(_London Daily Express._)
With the evolution of the United States into a world power there has
grown up across the Atlantic the greatest news-gathering agency ever
imagined or created, whose despatches are momentarily being read by
nearly half a hundred million people, and upon which Europe itself is
sometimes dependent for the first word or whisper of what has happened
within her own gates. The name of the agency which supplies America
with its news is the Associated Press.
Startling in its scope, romantic in its history, the Associated Press
has now, probably, more influence upon daily international events than
any other agent, except the will of the peoples, which it helps to form.
Sixty years ago, when America was in industrial and political
childhood, its papers depended for news upon Associated Press
post-boys, who, after meeting incoming schooners at New York, rode hot
haste, or leisurely, according to the character of the rider and nature
of the beast, to the various papers inland.
To-day the Associated Press sends over 31,000 miles of private
telegraph lines, which form a network across the continent of America,
thousands and thousands of columns, supplying about 3,000 American
papers with news of what is happening from minute to minute in America
and abroad.