| Show A NEWSPAPER IVTHE HOCKIES HOW AX ESTEBfRlSISO BUSINESS iIANAOtB GOT SItS 81ECItLS HUB NOTHING In the winter of 1SS4S5 I was wa managing editor city editor and the entire reportorial corps of a little dally paper in I Colorado mining town We uo had threw prInters a business and manager an office onc boy who acted as mailing clerk and confer I e business 1 manager I filled In his kkuro time rutniir a calUo rnncji and a coal mine I The town had a Loom a year or two before but the loom wat gone I auu me piacu was JUt with two dally newspapeis and hardly lust fleas for one woethy I sans hard sledding AiiothteJ 1ress lIls latclita were cut ff tlie atel wer tle question We had to depend ujioii the Denver papers whlclrreaelwd us the same evening for our telegraphic news Our readers tlidnt like this of cure but I was the best We could do and I as we were all holding on like grim death for the return of the boom which was always six months ahead of us nobody cared t say too much Jlut occasionally the trains got snowed up on lbs Pass fur a week or more and then we were la a box On one of these occasions we hadu had o m ill for four days rind things were looking blue There wasnt any local news to cloak cf The uiinets manager suggested a chap tr from the Uiblu with a cnp lead He thought it would be news out there and 1 guess he W right The town had gasnnd waterworks and a big hotel as reminders of Its I departed loom and I also had a telephone line which connected with another little conbeCe miles further up lu the mountains on a branch of lie same railroad The teleplfontt In Uie station thirty miLs away was connected every night with tho one in our office b Cor the central otc closed so that In case of an accident In the mines we could get the news Several tImes while using this telephone I hal noticed that late at nIght when all was still the clicking of tbe telegraph instrument In hits station up in the mountains could b distinctly heard over the Ir Tliia suggested an Idea The railroad wire was used as 1 news wire late at night If wo had any body with an car acute enough to read that faint ticking in the Iee > houe Instrument we could learn what was going on over the wln The business manager had been an operator and a good one baI In the States He ried the instrument and found the scheme would work This next morning we had a column of special spe-cial Including two or thnx items of Washington I new which were special Importance just then ear very second man In tile town was a candidate for some office under the Incoming administration The cJItur of tho rival C ltr taper lller rushed to the telegraph ofiicu to In Julr what I meant He was told that we had received nolliing overlie over-lie wire With the train snowed up ou ton of lie l oas faking from hits Denver papers was out orlue ion Vet there were tho dispatches nd uumUUikably genuIne too The wires had been tippeJthit woe certain but where when how Tie railroad people ordered an Investigation In-vestigation but discovered nothing Nobody thought cf the clicking instrument trument in the closed railroad sta len thirty miles away and the marvelous mar-velous carrying power of Ihie tele air phone In that clear still mountain airOur Our brother editor on the rival l sheet thought it was a dead cold fake but he was afraid to fay too much abcut it as ho had run out of operand wo had him at our mcr pprn until a train got In Of course the secret was Jealously giianl ed In the office but the specials were kept up until the train got through Then we quit Thel > ul ness manager was a conscientious man and didnt l licve > In stealing news when It could be obtained any other way Besides he objected to do the workl G M in Afeir York VurliL 6 |
