Show WHO S NEWS THIS WEEK by LEMUEL F PARTON NEW YORK henry L stoddard one of the best of all american political reporters friend of more presidents and cabinet officers than any other living stoddard on man is the author shirt sleeve of it costs to be Newspaper News papering ng president just pu pub b aish li shed e d its mine of previously untold stories quickly transferred it from the book page to the news page having enjoyed a long acquaintance with mr stoddard I 1 dropped in at his office overlooking the old park row which formed his genius close in nearly all his life with wing collar statesmanship he wanted to talk about shirt sleeve news papering the latter allusion had to do with Hitch cocks Beane beanery where shirt sleeved waiters served ham and beans to printers reporters editors and politicians tic ians who mingled in a shirt sleeve forum which mr stoddard thinks helped to galvanize the new york newspapers of that day from 40 to 50 years ago sixty two years in news papering mr stoddard is up from the case a printer on the new york tribune an ace political reporter and for 25 years owner and publisher of the new york mail it seems to me that every reporter ought to know the smell of printers ink he said the great newspaper of today with all its marvelous efficiency has lost something stimulating and vital in no longer having this mingling of the crafts I 1 remember mener that at Hitch cocks a slovenly reporter might be called down by one of those omniscient ni old time printers or perhaps it would be the other way ab about with one of the newsmen berating the press room foreman and asking him why he manage a decent make ready theodore roosevelt used to go to Hitch cocks frequently perhaps with jake riis or eddie riggs of the new york sun and I 1 remember james Cre creelman eIman julian ralph and a score of then famous politicians and newspaper men mingling with the men from the mechanical departments part ments arguing over the w world 0 ald war scare local and national politics everything under the sun it was so something like the free speech common in early colonial america where you could step into the enclosure and say what you thought about the king or anybody or anything else the gusto with which T R would dump a bottle of catsup and a slather e r of mustard on a plate of ham and beans or corned beef and beans was something worth seeing and remembering frequently these sessions at Hitch cocks were a postmortem post mortem on the paper just after press time in which any story of unusual distinction or a clean cut news beat was sure to get a cheer and quite as certainly 1 any of us who had stubbed his toe was in for a raking over my work has made me an observer of our efforts to establish true democracy in america I 1 have never attempted an exact I 1 definition of democracy but whatever it is I 1 am sure it was exemplified in this craft ideal of the old time newspaper the spirit seems lost in the highly departmentalized mechanized and specialized character of modern large 1 scale enterprise not only of newspapers but of business in general stoddards studdards dards family newspaper tradition goes way back into the flatbed days his great grandfather established the hudson N Y register in 1787 1737 he learned the printers trade in his grandfathers printing office at hudson A proofreader on the tribune at 15 he read proof on the famous tilden ciper dispatches a reporter soon thereafter on the tribune and the philadelphia press he wrote the first daily telegraph letter ever sent out from new york city I 1 T ALWAYS thought the reason 1 alice paul never stayed in jail long was that she was just a wraith and floated through the bars the wan fragile little tiny feminist feminist locked sets one goal up many times in for stiff rage tvs days past now fans up her national womans comans party to the world womans comans party of which she becomes temporary chairman its objective is the abolition of all legal distinctions between men and women to which goal she narrowed triumphant suffrage an and d to which she has held it ever since A tiny wisp of a woman she is the living refutation of hauers contention that will and intelligence never go together L consolidated new features feature service |