Middletown transcript., 1869-05-08
Usefut Snformation.
From the Printers Circular,
The Mystery of the Associated Pres


Read before the Press Club Of Philadelphia, Feb
ruary 10, 1869, by Thompson HesteoH.
Time was when there was no Associated
Press. In those happy days peaceful
serenity settled over the limited expanse of
journalism. The editor then was like the
shopkeeper, who waited behind his coun-
ter for customers. 1t was not for him to
run about in search of items, or DO agitate
himself lest some rival sheet should get
ahead of him in matter of news. If the
rival should be thus successful it made no
odds-he could copy the account. If the
news we're really worth anything, he fiat
tered himself that il would be brought to
him; and SO he remained in his office, kept
his scissors sharpencd, his paste-pot in
good order, and dozed away in the inter-
walls of his exciting employment, happy in
the belief that he was solid, sober, sub
stantial citizen, known and respected for
his learning and his influence.
Beginning before the Revolution, when
the mail between New York and Philadel-
phia was transported once week, and oc-
cupied two days in travel, and coming
down to so recent period as twenty years
ago, the transportation of news was slow
process. News that the Stamp Act was
repealed in England on the 18th of March,
1866, was received in Philadelphia on the
Goth of May in the same year, having been
eight weeks in crossing the ocean. The
battles of Lexington and Concord were
fought on the 18th of April, 1875. 1t
was not until the Oath, six days afterward,
that imperfect intelligence of those engage
ments arrived in Philadelphia.
On the 10Th of October, 1881, Corn
wallis surrendered to Washington at York
town; but papers at Philadelphia did not
receive the news by special aid-de-camp
until November Oath On the oath of
December, 1914, the Treaty of Ghent was
signed At the present time we might
know of such an event on the day upon
which it transpired. Even the ocean
steamship service, if it had existed in
1914 as it does now, might have brought
the intelligence across the water in time to
have prevented the Battle of New Orleans
which was fought fifteen days afterward.
But news of that treaty was not received
in this country until the 18th of February,
1915. Even in Philadelphia, the news of
the battle of the 9Th of January was un-
known until February 9th, an interval of
nearly month.
= AS the country increased, methods of fa-
cilitating the transmission of news by horse
expresses were devised, and by previous
arrangement of relays, and fresh riders,
speed was very much increased. During
the war between the United States and
Mexico, this plan was brought to some
thing like perfection, and news in eighteen
hours from Washington to Philadelphia
was frequently obtained. 1t may not be
generally known. that for three years be-
fore the extension of the electromagnetic
telegraph from Philadelphia to New York
there was private telegraph, upon the
Semaphore system, in operation between
the two cities. This was employed to bring
in advance the drawn numbers In the New
York lotteries to Philadelphia, for the pur-
pose Of assisting in speculations in the pur-
chase IF tlskets by persons who had the