed or
wounded. The officers had eaten nothing for twenty-four
hours, and PopofF shared with them such provisions as he had.
"Prudence urged me to leave the spot, but I was fascinated,"
he wrote. And here the message ended. A Russian officer,
who sent the telegram forward, added: "KiriloflF was shot
through the right lung while standing by our battery, and fell
back, suffering intense agony. He insisted upon being placed
on a horse, so that he could get to Liao-yang and file his des-
patch. It took him five hours and a half to cover the five miles
to the telegraph station. When he reached there he was so
exhausted and weak from loss of blood that we got him into the
hospital, although against his protest. He asked me to com-
plete his message for him. I am a soldier, and no writer; but
I will say that after the awful fight to-day we were still holding
our position. Japanese bodies bestrew all the heights. Their
losses must have run into tens of thousands. We have lost five
thousand thus far."

Mr. Hagerty, from the Chicago office of the Associated Press,
served at Chefoo. He was at the nearest cable station to Port
Arthur. He organized a corps of Chinese junkmen, who ran
the blockade and reported to him. There was sharp competi-
tion with a number of special correspondents of London news-
papers, and he put in service every available dock-labourer in
the port. On the arrival of a boat, day or night, he was
notified by his native assistants, and thus enabled to report
every story that came out of the beleaguered city. Two Asso-
ciated Press men in Port Arthur sent messsages to him whenever
possible.

Mr. Richmond Smith was detailed to accompany the be-
sieging Japanese army. He was not permitted to report daily,
but was given every facility for observing the movements, and
finally was permitted to take a despatch-boat to Chefoo, whence
he transmitted a telegram of over five thousand words, which
was the first authentic report from a newspaper eye-witness
covering the operations.

He was told by the Japanese authorities that he might send

I9C4) . FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 28/

from Chefoo his story of all that happened from the beginning
until October 29th, inclusive. A boat, the Genbu Maru> was
at his disposal for the journey, and was lying in the adjacent
harbour of Shaoping-tao. Smith at once set out. He rode
to the Japanese press headquarters, had his message censored,
and then went forward to the port. He arrived at Shaoping-
tao about ten o'clock at night, and found his boat at anchor
in the roadstead. He had been ordered to report to the naval
officer in command of the harbour. He went aboard the
commander's ship, and was astounded when that official politely
but firmly notified him that in no circumstances could he or
his despatch-boat leave before daybreak. This was indeed a
blow, because Smith had private information that the Japanese
had given all the other correspondents like permission to send
messages; and these correspondents had set out for the tele-
graph station at Yinkow, each believing himself specially
favoured. Smith was heartbroken. The commander took pity
on him, and showed him his instructions, which stated definitely
that the Genbu Maru might sail after the fall of Port Arthur and
not before. "These instructions can be changed only by an
appeal to the rear-admiral at Shaoping-tao and the admiral of
the fleet," he said.

This meant a delay of several days. The commander would
not insist upon the letter of his instructions, as he could see
from Smith's message that it was properly censored, and he
would allow the ship to go at daylight. But this concession
meant nothing. The other correspondents would be at Yinkow,
and Smith would be beaten. Then, in a dramatic attitude, he
took his precious telegram and held it over the blazing fire in
the cabin, and said that if he could not sail until daybreak he
would burn his message, and the important objects which the
Japanese War and Navy departments had sought to attain
would never be accomplished. This was too much, and the
officer relented. He agreed that the Genbu Maru might go out
to the guard-ship, and if the officer in command there would
assume the responsibility of passing it, it might sail on to
Chefoo. Fortunately, that commander shut his eyes, and
Smith went his way. It turned out later that the extreme

282 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [1904

caution exercised was due to the fact that the roadstead was
full of mines, which were invisible at night and might have
destroyed a boat at any moment. Smith reached his destina-
tion in safety, but, as it turned out, his rivals were delayed, so
that his message was printed in New York and London four
days ahead of those sent from Yinkow. It was no mean tribute
to the Associated Press and its representative that the Japanese
authorities read his telegram, approved it, and then sent him
alone to Chefoo, accepting his word of honour that he would not
change it, or disclose to any one the disposition of their troops
or their plan of campaign.

At Tokio, very early in his service, Mr. Egan established a
relation with the government which was easily more intimate
than that of any other journalist. His high sense of honour,
his administrative ability, and his tact were appreciated, and
soon won for him the confidence and esteem of the Japanese
authorities. He was given the official reports from the generals
in the field several hours ahead of any other correspondent,
and his wishes in regard to the treatment accorded to Asso-
ciated Press men at the front were respected in a remarkable
manner. At St. Petersburg our correspondent was given copies
of the official telegrams by direct command of the Czar, and
we were able to present a daily pen-picture of the Russian
activities which won high praise from every intelligent ob-
server.

The Qualities Needed in a War Correspondent

In reporting a war, the most important question naturally
arises over the selection of correspondents. The number of
men qualified by nature and education for such a task is very
limited. Your war correspondent must be physically capable
of withstanding the hardships of the field. He must also be as
courageous as any soldier. Indeed, his lot is an even harder
one, because he must put himself in places of the greatest
danger without the patriotic fervour, the touch of the com-
rade's elbow, or the possession of a rifle, all of which are large
factors in making up a trooper's bravery. He must be capable

1904I FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 283

of describing accurately and graphically what he sees. He
must have as large a perspective as the commanding general,
if he seeks to tell the whole story of the battle.

But he may have all of these primal requisites and still prove
a failure. He must be temperamentally a diplomat and cap-
able of ingratiating himself into the sympathetic and helpful
friendship of those with whom he comes in contact. He may
be an ideal representative at the headquarters of an American
general, but wholly incapable of serving satisfactorily with a
foreign army. He must, of course, be able to speak the lan-
guage of the army to which he is assigned.

Above all, the war correspondent must possess in marked
degree that familiarity with events and affairs which will
command the confidence of those in power about him. His
influence often extends beyond his primary mission of report-
ing, and strays into the field of international diplomacy. For
instance, during the Boxer Rebellion in China, one of the
Associated Press correspondents was sought out and consulted
by the commander of one power represented in the allied
expedition as to his proper attitude toward the military repre-
sentative of another power whose actions were causing grave
concern in that delicate hour.

When a battle has been fought, and the correspondent, at
great hazard, has written his story, then his troubles have only
fairly begun. He must "pass the censor." This may be
easy or it may be most difficult. Much depends upon the
character and intelligence of the censor.

Next, the messages must be transmitted. The correspon-
dent must be "first at the wire," or his work may all come to
naught. Here, again, he must exercise tact; otherwise a petty
telegraph official, who is often a very monarch in his field, may
spoil everything. And all along the long line — for the tele-
gram is retransmitted half a dozen times before it reaches
America — the cable officials must be friendly and painstaking
and intelligent, or the news will fail to reach its destination
promptly and in the form in which it was sent. Delays in
transmission are inevitable, and it speaks volumes for the
efficiency of modern telegraphy that they are so infrequent.

Z%4 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [I9o4

Foreign operators handle and transmit these messages, often
in bad chirography, in a language which they do not under-
stand, and seldom make a serious mistake.

In the World War no nation seemed to have had the faintest
idea of the merit of real neutrality on the part of this country.
Their theory was that, "He who is not for me is against me."
Some extraordinary things arose from this condition. An
Associated Press man, trained for years to impartiality, was not
acceptable to France or Russia if he had been in Germany or
Austria. And there was like objection in Germany to one who
had been in Great Britain or another of the allied countries.
They did not see how any newspaperman could be worth con-
sidering unless he were willing vigorously to do battle for them.

But our troubles do not end with the receipt of the message;
for with all the care that has been observed by correspondents
and telegraph officials, it does not often reach us in shape to
go at once to the press. There is no "padding," but, for the
sake of speed, the correspondents omit unnecessary words,
such as "and" and "the," and these are filled in at our receiving
offices. The telegram is very carefully written out to convey the
correspondent's precise meaning. In these receiving offices are
all the war maps, and libraries filled with books and documents
that may prove of value in deciphering a message. Lists of
foreign officials and warships and army organizations, spelled
correctly and sent to us by mail, are on file. There are com-
plete sets of all directories of every important city in the world.
But, more valuable than all else, there are carefully indexed
scrap-books containing every cable message received by the
Associated Press during the last twenty-seven years. These
serve to illuminate every new event with the antecedent and
the collateral history.

The Portsmouth Conference*

In his autobiography — page 586 — Colonel Roosevelt, speak-
ing of the Peace Conference at Portsmouth, New Hampshire,
thus refers to the Emperor of Germany:

*Saturday Evening Post, January 30, 1915.

i9oS] FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 285

During the course of the negotiations I tried to enlist the aid of
the government of one nation, which was friendly to Japan, in helping
to bring about peace. I got no aid from either. I did, however, re-
ceive aid from the Emperor of Germany.

Behind this lies a singularly dramatic story: The Conference
for the settlement of the Russo-Japanese War assembled early
in August, 1905. Something like a fortnight before the open-
ing Mr. Martin Egan, of the Tokio bureau of the Associated
Press, had sent me a memorandum of the Japanese claims. It
contained fifteen clauses.

The Japanese Government was represented by Baron Jutaro
Komura, as chief commissioner, a Harvard graduate of the
class of 1878, who had served his country as minister at Wash-
ington in 1898 and then gone to St. Petersburg as minister in
1900. His associate commissioner was Baron Kogoro Taka-
hira, who had represented Japan in the United States in several
capacities — first, as secretary of legation at Washington in
1881; next as consul-general at New York in 1891, and finally
as minister to Washington in 1900, which post he still held at
the opening of the Portsmouth Conference.

Besides these gentlemen there was an unofficial commissioner
for Japan who had been in the United States throughout the
war as personal representative of Prince Ito. This was Baron
Kentaro Kaneko, who had taken his degree from the Harvard
Law School.

The Russian Government was represented by Count Sergius
Witte, who at the moment was unquestionably the most dis-
tinguished statesman of his country, a man of remarkable
capacity, who had risen from an humble origin to a post of
commanding influence in the Czar's government. Associated
with him was Baron Roman Rosen, who had been Russian
minister at Washington for a number of years, and had then
been transferred to Tokio, where he was serving as minister at
the opening of the Russo-Japanese contest.

All of these commissioners were personal friends of mine, and
after their arrival in this country I had frequent interviews
with them. The conditions imposed by the Japanese were

286 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [I9o5

fairly well understood by both sides and were naturally the
subject of consideration between us.

At the outset, or within a day or two after his arrival in New
York, Witte told me in a most emphatic way that he had no
sympathy whatever with President Roosevelt's efforts to secure
peace. At the moment he believed the time to be most in-
opportune. He was convinced that the Japanese had passed
the high-water mark and had reached a point where they had
neither the men nor the money with which to continue the
conflict.

He firmly believed that if the Emperor of Russia had refused
to accept the Roosevelt invitation, and had gone on fighting,
the tide would have turned and Russia would have won. As
to any proposition for the payment of an indemnity, Russia
would never pay a penny. It was well understood that the
Japanese proposed to claim eight hundred million dollars; but
Witte said that if such a demand were made a condition of
peace there would be no peace.

"Why should we pay an indemnity ?" he asked. "The
Japanese have never invaded Russia. No Japanese has ever
set foot on Russian soil. The contest has been fought out on
Chinese soil and no claim for indemnity has ever been recog-
nized, nor can one ever be recognized, unless the victorious
party to a war has actually invaded the enemy's territory."

The Conference went into session almost at once, and most of
the points at issue were met, discussed, and settled in due
course; but finally the commissioners came to a deadlock on the
question of indemnity.

On Friday, August 25th, an impasse having been reached,
Witte and Rosen received peremptory orders from their
sovereign to quit the conference on the following Tuesday.
Whereupon they packed up their belongings and made ready
to leave at a moment's notice.

At that time I was living at the Lotos Club, in Fifth Avenue,
in the city of New York; and at an early hour on the following
Sunday morning I received a telephone message from Baron
Kaneko, who asked whether he might see me on an important
matter — he thought, perhaps, that I was able to influence the

1905) FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 287

Russian commissioners, and so on. He was living at the
Leonori, an apartment house on the corner of Madison Avenue
and Sixty-third Street.

As the Lotos Club was a rather public place for a conference,
I told him I would go to his apartment; and I went there shortly
before noon. We entered at once on a consideration of the
critical situation at Portsmouth. He asked me whether I
thought the Russian Government would pay any indemnity.
He was impressed with the idea that Witte and Rosen were
bluffing, and that Russia would pay something if by doing so
she would save her face.

He had a number of suggestions along this line, and asked
whether I thought the Russians would give compensation under
some other guise, or whether there was not some form that
could be adopted to satisfy the Russian amour propre.

"For example," he said, "Russia might pay for the care of
Russian prisoners in Japan or for the return of some part of the
South Manchurian Railroad line."

I told him I was positive that the Russian refusal to pay
money was final and that Russia could not be moved from its
determination in this regard. He suggested that Witte had
already said he was willing to pay as much as the United
States paid for Alaska.

To this I replied that the amount paid for Alaska was some-
thing like seven million dollars, and that the payment of such a
sum on a claim of eight hundred million was so ridiculously
small that Japan could not afford to take it.

"Moreover," I added, "you have settled every question
except that of money, and it now becomes important for Japan
to consider whether she can afford to go on fighting over a mere
matter of indemnity."

Baron Kaneko was quick to say that Japan recognized that
point, and added: "We shall never be placed in the attitude of
fighting for mere money. But the situation is very serious; the
conference is at a standstill, and day after to-morrow the
Russian commissioners will break up the conference. I fully
recognize the force of what you say; but now, if we take the
ground that we will not go on with the war merely to enforce

288 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [l9oS

the payment of indemnity, there is really no alternative except
to waive all claim on Russia for our tremendous losses.

"But suppose we waive this point," he went on; "our
immediate necessity is to hold the conference together. Witte
and Rosen are about to quit. I take it they have no sympathy
with the conference anyhow, and are quite ready and glad to
sieze on the authority given them to end our negotiations."

"There is one man who can intervene and save the situation,"
I replied.

"Whom do you mean?" Kaneko asked.

"The German Emperor."

" But," said he, "you know he is not our friend. You cannot
have forgotten the cartoon of the 'Yellow Peril' which he
drew."

"That is all very true," I replied, "but he is more anxious for
peace at this hour than to emphasize any sentimental views he
may have concerning the 'Yellow Peril/ He is a close friend
of the Emperor of Russia, and I have no doubt he would be glad,
if he were appealed to, and if he were advised that Japan was
prepared to abandon her claim for indemnity, to intercede with
the Czar to prolong the conference and reach a settlement."

By this time we had gone to luncheon, and Baron Kaneko
asked how the German Emperor could be reached. I replied
that it was not a difficult matter and that I should be glad to
arrange it. He asked me to do so.

Baron Speck vpn Sternberg, the German ambassador, was
not in America at the time, and in his absence Baron von dem
Bussche-Haddenhausen, counsellor and first secretary of the
Embassy, was acting as charge. The latter was spending the
summer at Lenox and I proceeded at once to get in touch with
him. Leaving the luncheon table at the Leonori, I stepped to
the telephone and asked long distance to connect me with
Baron von dem Bussche.

There was some delay about the connection, however, and as
I had another engagement I left word to have the call trans-
ferred to me at the Lotos Club. I then took my leave, Baron
Kaneko agreeing that he would remain at his apartment and
await word from me. A little later, at the Lotos Club, I re-

i9osJ FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST t 289

ceived word that Baron von dem Bussche was at the other end
of the telephone wire. I told him I wanted to talk to him
about a very important diplomatic matter and asked how soon
he could come to New York.

He replied that he could reach the city by five o'clock that
afternoon; he realized that it must be a matter of considerable
importance and asked no questions, but agreed to come to the
Lotos Club at the earliest possible moment. I suggested that
he bring with him his diplomatic code book.

I then telephoned Baron Kaneko and asked him to come to
the club, which he did. I told him of Von Bussche's coming
and said I had now gone as far as I could without notifying
President Roosevelt about what we had in mind. He ac-
quiesced, and I called up Oyster Bay and asked the President
whether I might go out at once and talk with him about a very
important matter connected with the Portsmouth Conference.
He replied that he would be very glad to have me come, and
soon after I was at the President's house on Sagamore Hill.

I told Mr. Roosevelt all that had happened, and he expressed
himself highly gratified at the course matters had taken. I
then suggested that he write a message to the Kaiser, and he
started to prepare one. At first he dictated and I wrote, but
when I questioned the form of his message, he suggested that
he do the writing and I the dictating. The following is the
message that resulted:

August 27, 1905.

Mr Bussche: Please cable His Majesty the Emperor from me as

follows: „, „

Theodore Roosevelt.

Your Majesty: Peace can be obtained on the following terms:
Russia to pay no indemnity whatever, and to receive back the north
half of Sakhalin, for which it is to pay Japan whatever amount a mixed
commission may determine. This is my proposition, to which the
Japanese have assented reluctantly and only under strong pressure
from me. The plan is for each of the contending parties to name an
equal number of members of the commission, and for them to name
the odd member. The Japanese assert that Witte has in principle
agreed that Russia should pay something to get back the north half

2QO FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [1905

of Sakhalin, and, indeed, he intimated to me that they might buy
it back at a reasonable figure, something on the scale of that for
which Alaska was sold to the United States.

These terms, which strike me as extremely moderate, I have not
presented in this form to the Emperor of Russia. I feel that you have
more influence with him than I or any one else can have. As the
situation is exceedingly strained and the relations between the
plenipotentiaries critical to a degree, immediate action is necessary.
Can you not take the initiative by presenting these terms at once to
him? Your success in the matter will make the entire civilized world
your debtor. This proposition virtually relegates all the unsettled
issues of the war to the arbitration of a mixed commission as outlined
above; and I am unable to see how Russia can refuse your request if
in your wisdom you see fit to make it.

Theodore Roosevelt.

The second sentence of the letter was inserted, after de-
liberation, as a diplomatic phrase to avoid saying that the offer
came from the Japanese.

At the President's suggestion I took this message, which was
in his own handwriting, to one of his secretaries, Mr. Barnes,
who was on duty at a hotel in Oyster Bay, and Mr. Barnes made
copies of it for the President's file and for me. I then hurried
back to New York, and about five o'clock was joined by
Kaneko and Bussche at the Lotos Club.

It then occurred to me that there was one feature of the
subject which had not been provided for: Baron Kaneko was,
as I have said, an unofficial commissioner, and it dawned on me
that I must assure myself of his authority before, by any act of
mine, I committed either the President of the United States
or the German Emperor to his assurance that the Japanese
Government would waive its claim for indemnity.

I frankly told him of my dilemma and said that I could not
go further without definite evidence of his authority. He
recognized the propriety of my suggestion and asked me to
telephone Baron Komura, at Portsmouth, and receive his
personal assurance on the subject. I felt that though this was
but a matter of form it was essential; and I accordingly put in
a long-distance call for Baron Komura.

,9oS] FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 291

To save time Baron Bussche had gone into another room at
the club and was converting as rapidly as he could the Roose-
velt message into code. For a time we had no response to our
call for Portsmouth; and while we were waiting I called up
President Roosevelt to tell him of what I had done. He ex-
pressed his hearty approval of the precaution.

Hour after hour passed without a word from Komura.
Bussche at length finished coding the message and was impatient
to transmit it to Berlin. He finally decided to cable it, with
an explanation of the circumstances.

Late that night, despairing of reaching Komura by telephone,
I telegraphed one of our correspondents at Portsmouth and,
in a guarded message asked him to wire me concerning Baron
Kaneko's authority. The reply came at length; and to say
the least it gave me pause, for it was to the effect that Baron
Takahira had informed the correspondent that Kaneko was in
no way authorized to speak for the commission. Naturally
I was dumfounded at this turn of affairs; and though I could
not believe that Baron Kaneko had deliberately tricked us, I
made haste to report the news to President Roosevelt.

My news was as much of a surprise to the President as it
had been to me. It was difficult for us to reconcile matters.
For days we had both been receiving Baron Kaneko as though
he were fully empowered to speak for his government, and we
were loath to believe that such was not the case; but in the
face of the message from Takahira what were we to believe?
Finally, it was decided that the President should send a frank
statement of what we had done to Baron Komura and see
whether he could not shed some light on the matter. This
message was the following:

Aug. 28th, 1905, Oyster Bay, N. Y.
Mr dear Baron Komura: I have had as you know a number of
interviews with Baron Kaneko since your arrival in this country.
These have always been held at his request and in the assumption that
he was acting for you, this having been my understanding of what you
said in our conversation when you were out here at my house, and
when the matter of keeping me informed of what was being done at
Portsmouth arose.

292 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [1905

Moreover, he has frequently transmitted to me copies of your
telegrams evidently written to be shown to me — for instance such
telegrams of yours were inclosed in his notes sent to me yesterday
and the day before yesterday, August twenty-sixth and twenty-
seventh. I have therefore assumed that I could safely accept what-
ever he told me as being warranted by his understanding with you.
To my astonishment a telegram was received by the Associated Press
from Portsmouth last night purporting to contain statements from
Minister Takahira to the effect that Baron Kaneko was not author-
ized to see me and containing at least by implication an expression
of surprise that I should have treated him as having any such authori-
zation.

The Manager of the Associated Press refused to allow this despatch
to go out, and I take it for granted that it was false and that Mr.
Takahira had given utterance to no such expression. But in view of
its receipt I retraced a cable I had prepared to send His Majesty the
German Emperor if Baron Kaneko approved, this cable having been
prepared by me after consultation with Mr. Stone, who had himself
seen Baron Bussche of the German Embassy and who understood
it was along the line you desired. [Here was inserted the cablegram
as given above.]

At the end Baron Bussche stated to the Kaiser that if the Czar
could be persuaded to come to these terms I should at once publicly
give him the credit for what had been accomplished and try in every
way to show that whatever of credit might attach to bringing the
negotiation to a successful conclusion should come to him in the most
public and emphatic manner. This was added at my suggestion, for
I need not tell you my dear Baron that my sole purpose has been to
try to bring about peace and I am absolutely indifferent as to any-
thing that is said about me in connection with the matter.

But of course under these circumstances I shall not send the cable
unless I amdefinitelyassured by you that this cable has your approval.
Moreover in view of the statement credited to Minister Takahira,
I do not feel that Baron Kaneko should communicate with me any
longer unless I am assured by you that it is your desire that he should
do so and that he speaks with authorization from you.

Sincerely yours
Theodore Roosevelt.

Monday was a day of great activity and great anxiety in
many places and in many ways. In Tokio the Elder Statesmen*

Lord Northcliffe

President Taft

i9oS] FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 293

against great obstacles, but with high courage and infinite
wisdom, were moving straight on in their effort to secure an
honourable peace. They were fully advised of the situation at
Portsmouth. They knew that, on the preceding Wednesday,
Komura had made his last despairing effort to enforce the
demand for indemnity. He had reduced the claim from eight
hundred million to six hundred million dollars, but had made
no impression; and, instead, had noted that the Russian com-
missioners were ready and anxious to seize on any demand for
tribute as an excuse to end the whole business and go on with
the conflict. At home they were confronted with a populace
burning with patriotism, glorying in their unexampled triumph,
and fully convinced of the ability of their nation to cope with
any measure of resistance on the part of their enemy. At the
moment, Marquis Ito proved to be the controlling force and
touched the highest level of his extraordinary career. Under
his commanding influence Japan refused to make monetary
compensation a sine qua non in her negotiations. She braved
the danger of a revolting war spirit, accepted the burden of her
immense war debt, and instructed her plenipotentiaries in
America to sign a treaty of peace on the terms already agreed
to.

In Russia the situation was no less complicated. There, too,
was a war party confident and insistent. After the series of
disasters that culminated at Mukden, Kuropatkin had been
relieved as General-in-Chief of the Manchurian Army and
Linevitch had taken his place. The new commander had a
great record as a warrior; he had been first lieutenant to the great
SkobelefF and shared in his glory. During the half year that
had followed his appointment he had received a hundred thou-
sand fresh troops and had fully reorganized his army. Now
he was anxious to flesh his sword, and had no sort of doubt of
his ability to wipe out his country's disgrace. With his asso-
ciate officers he telegraphed the Czar in terms almost dis-,
respectful. He said:

I have the honour to inform Your Majesty that all my comrades
and myself, after fully discussing the arguments for peace and the

294 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [1905

respective positions of the opposing armies, unanimously and reso-
lutely voted for the continuation of the war until such time as the
Almighty shall crown the efforts of our brave troops with success.
It is no time to talk of peace after the battles of Mukden and of
Tsushima.

The Czar himself, but a few days before, had issued a mani-
festo declaring that he would consent to no dishonourable peace.
Yet there were countervailing influences that must be reckoned
with; threatening revolutionary movements were observable in
his European domains, and the rank and file of his Manchurian
forces were not so enthusiastic for war as were his generals.

It was at this juncture that the German Emperor did his most
effective work. Before the peace commissioners had assembled
at Portsmouth he had held an advisory conference with the
Czar on the Russian royal yacht in the Baltic Sea. Now, with
Bussche's telegram before him, he sought once more to calm
the troubled waters. There were telegrams flying back and
forth between Berlin and St. Petersburg; and, as a result on
this fateful Monday, Witte and Rosen received a forty-word
cable from their Imperial master which held them in leash
until the final purpose of the Japanese should be disclosed.

In New York and Oyster Bay there was a day of impatient
waiting. Early in the morning we learned that our failure to
get word from Komura by telephone was due to a heavy storm,
which had put the wires out of commission. Later I learned
that the disturbing message which quoted Takahira as repudiat-
ing Kaneko was due to the fact that for prudential reasons my
own telegram of inquiry had been almost cryptic. I had been
so brief and had disclosed so little and asked so much that it
was not understood; and a worse than non-committal reply
had resulted.

I made another visit to Roosevelt; and after discussing the
situation he and I agreed that I should announce through the
Associated Press that evening that the Japanese had determined
to waive their claim for indemnity — this with a view to com-
mitting them irrevocably to the pledge that Kaneko had given
Bussche and myself.

I9oSj FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 29*,

This despatch was sent out, and of course reached Ports-
mouth instantly. As it was read to Komura and Takahira,
they declined to say anything. Witte and Rosen thought it a
ruse and went on with their preparations to quit the place the
next day. Their plans were well laid. If, as they expected,
there should be any further pressing for indemnity on Tuesday,
Witte was to leave the conference room at 11.50 a.m., and in
a casual way call to one of his secretaries the following Russian
command, " Pochlite sa moymy rousskymy papyrossamy" ("Send
for my Russian cigarettes").

This was a signal; the secretary told off for the task was to
step to a private telephone connecting with their headquarters
at the Wentworth Hotel, in Portsmouth, repeat the words to a
member of the mission standing at the other end, and a single
code word, already agreed on, should be instantly cabled to St.
Petersburg. On receipt of this word in the Russian capital
the signal was to be flashed to General Linevitch, and a battle
of the centuries was to begin. A million men were to partici-
pate.

Such was the plan and such the expectation on Monday night.

On Tuesday morning the London Times and the London
Telegraph led off in their despatches from Portsmouth with the
comments of their respective correspondents. These were
George W. Smalley, of the Times, and Dr. E. J. Dillon, of the
Telegraph.

They spent their wrath in ridicule and denunciation of the
Associated Press, which had assumed to know all things and had
asserted that the Japanese were about to withdraw their claim
for indemnity. Such a thing was inconceivable. There would
be further negotiations, said they, and Heaven alone knew what
would result.

On Tuesday morning Roosevelt received a message from
Komura assuring him that Kaneko was a quite responsible
gentleman, and that we had made no mistake in receiving and
in dealing with him. With this we awaited the result from the
naval-stores room at Kittery Point, five miles from Portsmouth,
with intense interest.

Up there it was a situation that, in point of dramatic interest,

2g6 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [1905

has rarely been equalled. The Conference met. The utmost
secrecy respecting the proceedings prevailed. Then the fateful
hour of eleven-fifty arrived. And Witte came from the room —
but not to ask for his Russian cigarettes. Instead, with flushed
face and snapping eyes, he uttered, not the expected five Rus-
sian words, but two — "Gospoda, mir." ("Gentlemen, peace.")
When the Conference gathered, Satoh, the Japanese secretary,
calmly rose and announced that, obedient to instructions from
their government, the claim for any indemnity was withdrawn;
Japan would not fight for mere money, and peace was possible
on the terms already accepted and agreed on by the Russian
commissioners.

The Case of Lagerkranz

It was about the 10th of July, 1907. Baron Lagerkranz,
Swedish minister to America, called on me in the afternoon at
the Lotos Club. He introduced himself and said he had been
instructed by his government to see me. His mission was a
peculiar one. Prince William, the second son of King Oscar,
had come to America aboard the battleship Fyglia to attend
the Jamestown Exposition. That was now over, and under
his instructions Baron Lagerkranz asked me if I would be good
enough to arrange a week of social entertainment for the Prince
at Newport. This request was, of course, a command and I
told him I would do what I could. The next day I went to
Newport and called upon Mrs. Stuyvesant Fish who was the
acknowledged leader of the Four Hundred. She was more
than pleased to take the matter in hand, and a programme for
the week's entertainment was easily adjusted. Mrs. Fish was
to give an initial luncheon and a final dinner, and the interval
between the two functions was to be filled up by events and
entertainments galore.

All went well and closed with a final dinner given by His
Royal Highness aboard his ship. Then he came to New York
and fell into my hands for further attention. He was anxious
to visit Coney Island. I had a small yacht under charter and
was a member of the Atlantic Yacht Club at Sea Gate, im-

1907] FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 297

mediately adjoining Coney Island. I took him with Baron
Lagerkranz and wife, and two gentlemen to the Yacht Club.
We dined there and then made a tour of Coney Island. He
expressed a desire to see Chinatown. I telephoned to police
authorities of New York for some detectives to meet us on
our arrival at the city and we at once returned. We went
to Chinatown and began at once a tour of inspection. We
visited the shops, the theatres, and wound up at an opium den.
I sent for "Chuck" Connors, the famous "Mayor of China-
town." He was a little, impudent, slangy Irishman, scarcely
above five feet. He was the original of Edward Townsend's
"Chimmie Fadden." Prince William clearly stood six feet
three inches in his stockings. When I introduced them Con-
nors looked up at the tall scion of Swedish royalty and with a
twinkle in his eye said: "Well, princes do come high in Sweden,
don't they?"

As we stood there we were startled by the appearance of a
Salvation Army trio singing religious hymns and beating their
tambourines outside the opium den. Madame Lagerkranz,
whom I was escorting, turned and said she could not stand the
disgusting and fetid atmosphere and desired me to take her
out to the Salvation Army people and the fresh air. We all
went out and found an elderly man, a young man, and a woman
perhaps of forty years of age. They continued their service for
a moment or two and then the young woman with an exclama-
tion threw herself on Madame Lagerkranz and with the deepest
emotion the two embraced each other. Each called the other by
their first name, and it was obvious that they were old acquaint-
ances. There was an arrangement for a further meeting but no
explanation and we took our departure. As we went home
Baron Lagerkranz whispered he would tell me all in the morning.

The next day he came and this was his story: "Our father
left my brother and myself the largest steel factory in Sweden.
My brother was a very religious man of a formal type, a Luth-
eran. I was not a professing Christian. One day two Salva-
tion Army lassies came to the office of which I was immediately
in charge and sought an audience. They told me they had
undertaken to found a rescue home for unfortunate women in

298 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [1907

Stockholm and that they were three or four thousand kronen
in debt for the enterprise. They asked modestly if my brother
and I would willingly make a contribution. The opportunity
was one that I enjoyed. I told them I would see what I
could do and asked them to return the following day. That
night, with a malicious pleasure, I presented the matter to my
sanctimonious brother and suggested that if he was willing we
should between us wipe out the total debt. He had no alterna-
tive and of course, consented. The amount, as you see, was
not a large one and the whole thing was rather in the nature of
a joke as far as I was concerned.

"Some time elapsed and then I received another call from
these two ladies. They said that General Booth, the distin-
guished commander-in-chief of the Salvation Army, was
about to visit Stockholm and they wondered if I would be will-
ing to entertain him as a guest at my house. I told them that
my wife had charge of such matters and they telephoned her
and were assured that Baroness Lagerkranz would be happy to
play hostess to so celebrated a personage."
H General Booth arrived for a week's stay. In a few days
Baron Lagerkranz and his wife were both converted and joined
the Salvation Army. Giving up temporarily activities in the
steel works they went out as lieutenants of the Commander-in-
Chief and established the Salvation Army throughout Asia.

"It was in India that the young woman whom we met in
Chinatown last night was my wife's assistant in the work. We
had not seen her for years, and you can well imagine the sur-
prise and delight in again encountering her."

Baron Lagerkranz continued his activities in the Salvation
Army for seven years and then returned to Stockholm and the
steel works. The King tendered him the post of ambassador
to England but he asked to be excused on the ground that he
had been known in London as a Salvation Army man and had
dined with King Edward at Buckingham Palace in the costume
of an officer of General Booth's army. King Oscar readily
saw the embarrassment and then offered him the post of minis-
ter to Washington. This he accepted, and thus and therefore
I met him.

SEVENTH DECADE

Genesis of the World War

ONE needs but to trace the history of the Near East
from the Treaty of San Stefano, concluded on March
3, 1878, after Russia's victory over the Sultan, which
was nullified by the Treaty of Berlin of June, 1878, down
through to the crisis of 1908, when Austria boldly annexed
Bosnia and Herzegovina in violation of the Berlin Treaty, to
see that in some sense all the events led up to the great World
War of 1914. Servia had been looking forward to the acquisi-
tion of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which was largely Slav, and
which would give Servia a port on the Adriatic. When the
two provinces were thus taken over by Austria, intense bitter-
ness developed at Belgrade, and it finally culminated in the
assassination of the Grand Duke at Serajevo in 1914, the
savage ultimatum, and the great cataclysm.

Things were going well in the United States in 1908. We
had weathered the financial panic. It had really done the
country good. It had made it obvious that the wild orgies
of so-called "High Finance" must end, and the necessity for a
central bank of discount had become evident. The Associated
Press was. sailing along on an even keel. The foreign agencies
which I had set up had demonstrated their efficiency.

The directors then suggested that I take a journey around the
world to see if anything more could be done with profit. It took
me a good while to get ready. My wife and my daughter went
over ahead of me, as they wished to go up the Nile once more.
I had a number of things to do. I had a delightful visit from
William Ferrero, the great Italian historian. He was ac-
companied by his wife, who was the daughter of an old-time
acquaintance of mine, Doctor Lombroso of Turin. We trotted

299

3oo FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [1908

about New York to luncheons, dinners, and theatres as three
children out of school.

Early in April Mark Twain and I accompanied our friend
Henry H. Rogers to attend the formal opening of the Virginia
Railway, which Mr. Rogers had built wholly with his own
means. This was one of many happy outings we had together.
I had no business relations with Mr. Rogers, but enjoyed his
company greatly as a friend. I believe him to have been a
high-souled, honest gentleman and one of infinite humour. A
few weeks after I delivered an address to the Pulitzer School
of Journalism at Columbia University, and in June another in
Detroit on the occasion of the anniversary of the founding of
the first daily newspaper in that city.

The Presidential campaign of the year was not an exciting
one. Mr. Taft was nominated at the Republican National
Convention in Chicago. There was an attempt to stampede
the organization for Roosevelt, although he had three times
definitely said he would not be a candidate. Mr. Bryan was
nominated without opposition at Denver.

Taft did not want to be President. He much preferred a
judicial office. Roosevelt twice offered him a seat on the
Supreme bench, but for personal reasons which he felt bound
him in honour he twice declined the tender. He found the
duties at the White House irksome and was really happy when,
four years later, he failed of reelection.

From the viewpoint of the pothouse politician, whether in
Congress or out of it, he was the greatest blunderer on the
rolling globe. He would go out to Columbus, Ohio, to make a
speech opening a State campaign and roundly denounce the
bosses on whom Republican success was dependent. He
would go to Boston and eulogize Senator Aldrich for the aid he
had given in securing legislation and the next day would give
out a statement defending the accused Secretary Ballinger.
This, said the political trickster, was "spilling the beans" in
most woeful fashion. And so it was for the moment. But
in the long run the American people like a manly man, one who
will tell the truth as he is given to see the truth, and Taft out-
lived in fame the foxy fool who carped at him. His quality

19091 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 301

#as that of President Cleveland, who saw beyond the immed-
iate consequences in dealing with public questions and sturdily
went his way to the undying respect of his fellow-citizens.

Discovery of the North Pole

Suddenly, on September 1, 1909, Dr. Frederick Cook turned
up at Copenhagen with the announcement that he had been at
the North Pole. A few days later I received this telegram from
Admiral Peary:

POSTALTELEGRAPH& CIALCABLE!

tf>

TPi 11 inrfirwA 1

TERMING

•• tm hat 1 OH Mi*

62 NX 8 Collect 116P

Indian BR Via Cap* *«oe Kf 6
A«sd Press
»Y
Stars and strip** nailed to worth pole
Peary

Admiral Peary's Telegram

I knew both of these candidates for immortal fame. I had
some suspicion respecting Cook. He had not convinced me of
the truth of his claim that he had climbed Mt. McKinley in
Alaska some time before. I had no doubt of Peary's veracity,
but the telegram was so startling that I feared it might not be
genuine. Before using it, I wired back to Indian Harbour,
Labrador, to have it verified and called attention to Cook's
claim. Then I received the following:

Indian Harbor via Cape May N. J. Sept. 6.

Melville E. Stone,
Associated Press New York.

Regret unable despatch details. My despatch Stars and Stripes
nailed to North Pole authoritative and correct. Cook's story should

302 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [1909

not be taken too seriously. The two Eskimos who accompanied
him say he went no distance North and not out of sight of land.
Other members of the tribe corroborate their story.

Peary.

Of course this was a personal message in reply to mine and
perhaps it should not have been made public. It was, however,
and, I am sorry to say, aroused criticism of the Admiral. I
asked him a number of times if it was not fair for me to an-
nounce that his message was not a voluntary attack on Cook,
but he was quite indifferent to anything Cook's friends might
say of him.

An English Panic

I was able to leave for my journey in the late autumn. Be-
fore my departure Admiral Lord Charles Beresford spent
some time with me in New York. He was quite sure that
Germany was preparing for war with England. He told me
German agents had been going through the Eastern Counties
of England listing the farmhouses and examining the coast
line for favourable landing spots.

Lord Northcliffe was over in Canada speaking on the same
theme. "The Englishman's Home" was the popular play
on the London stage. I laughed at Beresford, but at the
same time I received a letter from a friend who had just been
travelling in England. He said :

We had a delightful trip abroad and met many interesting people.
The astonishing thing, however, is the English fear of a German in-
vasion. In the most enlightened circles — indeed, among the most
eminent men — the invasion is spoken of as something that will
eventually occur. A spark would cause an explosion there.

Before I sailed the Pilgrim Society of New York gave a
dinner in honour of the British admirals, Seymour and Hamil-
ton, who happened to be here. They asked me to speak. I
derided the hysteria of my English friends. I saw no reason
for alarm. Moberly Bell, the long-time editor of the London

I9o9l FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST jo]

Times, sat beside me and followed me as a speaker. He dis-
agreed with me and portrayed the danger in exceedingly plain
terms.

Beresford hurried back to London before I was' able to get
away.

My friends insisted upon giving me a send-off. It took the
form of a parting dinner at the Lotos Club on October 3rd, and
was a notable event. The company was large, the addresses
brilliant, and the spirit most gratifying. I was presented with
a handsome bronze plaque commemorative of the occasion.

I sailed on October 5th.

I spent a few days in London, lunched with the Whitelaw
Reids at Dorchester House, and hurried away to Paris. There
I received this letter:

London, 3rd November, 1909.
Dear Mr. Melville Stone:

I have been trying to find you, and am delighted to hear that you
have come over.

I am in the middle of a tremendous fight, but will win.
Let me know when you come over to London, dine with me, and
meet some of your friends. There are very few people who could
do more to stop the coming war through Great Britain's unprepared-
ness. As I told you before, war will put back the progress of hu-
manity one hundred years. The English-speaking nations can pre-
vent war.

Yours sincerely,
Charles Beresford.

And I had a note from Moreton Frewen who wanted to talk
of bimetallism as a panacea for the world's unrest.

Days in Paris

These invitations did not tempt me. My friend James
Hazen Hyde had plans for me in Paris, and these for the mo-
ment were more interesting. I wanted to feel the pulse of
France rather than to share with what seemed to me the
neurosis of Britain.

304 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [1909

Mr. Hyde's contributions to an entente between our republic
and France were of incalculable value. If you were fortunate
enough to be invited to his house, you were sure to meet every
Frenchman worth while sooner or later. At his table I met
Millerand, who at this writing is President of France. There
were but the three of us at luncheon. Millerand was Minister
of War. He was anxious to send half a dozen young army
engineers over to the United States to work for a while in our
great factories to learn our methods, particularly of bridge
building. I saw no possible objection and promised to aid him.
So, later, the young fellows came over and were welcomed in
our establishments and gained valuable experience.

While I was in Pans in 1909 Mr. Hyde gave two remarkable
dinners for my benefit. One was a literary dinner at which
he had over a dozen members of the French Institute. The
other was a political dinner at which he gathered an equal
number of the leading publicists of France. That year he was
President of the Societe des Gens de Lettres, and I was their
guest of honour at a banquet at Margueray's. There were over
a hundred of the authors and artists of Paris participating.

I saw no signs of fear of the Germans among my French
friends. Of course they did not like their Teutonic neighbours.
They never had liked them. And the crape still hung over the
Statue of Strasburg on the Place de la Concorde. There was
still hope that the score left in 1870 would be settled. But that
seemed to be all.

The German Situation

Then I set out for Berlin. I wanted to see the Kaiser. When
I arrived he was out of town, but he sent me word that on a
certain evening he would return for an hour at the Potsdam
railway station and would be glad to see me. He was to go
somewhere in South Germany to shoot wild boar, but would
stop over for a brief talk. He was very frank and I cannot
believe that he had any idea of the forthcoming war. He
still regretted the friction with England. The logical alliance,
he said, was one including England, Germany, and the United

1909I FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 305

States against the Latin countries and the Roman Church. And
this relation to the Roman Church meant much to the Kaiser
as it had to his grandfather and Bismarck throughout their
lives. It had come down to them through four centuries from
the Hussite contest, the Thirty Years' War, the attempt at
peace by the Westphalian Treaty, and the never-ending struggle
between Protestant and Catholic. I laughingly said: "Here
is an interesting situation. Austria is without a direct heir
to her throne, Bavaria is without a direct heir to her throne,
Wurttemberg is without a direct heir to her throne, and Baden
is without a direct heir to the Grand Duchy, and you have al-
most enough heirs to fill every one of the positions." "No, not
Austria," said he. "I want no more Catholic influence in the
German Empire. There are now 129 members of the Reichstag
who owe no allegiance to the Imperial Government but whose
whole devotion is to the Vatican."

The Kaiser arranged for me to see Bethmann-Hollweg, who
had been appointed Chancellor of the empire a few months
before, supplanting Von Biilow. I spent the next evening with
the Chancellor. He was as candid as his Imperial master.

The situation in Germany seemed to be:

1. The Kaiser had not perceptibly changed. Before my
first meeting with him, back in 1902, Von Biilow had said:
"You will find His Majesty interesting. There are a good
many contradictions in his make-up. He is at once an
eighteenth-century autocrat and an up-to-date, twentieth-
century democrat."

And so I had found him. He was for ever rattling his
sword and running away from a fight. He would say, as he
did on July 4, 1900, at the launching of the battleship Wittels-
bach, that "Neither upon the water nor upon the land, in far-
away countries, must decisions be reached or events happen
without the consent of Germany and the German Emperor,"
and in the next breath would assure you that his mission in life
was to maintain peace among the nations.

I think we can see now how the militant spirit developed.
William II was the child of his grandfather rather than of his
father. The life of "Unser Fritz" was so short as to be of little

$o6 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [1909

avail in determining the character of his son. In his closing
years the old Emperor gave the care of both external and in-
ternal politics to Bismarck, and devoted himself to his army.
The young grandson was educated in this atmosphere. When
he was called to the throne, the Empire was still an experiment.
The South German Catholic states hated Prussia and its king,
and there had grown up in Prussia what does not develop in a
truly Catholic country, Socialism; there was real fear of the
Pan-Slavic power on the east; and of the burning desire for
revenge in France. It was but natural that the young emperor
with these elements of menace before him should foster the mili-
tary force of his nation, for police purposes within, as well as for
protection from his dangerous neighbours. He was a Franken-
stein, creating a monster, which was destined to destroy him.

2. As to the German people. I could see no evidence that
any of them had any thought of an invasion of England. Not
that they liked the English or any of the other nations. They
were sorely disappointed at the outcome of the Morocco busi-
ness and they did not feel that they had a "place in the sun."
They were always violating what the young college student
calls rule 5 — never to take oneself too seriously. Their be-
setting sin, as Prince Hohenlohe once told Dr. Andrew D.
White, was envy. After 1870 Bismarck had steadfastly op-
posed any attempt at colonial expansion, because he was en-
gaged in unifying the empire. It was not long after that they
awoke to find that other nations had been busy and all available
colonial territories of value had been preempted. Wherefore
their grief, their jealousy, and their hatred of their neighbours.
But this discontent had not, in my judgment, been translated
into any purpose to attack England. On the contrary, they
felt that they could and would defeat almost any other nation
if they could be assured that Britain would keep hands oflf.
This, I am sure, was always their attitude. My observations
in Berlin confirmed my judgment that Beresford and North-
cliffe were needlessly alarmed.

Then I went to Rome. Mr. Cortesi, chief of the Associated
Press service in Italy, gave me a dinner at which were gathered
a number of conspicuous gentlemen. Among them was Von

i9io] FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 307

Jagow, who later became German Minister of Foreign Affairs.
At that time he was First Secretary of the German Embassy in
Rome. I talked with him and was still further confirmed
in my view.

Visiting Asia

I set out for the East. My wife and my daughter met me at
Cairo and we left for India on January 5th. Among the
passengers on the boat to Bombay was an intelligent German.
It was obvious that he and the Englishmen aboard did not like
each other. And so it fell out that he and I became acquainted.
Yankee like, I plied him with questions. "Yes," he said in
reply to my inquiry, "I live in India six months of every year.
My business calls me there. I am in the aniline dye industry.
We do a fine trade in India and make large profits from it."

I expressed some surprise and said that as aniline dyes were
of English discovery and development, and as India was akin
to a British colony, I should have thought it a difficult field of
operations for Germans.

"Not so," he said. "Practically our only competition is
from two other German factories on the Rhine and one Swiss
concern at Basle. You are quite right in saying that aniline
dyes as a substitute for vegetable dyes were of English origin.
The invention of Sir William Perkin gave the Greenford Green
Works a monopoly. But they limited their output to red and
mauve dyes. We Germans widened the field by making dyes
of all colours. The people of India liked yellow and green as
well as red. The English would not furnish them. We did,
and we secured the trade."

At a hotel in India it was noted that all of the table china,
except the egg cups, were of English or French make. The
Germans, in their ceaselesss hunt for commerce, had learned
that the Indian hen laid a smaller egg than the European hen
and they had made a small egg cup and found a sale for their
product. This sort of commercial penetration was going on
everywhere: Germany was growing rich and her people were
content with her government.

308 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [i9I0

At Bombay we encountered Douglas Robinson and his wife
(sister of President Roosevelt). We took our way leisurely
across the country, halting at Agra, Delhi, Cawnpore, Benares,
and the other points of interest, and reached Calcutta in about
a month. Here we ran across Sir Thomas Lipton, and here I
was entertained by the Earl of Minto, at the time Viceroy. We
moved on down to Madras and over to Colombo. After mak-
ing a tour of Ceylon, we took a boat for the China Coast. We
stopped a day at Penang to see Kang Yu Wei, the famous
associate of Yuan Shih-kai as a revolutionist. A few days at
Hong Kong and Canton and Shanghai, and we reached Japan
early in March. We met a good many old friends and made
a number of new ones. We were the guests of the American
ambassador, Mr. Thomas J. O'Brien, of Grand Rapids, Michi-
gan. With him I was commanded to an audience of the
Emperor. I addressed about one hundred members of the
Friends of America Society, composed of young men who
had been educated in the United States, and I spoke to the
Japanese Peace Society at Count Okuma's. I was called home
to attend the annual meeting of the Associated Press, and sailed
from Yokohama to San Francisco. My wife and my daughter
went to Pekin and thence by the Transsiberian railway to
Moscow, and back to our old home in Switzerland.

On May n, 191 1, I addressed a small company of people on
my experiences and observations in Asia. Very much to my sur-
prise much of what I said on this occasion was used as an article
in the National Geographic Magazine. It was copied in some
of the papers in Japan and created a sensation. As I had noted
a dozen years before that practically all of Africa had been
occupied by the European nations, in like fashion I found an
extraordinary invasion in Asia. Nearly two thirds of the
area of the Asiatic continent was under the control of
European nations. And I found great injustice to the natives
of India and China and Japan, for which the white race was
responsible. All this seemed to me very menacing and I said so.
There was a demand on the part of the European residents in
Japan that I retract my statements. I not only declined but had
more to say on the subject, and there the debate came to a close.

i9n] FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 309

In 191 1 the Ohio Wesleyan University conferred a degree of
Doctor of Laws upon me in absentia.

Selecting an Associate

In 191 2, at no small personal sacrifice, Mr. Frederick Roy
Martin retired from the editorship of the
Providence Journal and came to me as assist-
ant general manager of the Associated Press.
There then began a companionship and af-
fection that have grown steadily to this hour.
I cannot imagine that I could have made a
better selection. Not alone by reason of
his intellectual qualification, breadth of in-
formation, and executive ability, but by
what was indispensable in a great coopera-
tive organization, patience and a genial tem-
perament, he was eminently fitted forthe post. F'ederick R°y Martin

Little or nothing beyond the usual routine happened during
191 3 or the early months of the succeeding year.

The World War

I think it was Joseph McCullough, the talented editor of the
St. Louis Globe-Democrat, who said that the secret of real news-
paper work was to know where something was to break loose
and to have a man on the spot. If it be so, I must confess that
I missed it at the beginning of the great World War. As I have
said, for several years before the outbreak in 1914, while
many others, and those whose judgment was clearly better than
mine, were warning us of trouble, I did not believe them. I
would have none of it.

Even when in June, 1914, there was a serious financial crisis
in Vienna, I did not see its significance, and when the assassina-
tion of the Austrian Grand Duke at Serajevo was announced,
harking back to the murder of Alexander and Draga, it seemed
to me that Servia was about to receive a well-merited rebuke.
The savage change of kingship in Servia from the Obrenovitch

}io FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [,9,4

line to the Karageorgevitch line by assassination had led me to
feel that it was quite possible that Servia was culpable in the
Serajevo business. The ultimatum of Austria seemed rather
the case of a stalwart man striking a small boy, but, after all, the
small boy seemed a pretty bad boy. And as to Belgium, we
were likewise indifferent. We had never had intimate relations
with Belgium. We did not like the stories we had read of the
licentious character of King Leopold, and we had been shocked
by the tales of atrocities in the rubber fields of the Congo. Also,
while we were thrilled by the moving speech of Sir Edward
Grey and recognized it as a tocsin call to chivalry, we could not
forget that, after all, Antwerp was a pistol pointed straight at
the heart of Britain, and that Britain had and must have a
strategic interest in the Belgian invasion by Germany. It
was only another European imbroglio in which we had doubtful
concern.

As the months went on, we began making munitions for the
Entente powers. Out of this a few people were making large
profits. This did not mean much for the great body of our
citizens. Far more important was the fact that there was a
lively demand for our farm products. Britain and France
needed food which we could supply and from which we could
profit largely in the supplying. We were a long way from the
battle-field, we were living a life of ease, we did not want war.

Some of the more unselfish of us had a feeling that in the
great conflict which was raging perhaps we could do more for
humanity by maintaining an attitude of neutrality, so that in
the end we might be accepted as an arbiter by the warring na-
tions.

Lack of Preparedness

This was in the summer and fall of 1914. In November we
elected a new national Congress. President Wilson felt, as
the months went on, that we were certain to drift into the
war but also that any president having the proper sense of his
responsibility must be very slow about plunging his country into
such a struggle.

i9i4l FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 311

I was with President McKinley in the early days of April,
1898, when the bellicose Americans were demanding war with
Spain, and when his close friends, including Vice-President
Hobart, Senators Hanna, Spooner, Aldrich, Frye, Fairbanks,
and others, were watching the situation to see if they could
muster strength enough in the Senate to sustain a veto in case
a war resolution should be prematurely passed. McKinley
was in great distress, but he sturdily refused to be forced even
by a pugnacious Congress until he had exhausted all diplomatic
agencies to secure peace.

On several occasions President Wilson asked me if I thought
that Congress, which under the Constitution had the power to
declare war, would declare war. I was forced to say it would
not and I am sure now that it would not have done so.

As late as May 5, 19 16, the New York Tribune tested the
question. The following special telegram appeared in its issue
on the morning of May 6th:

Washington, May 5. Congress, the sole war-making power of the
Government, is overwhelmingly opposed to going to war with Ger-
many, on the record of the submarine controversy in the last fifteen
months. Congress believes that the severance of diplomatic rela-
tions with Germany would not be justified by the circumstances of
the dispute, it being generally realized that a diplomatic break would
lead to war eventually.

"The sentiment in Congress was disclosed by a poll of the opinions
of the Senators and Representatives. To each Legislator was put the
following question:

"Do you believe that up to this time Germany has given the
United States sufficient provocation to go to war?

"Only one Senator — Williams of Mississippi — and three Repre-
sentatives—Dale of Vermont, Greene of Massachusetts, and Piatt of
New York — answered in the affirmative." *

The question was asked of 81 Senators and 318 Representa-
tives.
A month later the Republican National Convention for the

*New York Tribune, May 6, 1916, page 2, column 4.

312 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST, f Il9l6

nomination of a Presidential candidate met in Chicago and
declared in its platform that:

"We believe in maintaining a strict and honest neutrality between
the belligerents in the great war of Europe."

Governor Hughes was nominated on this platform. In a
letter to James Bryce Theodore Roosevelt said there was a
feeling that Hughes was nominated by the pro-German in-
fluence in the Republican Party.

So you see our going into the war or staying out of it was not
at all an issue in the campaign. There was a good deal of talk
about ioo-per-cent. Americanism and the protection of our
rights, but from first to last neither party was disposed to de-
clare for war, and none of the candidates in the campaign
speeches declared for our participation in the conflict.

So we went on to the Presidential election of 1916. There
were opposing and clamorous forces. The outcome was clearly
doubtful. And the situation was complicated by the manner
of our Presidential election. In the early days of the Republic
the date of our Presidential election was fixed for an early day in
November and the inauguration of the Chief Magistrate for an
early day of the succeeding March. This was necessary be-
cause at the time the means of communication were so limited
that a lapse of four months was requisite to determine the re-
sult of the balloting. George Washington's inauguration was
postponed several weeks because even this four months was
insufficient. Later we passed to party rule, and then nomina-
tions for Presidential candidates were made by conventions
which met in the springtime. So it came about that now we
have a period of suspense of eight months every four years.
And if there be a change of parties the retiring incumbent is
practically estopped from adopting any new and definite policy
lest he embarrass his successor, while the incoming Chief Execu-
tive is powerless to enforce a policy until he is inaugurated.

In 1916 the party conventions were held in June and July,
and the usual period of waiting and of doubt as to the result
began. It may be true that Mr. Wilson was reelected because

i9i6] FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 313

he had "kept us out of war." If so, his "keeping us out of
war" met the approval of the voters.

The campaign was a difficult one to report. The first thing,
as in every Presidential contest, was to have some words with
the candidates. Mr. Wilson had learned the ropes in 1912, so
it was unnecessary to see him. Governor Hughes was a "new
hand at the bellows." I made an appointment and he came
to New York for a meeting at the Hotel Astor. I introduced
him to the mysteries of "advance matter"; and told him how
impossible it was to secure any newspaper publicity from a
"tail-end" tour — meaning a journey over the country with
speeches in halls and from the platforms of railway cars. Of
all the performances this is about the most illusory and profit-'
less. It is pretty nearly true that no Presidential candidate
who has ever engaged in it has won.

Judge Douglas tried it in i860 and was defeated by Mr.
Lincoln, who stayed at his home in Springfield. Andrew
Johnson "swung around the circle" and came within one of be-
ing impeached. Horace Greeley galloped over the Middle West
in 1 872, while Grant, his opponent, stayed in the White House
and carried the election. Blaine failed in the same way in 1884.
Taft's journey to the Pacific Coast in 1909 did not help him.

Perhaps the most striking illustration was the struggle of
1896. Bryan, a brilliant orator, stumped the country, speaking
to enormous crowds. The Associated Press men who travelled
with him were greatly impressed, and told me of the millions
who gathered to welcome the itinerant, the wild enthusiasm
displayed, and the certainty of his ultimate victory. I replied
that they failed to take into account the human curiosity in-
volved, that nine out of ten in the great crowds greeting Bryan
would have been equally excited by a visit of a circus, and that
McKinley, who was making one speech a week from his cottage
porch at Canton, was really reaching the public mind as Bryan
was not by the practice he had adopted. And so it proved.

I told Governor Hughes what was sure to happen with his
"touch-and-go" talking. He would arrive at a town in the
evening, make a hasty speech, and move on. The reporters
would make a hurried report to be handed to a telegraph

3i4 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST fi9i6

operator at the next stopping place. The operator would
probably be an incompetent. The report would necessarily
be greatly abbreviated in order to secure transmission. On its
receipt by a newspaper in the rush hour it would be again "cut
down," so that when Hughes read the story as it appeared in
print he would probably be unable to recognize it as his own
speech. On the other hand, if he would give me half a dozen
well-prepared addresses a week in advance, so that I could mail
them to our newspapers throughout the country, they would
be put in type during the leisure hours in the newspaper offices
and on the day of their delivery would be released by two or
three words of telegraph. I told him how President Roosevelt
had managed things, how he had given me his messages to Con-
gress on some occasions six weeks in advance, so that they were
released and printed in Tokio and St. Petersburg on the morn-
ing after delivery.

But my advice was not accepted. The managers sent
Governor Hughes on his journey. Things turned out as I
knew they would, President Wilson made a speech a week at
Long Branch and gave it out in advance, and when the cam-
paign was over the Republicans felt that the Associated Press
had not given them their fair share of publicity.

When Election Day came we had our hands full. We had
made great preparations and were really alone in the business
of consolidating the vote of the country to determine the result.
Early in the evening and long before the polls had closed in the
Far West the Democratic papers of the East conceded Hughes's
election. Of course it was not our business to announce any-
body's election until we knew what the count would disclose.
Then began the clamour. Message after message came asking
if I was owned by the Democrats, and why on earth I did not
accept the admissions of the Wilson papers and announce
Hughes's election. Hour after hour passed and the outcome
appeared more and more doubtful. At one time it was thought
the State of Minnesota was a determining factor. The sus-
pense was great. It was not until Friday that we finished
counting the votes and found that Wilson had carried Cali-
fornia and therefore had won.

,9i6] FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 315

There had been such a shifting of party lines that nothing save
a most careful count could be used as a basis for any declara-
tion in respect of the matter. On former occasions, when party
lines were sharply drawn, I had been able to announce the result
at seven or eight o'clock in the evening, so that even the papers
in London, with a difference of five hours in time against them,
advised their readers of the name of the victorious candidate.

Within a month after his inauguration and the assemblage
of a new Congress having a different mind, in 1917, we were in
the war at Wilson's urgency. We were not well prepared as to
an army or as to munitions. We were prepared in that which
was of far greater worth — the public mind. The mind of Ger-
many had been made up in an hour, at Potsdam, on the 5th
of July, 1914, because it was the mind of one man — the German
Emperor. With us, the national mind was the mind of one
hundred and ten millions of people. And in 191 7, when Presi-
dent Wilson said the word which called us to battle, we were
ready, and we challenged the admiration of the world by our
unity of purpose and consequent energy and efficiency.

Other nations were as little prepared as we were. The
King of Italy sent for Mr. Cortesi, chief of our Italian service,
early in November, 1914, and talked with him very freely about
the situation. He emphasized the difficult position of Italy
between the Central Empires which had been her allies for
thirty-two years, and the powers of the Triple Entente toward
which she was inclined, for reasons which everyone knew. He
said that the war took Italy by surprise, as it did all other
countries. He thought the complaint of people that the
Italians were not prepared was unjustified as her fleet was in
the fittest condition, and as to the army, he said that no army
in any country on the eve of a war did not lack a thousand
things, while Italy "lacked a thousand and two hundred, but
hastened to get ready in all directions" and at the moment of
the conversation had 650,000 men under colours in perfect condi-
tion and this number could be doubled in the shortest time. The
King said that he did not believe it possible for Italy to keep
out of the war and that her neutrality should be understood
as a preparation for joining in the conflict. He gave Mr. Cortesi

3i6 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [i9i6

the impression that Italy would go to war against Germany
in the following spring, as she did. He said that Italy wanted
a restoration of the Trentino and Trieste, but not Dalmatia
because that had almost entirely become inhabited by people
of Slav nationality and its possession would be difficult to
defend; it would be a source of constant struggle with the
Balkan States and with Russia. Italy, however, he said, as-
pired to all the many islands in the Adriatic so as to have
complete command of that sea. He said there was an under-
standing between Rumania and Italy by which Rumania was
to join the Entente forces and Italy follow.

He told a number of amusing incidents respecting the Italian
censorship. As was known, he was a passionate sportsman and
on one occasion, hunting in a forest, had been so fortunate as
to kill a very rare bird called the " Knight of Italy." Knowing
that a bird collector in Naples had been for years vainly trying
to obtain a specimen of the bird, he rushed to the nearest
village and sent the collector the following wire: /

In the forests near the hunting lodge of San Rossore, have killed
Knight of Italy.

The telegram went on its way but was soon stopped by
the authorities, and the police set out to find the scene of the
murder and to capture the supposed assassin. The forest
was carefully searched, and a description of the sender of the
message given by the telegraph clerk resulted in the arrest of
several suspected people. The mystery was finally cleared up
when one of the officials suggested that they interrogate the
bird collector at Naples respecting the matter, and thus the
truth was discovered.

The situation in England was little better. Fortunately
Haldane, as War Minister, had created a body of militia, the
Territorials, and these constituted a nucleus which made it
possible to rush relief to France.

France was likewise in trouble. We had come to look upon
her as an emotional nation, splendid in a charge upon the
battle-field, but not likely to stand fire for a long period. We
were mistaken. She showed remarkable endurance from first

,9,7] FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 317

to last of the war. There has never been a more thrilling or
decisive struggle than the Battle of the Marne. The steadfast
defence of Paris evoked world-wide amazement and applause.
And even Germany was not prepared. Her army was all
right, but her diplomacy all wrong. She thought England on
the verge of civil war over the Irish question, France decadent,
and Russia still incapacitated from the war with Japan. She
made no account of the High Court of Public Opinion of the
world, which, in the end, was to decide the business.

Reporting the War

Before the war it was easy to report the world's happenings.
We had developed a system which gave reasonable assurance
that practically every event of great moment should come
promptly into the knowledge of every civilized community.
Then the war came. In a night all of the processes of civiliza-
tion, so carefully established and conserved, went down. Cer-
tain agencies which for more than half a century had been
devoted cooperating associates became enemies by govern-
mental order and were prohibited from any commerce with
each other. It was evident that this war was to be unlike any
former contest. It was not to be a struggle between praetor-
ian armies but between nations in arms. The battle line
extended from the North Sea to the Swiss border. There were
to be no dramatic cavalry charges, no opportunity for thrilling
reportorial descriptions. Long-distance gunnery furnished
little opportunity for word pictures. Take it altogether, how-
ever, we did fairly well.

Our first difficulty was with the censorship established in
England. Army censors as a rule are unwise in that their aim
is inordinately to suppress all information. They lose sight of
the great value of discrimination and of permitting the public
mind which is back of them to know enough of the situation
to enable them to sympathize with the military endeavour.

A number of the British censors were half-pay retired colo-
nels and some of the things they did, while annoying, were
amusing. For instance, when war was declared on Austria, a

318 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [im

stupid censor refused to allow the information to come to the
Associated Press, but released it for publication to one New
York newspaper. There was an investigation, and he calmly
said that he knew the Associated Press was a great organization
and that he felt he could not take the responsibility of per-
mitting the message to go to it, but he thought it would do no
harm to let it go to an individual paper in the United States.
Again, when the Battle of Jutland was fought and a victory won
by the British, a censor refused to permit the Admiralty story
to come out on the ground that he had been notified that
he must not allow any dispatch to go out indicating the location
of any British warship. Once more, when Premier Asquith
made an important speech, the censors refused to allow it to
come to the Associated Press because, as Mr. Asquith himself
said, "I. suppose they thought I was disloyal to the British
cause." All this led to many complications, but in time ad-
justments were effected.

When Mr. Arthur Balfour came to the United States in May,
191 7, after we were in the war, I saw him and called his atten-
tion to our experiences with the British censors and he agreed
that it was all wrong and that he would seek to remedy it. He
was not able to do all that he desired and it was far into 191 8 be-
fore the administration of the British censorship was intelligent.

Rene Viviani and Marshal JofFre came over as a commission
from France. I had a delightful visit with the dear old Mar-
shal. Later, when I was in Paris, I saw him with some fre-
quency, and the other day I received a letter from Mr. Roberts,
chief of our office in France, in which he said that Marshal
JofFre wanted to send me a photograph of himself. At his re-
quest Roberts selected one and the Marshal inscribed it and
sent it to me. He is a great character, and his victory at the
outbreak of the war in the Battle of the Marne has immortal-
ized him.

The Case of Cardinal Merrier

There was the case of Cardinal Mercier, Archbishop of
Malines, in Belgium. He was in no small sense one of those

I9i7] FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 319

who won the great World War. For it was not, after all, the
armies or navies that did the thing. It was the public opinion
of the world. Public opinion made armies
and navies possible. And who did more
than Cardinal Mercier to create that con-
trolling public opinion ?

The ruthless invasion of Belgium filled
the world with horror. Bethmann-Holl-
weg, whom I knew as a kind-hearted
creature, was forced, speaking for his Im-
perial master, to make abject apology,
admitting the infamy, but pleading ne-
cessity. It called to mind the phrase in
the Fifth Book of "Paradise Lost," where Satan in trying to
justify his entry to the Garden of Eden, was quoted :

Thus spake the fiend, and with necessity
The tyrant's plea, excused his devilish deed.

In that hour there was one man in Belgium who gave to
chance the keeping of his life, and bravely spoke the truth. It
was the Primate of Malines. His Christmas pastoral of 1914
rang out over the world, a challenge of civilization to savagery.

Von Bissing, the German Commander in Belgium, was furi-
ous, and was ready to resort to extreme measures. The Car-
dinal was subjected to offensive espionage, was forbidden to
make his usual round of pastoral visits, and there were rum-
ours of much worse things. Then, in the ordinary course, and as
a part of the daily routine, I sent some messages to our corres-
pondents, instructing them to watch the case. These tele-
grams came to the attention of the authorities in Berlin and
they promptly directed Von Bissing to keep "hands off." The
Cardinal, when he visited this country, hailed me as his
"saviour," and betrayed a sense of gratitude out of all propor-
tion to the service I was conscious of having rendered.

Case of the Lusitania

In April, 1915, my son Herbert had occasion to go to Europe,
and particularly to Germany, on business. He determined to

po FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [,9,s

sail on the Lusitania. Before going, he went to Washington
and secured from Count Bernstorff, the German ambassador,
a number of letters to important men in Berlin. Bernstorff
knew that he was going on the Lusitania. My son was the more
ready to ask this favour of the German ambassador because he
knew that in a large measure Bernstorff owed his position to
me. Bernstorff's predecessor, Speck von Sternberg, was an
intimate personal friend of mine. He developed an inflamma-
tion upon his cheek which some of us feared was cancerous.
One day, when I was in Berlin, talking with the Kaiser, I asked
about Sternberg's health and the Emperor said that he had had
the case examined by court physicians, who had pronounced it
a harmless thing. "But," said the Kaiser, "Sternberg is forced
to wear a very offensive white plaster on his cheek and he cannot
easily attend social functions. I think I shall have to place him
on the retired list for this reason. Of course, we shall have to
have as his successor an ambassador with an American wife."
And then he laughed and called attention to the fact that the
French ambassador to the United States had an American
wife. The Belgian minister had an American wife and George
Bakhmeteff was slated for the Russian Embassy and he had an
American wife. "What would you think of Count Bernstorff?"
he continued, "he has an American wife." I replied that I
had known Bernstorff for a number of years as secretary of the
German Embassy in London, and thought very highly of him.
"Then I shall appoint him," said the Kaiser, and within a few
days he did so.

Therefore when Bernstorff came to this country we at once
became friends. And he knew my son and his family.

On the morning of May ist our whole family went down to
the boat to see my son depart. Marconi joined us. We had
noted the advertisement of caution in the morning papers, and
in common with everyone else we laughed about it. I had said
that unless some such ship as the Lusitania was torpedoed, the
U-boat threat of Germany would become ridiculous. But to
sink a boat like the Lusitania was so barbarous an act as to be
unthinkable. Such was our feeling when the Lusitania left her
dock.

i9iS] FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 321

I know that a number of interesting but wholly untruthful
tales about this business have been told. They have been
invented by publicity seekers who were not over-scrupulous
about their facts. For instance, the claim that a code message
devised from the "New York World Almanac," and indicating
the prospective sailing of the Lusitania, was sent by wireless to
the German authorities was a pure invention. And the state-
ment of William Roscoe Thayer, in his Life of Theodore Roose-
velt (p. 409) seems to me equally lacking in verity. He says:

Bernstorff, we know now, planned the sinking and gave the Ger-
man Government notice by wireless just where the submarines could
best destroy the Lusitania on that Friday afternoon.

On reading this statement, I wrote to Thayer, telling
him of my peculiar interest in the matter and asking for his
authority. He replied in a curt note that a Government secret
service man, whose identity he could not disclose, was his
informant. I thought he could at least have said that, in the
light of the fact that my son was a Harvard graduate, he would
make some effort to give me the proof of his assertion. But
he did not. Presumably because he could not.

On Friday, May 7th, I was at the Hotel Vanderbilt, taking
luncheon with a friend. Suddenly I heard a boy paging me.
He said I was wanted at the telephone, the Associated Press was
calling me. My secretary then told me that the Lusitania had
been torpedoed. I hastened to my office and learned the sad
truth. Late that night it became evident that my son was
among the lost.

As I was wondering whether Bernstorff could have been so
much a savage as to let my son go on the Lusitania, knowing
that the boat was to be a target, I was called on the telephone by
a Chicago friend, Mr. William G. Beaie, law partner of Robert
Lincoln. He said that he felt he should tell me that on the
memorable Friday afternoon he and Mrs. Beale, en route from
the Virginia Hot Springs, were sitting in a parlour car. After
the stop at North Philadelphia, Bernstorff came in with
blanched face and apparently terrified. He said the afternoon
paper which he had just bought announced the sinking of the

322 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [i9iS

Lusitania. "Believe me," said Beale, "he could not simulate
the surprise or grief which he betrayed." I have never had
anything to do with Bernstorff since, but in common justice,
from the evidence before me, I accept as true his statement to
Hayden Talbot:

"Do you think — had I known it — I should have allowed three of
the best friends I had in America to take passage on the Lusitania?"

As he spoke tears came into his eyes and his voice shook.

"I not only let them go. I gave them friendly letters of introduc-
tion to certain gentlemen in London. Those three men were Mr.
Vanderbilt, Charles Klein, the playwright, an Englishman, and the
young son of Melville Stone, head of the Associated Press. No one
will suggest that any man could be such a monster as deliberately to
send three human beings, his friends, to their graves!"

I learned from survivors that my son went to his death as I
should have expected him to do. Before he sailed I had given
him a note of introduction to Madame Depage, thewife of the
eminent Belgian surgeon, who was to be a fellow-passenger.
When the torpedo struck the boat Herbert put on a life belt
and hunted out Madame Depage. She was a frail little woman
and asked if my son would permit her to be attached to him
when they went into the water. Before it could be done a cer-
tain Doctor Houghton, who knew them both, said he was strong
and a good swimmer and had better look after the poor lady.
And so it was agreed. Then Herbert saw an unfortunate woman,
obviously from the steerage, with no life belt. He took off
his own, put it on her, and went to his death unprotected and
without a tremor.

Herbert Stone was born in Chicago in May, 1871. He
received his preparatory education at Chateau de Lancy,
Geneva, Switzerland, and subsequently entered Harvard
University, graduating in 1894. He started the publishing
business of Stone & Kimball in 1894, while still at Harvard,
He was the founder of the Chap Book, a semi-monthly literary
magazine which created some interest and had a host of imita-
tors. He owned and edited The House Beautiful. He sold his
interest in the publications in 1897.

I9i 7]

FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST

3*3

man.

My second son, Melville E. Stone, Jr., was also a Harvard
He won distinction as president of the famous Hasty
Pudding Club. He graduated in 1897. After
some association with his brother in the pub-
lishing business he became editor of the Met-
ropolitan Magazine, a service
in which he was distinctly suc-
cessful. He was forced to re-
tire from this office as he was
attacked by tuberculosis.
With my wife and daughter,
he journeyed to northern It-
Jb>\\^'f z^y> Switzerland, the Adiron-

dacks, and Arizona to recover
his health. When the war
came on he was in Pasadena,
California, and was most active in urging America's partici-
pation. His contribution was too great for his enfeebled con-
dition, and he passed away in January, 1917.

Herbert Stuart Stone

Melville E. Stone, Jr.

Doctor Depage's Hospital

I have spoken of Madame Depage. Let me tell you of her
husband.

Gaston Calmette, the famous editor of the Paris Figaro, who
was killed by Madame Caillaux, was a friend with whom I
spent many delightful hours on my visits to Paris years ago.
After his fashion he was a successful journalist. One day he
printed what purported to be a circumstantial telegraphic story
of the massacre of many citizens of New York by savage In-
dians who invaded Broadway. It was not at all a whimsical
hoax, to be exposed and laughed over the next day; it was an
imposition upon his readers.

I upbraided him for it. "Nonsense," he replied, "you are
too serious with your ideas of accuracy. There are, among the
readers of Figaro, thousands of the demi-monde, to whom this
story is more interesting and pleasing than any of the com-
monplaces you call news."

P4 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [,9,7.

There was a world congress of physicians and surgeons at
Washington and Gaston's brother, Doctor Calmette, came
over and called on me. He introduced an eminent Belgian
physician, one Doctor Depage, who presided over the congress.

Years went by and early in 191 5 the wife of this Doctor
Depage came to America to collect funds for the Belgian Red
Cross, of which her husband was acting as chief. She came to
me, and I was able to advise her to some purpose. As I have
said, she sailed for home on the Lusitania. When the boat
was torpedoed she was among those drowned.

The work that Doctor Depage did in the great war was very
notable. But he was always embarrassed by the inadequate
means at his command. He had learned, when in this country,
how much further we had advanced in our surgical methods
than had Europe. There had never been, either in France or
Belgium, such a hospital or such a school for the training of
nurses as we had. He longed to found such an institution in
Brussels in memory of his dead wife, and of Edith Cavell, who
had been one of his nurses. He came back to New York and to
me in 1920, to see what could be done. He thought he would
need approximately three million dollars and hoped for one
million from us, another from England, and the third million
from France and Belgium.

I told him frankly how, after the end of the fighting, our
generous emotions had suffered a sudden collapse, and of the
difficulties I felt he was sure to encounter. I suggested that
before attempting any nation-wide "drive" for funds it would
be well to submit the matter to the Rockefeller Foundation
and the Red Cross Society. If they would give the enterprise
their approval and make contributions, however small, it
would greatly aid his undertaking.

To this end, I gave a small dinner in his honour, inviting
several surgeons and other friends to meet him. Among the
guests was Dr. George Vincent, whose father and mine had
been fellow Methodist ministers in Illinois. Depage's plan
was presented and Doctor Vincent, on behalf of the Rocke-
feller Foundation, of which he was president, agreed to make an
investigation with a view to a possible contribution.

President Wilson

The Hero of the Battle of the Marne

,9i7) FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST &

Then I heard no more of the business for a year. Doctor De-
page had gone home and I confess that his needs had almost
passed from my mind. Suddenly he reappeared and with tears
in his eyes told of the wonderful result of our little dinner. Vin-
cent had kept his word, they had sent investigators to Belgium,
and now they had notified him that the Foundation would give
two and a half million dollars toward a great enterprise, includ-
ing a municipal hospital and the medical laboratories of the
University of Brussels. This was much more than the good
Doctor Depage had thought at all possible and aided in surpris-
ing measure to the realization of his ideals. All and more than
he hoped for had in a way come to pass. He was overwhelmed
with gratitude.

In the early summer of 191 5 I was the recipient of an hon-
orary degree of Master of Arts from Yale University.

America in the War

On April 6, 191 7, the new Congress at Washington adopted a
resolution declaring that a state of war existed with the Ger-
man Government and authorizing the President to employ the
entire resources of the Government to carry on the war and to
bring the conflict to a successful termination. Three weeks
later the annual meeting of the Associated Press assembled in
New York and unanimously adopted by a rising vote a resolu-
tion :

That as loyal citizens of the United States, we hereby pledge our
hearty support of the effort of the executives of the Government to
carry out effectively the mandate of the nation as expressed in the
war resolution adopted by Congress.

Two or three days later I went to Washington and accom-
panied Mr. Noyes to the White House, when he notified Presi-
dent Wilson of the action of the Associated Press. Growing out
of our experience with the foreign censorship, we suggested to
the President that the newspapers of the United States were
deeply interested in the war and quite as anxious as any branch

326 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [1917

of the Government for our success, and that it seemed to us
that it would be wise to establish by law a censorship, but it
would also be well to include in the governing board of the cen-
sorship a competent journalist. This because the army and the
navy, out of their general impulse to suppress everything, would
be likely to excise matter which would really be valuable to
stimulate the national morale. The President agreed with us.

Of course, the appointment of Mr. George Creel as a repre-
sentative of the American press surprised us. He was not
recognized as a leading journalist by the great body of news-
papermen in the country, although he later assured me that
Mr. Hearst had offered him some fabulous salary to enter his
service. A great many complications resulted from the ap-
pointment of Creel. On the 3rd of July, 1917, he gave out a
story of two battles between our first transport fleet under Ad-
miral Gleaves and German submarines. The statement said
the attack by the submarines "was made in force, although the
night made impossible any exact count of the U-boats gathered
for what they deemed a slaughter."

Since U-boats are blind when submerged it was necessary
that they travel alone, lest they collide and injure each other.
They do not attack "in force." But this fact was no deterrent
for Creel.

When this account of the "two battles" reached England
and was read at Admiral Sims's station, we received a despatch
which read as follows:

July 5, 1917. London. Thursday confidential following Ameri-
cas naval base passed for publication USAonly quote private attitude
official circles here that Daniels story made out of whole cloth there no
submarine attack whatever no torpedoes seen no gunfire from de-
stroyers stop our destroyers dropped explosive charge as precaution
but no submarine or wreckage seen stop explained destroyers fre-
quently fire at logs or anything which might prove periscope stop
officials therefore decline permit aftermath story from this end. A. P.

* It will be seen on its face that this telegram would seem to
be intended for publication in the United States, but the fact
is that the words "passed for publication in the United States

i9i7l FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 327

only" were stamped on the despatch by the English censor and
should not have been transmitted by cable. Out of the mis-
understanding the despatch, which was really intended to be
confidential, was given to the American press and Secretary
Daniels was notified of it. He was greatly excited and over the
long-distance telephone asked me to kill the message. In obe-
dience to the policy laid down by the annual meeting and our
general desire, I did send out a notice to kill, but it was too late;
it had already been published in a good many newspapers!

A few days later I went to Washington and saw Secretary
Daniels. He said that as we were friends of many years' stand-
ing, we would have no quarrel over the matter, but that Gleaves
would never forgive me. I said I was sorry but it could not be
helped.

Then two or three weeks after Mayor Mitchel of New York
gave a large dinner to one of the numerous foreign missions that
came to New York that year. In the anteroom the guests
assembled to have their cocktails. Suddenly I felt someone
take me by the arm, and looking about, found it was Admiral
Gleaves. In a very cheery way he said: "Mr. Stone, is there
any reason why you and I can't have a cocktail together?"
I accepted his invitation. And then he told me that he wanted
to have a talk with me, to which I replied that I was equally
anxious to talk with him. He invited me out to his ship in the
Hudson River to lunch with him and I accepted. On the ap-
pointed day he was called to Washington and the luncheon was
off. A day or two after I met him in the Metropolitan Club
and he repeated the invitation for a cocktail and I again joined
him. We made another appointment for luncheon, and one
Sunday he came. To my utter amazement he opened the
conversation by saying: "Mr. Stone, I owe you a debt that I
never can repay. I mean for denying that silly story given out
from Washington respecting two fierce battles with subma-
rines. I am a plain common sailorand not given to that kind of
statement. I do not know any better than you whether there
was a submarine anywhere near us or not. Of course, the order
to all our boats was that if anything like a periscope appeared
to fire at it, and that was done. The officers on the individual

328 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST fog*

boats thought they saw evidences of one or more periscopes and,1
as they ought to do, took a shot at them. With the denial
which the Associated Press sent out, I can now show my face
among my fellow naval officers, as I could not otherwise hav£
done."

So far as Admiral Gleaves was concerned, the bloody chasm
seemed to have been very easily bridged. Not long after my
niece happened to be in New York and stopping at a little
private hotel on 32nd Street. I asked her to luncheon with me
at Sherry's and went to the hotel to call for her. While waiting
for her to descend from her room Admiral Gleaves dashed out
of the dining room and said his wife was anxious to meet me;
she was stopping at the hotel. I went into the dining room and
was presented, and she said she had been very anxious to meet
me in order to thank me for the denial of the silly 4th of July
story. From that day to this Admiral Gleaves and I have
been warmer friends than we ever were before, which is saying
a good deal.

A curious side-incident developed. President Wilson took
great offence at the matter and announced that he would never
speak to me again, to which I replied that I would strive to
exist as best I could nevertheless. As a matter of fact, for
nearly two years I never saw the President or spoke to him.

During the progress of the Peace Conference in Paris Colo-
nel House and I frequently went out for a ride in the suburbs
of the city. On one occasion he said that the President would
like to know if I would accept an invitation to lunch with him,
his other guest being the British Prime Minister, Mr. Lloyd
George. He said that he had assured the President that the
Prime Minister and I were on good terms and he thought it
would be agreeable. He wanted to know what I had to say.
I replied that the President had said he would never speak to
me, I thought he must have forgotten. However, if he should
invite me, it would be like a command from a sovereign and I
would be bound to accept. House reported this to the Presi-
dent, who said yes, in a fit of anger he had undoubtedly said
that, but he would like to forget it. So I received the invita-
tion.

i9i8] FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST )ig

The luncheon was in what was known as the Paris White
House. Besides Lloyd George and myself the others present
were Mrs. Wilson and Colonel House. At the table the Presi-
dent said grace and was most felicitous as a host. He told a
number of amusing stories and then had something to say about
the Scotch-Irish, remarking that he was of Scotch-Irish descent,
that his father was a clergyman, and turning to me said that
Mr. Stone was also of Scotch-Irish ancestry and the son of a
minister. I said that it was quite true and that in my infancy
I had taken great care to select the right kind of an ancestry,
so that every drop of blood in my veins was either English,
Irish, or Scotch, and that I had taken equal pains to see that
there was no Welsh, this being directed at Lloyd George. The
Prime Minister turned with a laugh and said, "Well, Taffy
was a Welshman, wasn't he!" Later, when I was at 10 Down-
ing Street in London with Lloyd George, I asked if he was at
all surprised that the President should say grace at such a
luncheon. I said that my father, being a minister, always
"asked a blessing" at every meal, but that President Wilson
was not a minister. "Did it occur to you," I asked, "that it is
rather unusual?" "Yes," he replied, "but I thought it was
done for your benefit."

The Memorable Year 1918

After all, the year 191 8 was perhaps the most important in
my life. It certainly was an exceedingly busy one.

I went out to St. Louis to address the Chamber of Commerce.
It was the 23d of March. A committee met me at the rail-
way station in the early morning and after breakfast took me
for a ride about the city. About noon I suggested that I should
call at our local office. Arriving there I found I was badly
needed. An amazing cable message had been received from
France. It announced that a heavy siege gun had been bom-
barding Paris throughout the forenoon. The shells had been
fired a distance of seventy-two miles at intervals of fifteen
minutes, beginning shortly after five o'clock. It order to
reach the city it was estimated that each shell must mount at

330 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [i9,8

least twenty miles in the air. The cablegram was sent from
Paris at eleven o'clock Paris time.

The story was so improbable that it gave much concern to
our New York office and I must decide whether we should
assume responsibility for it. To add to the complication, the
gunnery men of the Government at Washington denounced the
tale as absurd. Here was a dilemma. Of course, if the thing
were untrue, the consequences would be most serious. We
should never hear the last of it.

I took the telegram into a private room for meditation. I
knew Mr. Roberts, the chief of our Paris bureau, was not a man
who would lose his head. And he had waited five hours after
the firing began before sending the cable. Finally, there was a
French censor who would not permit a canard to be sent. I
said we would "stand pat."

That evening the president of the club chaffed me about my
claim for accuracy for the Associated Press, and asked what I
had to say of the impossible storyfrom Paris which hadappeared
in the evening papers. "Well," I replied, "back in New York
I have a friend, the Rev. Dr. Minot J. Savage, Unitarian, who
holds with a Cape Cod farmer that the religious faith of the
Evangelical Christian is 'believin' in a thing that you know
ain't so.' Such is my position. I believe this story 'that I
know ain't so,' because the Associated Press says it."

A few days later the Indiana members of the Associated
Press held a meeting and by a rising vote adopted a most grat-
ifying greeting, which was transmitted by telegraph. On
April 1 8th I went to Pittsburg and with Herbert Hoover and
Stephane Lauzanne, editor of the Matin of Paris, addressed a
large company on the occasion of the anniversary of the found-
ing of the Pittsburg Press Club.

A Fine Funeral
i

I had served as general manager for twenty-five years, my

seventieth birthday was approaching, and for some time I had
recognized that in obedience to the natural law I would soon
have to drop out of the activities of my vocation. It became

,9i8J FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 331

important to determine who should succeed me as general
manager of the Associated Press. I had chosen in Mr. Martin,
a gentleman in whom I had full confidence. For twenty-five
years I had had unchallenged authority to employ, discipline,
and dismiss every member of the Associated Press staff. I
believed that I had built up a personnel that was capable of
continuing the work after my retirement. If I had not done
so my work would have been in large measure a failure. But
this was not all. It was not sufficient that I should be satisfied
with the fitness of the gentlemen whom I had employed to con-
duct the work after my disappearance; it was equally im-
portant that the Board of Directors and the members of the
Associated Press and the public should be convinced. I asked
a private meeting of the directors and told them very frankly
my feeling. The spirit manifested by the directors was as
affectionate as any one could wish. They reluctantly accepted
my view and it was arranged that I should go to Europe, osten-
sibly in connection with the Associated Press work, but really
for the purpose of giving my associates in the executive depart-
ment an opportunity to demonstrate their capacity.

Then the Board of Directors held a secret meeting to which
I was not invited. The annual meeting of the organization was
approaching. It was usual, at the annual meeting, to have
either a dinner or a luncheon. Much to my surprise I was not
consulted about the luncheon, as to who should speak or what
the programme should be, but was told by my friends on the
board that they would arrange the matter. Then on the 23d
of April the luncheon came off and proved to be a function in
my honour. The Board of Directors, at their secret session,
had adopted the following resolutions:

WHEREAS, Melville E. Stone, on the 3rd of March, 1918, com-
pleted a period of twenty-five years as General Manager of the
Associated Press; first leading with unflagging courage and determi-
nation in the battle which freed the telegraphic news service of the
Nation from control and exploitation by selfish private interests, and
with wise enthusiasm and clear vision labouring for the firm establish-
ment of the cooperative principle in ownership and management;
then with extraordinary resourcefulness and constructive genius

$32 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [1918

planning and directing the development of a world-wide system of
news-gathering and distribution — always with unswerving devotion
to the highest ideals of the newspaper profession and the best stand-
ards of American citizenship;

RESOLVED: That a suitable volume be compiled, to set forth
in permanent form the record of the service of Melville E. Stone, his
life and activities as a loyal and public-spirited American citizen;
his contributions by voice and pen to the advancement of the cause
of liberty and of freedom of speech and of the press as furthered by a
clean, responsible, efficient, and courageous American journalism;
and more particularly his work for and in the Associated Press, to
whose character, growth, and achievements he has contributed so
much of fidelity, industry, and inspiration.

RESOLVED: That upon the occasion of the Annual Meeting of
The Associated Press in April, 191 8, a copy of this volume be delivered
to each member of the Association, and that a special copy, suitably
bound and inscribed, be presented to Mr. Stone, with due expression
of the admiration, gratitude, and affection of his colleagues.

A beautiful copy de luxe of the volume in question, which was
entitled "M. E. S., His Book. A Tribute and a Souvenir of the
'A. P.* 1 893 -191 8," with twenty-five one-thousand-dollar
Liberty Bonds interleaved, was presented to me. Fifteen
hundred other copies had been printed for distribution among
the members of the organization. The work contained several
flattering encomiums, and perhaps I may gratify my vanity by
reproducing certain of them from men with whom I had been
most intimately associated. The following was from my
old-time partner, who had served with great sacrifice, devotion,
and ability as the president of the Associated Press of Illinois,
and was the real father of the self-governing news-gathering
organization:

My dear Mel:

For fifty years we have known each other, and for more than forty
years we have been intimately associated. Out of the memories of
the years I give you this day the greetings of affectionate friendship.

Someone has said that the great things of life often lie with their
little ends toward us. It was a little thing that nearly forty-two
years ago you asked me to join you in the then little adventure of

1918]

FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST

333

Victor F. Lawson

I congratulate you,

the Daily News. But it was a great thing that twenty-five years
ago, as a direct consequence of our earlier association, you and I, and
the friends who are now gone, joined in the
great adventure of the Associated Press.

And how little a thing it was — that four-page,
five-column Daily News, "published somewhere
on Fifth Avenue behind a tree," as a conde-
scending five-cent contemporary observed — that
brought us together forty-two years ago, and
how great a thing, world-wide in its activities
and its consequence, has been born out of the
convictions and the labours of the later years —
labours in which you and I have been privi-
leged to have a part with the good men and
true of those early days and those who remain
unto this present.

You have now rounded out a quarter of a
century in the service of the Associated Press,
and the Associated Press. When you were called to this service — and
I say "called" advisedly — the import and large consequence of the
high calling already foreshadowed themselves to your and our recog-
nition. You came to the work in a day of stress when, in very truth,
the independence of the American press was challenged by a selfish
commercialism. How well you bore your part through all those
years of anxious conflict, and how faithfully and wisely you contrib-
uted in these and later days to those constructive labours upon which
has been reared the structure of the American cooperative news ser-
vice, is in a very large measure the history of the Associated Press.

But not alone to us of the newspaper calling have you given the
loyalty and strength of your years, but in a very real sense, and in a
measure that only we who share with you the like responsibility for
the maintenance of the wellsprings of public information and right
action pure and untainted by sinister influences can fully appreciate,
your life has been truly devoted to the public good. In a word, in all
these years you have been the right man in the right place, a place of
high service and of corresponding honour. And so I congratulate you
on both your opportunity and your success. And I congratulate the
Associated Press not only on what has been accomplished in all these
years under your directing hand, but also that the past is but an earn-
est of the future as you bring to each day's service the gathering re-
sources— the added experience and the ripened judgment — of the.

334

FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST

[1918

years, each better than the last. May the years that remain be
many, as many for you and for us, as the all-ruling love that is better
to us each than can be our own desires shall permit.

And so, as these things of the past crowd upon the memory, shall
we not say — you and I, partner — that along with the chastening
sorrows of life — mysteries which it is not given us now to understand —
have come to us both the generous rewards of service, and that unto
us the lines have indeed fallen in pleasant places. And at the last —
whether it come soon or late — for you and for us and for all we love,
may it be light at eventide.

Yours in the fellowship of the years.

Victor F. Lawson.
Chicago, Feb. 4, 191 8.

The contribution of Mr. Frank B. Noyes, who has been
president of the Associated Press of New York from its incor-
poration in 1900 was as follows:

Too often we wait until a man has passed away before we say
the things that are always in our hearts concerning him, and so the
opportunity of recording, even haltingly, as I
must, the regard and deep affection for Mel-
ville E. Stone that the long years of close
association have brought to me is peculiarly
welcome, as the present year of his service to
the cause he has laboured for finds him serving
as greatly as the first.

Frank B. Noyes

When, in 1893, Western newspapermen,
headed by Victor F. Lawson, resolved to make
their fight for a press service that should be-
long to its newspaper members and be con-
trolled by them and by them alone; that should
be cooperative and non-profit-making, they turned to Melville E.
Stone, not then engaged in active newspaper work, and laid on him
the heavy burden of leading in this battle for a principle.

In all the world, in my belief, there was no man so fitted for this
great duty as the man then selected.

It is not my function to tell the epic story of the giant conflict
between the organization then formed, founded on the belief that

,9i8] FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 335

the safety of the press and of the people required that the news service
of the American newspapers should be controlled by the newspapers,
and that other organization, then dominant, which had for its purpose
only the making of profits. That struggle ended in the complete
triumph of the cooperative principle, with the Associated Press
admittedly the greatest news-gathering and distributing organization
in the world. Nor am I to tell you of his insistent fight through years
for the principle of Property Right in News — for the right of the news
gatherer to the fruit of his labour. The records of these endeavours
and many others are written elsewhere in this volume.

My acquaintance with Stone began in 1893, some time before the
Associated Press, of which he was General Manager, began actually to
function. Early in 1894 I became a director and member of the
Executive Committee of the organization, and from that day to this
have been in intimate touch with him, either in the Illinois organi-
zation or in the present New York organization that was formed later.

First let me speak of his immense services to the newspapers of this
country, regardless of whether or not they are represented in the
membership of the Associated Press. Melville E. Stone came into
the fight for a news service that would be unsubservient to private
interests, with a full sympathy for its object and an absolute belief
that such a service was vital to an honourable American press.

He was extraordinarily equipped for the part he was to play, both
in the war with the opposition and in the constructive work of estab-
lishing, maintaining, and constantly developing a great world-wide
news service. He was a tactician of the highest order, fertile of re-
source, ready to meet any emergency, perceiving unerringly the
weak spot in the enemy line and deadly in his blows on that line,
though in this war the blow took the form of persuasion of the enemy
and the victory that of a new recruit to the cause of an unfettered
press.

I would not be just to Stone nor to others if I gave the impression
that he fought alone. Those of us who were comrades in that struggle
know and appreciate the mighty part taken by Victor F. Lawson,
who staked his all that right as he saw it should triumph. These two
men worked untiringly for the great end they sought, backed by the
most loyal following that men ever had.

It is one thing, however, to win a fight for a principle and altogether
another thing to put that principle into working practice. And this
is where Stone's genius came into full play. His range of knowledge;
his acquaintance with men of all stations of life and of all countries;

$36 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [1918

his understanding of conditions throughout the world and his ability
to call into instant service his knowledge; this acquaintance and this
understanding are simply marvellous. Under his direction the news
arms of the Associated Press have year by year reached out until now
the whole globe contributes to its daily story of world happenings.

The men engaged in this work throughout the world have become
saturated with his high ideals for the service, his determination that
it should be truthful, should be impartial, should not be tainted with
bias or propaganda.

The Boards of Directors of both the Illinois and the New York
organizations have been made up of strong men, but I have never
found in all the changing membership anything but steadfast de-
votion to the highest ideals, and this I attribute to the standards set
in the early days by both Stone and Lawson.

I am sure that every man still living who has served on these
Boards will bear me out when I assert that every one of us is wiser and
more hopeful of human nature by reason of our association with this
work and these men and has come to understand the spirit of fairness
and unselfishness that has guided the Boards' activities.

I would not be understood as indicating that there have been no
differences of opinion — no meeting of the Board has ever been held,
I think, without such differences — but the differences have been as to
what was the right thing to do and not such as breed distrust as to
motives.

In this respect I can speak with intimate knowledge of Stone's
characteristics. For eighteen years I have served as President of the
organization formed in 1900, and during those eighteen years Stone
has been General Manager in charge of the news service. During
this time we have differed widely on a thousand questions, but always
the difference has been one of judgment, never of a nature that left
in my mind misgivings as to his intention to do the right thing as he
saw the right, and I only hope that he has the same feeling concerning
me.

Our working relationship during these years has been a very
wonderful thing to me. His patience and tolerance of an abruptly
differing view and his unreserved acceptance of a decision by the
Board of Directors adverse to his own point of view mark a mind
disciplined to an amazing degree, when the masterful nature of the
man is considered, and an underlying kindness and charity of spirit
that come to few of us.

In his social relationship Stone has great charm. With an enormous

i9i8] FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 331

fund of information is also a marked ability to give out that infor-
mation. His wit is very keen and he is one of the best conversation-
alists and raconteurs of our time. While not an orator he is a most
interesting speaker and is one of the best after-dinner talkers I ever
heard.

I suppose that every man who amounts to anything has enemies,
and he has a select assortment; but it seems to me that more people
throughout the world regard Stone as a friend than any one else that
I know of.

It seems to me almost a law of nature that with him an acquaint-
ance should be a friend.

As one of those whose relationship is more than of an "acquaintance
friend" it is difficult for me to speak. During the long years we have
worked together there has grown up what has been to me, and I hope
and think to him, a very tender and beautiful friendship. We have
been together in days of trial and days of triumph, in days of heavy
sorrow and those of radiant gladness, and throughout I have found
him true. This friendship has been a precious thing in my life.

And this is why I prize this opportunity of placing my little laurel
wreath on the living brow of the great man whose monument is the
Associated Press of to-day and of having the unwonted pleasure of
wearing my heart on my sleeve for the dear friend of so many years.

Mr. Frederic B. Jennings, who had been General Counsel of
the Associated Press from 1900, wrote as follows:

The completion of a quarter of a century of successful effort is a
notable event in the life of any man. When that effort has resulted
in such achievements as those accomplished by Melville E. Stone, it
is natural that his friends should desire to mark the occasion by some
testimonial of their esteem and affection. I consider it a privilege to
be permitted to join in that testimonial.

I met Mr. Stone for the first time in April, 1900, when he and cer-
tain publishers consulted me in regard to the organization of the
Associated Press. The questions involved were important, and their
determination not free from doubt. The publishers desired to form a
cooperative organization, which could be conducted for the mutual
benefit and protection of its members, free from obligation to others
not admitted to membership.

338 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [I9l8

Mr. Stone was chiefly interested in the adequacy, accuracy, and
integrity of the news service, and believed that in the public interest
a news association should be under cooperative control and not sub-
ject to the domination of any one newspaper or group of newspapers.

After careful consideration it was decided to organize an association
under the Membership Corporations Law of New York, and the
Associated Press was accordingly incorporated in May, 1900. In
its organization and the preparation of the plan for its development
Mr. Stone's great experience and thorough knowledge of the news
business, his clarity and breadth of vision, his intelligent appreciation
of the difficulties to be avoided and of the objects to be realized, his
sound judgment, and, above all, the fact that he enjoyed the confi-
dence of the publishers generally, whose enlistment as members was
essential, were invaluable, and without his assistance the formation
of the Association would have been impossible.

Its successful career, which has continued for seventeen years and
abundantly justified its organization, is largely due to the wise and
resourceful management of Melville E. Stone. The confidence of its
members in the Association, the reliance of the public upon its news,
the high morale of its employees, the breadth of its activities, its
world-wide arrangements for the collection of news, and its great
success, are chiefly "he result of his efforts.

One of his notable achievements is the recent adjudication by the
courts that a news agency or a newspaper, which, by the expenditure
of money and effort, has gathered the news, has a property right in
it which is not lost by publication and can be protected by injunction.

Mr. Stone for a long time had felt strong conviction upon this
subject, and when the appropriation of our news by the International
News Service during the war became so frequent and extensive as
seriously to injure the Association, he urged that a suit be brought to
enjoin it. This was done, and, upon a decision rendered by the U. S.
Circuit Court of Appeals sustaining our contentions, an injunction
was obtained fully protecting our rights.

Thus, Mr. Stone's opinion, long and earnestly maintained, has
become the settled law, and all honest news agencies and newspapers
are largely indebted to him for the establishment of this principle,
as applicable to news, so vital to the protection of their rights. It
may well be doubted whether this decision would thus have been
obtained had it not been for his clear and positive views upon the
subject and his pertinacity in maintaining them. If his twenty-five
years of devoted service to the news profession had produced no other

,9,8] FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 339

result than this, they would not have been spent In vain. But this
has been only an episode in his busy and useful life.

He has built up an organization for the collection and dissemination
of news which, I suppose, has no equal anywhere in the world.
He has placed it upon the sure foundation of fairness, accuracy, and
reliability, upon which he has always insisted. Thus he has improved
not only the quality of the news service, but also the character of the
employees who are engaged in it.

He has successfully served for twenty-five years two such critical
masters as the Press and the Public, and still retains their confidence
and esteem. Perhaps no greater tribute than this could be paid to
the impartiality and success of his management.

But this is not all. He has made few, if any, enemies, and his
friends are legion. As he looks back upon this period of his life, one
of his greatest sources of satisfaction must be that he has gained the
confidence and respect of all, and the regard and affection of his many
friends.

I have had somewhat close and frequent association with him during
the last seventeen years, and my relation with him has been one of the
most delightful and cherished experiences of my life. During that
time I have come to have the highest opinion of his intellectual
ability, and the warmest esteem and affection for him. In my pro-
fessional experience of more than forty years I have never had a more
considerate, intelligent, helpful, and satisfactory client than he.

His apprehension is so quick and keen, his mind so active and
resourceful, his judgment so sane and fair, that it has always been
a great advantage and pleasure to work with him.

But, after all, impressed as I have been by his remarkable intellec-
tual powers, I have been quite as much affected by his qualities of
heart, his good fellowship, his human sympathy, his sincerity, his
kindly consideration for others, his toleration, his great fairness and
lack of resentment even under the strongest provocation. These
are the qualities which have so endeared him to his friends, all of
whom will agree with me when I express the earnest hope that he may
continue to serve the Press and all mankind, and to honour and
delight us with his friendship for very many years to come.

And at the luncheon Mr. Adolph Ochs said, among other
things:

I am impelled to say a few words to express what I regard as an
obligation of the members of the Associated Press to Melville E.

340

FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST

[1918

Adolph S. Ochs

Stone, who has served them for twenty-five years with a fidelity that
had no reservations and with ability that can best be characterized as
genius.
The Associated Press to-day is one of the monumental achievements
of the age. We little appreciate its potential-
ity, its importance as a factor in our civiliza-
tion, its superb organization, its honesty,
integrity, and practice of the highest standards
in news gathering. We accept now as a mat-
ter of course that enlightened public opinion
regards the reports of the Associated Press as
reliable, trustworthy, and scrupulously honest,
fair, and impartial. That this is so is due in
a large measure to the integrity, genius, ability,
and self-sacrifice of Melville E. Stone.

As to its accuracy and legal limitations I
need only refer to the fact that libel suits have
cost the Associated Press a negligible sum.
In fact, there never has been a substantial
sum realized in a libel suit against the Associated Press, and alto-
gether, not a half-dozen suits these past twenty-five years. "Libel
suit judgments have cost the Associated Press in the last twenty-five
years less than the expenditure for lead pencils in the same period."

Indulge me a few minutes to say a word concerning the Associated
Press — itself. There is a popular superstition that the Associated
Press is a monopoly. Yes, it is in the sense that a family monopolizes
its personal possessions and its coordination; that is, if it coordinates.
I wish to remind you that the Associated Press is, in fact, a family, a
club, for it is incorporated as a social club under the State laws of New
York. The primary purpose of a social club is to bring into associa-
tion congenial persons. It is their personality that constitutes all
that makes the club congenial. To force an objectionable member
into such a club impairs its purpose. So with the Associated Press.
It consists of kindred interests united for mutual advantage where
each and every one contributes voluntary personal service. Each
giving a part of himself to make a thing greater collectively than they
can create individually. It is a service that cannot be imposed by
law, even though the Associated Press is impressed with a public
interest. Governmental supervision can extend only to good con-
duct so that the power created is not to be misused. It cannot be
successfully contended that in law or morals it should be under

^l^l^l^t^A.

Georges Clemenceau

/./</<?

Marshal Foch

i9i8] FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 341

government control and made to conform to the requirements of a
common carrier, for that cannot be done except by the exercise of the
powers of a master over a slave; that is if personal service is to be
exacted, and otherwise there cannot be an Associated Press such as
now exists.

The success of the Associated Press is Melville E. Stone's success.
The Association is stamped all over with Stone's handiwork, his
thought, his ideals, his abilities, and his sense of public service. It is
his monument, and may it ever endure on the foundation that he
builded so masterly and with so much sagacity and self-sacfifice. I
emphasize the much-abused word "self-sacrifice," for in the case of
Melville E. Stone and his relation to the Associated Press it is
applicable in its true significance. He might have been a captain of
industry, a banker of great repute, an important member of a presi-
dent's cabinet or an ambassador extraordinary and minister pleni-
potentiary at one of the chief courts in Europe. And who knows but
that had he been the latter, this world's calamity might have been
averted. I am not indulging in a flight of imagination. I also know
that a great publisher offered him a substantial fortune to undertake
the management of his affairs, and this was one of many similar
seductive offers. But they offered Melville E. Stone no temptation.
He was wedded to his idol — the Associated Press — for he worships it,
dreams of it, and it occupies all his thoughts during his waking hours.
He cherishes it, he nourishes it, he suffers for it and truly spiritualizes
it. His work for the Associated Press is to him congenial employment,
and in it he realizes every good man's highest ambition — public service.
He gives the cause the best that is in him; in fact, gives himself wholly.
His personality inspires the whole organization from top to bottom.
There is no man in the service of the Associated Press who has not
been impressed with the management's demand for honesty, im-
partiality, and thoroughness.

Never did a man occupy a more trying position than Mr. Stone
created for himself when he inaugurated and put into operation for
several hundred newspapers representing every shade of public
opinion a news service that was to be comprehensive, intelligent,
enterprising, and scrupulously fair and impartial — to be universally
so recognized and esteemed. It all appears simple enough now that
organization has been perfected and the newspapers and the public
have faith. But it was a stupendous undertaking, and it needed a
man of courage and preeminent ability, and, above all, perseverance
and the faculty of dealing with men of most diverse and suspicious

342 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [,9l8

temperaments. Had I the time, and you the patience, I could
recite innumerable instances in the history of the Associated Press
where its reputation and its very existence rested on the integrity of
Melville E. Stone.

With these words of flattery ringing in my ears I set sail on
June 15th. I had felt that I never wished to see France again,
the France that I had often visited and to which I was devoted.
To see it in its ruined and devastated state could give no
pleasure. Now, however, had come a day when I had a real
call to go. Not out of curiosity, nor as a mere sightseer. But
to do service. And so, and therefore, I went.

I sailed from New York on a French steamer, bound for
Bordeaux. The weather was mild, the sea calm, and the
voyage an agreeable one. There were some interesting epi-
sodes. We had a thousand soldiers aboard, and approximately
an equal number of Red Cross and Y. M. C. A. men. The
soldiers under very proper orders from the War Department
were forbidden to show themselves on deck, for the good
reason that if the ship were known to carry soldiers, it became
a transport and therefore fair game for a submarine. But the
Red Cross and Y. M. C. A. men were constantly promenading
the decks in khaki, and it was inconceivable that a man behind
a periscope could observe the small red cross or triangle on one's
uniform which, otherwise, was precisely like the garb of a
soldier. One class of men would endanger the safety of the
boat quite as much as the other. But the ways of our war con-
duct were always in some fashion past finding out.

Creel Committee

The boat was crowded and many people were forced to
"double up." A Chicago friend of mine had as a "bunkie"
a Baptist Doctor of Divinity from Laurel, Mississippi. He
was a strange being. He wore an ordinary dark civilian suit
of clothes with a black slouch hat plus several other things :
namely, puttees over his mufti trousers, and low shoes. And
between the puttees and shoes exposed bare ankles, proving
that he eschewed socks. His room-mate, my Chicago friend,

i9i8] FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 343

told me that he slept nightly in these clothes. Day by day,
hour by hour, and almost minute by minute he stood by the
gunwale peering into the offing for a periscope. He was un-
deniably nervous. One day he confided to me that he carried
three days' rations in the right-hand pocket of his sack coat, and
a "jiffy life preserver," whatever that might be, in the left-hand
pocket.

I could not resist the impulse to chaff him. As with anxious
eyes he was scanning the horizon, when I had a sympathetic
audience, I called out:

"Doctor, you are a minister of the Gospel, and are afraid of
death."

"N-no," he stammered.

"You are a Baptist and afraid of water."

"N-no," he haltingly replied.

"You sleep in your clothes, because as a Southerner you must
die with your boots on."

Again he demurred, and spat out a liberal allowance of
tobacco.

Then I related what the French call a petite histoire which
seemed apt:

Once upon a time there lived on a high mountain in
Virginia a distinguished astronomer. One evening a farmer
called, his boots covered with red clay and he chewing plug
tobacco earnestly. The savant undertook an elemental lesson
in his field. He pointed out the various constellations and
indicated their size and importance. Finally he pointed to
a little star and told his open-eyed visitor that it was Orion, so
many million times larger than the moon, the earth, or the sun,
and perhaps the centre of the celestial universe and mayhap the
seat of the throne of God. "Do you mean to say that that
little star which I can hardly see is all that?" asked the farmer.
And when the astronomer acquiesced, the quite practical Vir-
ginian spat out some tobacco and declared himself: "Well,"
said he, "all I've got to say is, it has a darned poor way of show-
ing itself."

My ministerial friend told me he was going to France for
Creel's Committee on Public Information "just to look around

344 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [i9l8

and report." He did not expect to stay long and it was the
first time he had been abroad. I saw him once in Paris. The
Boches were bombing the city. He did not like it. He had done
all the "looking around" he cared to, and hurried home to

report.

On the boat was a worthy Pittsburg woman on the same
errand. She frankly confessed that Creel, wanting a Congres-
sional appropriation, was giving some friends of congressmen
opportunities to visit Europe at Government expense. Putting
two and two together, I remembered that Pat Harrison, one
of the most influential members of the House of Representa-
tives, served the district in which my timorous Baptist divine
lived. Wherefore, without doubt, his joy ride.

Although we took all precaution, running without lights at
night and zig-zagging, indeed, there was little or no danger,
because the French Line had been immune from attack through-
out the war. There was much speculation as to the reason for
this exemption. The best explanation was that the Germans
found these boats about their only means of communication
with the outside world. They freely sent letters to friends in
Switzerland. There the substance of these epistles was re-
written into new letters from the Swiss friends and forwarded
as their own. As we had among our passengers the Swiss
minister to Washington, a thoroughly worthy gentleman, some
fun-loving fellows proposed a resolution of thanks to him in-
stead of to the company, for providing us a safe journey, a
suggestion which he did not fully enjoy.

The ride up the Garonne from the seacoast to Bordeaux
was a thrilling one as it gave us our first real idea of the vast
war work the American had done in France. Mile upon mile
of vast storehouses and factories, with thousands of American
locomotives and railway cars, a great army of Yankee workmen,
and many of our newly constructed freighters greeted and
startled us.

When we reached our dock and went ashore we found gangs
of German prisoners at work everywhere.

Then we set out for Paris. The metropolis was shrouded in
gloom day and night. All of the old-time jollity was gone.

i9,8J FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 345

I called on my old friend Clemenceau, saw Marshal Joffre,
and early in July spent a couple of days with General Pershing at
Chaumont. I was stricken with the prevailing influenza and
was interned for some days. Then I went to London.

Greetings Abroad

Much to my surprise, on July 25th a dinner in my honour was
given by the British press at the Ritz Hotel in London. The
committee in charge included Lords Burnham, Northcliffe, Rid-
dle, and other distinguished journalists, and the company gath-
ered comprised substantially all of the leading newspapermen of
the British metropolis. Addresses were made by LordBurnham,
who presided, Lord Riddle, Sam Blythe, and Admiral Sims. It
was a compliment of which any one might well be proud.

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Dinner of the British Press

A few days later I went with Lord Chancellor F. E. Smith to
luncheon at Gray's Inn. I had been in the historic hall years
before with Lord Coleridge, but this occasion was much more

346 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [1918

interesting. When we came to the cigars "F. E." took me to
the library where there were something like a half-dozen big-
wigs who wanted to know something about my struggle on be-
half of property in news, a subject then before our courts on
my initiative. I explained to them in detail my views and
there was no dissent from the conclusions I drew. They said
that undoubtedly if the same case was presented to the British
courts, they would grant an injunction.

Then on August 2nd Mr. Arthur Balfour asked me to lunch-
eon, his other guests being Prime Minister Lloyd George and the
War Minister Lord Milner. We discussed the censorship again
with interest and I found them thoroughly sympathetic with my
point of view.

The following day at Manchester a large company of editors
and newspaper proprietors from the provinces and from Scot-
land and Ireland assembled at the Midland Hotel for a luncheon
in my honour. It was a very notable occasion. The presiding
officer was Mr. John R. Scott of the Manchester Guardian,
and among the speakers were his father, C. P. Scott, the
Lord Mayor of Manchester, and Mr. Phillips of the York-
shire Post. I was particularly gratified at the presence of an
old-time friend, Sir Edward Russell of the Liverpool Daily Post,
who had come over to propose my health and speak some kindly
words. He and I had been acquainted for many years. He
had visited me in the United States and I had seen him in his
lair at Liverpool. He was then well-nigh eighty years old.

Three days later General Smuts and I had luncheon with
Lloyd George at 10 Downing Street. It was an occasion full
of interest. There was a frank consideration of every ques-
tion that was uppermost at the moment.

Then I went back to France and on to Switzerland. At
Berne I spent an afternoon with Doctor Muehlon, the one-time
manager of the Krupp works, who was so outspoken in denun-
ciation of Germany's misconduct.

On September 13th the press of Italy honoured me with a
luncheon at the Villa Borghese in Rome. Andrea Torre, presi-
dent of the Press Association, made the speech of welcome in the
name of the entire Italian press. Premier Orlando was with the

i9i8] FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 347

army at the front, but sent a message of a most appreciative
character. Nitti, who at the moment was Minister of the
Treasury, followed in most flattering terms.

Mr. Gallenga, whose father in former days had been a
famous correspondent of the London Times, had now risen to
the post of Minister of Propaganda. He motored me down to
his home in Perugia, where on the following Sunday I addressed
two or three thousand people in the theatre, Gallenga inter-
preting for me. The next day we went to Padua, where I had
a short visit with General Diaz, then commanding the Italian
army.

Back to Paris; a luncheon with Lord Derby, the British am-
bassador; a short visit with the Prince of Wales; and a luncheon
in state by the Paris press, presided over by Mr. Naleche, editor
of the Journal des Debats. There were many notables at the
luncheon, including Minister Pichon and Andre Tardieu.

Then on October 22d I sailed from Bordeaux for New York.

On November 16th I was given a home-coming dinner by my
friends at the Lotos Club.

Our directors felt that I should go back again to give the
staff a longer opportunity and also because the Armistice had
come, the war was over, and President Wilson was going over
to attend the Peace Conference. I sailed again on December
5th and followed the President into Paris by one day.

I shall not undertake to tell the story of the Peace Con-
ference. That has been done by many and in many ways. The
best book on the subject, one free from bias, accurate, and com-
plete, has been written by a member of the Associated Press
staff, Mr. Charles T. Thompson. It is entitled "The Peace
Conference Day by Day."

I shall content myself with a few observations which seem to
me pertinent.

It is as well to bear in mind that the Armistice was only a
truce and not at all a definite close of the war. Yet, after the
exhausting struggle of more than four years, it was hailed in all
of the Entente countries as the end of the contest. There was
as little fight left in the Allied armies as in Germany. And this
was as well understood in Berlin as in London or Paris.

348 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [,9l8

Second, the Armistice was based on President Wilson's
Fourteen Points and his subsequent proclamations, all of which
were susceptible of varying interpretations. There was a very
practical fifteenth point which was neither presented to the
Germans nor accepted by them. That was a plain declaration
that Germany had wantonly imposed upon the world a horribly
wicked war, had been defeated, and ought in all justice to pay
the penalty for the crime. The sixty millions of people in Ger-
many were the culprits. But they were unrepentant. Nor
were they conscious that they had lost the war. They were
hoping, and not without cause, that a split would develop in
the ranks of their enemies. None of the Allied governments
had accepted the Fourteen Points with real wholeJieartedness.
Their acquiescence had been really forced from them because
the United States held a commanding place in the business.
All this meant that the Armistice signed on the nth of Novem-
ber had left a Pandora's box to be dealt with.

Wilson expected to attack at once the problems presented
— Lloyd George and Clemenceau were cautious. In order to
maintain the morale of their people in the hours of stress they
had held out the promise of an indemnity, impossibly large,
from the Germans, when the contest should end. Wilson's
plans did not contemplate this. And there were secret com-
mitments that had seemed necessary to hold the Entente to-
gether in the days of trial. Wherefore, although Clemenceau
and Lloyd George had fixed December 17th for the opening of
the Peace Conference, and the American Delegation had been
appointed and had hurried over to meet the convenience of
their French and English allies, there was a rather uncivil
delay so that our oversea friends could find out precisely in
which quarter sat the wind. Wilson had just been defeated
in the American Congressional election, a fact which was
significant.

England was in the throes of a general election and the
French had not even named their delegates. President Wil-
son and his associates were left "waitin' at the church" for over
a month. A round of royal entertainments was arranged to
fill in the days. There was a reception at the American Em-

i9i9] FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 349

bassy in Paris attended by a large number of French notables;
a state dinner at the Elysee Palace, given by President Poin-
care in honour of the King of Italy and his son, to which the
American President was invited; the conferring of a doctor's
degree upon Wilson at the Sorbonne; a spectacular visit to
King George in London; a presentation of the "Freedom of the
City" at Manchester; and a whirlwind tour to Rome to visit
King Victor Emmanuel and to call on Pope Benedict. During all
these days the President made it clear that he was appealing to
the people of Europe over the heads of their governmental offi-
cers, precisely as he had, during the progress of the war, en-
deavoured to appeal to the German populace against their con-
stituted authorities. He gave a notable interview outlining his
views to the London Times — the only interview he gave to
any one while in Europe. He spoke to great crowds in England
and in Italy. At Manchester he took issue squarely with the
old-time European devotion to a balance of power. There was
unmistakably a growing divergence of views between him and
Clemenceau.

It was another of those speaking tours to which I have alluded.

All of this seemed to me a blunder. Wilson was hailed by the
populace as a veritable Messiah, but they understood little of
his idealistic utterances. Those who heard him in Italy did
not even understand the English language, in which he spoke.
Behind it all remained the fact that so far as any of the govern-
ments were concerned the officials alone could be vocal in any
peace conference. The mob could cheer, even though they
did not understand, but they could have no real share in solving
the terrible problems presented.

Few of those in authority in any European state were at one
with President Wilson in his views. They interpreted his
declaration for "self-determination" to suit themselves. In
order to learn their precise desires, the staff of the Associated
Press went among their representatives and we telegraphed
to the American papers an extraordinary revelation of their
greedy demands. It covered several columns and illustrated
how little a part generosity was playing in their attitude.

Certain of the demands were grotesque. For instance,

Ho FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [I9i9

Venizelos, the Greek statesman, asked for a strip of territory
along the littoral of European Turkey out to the Black Sea,
and another down the coast of Asia Minor to and including the
villayet of Smyrna. And he wanted to extend a like strip up
the eastern shore of the Adriatic to include about one half of
Albania. All this because there was a small Greek colony in
Smyrna, and ancient Thrace and Albania had at one time be-
longed to Greece. It was an outrageous claim; it shut off Bul-
garia and Asia Minor from access to the Mediterranean. As
well might he have asked to include Alexandria and practically
every seaport town in the Levant. They all had Greek colonies
for the reason that the Greeks were the adventurers of the sea
in the olden days and planted their colonies almost everywhere.
I suggested to Venizelos that under his contention he was fairly
entitled to the west side of Sixth Avenue in New York where
there were any number of Greek restaurants and obviously a
Greek colony. Yet in the end the Greek claim was allowed.

Poor France ! She hardly knew how to extricate herself from
the difficulty in which she was plunged. After all, the worst
offence of the Germans was not the slaughtering of something
like ten millions of the very flower of the civilized nations in
battle, nor the killing of women and children by submarine or
aeroplane. The dead, at least, were at peace. The worst offence
of the Germans was that they left us a world in which the living
could hardly live. France and Belgium were ravaged and torn
beyond description. It was not strange that Clemenceau and his
fellow publicists looked in absolute terror upon the future. It
was only human for them to seek a mandate in Syria and for
control of southern Russia that they might secure the resources
of that territory. In their situation it was but natural for them
to ask unreasonable things. They wanted to pool the cost of
the war as from August, 1 914, with the idea that they had been
fighting America's war for three years and that it was only fair
that we should pay our proportion of the cost. Of course this
could not be done and it was a mistake to propose it. Turn-
ing from this they next suggested that the whole cost of the
war from the beginning should be paid in proportion to the
number of lives sacrificed. That is, that among the Allied na-

,9,9] FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 351

tions the one which contributed the largest number of lives
should pay the least in money, and the nation having contrib-
uted the smallest number of lives should pay the largest share.
This was equally inadmissible, because in both cases it meant
the imposing of the chief financial burden of the war on the
United States.

And France was not at all sure of the military situation which,
although she had consented to the Armistice, was still menac-
ing. At the close of the year, on New Year's eve, Mr. Hyde
and I went for a talk with Foch. In an inoffensive address at
a public gathering in Paris a few months before the German
collapse, I told the audience that we had come to a new fashion
of speech, so that initials such as "G. H. Q." and "A. E. F."
were perfectly well understood and much briefer than the
extended appellations. "There are three such letters, 'U. S.A.',
to be seen everywhere in France to-day," I continued. "I
suppose to you they mean 'United States of America.' To us
they mean 'Unconditional Surrender Always'." This jocular
utterance was picked and made much of by the press of Paris.
And so in talking with Marshal Foch I ventured to say that I
thought perhaps the Armistice was a mistake. "Oh, no," he
replied, "I am a father, and so long as there was the life of one
of our soldiers to be saved, I could not refuse to cease hostilities."
One of the affectionate phrases in use about this kindly old soul
was that " Foch was a miser about his men." He never wanted
to part with one of them. I suggested that if he had fought on
for ten days, he would have bagged the whole German army and
won the greatest victory of all history. This did not interest him.

Through all the weary weeks of the Conference Presi-
dent Wilson was the only participant who was assured of a
definite tenure of office. It therefore became necessary for Lloyd
George, Clemenceau, and all the other confreres to keep a close
eye on their constituents back home, and instead of viewing the
problems with international mind they were much like the
American congressman whose sole aim is to care for the people
of his district. Wilson was not "bamboozled," as Mr. Keynes
put it. He was all the time looking at a world as it ought to
be, while his associates, the European premiers, were looking

3$2 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [i9,9

at the world as it was. Of course, in a case of such magnitude
some compromises were necessary, but as a whole the American
President won a victory from his point of view. The import-
ant question is whether, with human nature as it existed, the
realization of his hopes was possible.

It may well be assumed that the Conference went much
too far into the details of territorial allotment and new
national boundaries. The attempt to carry the principles
of self-determination to a finality could not in every case be
wise for the reason that ethnic solidarity and economic associa-
tion were often not coincident. And it is quite doubtful
whether ethnic unities were of first importance. Indeed, it
might be that such coherence would really prove a menace to
the world's peace. Someone has said the immediate cause
of the great war was the destruction of the Tower of Babel
on the Plain of Shinar and the consequent division of the world
into peoples who could never understand each other. Madame
de Stael once wrote very philosophically that "the patriotism
of nations ought to be selfish." So self-determination might
encourage widespread chauvinism, might mean the creation
of national races, national languages, national interests, with
international jealousies, envies, and hatreds. It was one of the
Kaiser's pet theories that the enforcement of the German
language upon his people tended to solidify his empire. He
refused to permit the use of the word "telephone" and coined
the word "Fernspracher" as a substitute. The United States,
taught tolerance by the hourly contact of people of different
races, languages, and religions, was suggested as an object lesson,
as was Switzerland where people of German, French, and Italian
origin live in perfect harmony. What was needed was that the
world should be made a melting pot.

Another complication was the vexed question of super
sovereignty. We of the United States had at our birth wrested
from the ruler the right to declare war and placed that power
in the keeping of the representatives of the people — the Con-
gress. This provision we had embodied in our organic law, the
Constitution. It was a principle which none of our peace-
making commissioners would dare to violate. In this respect

,9i9] FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 353

we were not on even terms with the representatives of our Allied
nations. The declaration of war with them was a prerogative
of the sovereign. It was wrestled with for months and finally
left in the equivocal phrase of the famous Article Ten.

An organization had been set up in the United States with a
policy which, had it been adopted at Paris, might have proved
more successful. It was "The League for the Enforcement of
Peace." The method it proposed provided, as a basic step, for
the establishment of a high court to frame a body of agreed
international law and to hear and decide certain contests be-
tween nations. Of course this would have involved in some
measure the principle of super-sovereignty, because a court
having no power to enforce its decrees would have been value-
less, but it would probably have been less difficult to secure
general consent for such an exercise of force than for the Paris
plan. It cannot be denied that it would also have involved the
principle of a "balance of power," but of a sort that might have
been approved.

Such a document would have been very simple, easily under-
stood, and would have left a great number of comparatively
trivial issues to the adjudication of a tribunal qualified to act.

The Peace Treaty was practically settled in the middle of
April and I returned to America, to attend the annual meeting
of the Associated Press, and was once more and for the twenty-
sixth time elected general manager.

From time to time I saw Clemenceau. He impressed me as
much the brightest mind at the peace table. I doubt if any
other man could have brought France through the great stress
of the war. He knew his people. Behind his brusque exterior
there was a kindly, considerate soul that endeared him to the
mass of his countrymen. He lived in a shabby old house in
the little Rue Franklin, the last place in Paris for the abode
of a French premier. I doubt if there was another residence
in his immediate neighbourhood. The street was choked with
grocers' shops, tobacconists, and every other sort of tumble-
down rookery. He had a delightful sense of humour.

While I was in Rome Mr. Galenga had given a dinner in my
honour, at which he assembled a number of members of the

354 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [,9I9

Italian Cabinet. They were greatly disturbed over the military
outlook. Their army had suffered the great defeat of Capor-
etto; their commanding general had been supplanted by Diaz,
in whom they had limited confidence; the Austrians who con-
fronted them on the Piave were much their superior in numbers
and in munitions; Lombardy and Piedmont were ablaze with
the fires of socialism. With the collapse of Russia large bodies
of Austrian troops had been withdrawn from the eastern front
and pitted against the Italians. If the enemy should reopen
their attack there was grave danger that Italy would be driven
out of the war. They were most anxious for aid from the Allies.
They thought there would be less danger if the Stars and
Stripes could be shown on their battle-front. There was a
good deal of justice in their view. They Jiad at the moment
more Italians on the French front than all of the Allied troops
on the Italian front. They had only one regiment of American
troops in Italy and three fourths of this regiment were at Padua,
many miles from the trenches. Secretary Baker was in France
at the time, and as I was about to return to Paris, they implored
me to present their perilous situation to him. I did so, but of
course the Secretary replied that he could not properly interfere
with the military operations. Then General Diaz went up to
see Clemenceau about the business. He told him the fighting
qualities of the Austrians had been much underrated, that they
were veritable lions, and that they outnumbered the Italian
army and had more guns. The French premier was forced
to refer him to Foch. There were many reasons why Foch
could not meet the wishes of the Italians, and Diaz returned to
his command greatly disheartened. A few days later Foch took
some 5,000 Austrians as prisoners on the French front. Then
Clemenceau sent a telegram practically in these words:

My dear Diaz:

We have taken as prisoners 5,000 of your lions. What shall we do
with them? Affectionately —

The Tiger.

During my absence, on December 23, 1918, Mr. Justice
Pitney, speaking for the Supreme Court of the United States,

i9i9] FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 355

rendered a decision of a very momentous character. I must
relate the story of the case here and now.

In 1875, when we founded the Chicago Daily News, we had
as co-tenants in the office of publication a morning newspaper
conducted on peculiar lines. It was called the Chicago Courier.
It had no reporters, no correspondents, no alliance with
any news-gathering organization. The other morning papers
went to press shortly after midnight and could be purchased )
at, say, 3 a. M. The Courier's practice was to buy copies of
these papers, glean from them all the news of the day, put it in
type hurriedly, and issue about daybreak. This meant that
the paper had all the news, it was never beaten on anything,
and its expenses for gathering its information were practically
nothing.

Not long after Major O. J. Smith came to Chicago from
Terre Haute, Indiana, with an enterprise of much the same
character. He founded the American Press Association. It
also bought the morning papers in the early morning, gleaned
their news, put it in type, made stereotype plates and shipped
them to neighbouring cities, where they were incorporated in
small dailies, which were sold in competition with the Chicago
journals from which the news had been taken.

It was a day when the custom of reprinting matter from
newspapers without permission in this fashion was well-nigh
universal. To me it seemed all wrong, and I began an in-
vestigation to see if there was no legal remedy. I found little
to encourage me. From time to time I set a trap and exposed
a news thief as in the case of the Post and Mail* But these
cases, while they amused the public, did not afford relief.

When reading Isaac Disraeli's "Calamities and Quarrels of
Authors," I came across a chapter on the "History of Literary
Property " which impressed me greatly. It was a revelation.
"Is it wonderful," he asked, "that even successful authors are
indigent? They are heirs to fortune, but by a strange singu-
larity they are disinherited at their birth; for, on the publica-
tion of their works, these cease to be their own property."

I read the illuminating chapter on the "History of Property"

•See page 63.

45* FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [i9I9

in Henry Sumner Maine's "Ancient Law." I read all the
existent books on copyright, and I re-read my Blackstone.
Definitions were obviously a matter of evolution. At first
property was, of course, corporeal, as coal, a physical thing,
having length, breadth, and thickness. Under the Roman law,
when a man wrote a thing on, for instance, a sheepskin, the
title to the thing was in the man who owned the sheepskin. How
could it be otherwise? The sheepskin was the only corporeal
contribution, and to- be property anything must be corporeal.
The ideas of the writer were incorporeal and clearly, therefore,
not property.

In England there came a time when the ideas of the writer
seemed to have value. But again it was not the author of
the ideas who was recognized as entitled to any reward. It
was his assignee, the publisher, who produced the corporeal
book or pamphlet who had the property, as property was under-
stood, and who therefore was deserving of protection at law.
Wherefore the absurd recompense to Milton and every other
author of his day and the profiteering of the publishers. It
was not until 1709, in the reign of Queen Anne of England, that
any one seemed to have the slightest interest in the work of
the author. Even this interest was not great. Because the
printers quarrelled with the publishers, claiming their lawful
share in the plunder, attention was directed to the prevailing
injustice. Then the first copyright act was passed. All along
the theory was that occupancy, possession, was the distinguish-
ing mark of property, and it was quite logical to say that with
publication, unless through the saving grace of some statute,
occupancy or possession must cease and that thereafter there
was abandonment of all right of monopoly. The statute of
Queen Anne gave the author, after compliance with certain
preliminaries, monopoly of his book after publication, for four-
teen years, and later this term of monopoly was considerably
extended. Yet all the time there was no fair conception of the
real meaning of the word "property" nor of the just right to
protection of the man who contributed the ideas of the publica-
tion, which constituted the "property," after all.

The invention of the electric telegraph and the consequent

i9i9] FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST ^57

development of news gathering created a new problem. It
had been held, following the accepted theory underlying
copyright law, that, unless a book or painting was registered,
publication was equivalent to abandonment of the author's
rights, so that thereafter any one was privileged to produce an
article at will. It was clear that for a news dispatch, which
must be published immediately upon receipt by a newspaper,
this sort of protection from piracy constituted no protection
at all. And it was to this obviously unforeseen situation, as
far as all statutory copyright measures were concerned, that I
addressed myself.

I have said that in 1880, after Mr. Charles Stewart Parnell,
the Irish leader, returned to Ireland, he sent me several im-
portant cable messages for publication in the Chicago Daily
News. I was anxious to guard my right of property in them.
Under the law, in order to copyright them, it was necessary to
print the title and deposit it with the fee with the librarian
of Congress at Washington before publication, and to deposit
two copies of the printed article with the same official after
publication. As the only way to meet these requirements a
subterfuge was, with the approval of the librarian of Congress,
resorted to. Upon the receipt of a Parnell message, the
title was telegraphed to my Washington correspondent. He
"printed" it on a sheet of paper with a typewriter, enclosed
this with the fee in an envelope, and slipped it under the door
of the librarian's residence. This was accounted a compliance
with the statute. But it only served to convince me that the
law was never intended to apply to this sort of literature.

Then I dreamed a dream. There was a defect in the law
which should, and perhaps might, be remedied. There were
equities involved, and I had learned in the days when I studied
law that there was no wrong which the arm of the chancellor
was not long enough to reach. I knew of the "tasteless"
lawyers and their point of view. Precedent, as found in the
books, with them was all-controlling. But, mayhap, there
were others who could see beyond the books into the final
authority of justice, and it was worth while to find out.

I talked freely of my belief that there was some way to pro-

3$8 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [l9I9

tect news from piracy, and early in 1883 I received the following
note from the then general manager of the Associated Press :

Qfct § w-f et% ^mmiti g xm :

Bo. IK 2S0 AS VAT.

P.O. Be* ucs. ®fcv%*J. ' -%UeZ-2z??—/<?S3

1kS. /£u.,<y*.

v*^0z^fv~2^^&

Every lawyer turned to the statutory protection for literary
composition as furnishing a solution. Without any faith in
the effort, I thought it well enough to seek from Congress
such an amendment to the law as would meet the emergency.
So it happened that at the meeting of the Western Associated
Press, held at Detroit, October 17, 1883, the following com-
mittee was appointed, on my motion, to take up the matter at
Washington: Henry Watterson, A. C. Hesing, I. F. Mack,
Albert Roberts, and J. G. Siebeneck. Of the matter Mr. Wat-
terson says in his Autobiography, Volume 2, page 104:

I was sent by the Associated Press to Washington on a fool's
errand — that is, to get an act of Congress extending copyright to the
news of the Association — and, remaining the entire season, my busi-
ness to meet the official great and to make myself acceptable, I came
into a certain intimacy with the Administration circle, having long
had friendly relations with the President. In all my life I have never
passed so delightful and useless a winter.

Very early in the action I found that my mission involved a serious
and vexed question — nothing less than the creation of a new property
— and I proceeded warily. Through my uncle, Stanley Matthews, I

i9i9] FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 35g

interested the members of the Supreme Court. The Attorney
General, a great lawyer and an old Philadelphia friend, was at my call
and elbow. The Joint Library Committee of Congress, to which the
measure must go, was with me. Yet somehow the scheme lagged. |

I could not account for this. One evening at a dinner Mr. Blaine en-
lightened me. We sat together at table and suddenly he turned and
said : " How are you getting on with your bill ? " And my reply being
rather halting, he continued, "You won't get a vote in either House,"
and he proceeded very humorously to improvise the average member's
argument against it as a dangerous power, a perquisite to the great
newspapers and an imposition upon the little ones. To my mind this
was something more than the post-prandial levity it was meant to be.

Not long after a learned but dissolute old lawyer said to me, "You
need no act of Congress to protect your news service. There are at
least two, and I think four or five, English rulings that cover this case.
Let me show them to you." He did so and I went no further with
the business, quite agreeing with Mr. Blaine, and nothing further came
of it. To a recent date the Associated Press has relied on these
decisions under the common law of England. Curiously enough,
quite a number of newspapers in whose actual service I was engaged
opened fire upon me and roundly abused me.

That the mission of this committee was unavailing did not
surprise me. It confirmed my suspicion that I was travelling
the wrong road. Relief must be sought from the arm of the
Chancellor. This was obviously no easy task. It meant a
successful revolution in all of the accepted theories of the law
so far as literary property was concerned. It meant new and
wider definitions of the words "property" and "publication,"
and it meant forward-looking men of no mean order both upon
the bench and at the bar. I was somewhat surprised that
Watterson's committee never reported to the Association.

Fortunately I found as a fellow resident at the Virginia Hotel
in Chicago, where I lived during a winter season, precisely such
a forward-looking man as I was seeking, in the person of Judge
Grosscup, then presiding in the United States Circuit Court
for the Eighth Circuit. He listened to me and was interested.
He saw with me eye to eye, and frankly stated so. No one else
did. And as I had other things pressing for attention, I waited.

Some time after I encountered Judge Grosscup on a railway

S60 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [im

train, and he asked me to restate my case for the protection
of news against piracy. And this was my putting of it :

First, that to keep pace with the progress of the world there
must be a revised definition of the word "property" so that it
should cease to cover simply "movables" and "immovables,"
and should include everything having an exchangeable value.
This would take it out of the narrow place it had theretofore
occupied in legal parlance, and should connote incorporeal
rights. Second, there should also be a revised definition of the
word "publication." I took the ground that the printing of
a news telegram in the columns of a newspaper which was sold
for one cent a copy should not, and did not, constitute such a
publication as would mean abandonment to the public for re-
publication. One was justly entitled to buy the newspaper,
to read it, to enjoy or regulate his conduct by the information
thus obtained, but it was manifestly unfair that he should be
permitted to use the telegrams in competition with one who
had paid his money and exercised his ingenuity to obtain them.
The publication in this case was a limited one, and the legal
doctrine of animus domini — intent of the owner — should apply.

The Judge had a case in his court involving the principle, and
soon after rendered a decision evidently sustaining my conten-
tion. The case went to the United States Supreme Court, and
the decision was confirmed. Yet so universal was the piracy of
news telegrams, and so confirmed were the "tasteless" lawyers,
that I could still get no encouragement in any quarter.

Meanwhile, in all of the conferences for the establishment
of international copyright, the question of protection for news
had arisen, and such protection had been refused. The Berne
Convention of September, 1886, expressly excluded from copy-
right protection "news matter or current topics [foits divers]."
[Bowker, page 319.] The Berlin Convention of 1908 expressly
denied protection to "news of the day or press information on
current topics." [Bowker, page 318.] The Pan-American
Conference and Convention at Buenos Aires in 1910 decided
that even credit was not required for "news and miscellaneous
items published merely for general information." [Bowker,
page 337.]

i9i9l FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 361

Finally, on the evening of November 12, 1916, I invited
Judge Grosscup, Frederick W. Lehman of St. Louis, and Fred-
eric B. Jennings, General Counsel of the Associated Press, to
dine with Mr. Frank B. Noyes, our president, and I delivered
to them my lecture on "Property in News." Then I presented
the matter to the Board of Directors of the Associated Press
and rather out of courtesy to me than because of any faith in
my endeavour, they authorized me to go ahead and voted to
pay any expense involved.

While Mr. Jennings, our general consul, was by no means
confident of the success of the enterprise, he entered zealously
into the work as was his custom with all his cases, and a con-
clusive brief was prepared. Mr. Jennings, who for the twenty
years that I knew him until his death, was not only a wise
counsellor, but a devoted friend. He argued at the first hear-
ing in the United States District Court and from the presiding
judge we were given a satisfactory decision. Then it went to
the United States Circuit Court of Appeals, and Judge Gross-
cup made the argument. The court not only affirmed the
decision below, but added distinct strength to our contention.
Finally, before the Supreme Court of the United States, Fred-
erick W. Lehman made the argument, and then there was a
most decisive victory.

Thus thirty-six years after I had settled the equities in my
own mind was the law finally revolutionized.

During the summer certain questions arose respecting our
relation with some of the foreign agencies and it was thought
best that I should return to Europe. I sailed late in November
and spent a couple of months on the other side. Then in April,
1919, by a unanimous vote of the Board of Directors, I was
relieved from the office of general manager; Mr. Martin was
chosen to that office; and a new office, that of counsellor, was
created for me.

The Associated Press of To-day

The Associated Press has grown in strength and character
with the years. From the 63 members in 1893 it has reached

362 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [I921

out until to-day there are nearly 1,300 members. From the
annual expenditures of about $500,000 in the beginning it has
widened its activities until its annual budget is now nearly
$6,000,000. Each of the 1,300 members is either a partial or
sole owner of a daily newspaper. These members have no
common aim or partisanship of any sort. They are as varied
in their advocacy of political, religious, or economic principles
as it is possible for human beings to be. And this, they believe,
is the best guarantee that the news they receive and print js
and must be accurate, impartial, and honest. Often they
personally dislike certain of their fellow-members. They are
at one on one thing alone, and that is that their news service
shall never be tainted. There is no master hand of any govern-
mental censorship, but there is a most exacting and jealous con-
trol of a highly sensitive body of intelligent editors with varying
views upon every discussible subject, each one of whom has
his voice and vote in the management of the institution. There
is no pretence that the Associated Press is perfect, but it is
believed to furnish the best-known method for giving to the
American public an impartial service of news.

The four-years' struggle with the old United Press was
waged over this principle. Victor F. Lawson of the Chicago
Daily News, Charles W. Knapp of the St. Louis Republic,
Frederick Driscoll of the St. Paul Pioneer Press, Frank B. Noyes
of the Washington Evening Star, and those associated with them
in that contest, deserve the lasting gratitude of the American
people for having established, at a vast cost of time, labour, and
money, a method of news gathering and distribution free from
a chance of contamination.

The Associated Press is several times greater in magnitude
and in the importance of its work than any other like institu-
tion in the world. It furnishes more than one half of the news
the American newspapers print, and its despatches appear in
journals having an aggregate issue of over 20,000,000 copies a
day. If the recognized formula of three readers for each copy
be accepted, it is evident that its telegrams are read by more
than one half of the people of the nation. How wide is the
influence exercised by this service in a land where readers

i92i] FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 36;

demand the facts only and form their own judgment, none may
estimate. The Association certainly plays a most important
part in our national life. Yet, if one may judge from inquiries
that come to the general office, it is little understood either by
editors or readers.

The world at large is divided, for the purpose of news
gathering, among four great agencies. The Reuter Telegram
Company, Ltd., of London, gathers and distributes news in
Great Britain and all her colonies, China, Japan, and Egypt.
The Continental Telegraphen Gesellschaft of Berlin, popularly
known as the Wolff Agency, performs a like office in the Teu-
tonic, Slav, and Scandinavian countries; and the Agence
Havas of Paris operates in the Latin nations. The field of the
Associated Press includes the United States, the Hawaiian
Islands, the Philippines, and Central America, as well as the
islands of the Caribbean Sea. Each of these agencies has a
representative in the offices of the others. Thus the Associated
Press bureau in London adjoins the Reuter offices. The tele-
grams to the Reuter company are written on manifold sheets
by the telegraph and cable companies, and copies are served
simultaneously to the Associated Press bureau, the Wolff
representative, the Havas men, and the Reuter people. A like
arrangement obtains in Paris, Berlin, and New York, so that
in each of these cities the whole panorama of the day's happen-
ings passes under the eyes of representatives of each of the four
agencies.

But the scheme is much more elaborate than this arrange-
ment would indicate. Operating as tributary to the great
agencies are a host of minor agencies — virtually one such
smaller agency for each of the nations of importance. Thus in
Italy the Stefani Agency, with headquarters in Rome, gathers
and distributes the news of Italy. It is the official agency, and
to it the authorities give exclusively all governmental informa-
tion. It is controlled by Italians, but a large minority of its
shares are owned by the Agence Havas of Paris, and it operates
in close alliance with the latter organization.

Thus, if a fire should break out in Milan, the Secolo, the lead-
ing newspaper of that city, would instantly telegraph a report

364 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [igM

of it to the Stefani Agency at Rome. Thence it would be
telegraphed to all of the other Italian papers, and copies of 'the
Secolo's message would also be handed to the representatives,
in the Stefani headquarters, of the Reuter, Wolff, Havas, and the
Associated Press agencies.

In like fashion, if a fire should happen in Chicago, the As-
sociated Press would receive its report, transmit it to the
American papers, and furnish copies to the representatives of
the foreign agencies stationed in the New York office of the
Associated Press.

Of the minor agencies the most important are the Fabri
Agency of Madrid, the Norsky Agency of Christiania, the Swiss
Agency of Berne, and the Svensky Agency of Stockholm.

But the Associated Press is not content to depend wholly
upon these official agencies. It maintains its own bureaus in
all the important capitals, and reports the more prominent
events by its own men, who are Americans and familiar with
American newspaper methods. These foreign representatives
are drawn from the ablest men in the service, and the offices
they fill are obviously of great responsibility. They must be
qualified by long training in the journalistic profession, by
familiarity with a number of languages, and by a presence and
a bearing which will enable them to mingle with men of the
highest station in the countries to which they are accredited.

Thus, with its alliances with the great foreign agencies cover-
ing every point of the habitable globe, with its own city, with
special commissioners to report events of great moment, with
the correspondents and reporters of virtually all of the news-
papers of the world laid under contribution, and with official
recognition in a number of countries, the Associated Press is
able to comb the earth for every happening of interest, and to
present it to the newspaper reader with almost incredible speed.

Within the limits of the United States the task was a com-
paratively easy one. Here men of the required character were
obtainable. It was necessary to select them with care and to
drill them to promptness, scrupulous accuracy, impartiality,
and a graphic style. So widespread is American education
that it was soon discovered that the best men could usually be

i92ii FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 365

found in the villages and the smaller cities. They were more
sincere, better informed, and less "bumptious" than the
journalistic Garcons so frequently employed on the metropoli-
tan press.

Presidential Years

"Presidential years" are always trying ones for the man-
agement. In 1896 the friends of Speaker Reed were incensed
because we were unable to see that a majority of the delegates
to the Republican National Convention were Reed men. Not
that I think they really believed this; but everything is ac-
counted fair in the game of politics, and they thought it would
help their cause if the Associated Press would announce each
delegation, on its selection, as for Reed. They appealed to
me; but of course I could not misstate the facts, and they took
great umbrage. The St. Louis Convention, when it assembled,
verified our declarations, for Mr. Reed's vote was insignificant.

The national nominating conventions are our first care.
Preparations begin months before they assemble. Rooms are
engaged at all the leading hotels, so that Associated Press men
may be in touch with every delegation. The plans of the con-
vention hall are examined, and arrangements are made for
operating-room and seats. The wires of the Association are
carried into the building, and a work-room is usually located
beneath the platform of the presiding officer. A private pass-
age is cut, connecting this work-room with the reporters' chairs,
which are placed directly in front of the stand occupied by
speakers, and enclosed by a rail to prevent interference from
the surging masses certain to congregate in the neighbourhood.

A week before the Convention opens a number of Associated
Press men are on the ground to report the assembling of the
delegates, to sound them as to their plans and preferences, and
to indicate the trend of the gathering in their despatches as
well as they may. The National Committee holds its meetings
in advance of the Convention, decides upon a roll of members,
and names a presiding officer. All this is significant, and is
often equivalent to a determination of the party candidates.

366 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [I92X

Of the Convention itself, the Associated Press makes two
distinct reports. A reporter sits in the hall and dictates to
an operator, who sends out bulletins. These follow the events
instantly, are necessarily very brief, and are often used by the
newspapers to post on bulletin-boards. There is also a graphic
running story of the proceedings. This is written by three men,
seated together, each writing for ten minutes and then resting
twenty. The copy is hastily edited by a fourth man, so that it
may harmonize. This report is usually printed by afternoon
papers. Finally, there is an elaborated report, which is printed
by the large metropolitan dailies. A corps of expert stenog-
raphers, who take turns in the work, are employed. As a
delegate rises in any part of the hall, one of these stenographers
dashes to his side and reports his utterances. He then rushes
to the work-room and dictates his notes to a rapid typewriter,
while another stenographer replaces him on the convention
floor. The nominating speeches are usually furnished by their
authors weeks in advance, and are in type in the newspaper
offices awaiting their delivery and release.

The men who report these conventions are drawn from all
the principal offices of the Associated Press. Coming from
different parts of the country, they are personally acquainted
with a large majority of the delegates. There is a close division
of labour — certain men are assigned to write bulletins; others to
do descriptive work; still others to prepare introductory sum-
maries; a number to watch and report the proceedings of
secret committees; and a force of "scouts'* are kept in close
touch with the party leaders, and learn of projects the instant
that they begin to mature. Out of it all comes a service which
puts the newspaper reader of the country in instant and con-
stant possession of every developing fact and gives him a pen-
picture of every scene. Indeed, he has a better grasp of the
situation than if he were present in the convention hall.

When the candidates are named and the platforms adopted
the campaign opens, and for several months the Associated
Press faces steadily increasing responsibilities. The greatest
care is observed to maintain an attitude of strict impartiality,
and yet to miss no fact of interest. If a candidate, or one of the

,92.] FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 367

great party leaders, names a "stumping journey," stenogra-
phers and descriptive writers must accompany him. As I have
said, while Governor Hughes was "on tour," it was his practice
to speak hurriedly from the rear platform of his train, and in-
stantly to leave for the next appointment. While he was speak-
ing the Associated Press stenographer was taking notes. When
the train started, these notes were dictated to a typewriter,
and at the next stopping-point were handed over to a waiting
local Associated Press man, who put the speech on the telegraph
wires. In the general offices records are kept of the number
of words sent out, so that at the end of the campaign the volume
of Republican and Democratic speeches reported is expected to
balance.

Finally, the work of Election Day is mapped out in advance
with scrupulous care, and each correspondent in the country
has definite instructions as to the part he is to play. On Elec-
tion Day brief bulletins on the condition of the weather in
every part of the nation, and on the character of the voting, are
furnished to the afternoon papers. The moment the polls
close, the counting begins. Associated. Press men everywhere
are gathering precinct returns and hurrying them to county
headquarters, where they are hastily added, and the totals for
the county on Presidential electors are wired to the state head-
quarters of the Association The forces of men at these general
offices are augmented by the employment of expert accountants
and adding-machines from the local banks, and the labour is so
subdivided that some years the result of the contest is an-
nounced by eight o'clock in the evening, and at midnight a
return, virtually accurate, of the majority in every state
presented to the newspapers.

Our Critics

If I were not what Mr. Gladstone once called "an old parlia-
mentary hand," if I had not given and taken the buffets of
aggressive American journalism for many years, and if Heaven
had not blessed me with a certain measure of the saving grace
of humour, I think I should have been sent to an early grave by

368 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [ig2x

the unreasonable and unfair attacks made upon my administra-
tion of the Associated Press news service. In the exciting
Presidential campaign of 1896, Senator Jones, the Democratic
national chairman, openly charged me with favouring the
Republicans; while Mr. Hanna, his opponent, was at the point
of breaking a long-time personal friendship because he regarded
me as distinctly "pro-Bryan." The truth is, both men had
lost their balance; neither was capable of a judicial view; each
wanted, not an impartial service, but one that would only
help his side. Fortunately, the candidates presented a better
poise than their lieutenants. At the close of the campaign
both Bryan and McKinley wrote me that they were impressed
with the impartiality that we had observed.

During a congressional inquiry a number of trade-unionists
appeared and testified for days in denunciation of the As-
sociated Press, because they conceived it to be unfriendly to
their cause. Later, but with equal injustice, the secretary of
the Citizens' Industrial Association was pelting me with letters
charging our association with favouring organized labour.

When we reported the death of Pope Leo XIII in a manner
befitting his exalted station, a number of Methodist newspapers
gravely asserted that I was a Catholic, or controlled by Vatican
influences, although, as a matter of fact, my father was a Metho-
dist clergyman and my mother, as I have said, was the grand-
niece of a coadjutor of John Wesley. On the other hand,
when the Associated Press reported the Marquise des Mon-
stier's renunciation of the Catholic faith, certain Catholic news-
papers flew into a rage and asserted that I was an anti-Catholic
bigot.

The more frequent criticisms, however, result from want
of knowledge of the true mission of the organization. Many
persons, unfamiliar with newspaper methods, mistake special
telegrams for Associated Press service, and hold us to an unde-
served responsibility. Many others, having "axes to grind,"
and quite willing to pay for the grinding, find it difficult to be-
lieve that not only does the association do no grinding, but by
the very nature of its methods such grinding is made impossible.
The man who would pay the Associated Press for "booming"

1921} FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST j6g

his project would be throwing his money away. Any man in
the service of the association, from the general manager to
the humblest employee, who should attempt to "boom" a
project would be instantly discovered, disgraced, and dismissed.

Such is the process by which the Associated Press is writing
history. Now it is an exhaustive review of the causes leading
up to a war; again it is a scene painted in high lights to illumine
the march of the world's progress. Here it is the first an-
nouncement of the negotiation of a treaty; there it is a thrilling
interview with a refugee from Port Arthur, depicting all the
horrors of a desperate and sanguinary campaign.

It seems hardly necessary to say that in all this work the
Associated Press is writing the real and enduring history of
the world, and is not chronicling the trivial episodes, the scan-
dals, or the chit chat. And the searchlight that it throws
upon the world's happenings has a substantial moral value.
The mere collection and distribution of news has an ethical
worth. No great and lasting wrong can be inflicted upon
the sons of men anywhere so long as this fierce blaze of publicity
is beating upon the scene. For, in the end, the world must
know; and when the world knows, justice must be done. The
most absolute and irresponsible authority must finally yield
to the demands of a great public sentiment.

The assertion, often made, that the Associated Press is a
monopoly rests upon the fact that its news service is available
to a limited number only. There could be no pretense that it
controls the information at the point of origin, or that it has
any advantages or exclusive rights in respect to the manner of
transmitting its news to those who publish it. At the point of
origin, the news, in order that it be news at all, must be of such
moment that everyone may have it if he chooses. None of the
events reported by the Associated Press is a secret at the point
of origin. The destruction of the Maine in Havana harbour,
and the eruption that overwhelmed Saint Pierre, were known by
everybody in Havana and Martinique, and the rates paid to
cable companies for transmission to New York, or to the tele-
graph companies for the distribution of the news throughout
the United States, are such as are open to any one. Any other

370 FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST [1921

association may gather, transmit, and distribute the news on

equal terms. But A , who is a member of the Associated

Press, may receive and publish its news, while B , who is not

a member, may not. Does this make a monopoly? If so, it is
unlike any other monopoly. It is the essence of the charge
against other alleged monopolies that they are able to control
the output of certain products or to ship it over quasi-public
routes of transportation at rates not open to their competitors,
or that by reason of some unfair advantage which they enjoy
they are able unduly to advance prices to the consumer. None
of these objections lies against the Associated Press. What,
then, is the allegation ? It is this : that by reason of the magni-
tude of its business it is able to deliver news to its members
cheaper than a rival is able to, and that it will not admit to its
membership everyone who applies.

The Supreme Court of Illinois, after mature deliberation,
decided that news was a commodity of such high public need
that any one dealing in it was charged with a public duty to
furnish it to any other one demanding it and ready to pay the
price. The Supreme Court of Missouri, in an equally well-
considered opinion, held in effect that news gathering was a
personal service, and to say that a public duty to serve everyone
attached to the business was to say that any one — a lawyer, for
instance — was obligated to give any information of which he
was possessed to whomsoever might demand it.

Rivals of the Associated Press do exist, and do profess to
furnish their members an equally valuable service. They have
the same opportunity for securing the news at the points of
origin, and are accorded precisely the same cable and telegraph
tolls for its transmission. Their revenues are smaller, to be
sure, and therefore their ability to cover the field is more re-
stricted, their service less complete, and, naturally, since there
are fewer to pay the bills, the cost to each is greater. But
who, on reflection, can say that these facts constitute the Asso-
ciated Press as unlawful monopoly?

The Associated Press is not perfect. Far from it! All of
the frailties of human nature attach to it. Inerrancy is
not possible in this blundering world of ours. But neither is the

i9aI] FIFTY YEARS A JOURNALIST 31i

Associated Press corrupt. It lives in the open. Its news
service is published in millions of words every month. It
wears its heart upon its sleeve. There are no secrets about it.
There is no mystery concerning it. It is striving to tell the
truth about the world's important happenings. It goes out
into the world and with its many correspondents is atouch with
things wherever human activities have play. It brings to you,
by the processes of electricity, by telegraph and telephone, by
cable and by wireless, everything of moment that goes to make
up the history of the world, and you may read and profit by this
information in a newspaper costing you two cents a copy.
It is a propagandist of no opinion or activity however worthy.
It rests down on the theory that in a self-governing nation the
people must needs be capable of forming their own opinions,
and it strives to give you the facts without the least hint that
the thing done is right or wrong. It is :

Not a ladder from earth to heaven,

Not an altar of any creed,
But a simple service simply given

To our own kind in our common need.

Since the annual meeting of the Associated Press in April,
19 1 8, 1 have been leading a post-epitaph life. There have been
things to do, but in the main my duty has been to keep aloof
from the management of the daily service, and thus to dem-
onstrate that my associates were competent to do the work.
And how they have succeeded! Nothing now gratifies me so
much as the consciousness that the men with whom I have
worked through all the years — officers, directors, and fellow-em-
ployees— still bear me in affectionate regard. They are all
mindful that the standards set up in our co-service must be
observed and are proud to contribute their share to that end.

THE END

THE COUNTRY LIFE PRE88
GARDEN CITY, N. T.

^uHTE» IN THE UNITED BU

*"".

4874
S7A3
1921

Stone, Melville Elijah

Fifty years a journalist

PLEASE DO NOT REMOVE
CARDS OR SLIPS FROM THIS POCKET

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO LIBRARY

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