Page:Pacific Monthly volumes 9 and 10.djvu/652

30 ning expenses, and this independent of an unusually heavy investment for type, printing machinery and presses, which it was deemed advisable to make in order that the paper might be properly produced.

This was the condition of affairs, the steady drain on Mr. Bostock's pocketbook to the tune of $10,000 a year continuing, until, in the spring of 1897, a young Canadian journalist, W. C. Nichol, was attracted to the West by the gold fever which, during that period, raged aH over Eastern Canada. Mr. Schaife was on the point of leaving for England, and Mr. Bostock was desirous of seeing if a trained newspaper man. could not stop the continuous drain on his resources which the publication of the paper entailed, and transform it into a financial success. After some negotiations, an understanding was arrived at, and on the 1st of October, 1897, Mr. Nichol assumed editorial charge of The Province. He soon satisfied himself, however, that it was impossible to make such a publication a financial success in such a field, and, accordingly, he made arrangements to change it from a weekly into a daily paper, with its office of publication in Vancouver instead of in Victoria. On the 26th of March, 1898, the first number of the daily paper was issued from The Province building, on Hastings street, where it has continued to be published since that time. From the day of its publication it proved a success. Its circulation went up by leaps and bounds. The Province press could not print the paper fast enough; after a few months it was found necessary to put a fast web press in, but in a year or two its capacity also was found to be too small. The result was that a modern two-deck web press was installed, capable of printing anything from one page to 16 pages in a single book, at the rate of 20,000 complete papers an hour, cut. pasted and folded.

All this was not accomplished without a liberal expenditure of money and brains. Nothing was left undone to provide the readers of The Province with all that the wide world of news offered which was bright, attractive