The weekly sentinel. [volume] (Winston-Salem, N.C.) 1886-1887, 1886-10-21
HARD WORKERS OF THE PRESS.
Toilsrs of the Day and Mght-NTen WIZ
6ufde Newspaper Machinery.

Toilsrs of the Day and Meht-A1en WIZ
Guide Newspaper Machinery.
There is a drug store down IN The Her.
aid building, at the corner of Ann street
and Broadway, which has wide celebrity
all over the United States as "Hudnut's."
It is a small box of place, not many
feet deep and still fewer feet wide, but it
is full OF customers all day long, and it
has good rrany purchasers clear through
the night. i, does an enormous business
in surgical instruments and ready-made
medicines, but it derives by tar the
greater part of its celebrity from the
large quantity of soda water disposed of,
where the purchaser winks solemnly at
at the clerk and calls for "the same.h
Late at night when the morning pap
ers have gone to press, the back part Of
Hudnut's store becomes the gathering
place of about as distinguished and In
teresting group of men as one often
finds together. They are the men who
make the journalism of New York. !
don't mean by this expression that they
are the commanding officers Of the jour
nalistic army, who go by the technical
name of editors-in-chief. These gentle
men 1 tell you of as being wont to gather
at Hudnut's are the actual workers, the
men who take charge of the entire great
machinery of the papers under their con-
troll, beginning early in the day and re-
manning until the next mornings edf-
ton begins to roll off from the presses,
which clatter and bang away in the sub
cellars with a noise almost like the rat
tie of artillery.
In many walks of life have come
across men who thought they were hard
worked and generally abused. But I
don't believe there is any position in thu
world in which a greater quantity o1
both labor and unjust criticism exits
than finds its way into the daily life Il
these gentlemen who build daily publ
cations. The managing editor Of a big
newspaper is responsible for all the news
of the day in every part Of the world. II
he doesn't get 1t, and some other new
paper does, he Is likely TO hear from tho
editor-in-chief, and whether he gets it q
not, he Is the one person in a newspaper
Office who is pitched into alike by prins-
ers and proprietors and by reporters
and editors. All day and all night he il
reading and answering letters and dis
patches, ordering special accounts of
certain things which occur in various
parts of the universe, declining to 10
ceive accounts Of certain other happen
ings, skimming through proofs, giving
orders to subordinates, comforting with
visitors who range all the way from tho
man who has been hauled up the day be-
fore Ia a police court for drunkenness
and thinks he has grievance against
the paper for publishing the fact, to the
influential politician who has an editorial
suggestion to make. A man who per
forms such duties as these, It will be
seen, must be the possessor Of an alert
mind and untiring physique, Of the
faculty of forming his judgment in
Simultaneously, and Of that degree Of
application which viii enable him to
stick to his desk from morning to night,
and almost from night to morning,
without any material degree Of rest.
Some Of the men I saw together the
other night at Hudnuts Lead this life of
close confinement year in and year out,
and how they stand it is one of the mys-
teries that simply amaze the close OBJ
server of their career.-Leander Richard
son in Boston Herald.