Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 35, Number 30, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 December 1902 — THE PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE. [ARTICLE]

THE PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE.

Great Care Taken that Ita Information Shall Not Leak Ont. One government matter which is treated with the utmost possible secrecy from the time it leaves the hands of the President until it is ready for Congress and the public at large is the preparation of the President’s message. The preservation of absolute secrecy regarding the contents of the message is most essential, inasmuch as advance information as to the recommendations to be made would in many instances be of the greatest value to speculators on the stock market and certain business interests. Despite the number of men who aid in the handling of the document at the big print shop, however, there has been no violation of confidence in recent years. Daring the Hayes administration a message was stolen from the printing office end sold at a price popularly supposed to be many thousands of dollars, but the theft has never been repeated. As a means of preserving inviolate the contents of the message while it is in the printing establishment the plan is adopted of placing with a single official the entire responsibility for the message from the time it is delivered at the printing office until it emerges in pamphlet form ready for delivery at the White House. The average presidential message ranges in length from 12,000 to 20,000 words, and when this is parceled out to the typesetters it is cut up into pieces so small that no compositor can gain any definite knowledge of the subject under discussion, and the work is so distributed among hundreds of typesetters; The assembling of all the various tiny masses of type is entrusted to one man of known reliability, and likewise only old and trusted employes are permitted to have a hand in the printing and binding of the pamphlets. As an extra safeguard, the workmen engaged upon the printing of the message are compelled each evening to account for every sheet of paper which has been issued for use on the presses. The printed copies of the message are taken, upon completion, direct to the White House offices and the only copies which are permitted to leave the hand of the office force prior to the day of the opening of Congress atr those which are given in confidence to the representatives of the newspapers and press associations with the understanding that no extracts from them shall be printed until the message has been read to Congress.