Jasper County Democrat, Volume 13, Number 19, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 June 1910 — THE FOURTH ESTATE [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

THE FOURTH ESTATE

. ... Novelized by

FREDERICK R. TOOMBS

From the Great Play of the Same Name by Joseph Medill Patterson and Harriet Ford. & COPYRIGHT. 1909. BY JOSEPH MEDILL PATTERSON AND HARRIET FORD.

SYNOPSIS. Chapter I—Judith Bartelmy, society woman, goes t'o the office of the Daily Advance to protest against a story which had severely criticised her father, a judge of the United States court. She discovers that the author of the article was Wheeler Brand, a brilliant young writer whom she had promised to marry. He refuses to cease attacking her father. ll—Judith discards her engagement ring., Dupuy, a lawyer, representing big advertisers, calls and demands Brand’s discharge, as his clients are friends of Judge Bartelmy. in— Brand is discharged by the managing editor, for the paper, long owned by an insurance company, had been friendly to corporations. Michael Nolan, who buys the paper, comes in the office and finds Dupuy to be an old enemy of his. JV —Nolan calls for Brand and makes him managing editor. V—Brand tells Nolan and his socially ambitious family that the dishonest judge, Bartelmy, and his unsuspecting daughter have taken them up socially so as to try to induce Nolan not to attack the judge in his newspaper. Vl—Dupuy aids Bartelmy in endeavoring to have Brand and the Advance avoid attacking the judge regarding a tricky opinion he has rendered in the Lansing Iron case. “Every man has his price, even Brand,” says Dupuy. Vll—Nolan says if Brand will trap Bartelmy in the act of offering him a bribe to keep silent that the Advance will print the story in full, Vlll—Bartelmy agrees to pay Brand $lO,000 to keep quiet about the Lansing Iron case. IX—Brand lays the trap for Bartelmy. X—Bartelmy arrives at the Advance office to pay Brand the SIO,OOO. XI —Brand, aided by three reporters, takes a flashlight photograph of Bartelmy offering the SIO,OOO bribe money and obtains by a most ingenious telephone trick an accurate record of the judge’s words as lie counted out the money. '■

CHAPTER XII. / w in the rooms of a I (VI I leading daily paper in a big Igpsd city is not a time whenpeace(jU2g£g ful siufcber is in order for those who are concerned in the business of producing the paper. It is the time when trained brains and trained hands are exerted to the extreme limit of their capacity to get the very latest news into shape, into type, into the press, into the mail wagons and “on the street.” And it is in the composing room where the brunt of the battle is borne in the final hours in which is completed the record of a world’s doings and undoings for a day. Masses of “copy” swirl upward in the tubes or are carried in by boys from the city editorial room. The typesetting machines click, click, click, in unceasing monotony, and the proofreaders scan columns of “green proofs” with a rapidity, when under pressure, that would amaze the uninitiated observer. The “makeup” men cluster around the cumbersome tables or “stones” on which the forms are made up, lifting in the metal lines of type here, making corrections or shifting cuts there and locking the forms to be shunted into the stereotype room, where the paper matrices will be made. When the matrix is placed in the casting box the molten stereotype metal is poured in. and within, a very few minutes the cylindrical plates, hardened quickly in the casting box by the pouring of cold water into the jacket, are locked on the cylinders of the gigantic duodecuple press and ready to whirl off over 100 copies of a paper per second, all printed, pasted, folded and counted. Midnight in the offices of the Advance on the night that Judge Bartelmy’s photograph was taken with $lO,000 of bribe money in his hands found the staff of the paper in all departments working as probably they had never worked before, except on election night. The story required considerable time for preparation. The notes of Howard and Jeff, the two reporters who recorded the conversation of Brand and Bartelmy, had to be translated from shorthand into English. Then an introduction and a head had to be written, and the art department had to break all' previous records in turning out a cut made from the photograph resulting from the flashlight. In the composing room men were working like galley slaves to get the great Bartelmy exposure story into type and into .the forms. The composing room in the Advance building was a “doable decker”—!, e., a second story had been built in the rear part of the room to accommodate the proofreaders. This second story was really but a half story, extending out over a portion of the composing room, and the walls were partitions, the lower half of wood and the upper half of glass windows.

On the lower floor the linotype machines were set in rows. A steam table loomed on one side. On another table, an ironbound one, rested the galleys containing matter for the night’s edition of the paper. At the extreme left of the room a wooden partition shut off the small office that the managing editor used at night when he superintended the makeup proceedings. A door opened into this small room from the outer hall, close to a door opening from the hall into the composing room itself. At the opposite end of the compartment a door opened-into

the composing room. In his small inclosure Brand, the managing editpr. had a desk and a telephone. Adjoining the partition, which shut him off from the composing room and on the outside of it. was a desk used by the copy cutters, who cut the pages of manuscript—after they had been pasted together—into “takes.” A takers one of the sections into which a story is cut, so that several compositors can work on different parts of the same story simultaneously, resulting in the saving of considerable time in setting it up. xne typesetting machines clicked off rapidly the words, sentences and paragraphs of the Bartelmy “beat" and the other stories which had to be crowded into the “mail edition.’’ Brand was in his little room at the right, reading the proof ot the introduction of the account ot the accusation of the United States judge, which introduction he had chosen to write himself. McHenry, the deposed managing editor and now Braud's assistant, was at the forms with the makeup men. A boy rushed in with a cut for McHenry. The busy editor squinted at it and waved the boy to one side. “Why do they send us this baled hay when we’ve got a live one?” he said disgustedly. Downs came in from the city room. “That Clinton street fire Is getting better every minute,” he said to McHenry. “We ought to have at least four columns on it.” McHenry glared at the speaker. “Are you crazy, man?” he exclaimed. “Do you think we use rubber type? You’ll have to keep it in three.” Downs was dissatisfied. “All right. This shop is going to the d —l." he answered, shaking his head negatively. He went out of the composing room. >’ McHenry went over to one of the makeup stones. “Where are the cuts for the Chicago and Bryan jump heads? 1 can't find them anywhere.” he asked. “Here they are.” answered One of the makeup men. “All right. They go there.” He pointed to a space in one of the forms as a boy handed him another cut. McHenry held it up to the light and hurried into Brand’s office with it. He laid it proudly on the managing editor’s desk. “That’s a wonder, Mac!” pronounced Brand. McHenry agreed. “Yes; you can almost count the money in old Bartelmy’s hand!" he exclaimed, and be peered closely once more at the metal, slab. Brand meditated a moment “I’m going to change the makeup on that page.” he decided. "Put this cut at the top of the page, so that when the papers are folded on the newsstands every one that passes by will see Bartelmy offering a bribe of $lO,000 to suppress the truth about himself. is your story all up yet?” “Yes. it’s in the form.” "Then go finish it off and send it down to the stereotyping room.” McHenry turned away. "Won’t this make the Patriot sick?" he said as he left. "They’d give the shirts off their backs to beat us on a story like this or to keep us from doing it to them.”

As McHenry of the door into the composing room Sylvester Nolan dashed into Brand’s room from the hall through the other door. The lad was plainly excited, his face showing an amount of animation 1 that, for him, was a decided novelty. His eyes flashed and his breath came in short gasps, indicating that he had been hurrying. “Where’s my father, Mr. Brand? Where is he?” he gasped. Brand suspected something of the Nolan son’s errand. “I’m afraid you’ll have to find him,” was the only information he chose to Impart. Young Nolan drew close to the desk at which the managing editor was working. “Judge Bartelmy wants him,” he exclaimed. “The judge, the judge! Don’t you understand?” “Does he?” asked Brand with utmost unconcern. Sylvester grew impatient at his father's employee who dared assume indifference toward his father’s only son. “I want to know where he Is,” he demanded. “Well, I can’t tell you.” Brand rose and stepped away, with Sylvester following him. *i understand that you. are going to publish something about the judge that’s beyond the limit," said the son. “Possibly.” _ , “Well, this thing’s gone far enough,” snapped Sylvester. “In the absence of my father I forbid it; Do you hear?” Brand took up a bundle of proofs and moved to the door. “Pm afraid I can’t .takg. orders from 1 ~ t ~

you,” he” said, and he stepped calmly out into the composing room. Sylvester, nonplused, looked about uncertainly for a moment. Then, with a sudden thought, he went to the telephone. ' .} ■ He placed the receiver at his ear. “Hello! Hello! I’m Mr. Sylvester Nolan. Get me the house on the wire, please.” An office boy entered. “What do you mean by trying to prevent me from coming up here?” asked young Nolan. ;

“My orders.” “You’re discharged.” The boy grinned amusedly and hurried out. “Hello! Hello!” continued Sylvester at the telephone. “Is this you, mother? I want to speak to father. I’m at the Advance office. Hell’s breaking loose here, and 1 want him to come down quick. Isn’t he there? Where is he? Expecting him any minute? Oh!

Jump in a taxi and come down, will yo n ? All right Good!” He bung up the receiver and walked swiftly into the hall to leave the building. Downs and Brand entered the little room. “There is a big fire in Clinton street.” the former said. “McHenry won’t give me room, but I’ve got to have it"

“That’s it The good stuff always Homes in bunches,” said Brand, showing his disgust. “What else you got?’ “Your cub. Powell, just came in with a prose poem on a dance hall suicide.” “Let’s see it” The managing editor looked at the story, smiling broadly as he did so. "Send him in.” The voice of Edward Dupuy was heard outside. “Is Mr. Brand in there?” “Here; you can’t go in there.” a voice was heard in warning, and Brand looked up. “Oh, yes. I can,” was the cool response. and Dupuy walked in. “Brand,

you print that picture of Judge Bartelmy and your paper’s as good as dead.” he threatened. • Brand smiled.

“Oh, we’ll try to struggle on.” “The whole thing was a dirty piece of trickery, and we can prove it.” “Go ahead and prove it.” "Well prove it was a faked picture," snarled the lawyer. “What are you going to do?" “Never mind what we’ll do.” , Dupuy now delivered the prize threat that he had saved for use in the last extremity, should it arise. aud.be was justified in assuming that it bad arisen, “A temporary injunct ion would certainly issue in a case like this,” be said Sternly. “I’ll get one atid close yoilr shop.” “Sure! That’s the thing! Get Bar telmy to issue one.’ suggested the managing editor sarcastically. “1 will and put a stop to your,game! This muck raking mania is sweeping the country like a disease, breeding madmen everywhere. Brand, this is your finish!" He shook his fist violently. Brand jumped up in anger and strode toward the lawyer lobbyist. “Now, you get out of here or I'll throw you out!” he announced hotly. “You will, will you? You just wait!” Dupuy backed slowly out of the doorway. Brand hastened out into the com posing room. “Mac, they're beginning to squirm already!" he cried “We’ll make them squirm more in the morning." responded the night editor significantly. (To Be Continued.)

"That cut is a wonder. Mac!"

“Jump in a taxi and come down."