Part 25 (1/2)
”And what happened?” asked Miss Trevor.
”Why, just what you see now. The Managing Editor, Mr. King over there--I'll introduce him to you presently--went up to a group of men standing at one of the windows. They were pretending indifference as they looked down at the crowd which was shouting and tossing its arms in a way that more than suggested pity for us poor devils up here. Well, King said: 'Boys, boys, this isn't getting out a paper.' Every one went back to his work and--and that was all.”
They went on to the room behind the newsroom. As Howard opened its heavy door a sound, almost a roar, of clicking instruments and typewriters burst out. Here again were scores of desks with men seated at them, every man with a typewriter and a telegraph instrument before him.
”These are our direct wires,” Howard explained. ”Our correspondents in all the big cities, east, west, north and south and in London, are at the other end of these wires. Let me show you.”
Howard spoke to the operator nearest them. ”Whom have you got?”
”I'm taking three thousand words from Kansas City,” he replied.
”Was.h.i.+ngton is on the next wire.”
”Ask Mr. Simpson how the President is to-night,” Howard said to the Was.h.i.+ngton operator.
His instrument clicked a few times and was silent. Almost immediately the receiver began to click and, as the operator dashed the message off on his typewriter the two women read over his shoulder: ”Just came from White House. He is no better, probably a little worse because weaker.
Simpson.”
”And can you hear just as quickly from London?” Marian asked.
”Almost. I'll try. There is always a little delay in transmission from the land systems to the cable system; and messages have to be telephoned between our office in Trafalgar Square and the cable office down in the city. Let's see, it's five o'clock in the morning in London now. They've been having it hot there. I'll ask about the weather.”
Howard dictated to the man at the London wire: ”Roberts, London. How is the weather? Howard.”
In less than ten minutes the cable-man handed Howard a typewritten slip reading: ”_News-Record_, New York, Howard: Thermometer 97 our office now. Promises hottest day yet. Roberts.”
”I never before realised how we have destroyed distance,” said Mrs.
Carnarvon.
”I don't think any one but a newspaper editor completely realises it,”
Howard answered. ”As one sits here night after night, sending messages far and wide and receiving immediate answers, he loses all sense of s.p.a.ce. The whole world seems to be in his anteroom.”
”I begin to see fascination in this life of yours.” Marian's face showed interest to enthusiasm. ”This atmosphere tightens one's nerves. It seems to me that in the next moment I shall hear of some thrilling happening.”
”It's listening for the first rumour of the 'about to happen' that makes newspaper-men so old and yet so young, so worn and yet so eager. Every night, every moment of every night, we are expecting it, hoping for some astounding news which it will test our resources to the utmost to present adequately.”
From the news-room they went up to the composing room--a vast hall of confusion, filled with strange-looking machines and half-dressed men and boys. Some were hurrying about with galleys of type, with large metal frames; some were wheeling tables here and there; scores of men and a few women were seated at the machines. These responded to touches upon their key-boards by going through uncanny internal agitations. Then out from a mysterious somewhere would come a small thin strip of almost hot metal, the width of a newspaper column and marked along one edge with letters printed backwards.
Up through the floor of this room burst boxes filled with ”copy.” Boys s.n.a.t.c.hed the scrawled, ragged-looking sheets and tossed them upon a desk. A man seated there cut them into little strips, hanging each strip upon a hook. A line of men filed rapidly past these hooks, s.n.a.t.c.hing each man a single strip and darting away to a machine.
”It is getting late,” said Howard. ”The final rush for the first edition is on. They are setting the last 'copy.'”
”But,” Mrs. Carnarvon asked, ”how do they ever get the different parts of the different news-items together straight?”
”The man who is cutting copy there--don't you see him make little marks on each piece? Those marks tell them just where their 'take,' as they call it, belongs.”
They went over to the part of the great room where there were many tables, on each a metal frame about the size of a page of the newspaper.
Some of the frames were filled with type, others were partly empty. And men were lifting into them the galleys of type under the direction of the Night Editor and his staff. As soon as a frame was filled two men began to even the ends of the columns and then to screw up an inside framework which held the type firmly in place. Then a man laid a great sheet of what looked like blotting-paper upon the page of type and pounded it down with a mallet and sc.r.a.ped it with a stiff brush.