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THE COURIER
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It was after dinner on the city editor's
night off and the man of municipal
"beats" and three alarm llres was grow
ing reminiscent.
, "Considering the interest of the aver
age reader In all branches of things
literary. It has always been a surprise
to me how little Is known of what might
be called the 'mechanical end' of writ
ing," he began. "For example, who are
our champion writers, judging 4rom the
standpoint of numbers of words turned
out in a given time What is the limit
of human capacity in bring thought to
paper? To what extent does practice
facilitate quick writing? Under what
pressure and under what adverse con
ditions are. the stories often written, and
what Is the effect of the strain on the
human system when driven to the ut
most In this line of work?
"Ask almost any fairly well posted
person who Is the champion producer of
words, and likely he'll tell you. 'Marlon
Crawford,' who seems to have set him
self a standard of two novels a year.. Or
Clyde Fitch, the playwright, some may
say, relying on Mr. Fitch's ability to
turn out a comedy or a melodrama with
every manhole cover blown off In New
York's streets. But the champion of all
writers, three or four times over. Is the
star reporter on almost any of the big
New York papers. Take the work of a
star and It Is no exaggeration to credit
him with an average of two newspaper
columns of reading matter a day. Days
there will be when his story does not
pan out and when he goes home with
but a half column to his credit. But
the next day, or the following one, will
bring up the average-say 3,000 words,
or. In appreciable measure, at least forty
inches a day. That means during a
week for the star usually works seven
days, taking a day off once a month or
so the man turns out 21,000 words, or a
little more than twenty-three feet of
matter. In a month or thirty days he
produces 90,000 words, or 100 feet of
newspaper literature. And figuring this
by the year, he runs out l.OSO.OOO words
to a length of 1,200 feet In other words,
'the equivalent in number of words to
twelve novels of the length of 'Soldiers
of Fortune,' strung In a strip about two
inches wide from Thirtieth street to
Thirty-sixth street, on Broadway.
"Vast figures, these, when you come to
consider them, and naturally they sug
gest the limit of human capacity in re
cording thought. But there arises the
question whether your man writes by
hand or by typewriter. No matter
whether the star uses a machine or not,
it is necessary that he be a quick writer.
Contrary to general Impressions, the star
reporters of today do not use shorthand
except on rare occasions, If, Indeed, they
understand stenography at all. The ex
ceptions are when a speech ,1s to be taken
verbatim, and even here the expert
longhand man will work as accurately,
though with greater expenditure of
labor, than his colleague who uses the
pothooks. But there are two sides to
reporting by shorthand ordinarily. In
the first place, a speaker, be he ever so
trained, will rarely make a speech which
Is all 'meat' and worth reading. Un
consciously the shorthand man will take
down all that Is said, while invariably
the longhand fellow will cull out what
he wants on the spot, trusting to his
notes and a trained memory to 'get
there.'
"The other disadvantage to shorthand
is that whei a man reaches his office late
and must dash off his story with one eye
on the clock and the other on his work,
and his mind on the concluding sentence,
he has no time to translate pothooks.
His notes, on the other hand, suggest the
entire thread of the story, and he can
sit down to his machine and rattle away,
turning out, If necessary, a column of
matter In from twenty to twenty-five
minutes. If he Is very expert.
"The man who writes a column In
twenty minutes must not Imagine that
he will turn out two In forty minutes.
A man with strong physique, with a
clear brain, with his story well in hand
and expert at the typewriter will find
that his ability to grind out newspaper
literature at top speed decreases at al
most arithmetical progression. If the
first column takes twenty minutes, the
second will take at least twenty-five
minutes, the third thirty minutes, and
so on up to seven columns as one night's
work an entire page of report which
was made during the first Molineux trial,
and stands, I think, as a record.
"As to writing by hand, of course the
work is both more laborious and more
time consuming. Most New York re
porters can turn out a column by hand
within an hour. Many can turn out two
columns in two hours, but the fellows
that can write four columns In four
hours you can count on the fingers of
one hand. You can see, there Is where
the limit of human endurance comes In,
a point which probably never even oc
curred to you In connection with writing.
"It is this strula which requires that a
reporter be clear, not only In the upper
story, but as well physically. At that
many of the men break down from time
to time and disappear from the Row to
build up again. Altogether pardonable
when you come to consider that fre
quently a reporter works anywhere from
twelve to fifteen hours, and even to
eighteen and twenty hours a day de
pending upon the size of the thing that
has broken loose.
"Only through practice can a man gain
that confidence In himself which enables
him to sit down without getting rattled
to dash off a story wlhout ever seeing a
line until it Is in the paper next morning.
I have known men to write under high
pressure, trying to catch the last edition
with an important story, when every
body In the shop seemed to be 'up In
the air' except the man at the keys of
the machine. I have seen a night city
editor himself stand over a man like that
and hurry and urge him along and clip
off the copy as fast as it appeared over
the roll of his typewriter; and still the
writer sat calm and rattled on his ma
chine to make your head swim without
seeming to see the crazy man alongside.
"But there are other conditions,
equally distressing, which the reporter
must learn to face, and which he does
face so often that from time to time he
suffers his periodical breakdown. For
Instance, the men who followed Jerome
through his campaign speeches had one
of the hardest Jobs on record. From
place to place they followed the strenu
ous campaigner, riding in an especial
automobile, trailing behind him through
crowds . at political meetings, writing
while standing up with elbows locked
against squirming, cheering crowds, and
picking words between applause and
writing out their speeches while the
brass bands droned noises preparatory
to the next speaker.
"It's a lively game from end to end.and
one, I often thought, the public would
be interested in If It could really look be
hind the scenes. I remember one time
we printed a pretty, dainty love story
turned out by a young man, on our staff,
probably the prettiest thing of its kind
we ever had. Afterward I learned that
It had been written while Mated ea a
heap of pine coffins. It was this way:
The writer had a story In mind, but bad
not been able to find time to write it
until at the time of the North German
Lloyd fire he was sent on board the
sunken steamer Saale to report the re
covery of bodies. Barring the grewsome
ness of the Job, I don't suppose human
mortal ever was more tickled at an 'as
signment.' Out on the breezy river dur
ing the hot period of July, vhen the city
sweltered, what more could a fellow
want? So, between the acts he picked
out a heap of waiting coffins as the only
clean thing to sit on aboard the fire-ridden
hulk, and there he wrote his love
story, which was reprinted In nearly a
score of western papers." New York
Commercial Advertiser.
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