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the present Associated Press was organized out of the old West- ern Associated Press.

ASSOCIATION

That the period was one in which the emphasis, on the whole, was placed upon the marketing of news, was shown by the forma- tion of the American Newspaper Publishers' Association, which, after preliminary steps had been taken at Detroit, Michigan, on November 17, 1886, was organized at Rochester, New York, February 16, 1887, to provide a clearing-house for the business departments of its members and to protect them in case of labor difficulties. From the start, it devoted most of its attention to a study of paper conditions, a supervision of advertising agencies in an attempt to weed out the undesirable, a campaign against the imposition of press agents who tried to secure the insertion of advertising as pure reading matter, etc. The association came to be a great force in American journalism, as its membership included the most influential newspapers in the country. The need of such an organization early became patent when legis- lators at Washington began to take steps looking toward the regulation of the press.

PRINTING-PRESSES OF PERIOD

The two decades from 1880 to 1900 saw the printing-press of the newspaper develop into the greatest mechanical achieve- ment of the human mind. Hoe had produced a press which would print on both sides of a continuous roll of paper, but there were several minor difficulties to overcome. Among these were the unequal distribution of ink and a frequent tearing of the paper web. Hoe took these matters up with the leading manufacturers and insisted that the ink-makers produce a product which would spread evenly from the ink fountain of his press ; he next turned his attention to the paper manufacturers and demanded that they produce a paper of even thickness and uniform quality, while he in turn experimented with presses where the paper pressure would be uniform. Other inventors perfected the me- chanical arrangement of the press by means of adjustments too complicated to describe in a book of this characte