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Show A PRESS "FAKE." How the Associated Press Swindles the Public. Leo Haetli Does a Very Neat Piece of Journalistic Detective De-tective Work. The Bravery of a Mt. Hope Schoolmaster all Cone to "Smash." Midway, Utah, March 22, 1891. Special correspondence of TnE Dispatch. Dis-patch. Since I last wrote you. giving you hurried information about the movement for the establishing of a water works system in Aiuiway, tne committee appointed to make the necessary nec-essary preliminary inquiries, have gone to work with a laudable zeal, and I may be able to lay before you something some-thing more definite as to the wheres and whens, hows and whats of the plans, which has yearly become of greater necessity, as the increase in human habitations with their animal dependencies has had the inevitable result in defiling the small ditches, branching off from the big Snake Creek, upon which most of the people in the bottom part of this burg are depending de-pending for all domestic purposes. Hence there ia no wonder that some of your superfastidious people in Provo have expressed a certain dislike for our water, being afraid of its impuritiesalthough impuri-tiesalthough I concur with a speaker speak-er at a recent meeting of your Chamber Cham-ber of Commerce, in thinking that by the time the Provo river empties its water into your canals and ditches the rough rocks of the canyon bed, with the wear and tear and rush and brush of the declivitous current, have acted as tolerablyithorough, niters to what deleterious or otherwise undesirable ingredients the stream may havere-ceived havere-ceived in the upper yalley. It is ourselves our-selves up here that need pure aqua, fresh from the unpolluted bosom of mother earth, such as I used to quaff in copious draughts up in Snake Creek canyon, on the half-romantic and half-idyllic half-idyllic country place of my long-time friend, John Iluber. The nature of the soil here, in the "business part of town," is of a rocky, yolcanic nature, rendering the digging of wells extremely ex-tremely difficult, and its results questionable, ques-tionable, as the warm springs that break out in the numerous "hot pots" are percolating the ground in all directions, di-rections, both tainting and "unfresh-ening "unfresh-ening the native cold water all over." But as we live not on water alone after all, let us leave the matter to be "liquidated" and filtered still more to the committee of five, with friend A. J. Alexander (brother of our former Bishop II, S.) at the head. 1 will tell you,fcr sake of variety, of a discovery I have just made, which has again confirmed me in my skeptical attitude towards the numerous '-cock-and-bull" stories which appear almost daily in the telegraph columns of the press, as "specials" to and from the Associated Press or some other syndicate syn-dicate of gatherers and disseminators of current events. Some time in January Jan-uary (I forget the exact date) there appeared ap-peared in the dispatches of the western journals that enjoy the franchise fran-chise of the Associated Press at from $200 to $300 per month, an interesting account of the prowess of a lloosier pedagogue. The narrative itated that at Mount Hope, Indiana, a young male teacher, named Edgar Farmer, had been annoyed by some of the larger scholars (of the type called "yaps" in this region) who would use improper language toward the female students. One morning, as he called one of the offenders up for chastisement, the latter, lat-ter, on responding to the teacher's summons, sum-mons, was at once joined by four of his rowdy companions with the evident evi-dent design on their part "to do" the school monarch "up." The latter, however, resolutely took his coat off and just "waltzed" into the gang right and left, so that after a brief but serious interview the "king of the ferule" came out on top, and the conspirators con-spirators had no i;ther trophies to show save "black eyes and bloody noses," as the graphic dispatch described de-scribed it. This tale had a moral so applicable in country schools in general gen-eral (although in Midway, I am glad and proud to say there are' no big good-for-nothings of the Mount Hope stripe) that one of my children recited the "item" in school, in the morning clat.s, devoted to the daily current news. The startling item was received with due respect, but my, by no means "rock-ribbed," faith commenced to show cracks in its foundation when, after waiting for nearly three weeks for an acknowledgement from Mr. "Edgar Farmer," of the receipt of the Vol. II of my "As You Like, It" (which I had sent him as a tribute to his valor and courage under difficulties in the school room), I still failed to hear from him. To make 'sure about it (for the Associated Press does, yea, indeed! it dues, sometimes rove on Truth's sacred demesne). I wrote to the postmaster of Mount Hope about the matter. And lo, and behold! on the 19th I received from that worthy public official a note informing me that no such person was known or heard of in those regions of Iloosier-dom, Iloosier-dom, and that he still held the book subject to my orders for remailing upon up-on receipt of the necessary postage. But although this is only a matter of three cents, 1 thought enough of the worthy postmaster's prompt kindness (which cost him a two oe;-:t stamp and one cent worth of stationery) to make him a presenc of "As You' Like It," for the benefit of his family. (If he is a bachelor, there's nothing to hinder him from getting one right off.) It is worth more than one volume to me to add another evidence to the numerous "fakes" and fabrications by which either the too greedy agents impose upon the Associated Press, or the latter upon the customers, the newspaper editors, and irdirectly upon the reading public of the country. Having, in my not too limited experience experi-ence in that line of business, "smelled a mice" several times, I availed myself my-self of this opportunity to verify or explode another A. P. sensation from some obscure corner which is hardly ever reached by anything more wideawake wide-awake or "up-to-the-times" than a patent outside weekly paper, so that the astute inventor is safe in his Chicago Chi-cago news-manufacturing "den." All he needs is a postal guide to rind the very most insignificant hamlets in the most remote quarters of obscure regions, re-gions, where to locate the blood-curdling yarns that are sent out as sensational sensa-tional news. I guess one-third of the news thus telegraphed has no foundation founda-tion in truth, such as the recent harrowing har-rowing report of the little child from whose stomach untold numbers of buttons, needles, pins and other household house-hold implements were extracted; or "the oldest inhabitant'' dying at the age of 128; or the farmer that raised $3000 worthof potatoes on a few acree, etc. Thus, Mr. Editor, look out when you get your dispatches. You should preface many of them with a note of warning to the subscriber, or "suffix" them with a pica question mark, though the body type bi nonpareil non-pareil or agate. I prefer getting my news fresh from the tap, foming with the fresh ebullition ebul-lition of truth. Thus in the case of our mail service. You know we only enjoy a tri-weekly mail, and as this comes via Heber City from Park City, all our postal communication and commercial connection with Provo and Southern Utah in general goes a roundabout way, with an.average ae-lay ae-lay of at least two days in the inequit-ous inequit-ous circuit, whereas a mail route down Provo canyon, such as it existed in the good days of yore, when I first swung the bacculus over the youthful portion of the Midway Saints (there are no sinners here)would be a material materi-al relief to all concerned. A petition setting forth at length all the facts, substantiating our desires and just dues was forwarded to the Hon. John T. Caine, the Delegate to Congress, from whom I have just received the glad tidings .that he favorably pre- j sented and urgently recommended our prayer and that early action is anticipated an-ticipated at headquarters, as attested by an accompanying note from the Second Assistant Postmaster General. Thus we are on the eve of great things, or at least of sound and sober development. Just look out for the "boom" in "garden sass," to be sprung on the vegetation community when I put on the market all the sweet corn, pease, parsnips, parsleys, onions, turnips and other green stuff that is to grow from the seeds which a paternal government at Washington has kindly forwarded tome,through the friendly intercessi" (unsolicited at that) " hon delegate. J usrser n "XXr a more peaceable manner than- to, in the maddening whirlpool of p, tics. Now. this is no bait adroitly thrown out f r the credulous and sanguine san-guine herbalists, florists, horticulturists horticultur-ists "and sec h" to Hood the postoffice and my mail boy wtth catalogues and circulars of sample seeds shrubs, flowers, setts, etc,, unless such publications publi-cations are fully prepaid and embellished embel-lished with appropriate illuminated cartoons and cuts of the various beauties beau-ties of the Kingdom of Botany, with which my girls may hang their playhouse play-house as with costly Arras. That's all the use I could make of the catalogues, besides kindling the breakfast lire. 1 haye to send my fleet messenger on his Bucephalus over te Ileber, so that this" oit podrida of solid sense and gaseous nonsense leaves there on Saturday morning, else it would have to waste some of its fragrance on Wasatch air till Monday morning, our nextJ opening date for the outside world. IIe;ice, here you go! Your as evergreen, Leo IIaefli. |