Springfield globe-republic. (Springfield, Ohio) 1884-1887, 1885-05-31
George Alfred Townsend.


There is set of men in New York
whose members make quito 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 the 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 icalousics 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 corre-
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 go 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 a day, and he gets paid, Us a
general thing, at the rate of $50 per
column. To hear other correspondents
talk about him you would think his
work wasn't worth ten cents 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 a 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
famlliarlze 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 ne Is to DO next
morning, ana the iirst thing after
breakfast ne goes INTO MS study and
dictates the letters for the day. Leav-
ing his stenographer to write out their
notes, he runs through the morning
papers, ana then strolls out to the
haunts OF the busy politicians and
other people who have things to say
which are worth hearing. lie 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 II o'clock
in the forenoon, townsend is man OF
leisure, He never takes note or Jots
down amemorandum. Constant train
ing has made his mind almost indel-
ibie, 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