Grant County herald. [volume] (Lancaster, Wis.) 1850-1968, 1885-06-18
George Alfred Townsend.

There is set of men in New York
whose members make quite handsome
incomes by writing letters to out-of-
town papers. 1t is astonishing that
there are so few journalists engaged in
this particular branch of work, but the
fact is that tho bulk of all the news
paper letters sent out from the metro
polls are written by half dozen men.
One who is acquainted with the people
doing this business is obliged to laugh
sometimes at the petty jealousies and
chickering's which arise among them.
Men in other walks of life are jealous
and acrimonious. But you have got to
walk into the field of newspaper corre-
spondence to find internal bitterness
and unreasonable anger developed to
their highest point.
As an instance, let me quote George
Alfred Townsend. / don't mean to
give the inference that George Alfred
Townsend is jealous or unreasoning.
On the contrary, he is the victim of
more verbal attacks at the hands of his
co-workers than any man of my ac-
quaintance. Townsend is undoubtedly
the leader of the out-of-town CORE
spondents. He has more work to do
than any two of them, and he gets
more than double the pay for it which
is given to other operators in the same
line. You have to 60 long way among
journalists to scare up good word
about George Alfred, fact which is
due simply and solely to the advance
ment of his position over that of the
people who go by him. Townsend
writes on the average four columns of
matter day, and he gets paid, as a
general thing, at the rate of 500 per
column. To hear other correspondents
talk about him you would think his
work wasn't worth ten cents a ream,
but Townsend must be right and they
must be wrong, or else he could not
command the place he holds and the
prices he receives.
Townsend's success is due mainly to
the systematic manner in which he
goes about his work. He probably
possesses the most valuable and extern
sive set of scrap books in the United
States. In the room in which he does
the bulk of his work he has the walls
lined with these volumes of personal
Information. Ever since he has been in
newspaper life he has cut every thing
of personal character out of the peri
odicals coming to his hand, and these
slips he has pasted into books, which
are subsequently indexed and arranged
in order.
When Mr.. Townsend wants to write
anything about any man of general i'm
portance, he merely hunts up the per-
sons name in his index, and the
chances are that he possesses pretty
clear record. not only of the doings,
but of most of the sayings of the man
in question. He is thus enabled to
familiarize himself with the train of
thought followed by the different peo-
pie of whom he writes, and this is of
great advantage to him. Townsend
looks up his material in the afternoon
and evenings. Before he goes to bed
he maps out what he is to do next
morning, and the first thing after
breakfast he goes into his study and
dictates the letters for the day. Leav-
ing his stenographer to write out their
rotes, he runs through the morning
papers, and then strolls out to the
haunts of the busy politicians and
other people who have things to say
which are worth hearing. He moves
about pretty much all the afternoon
and far into the evening among the ac-
| quaintances he has long established in
this pursuit Practically after IL o clock
in the forenoon, Townsend is man of
leisure. He never takes note or jots
down memorandum. Constant train
| ing has made his mind almost indel-
ible, and when man says anything in
his hearing it is about as faithfully re-
collected as though it had been taken
down in shorthand.
Townsend is becoming rather portly
in his personal appearance. He has a
round and rather full face, broad
through the jaw, and rather florid as to
| its complexion. A small, dark mus
tsche grows upon his upper lip, and is
overshadowed by strong nose. His
eyes are gray and his brow is project
| ing. Townsend's hair is thick and
brown, and he talks with the decided
manner of man whose range of infor-
nation is wide and accurate. Town
sends income is very large. have no
doubt that it exceeds $4,000 a year.
He writes for half dozen papers,
and, as have already said, he is very
we'll paid by all of them. Yet he finds
time in the midst of his duties to turn
off an occasional novel and to make a
short lecture tour now and then. Town
send owns the house in which he lives,
over in West Thirty-fourth street, and
| suppose it must have cost him some
where in the neighborhood of $4,000.
1t is large, comfortable mansion, and
it is so convenient to the horse railways
and elevated stations that he can reach
almost any point in the city within
twenty minutes. 81. Richardson, in
Louisville Commercial.