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 CHAPTER XXIII THE AUTOMOBILE CLUB

N the office of the large daily paper Stanok they were busy selecting copy which had been left over from the previous day’s issue. Different notes, articles,

and reports were being gone through and counted to see how much space they would occupy. Then the usual wrangling began as to whose article should be put in and where it should be placed. The whole paper of four pages comprised some four thousand four hundred lines, into which everything had to be spaced : telegrams, articles, current events, letters from worker correspondents, one serial in verse and two in prose, cartoons, photographs, and special articles on the theatre, chess, sport, and news of the Soviet party and professional organizations, a novel in serial form, literary sketches of town life, popular articles on various subjects, a wireless section, and other miscellaneous subjects. They usually had sufficient material to fill about ten thousand lines, so that the question of space was discussed with great heat, and there was always a great deal of quarrelling.

The first man to run to the sub-editor of the paper was the chess editor, Sudekin. ‘ What’s this mean ?’ he asked with biting politeness. ‘ There’ll be no chess news to-day ?’

‘ There’s no room for it,’ said the sub-editor, ‘ We’ve got far too much copy as it is.’

‘But it’s Saturday to-day, and the readers are waiting for the Sunday article. I have got solutions to problems, an excellent study by “ Hopeful’’, and I’ve also got a——’

‘Oh! all right. How much space do you want ? How many lines ?’

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