The Great God Success Part 25

"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.

"That is the matrix," said Howard. "See him putting it on the elevator."

They looked down the shaft. "It has dropped to the sub-bas.e.m.e.nt," said Howard, "two hundred and fifty feet below us. They are already bending it into a casting-box of the shape of the cylinders on the presses; metal will be poured in and when it is cool, you will have the metal form, the metal impression of the page. It will be fastened upon the press to print from."

They walked back through the room which was now in almost lunatic confusion--forms being locked; galleys being lifted in; editors, compositors, boys, rus.h.i.+ng to and fro in a fury of activity. Again the phenomenon of the news-room, the individual faces calm but their tense expressions and their swift motions making an impression of almost irrational excitement.

"Why such haste?" asked Marian.

"Because the paper must be put to press. It must contain the very latest news and it must also catch the mails; and the mail-trains do not wait."

They descended in the main elevator to the ground floor and then went down a dark and winding staircase until they faced an iron door. Howard pushed it open and they entered the press-room. Its temperature was blood-heat, its air heavy and nauseating with the odours of ink, moist paper and oil, its lights dim. They were in a gallery and below them on all sides were the huge presses, silent, motionless, waiting.

Suddenly a small army of men leaped upon the mighty machines, scrambled over them, then sprang back. With a tremendous roar that shook the entire building the presses began to revolve, to hurl out great heaps of newspapers.

"Those presses eat six hundred thousand pounds of paper and four tons of ink a week," Howard shouted. "They can throw out two hundred thousand complete papers an hour--papers that are cut, folded, pasted, and ready to send away. Let us go before you are stifled. This air is horrible."

They returned in the elevator to his lofty office. Even there a slight vibration from the press-room could be felt. But it was calm and still, a fit place from which to view the panorama of sleeping city and drowsy harbour tranquil in the moonlight.

"Look." Howard was leaning over the railing just outside his window.

They looked straight down three hundred feet to the street made bright by electric lights. Scores of wagons loaded with newspapers were rus.h.i.+ng away from the several newspaper buildings. The shouts, the clash of hoofs and heavy tires on the granite blocks, the whirr of automobiles, were borne faintly upward.

"It is the race to the railway stations to catch the mail-trains,"

Howard explained. "The first editions go to the country. These wagons are hurrying in order that tens of thousands of people hundreds of miles away, at Boston, Philadelphia, Was.h.i.+ngton and scores on scores of towns between and beyond, may find the New York newspapers on their breakfast-tables."

The office-boy came with a bundle of papers, warm, moist, the ink brilliant.

"And now for the inquest," said Howard.

"The inquest?" Marian looked at him inquiringly.

"Yes--viewing the corpse. It was to give birth to this that there was all that intensity and fury--that and a thousand times more. For, remember, this paper is the work of perhaps twenty thousand brains, in every part of the world, throughout civilisation and far into the depths of barbarism. Look at these date lines--cities and towns everywhere in our own country, Canada, Mexico, Central America, South America. You'll find most of the capitals of Europe represented; and Africa, north, south and central, east and west coast. Here's India and here the heart of Siberia.

"There is China and there j.a.pan and there Australia. Think of these scores of newspaper correspondents telegraphing news of the doings of their fellow beings--not what they did last month or last year, but what they did a few hours ago--some of it what they were doing while we were dining up at Sherry's. Then think of the thousands on thousands of these newspaper-men, eager, watchful agents of publicity, who were on duty but had nothing to report to-day. And----"

Howard shrugged his shoulders and tossed the paper from him.

"There it lies," he said, "a corpse. Already a corpse, its life ended before it was fairly born. There it is, dead and done for--writ in water, and by anonymous hands. Who knows who did it? Who cares?"

He caught Marian's eyes, looking wonder and reproach.

"I don't like to hear you say that," she said, forgetting Mrs.

Carnarvon. "Other men--yes, the little men who work for the cheap rewards. But not you, who work for the sake of work. This night's experience has thrilled me. I understand your profession now. I see what it means to us all, to civilisation, what a splendid force for good, for enlightenment, for uplifting it is. I can see a great flood of light radiating from this building, pouring into the dark places, driving away ignorance. And the thunder of those presses seems to me to fill the world with some mighty command--what is it?--oh, yes--I can hear it distinctly. It is, 'Let there be light!'"

Mrs. Carnarvon's back was toward them and she was looking out at the harbour. Howard put his hands upon Marian's shoulders and they looked each the other straight in the eyes.

"Lovers and comrades," he said, "always. And how strong we are--together!"