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NEWSPAPER BATTLES

In the competition to be first on the streets with important news, papers spared neither labor nor expense to use a hack- neyed expression. In an age when politics attracted so much attention in the press it was natural that there should be the keenest rivalry in reporting political speeches. As these were often delivered at some distance from the place of publication, papers adopted various methods to rush the reports. If news had to come by boat, compositors and type cases were put on board, and as fast as copy was written on the trip it was put into type and made ready for the press. On the other hand, if news had to come by rail, a reporter, acting under instructions from his paper, hired a locomotive for his exclusive use and made a fast run with only the engineer as a companion. Such methods for the transmission of news were common until the telegraph proved quicker.

Such enterprises did much to develop the instinct for news, for speed soon became the distinguishing characteristic of Amer- ican journalism. Boats on the Hudson river often carried a corps of compositors who could put into type a speech delivered at Albany and have it ready to lock up in a form by the time the boat docked in New York. One of the most remarkable beats in this connection was the report of a speech delivered by Daniel Webster in Boston. Several New York newspapers sent shorthand reporters who took down the remarks of Webster, as the address was an important one. Representing The Tribune was Henry J. Raymond, who, inexperienced in stenography, was somewhat handicapped, but he had provided for the emergency by taking with him a number of Tribune compositors. The latter, with the help of a miniature printing-plant which had been put on board the night boat out of Boston, were prepared to set the speech in type as fast as Raymond could write it. Employees of The Tribune met the boat when it landed at five the next morning and in one hour carriers were distributing copies of The Tribune which contained a full report of Webster's speech delivered in Boston the preceding afternoon. Greeley's paper that morning was the talk of the town, and his rivals on that occasion were simply "also rans."