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Show EEEZY J0UKNALISM. THE FIRST DAILY PAPER ESTABLISHED ESTABLISH-ED IN LEADVILLE. Its Pathway Ws Rough and Stony Twenty Twen-ty Hoars' Work a Day For' Editor and Manager The J ob Office Was a Veritable Bonanza Prices No Object. . In 1878 Leadville had no newspaper worthy the name, and people were gathering there by the thousands. At that time I was the foreman of the Denver Den-ver Tribune, and in looking the situation situa-tion over I became, In common with scores of others, possessed tf a desire to fill one of the long felt wants of the new community. After talking 't over with a couple of fellow printers and figuring up the cost we agreed on alal habitation habi-tation and a name. ''f There was no such thing As a houss to be had in Leadville at tllat time. I couldn't even find a room. Finally I secured se-cured a lot from a squatter out on Harrison Har-rison avenue. It was way off in the sagebrush, sage-brush, and I selected it because it was cheap. After a great deal of difficulty and using what influence I could with the sawmills I got together lumber enough to build a one room house to accommodate ac-commodate the paper. It was almost impossible to get carpenters or people who would do any kind of labor. Everybody Ev-erybody was in pursuit of carbonates. However, after something of a struggle strug-gle the house was put np, and I was notified no-tified of the shipment of the office appurtenances ap-purtenances from the St. Louis type foundry. Being a practical printer and j aware of our somewhat straitened financial finan-cial condition, the purchasing partner j had bought just enough of the various kinds of material to get out a small daily, which we called The Evening Chronicle. One partner was made business man- ager, a second took the mechanical department, de-partment, while I was selected to do the j editing. I was managing editor, city editor, telegraph editor, set up a little ; type, made up forms and attended to a few -A-4-v worked to-getncV to-getncV almost yCfasiuly any end night. ' Hundreds of firms were being established estab-lished in Leadville with not a line of printed matter in any shape not a letterhead let-terhead or even a card. We had less than $23 in our treasury when we printed print-ed our first issue and knew we must depend de-pend on our job office for a revenue. We got it. It was not "How much does it cost?" in Leadville at that time, but "How soon can I have it?" We knew how to give it, and we learned how to charge. Everybody else waB doing the same thing, each in his own line of business. Our stock of job papers was limited, and correspondingly short counts were given to customers. The editor and business manager assisted with the job work at night, ran presses, sawed wood and kept up fires. As a sample of charges I will tell you of one order we filled. We had no particular hours of labor, but were generally on our feet from 16 to 20 hours out of the 24. After a day's work of this kind we were just shutting down one night when a gentleman came in and said he wanted 25 cards printed immediately. He was running some sort of a game at Tom Kemp's theater, and this game required cards with figures, one figure to a card. He said he didn't care what they cost so he had them by 9 o'clock. It was then about 7, and we accommodated him. He was waiting when the messenger, who was armed with the bill, arrived. "Have you got them?" he said. "How much are they?" The messenger was afraid the man would fall down if he pronounced the amount, so he handed over the bill. The sporting man pulled from his pockets a wad of greenbacks and handed over two tens and a five $25 for 25 cards. As the messenger started to go away the man said: "Hold on. Now, look here, I'm a gambler that's the way I make my living but isn't this bill just a little lit-tle high?" You needed to know something about running a newspaper in those days. There was no lack of material, but it was not all easy sailing in a mixed crowd aggregating 6ome 40,000 people from all parts of the world cad all classes of society. There was rot what could be called a large proportion of evangelists in the crowd either. One day we were notified that we would have to move. In fact, a fo:ce of men, presented themselves and declared ' tnuir jnTr-jirion to assist us in the speedy transfer of our goods and chattels to green fields and pastures new. They didn't have furniture vans, but they had some very ugly looking gnus sticking out of their pockets. We didn't see it that way, so Davis slipped out and got two or three rifles and as many more revolvers and came back. We closed the doors and announced cur intention of remaining where we were. This kind of thing was repeated several times, but finally quiet was restored, re-stored, our title resting in our firearms. I had paid $100 for that lot, and it was now worth 10,000; hence the contention. conten-tion. I believe I have written more murders and shootings in a given length of time than any other newspaper man in the country. One day we had four, which we spread out over four editions of the paper, the issue which Consolidated the four having a scare head in type an inch long, "Hell Let Loose." While Leadville at that time was pretty rough, with plenty of shooting and killing, there has never been a more generons.open hearted, honest and faithful faith-ful class of people than these miners. They gathered round and supported us grandly, coming to our rescue as often as our little property was attacked. When we entered upon our second year, we had hosts of friends, a reputation which can almost be called worldwide and money enough to put us on good terms with the rest of the world. Kate Field's Washington. The riuman Family. The human family living on earth today to-day consists of about 1,450,000,000 souls not fewer, probably more. These are distributed literally all over the earth's surface, there being no considerable consider-able spot on the globe where man has not found a foothold. The extremes of the blacks and whites are as five to three, the remaining 700,000,000 intermediate, inter-mediate, brown, yellow and tawny in color. Exchange. |