When Ager arrived at "The Straits Times", the newspaper was ‘produced by two coolies turning the handle of the printing machine’ under the editorship of Mr. Arnot Reid. A year later, Ager installed the first oil engine to be used in Singapore for the purpose of newspaper printing. At the time of the Relief of Mafeking, Arnot Reid wrote an article condemning a group of expatriates who had driven to Government House offering their congratulations to Sir Alexander Swettenham but were promptly escorted off the premises by an armed guard. The expatriates expressed their anger with the article, bizarrely through death threats to Arnot Reid; Ager later witnessed the attempted murder of Reid. Fortunately for Reid, the police successfully intervened although the aggrieved expatriates then sought to acquire the newspaper; the newspaper was subsequently sold and Reid removed as editor.