PICTURE a dreamy cub of twenty-one, long, spindling, a pair of
gold-framed spectacles on his nose, his hair combed _à la pompadour_, a
new spring suit consisting of light check trousers and bright blue coat
and vest, a brown fedora hat, new yellow shoes, starting out to force
his way into the newspaper world of Chicago. At that time, although I
did not know it, Chicago was in the heyday of its newspaper prestige.
Some of the nation’s most remarkable editors, publishers and newspaper
writers were at work there: Melville E. Stone, afterward general manager
of the Associated Press; Victor F. Lawson, publisher of the _Daily
News_; Joseph Medill, editor and publisher of the _Tribune_; Eugene
Field, managing editor of the _Morning Record_; William Penn Nixon,
editor and publisher of the _Inter-Ocean_; George Ade; Finley Peter
Dunne; Brand Whitlock; and a score of others subsequently to become well
known.
Having made up my mind that I must be a newspaper man, I made straight
for the various offices at noon and at six o’clock each day to ask if
there was anything I could do. Very soon I succeeded in making my way
into the presence of the various city and managing editors of all the
papers in Chicago, with the result that they surveyed me with the
cynical fishy eye peculiar to newspaper men and financiers and told me
there was nothing.
One day in the office of the _Daily News_ a tall, shambling,
awkward-looking man in a brown flannel shirt, without coat or waistcoat,
suspenders down, was pointed out to me by an office boy who saw him
slipping past the city editorial door.
“Wanta know who dat is?” he asked.
“Yes,” I replied humbly, grateful even for the attention of office boys.
“Well, dat’s Eugene Field. Heard o’ him, ain’tcha?”
“Sure,” I said, recalling the bundle of incoherent MS. which I had once
thrust upon him. I surveyed his retreating figure with envy and some
nervousness, fearing he might psychically detect that I was the
perpetrator of that unsolicited slush and abuse me then and there.
In spite of my energy, manifested for one solid week between the hours
of twelve and two at noon and five-thirty and seven at night I got
nothing. Indeed it seemed to me as I went about these newspaper offices
that they were the strangest, coldest, most haphazard and impractical of
places. Gone was that fine ambassadorial quality with which a few months
before I had invested them. These rooms, as I now saw, were crowded with
commonplace desks and lamps, the floors strewn with newspapers. Office
boys and hirelings gazed at you in the most unfriendly manner, asked
what you wanted and insisted that there was nothing—they who knew
nothing. By office boys I was told to come after one or two in the
afternoon or after seven at night, when all assignments had been given
out, and when I did so I was told that there was nothing and would be
nothing. I began to feel desperate.
Just about this time I had an inspiration. I determined that, instead of
trying to see all of the editors each day and missing most of them at
the vital hour, I would select one paper and see if in some way I could
not worm myself into the good graces of its editor. I now had the very
sensible notion that a small paper would probably receive me with more
consideration than one of the great ones, and out of them all chose the
_Daily Globe_, a struggling affair financed by one of the Chicago
politicians for political purposes only.
You have perhaps seen a homeless cat hang about a doorstep for days and
days meowing to be taken in: that was I. The door in this case was a
side door and opened upon an alley. Inside was a large, bare room filled
with a few rows of tables set end to end, with a railing across the
northern one-fourth, behind which sat the city editor, the dramatic and
sporting editors, and one editorial writer. Outside this railing, near
the one window, sat a large, fleshy gelatinous, round-faced round-headed
young man wearing gold-rimmed spectacles. He had a hard, keen, cynical
eye, and at first glance seemed to be most vitally opposed to me and
everybody else. As it turned out, he was the _Daily Globe’s_
copy-reader. Nothing was said to me at first as I sat in my far corner
waiting for something to turn up. By degrees some of the reporters began
to talk to me, thinking I was a member of the staff, which eased my
position a little during this time. I noticed that as soon as all the
reporters had gone the city editor became most genial with the one
editorial writer, who sat next him, and the two often went off together
for a bite.
Parlous and yet delicious hours! Although I felt all the time as though
I were on the edge of some great change, still no one seemed to want me.
The city editor, when I approached after all the others had gone, would
shake his head and say: “Nothing today. There’s not a thing in sight,”
but not roughly or harshly, and therein lay my hope. So here I would
sit, reading the various papers or trying to write out something I had
seen. I was always on the alert for some accident that I might report to
this city editor in the hope that he had not seen it, but I encountered
nothing.
The ways of advancement are strange, so often purely accidental. I did
not know it, but my mere sitting here in this fashion eventually proved
a card in my favor. A number of the employed reporters, of whom there
were eight or nine (the best papers carried from twenty to thirty),
seeing me sit about from twelve to two and thinking I was employed here
also, struck up occasional genial and enlightening conversations with
me. Reporters rarely know the details of staff arrangements or changes.
Some of them, finding that I was only seeking work, ignored me; others
gave me a bit of advice. Why didn’t I see Selig of the _Tribune_, or
Herbst of the _Herald_? It was rumored that staff changes were to be
made there. One youth learning that I had never written a line for a
newspaper, suggested that I go to the editor of the City Press
Association or the United Press, where the most inexperienced beginners
were put to work at the rate of eight dollars a week. This did not suit
me at all. I felt that I could write.
Finally, however, my mere sitting about in this fashion brought me into
contact with that copy-reader I have described, John Maxwell, who
remarked one day out of mere curiosity:
“Are you doing anything special for the _Globe_?”
“No,” I replied.
“Just looking for work?”
“Yes.”
“Ever work on any paper?”
“No.”
“How do you know you can write?”
“I don’t. I just feel that I can. I want to see if I can’t get a chance
to try.”
He looked at me, curiously, amusedly, cynically.
“Don’t you ever go around to the other papers?”
“Yes, after I find out there’s nothing here.”
He smiled. “How long have you been coming here like this?”
“Two weeks.”
“Every day?”
“Every day.”
He laughed now, a genial, rolling, fat laugh.
“Why do you pick the _Globe_? Don’t you know it’s the poorest paper in
Chicago?”
“That’s why I pick it,” I replied innocently. “I thought I might get a
chance here.”
“Oh, you did!” he laughed. “Well, you may be right at that. Hang around.
You may get something. Now I’ll tell you something: this National
Democratic Convention will open in June. They’ll have to take on a few
new men here then. I can’t see why they shouldn’t give you a chance as
well as anybody else. But it’s a hell of a business to be wanting to get
into,” he added.
He began taking off his coat and waistcoat, rolling up his sleeves,
sharpening his blue pencils and taking up stacks of copy. The while I
merely stared at him. Every now and then he would look at me through his
round glasses as though I were some strange animal. I grew restless and
went out. But after that he greeted me each day in a friendly way, and
because he seemed inclined to talk I stayed and talked with him.
What it was that finally drew us together in a minor bond of friendship
I have never been able to discover. I am sure he considered me of little
intellectual or reportorial import and yet also I gathered that he liked
me a little. He seemed to take a fancy to me from the moment of our
first conversation and included me in what I might call the _Globe_
family spirit. He was interested in politics, literature, and the
newspaper life of Chicago. Bit by bit he informed me as to the various
editors, who were the most successful newspaper men, how some reporters
did police, some politics, and some just general news. From him I
learned that every paper carried a sporting editor, a society editor, a
dramatic editor, a political man. There were managing editors, Sunday
editors, news editors, city editors, copy-readers and editorial writers,
all of whom seemed to me marvelous—men of the very greatest import. And
they earned—which was more amazing still—salaries ranging from eighteen
to thirty-five and even sixty and seventy dollars a week. From him I
learned that this newspaper world was a seething maelstrom in which
clever men struggled and fought as elsewhere; that some rose and many
fell; that there was a roving element among newspaper men that drifted
from city to city, many drinking themselves out of countenance, others
settling down somewhere into some fortunate berth. Before long he told
me that only recently he had been copy-reader on the Chicago _Times_ but
due to what he characterized as “office politics,” a term the meaning of
which I in no wise grasped, he had been jockeyed out of his place. He
seemed to think that by and large newspaper men while interesting and in
some cases able, were tricky and shifty and above all, disturbingly and
almost heartlessly inconsiderate of each other. Being young and
inexperienced this point of view made no impression on me whatsoever. If
I thought anything I thought that he must be wrong, or that, at any
rate, this heartlessness would never trouble me in any way, being the
live and industrious person that I was.
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