Middlebury register. (Middlebury, Vt.) 1886-1937, 1886-06-04
HARD WORKERS OF THE PRESS.
Toilers Of the Day and Night-Men Who
Guide Newspaper Machinery.


Guide Newspaper Machinery.
There is 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."
1t is a small box of a place, not many
feet deep and still fewer feet wide, but it
is full of customers all day long, and it
has good many purchasers clear through
the night. 1t does an enormous business
in surgical instruments and ready-made
medicines, but it derives by far 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"
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 l 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-
naming until the next mornings edi-
ton begins to roll off from the presses,
which clatter and bang away in the SUBJ
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 l
don't believe there is any position in the
world in which a greater quantity of
both labor and unjust criticism exists
than finds its way into the daily life of
these gentlemen who build daily publ
cations. The managing editor of big
newspaper is responsible for all the news
of the day in every part of the world. If
he doesn't get it, and some other news
paper does, he is likely to hear from the
editor-in-c chief, and whether he gets it OF
not, he is the one person in a newspaper
office who is pitched into alike by print
ers and proprietors and by reporters
and editors. All day and all night he is
reading and answering letters and dis
patches, ordering special accounts Of
certain things which occur in variou:
parts of the universe, declining to re
ceive accounts of certain other happen
ings, Swimming through proofs, giving
orders to subordinates, comforting with
visitors who range all the way from the
man who has been hauled up the day be
fore in a police court for drunkenness
and thinks he has a grievance agains
the paper for publishing the fact, to the
influential politician who has an editoria
suggestion to make. A man who per
forms such duties as these, it will b,
seen, must be the possessor of an aler
mind and untiring physique, of TIN
faculty of forming his judgment in
simultaneously, and of that degree o
application which will enable him t.
stick to his desk from morning to night
and almost from night to morning
without any material degree of rest
Some of the men l saw together tn
other night at Hudnut's lead this life o
close confinement year in and year out
and how they stand it is one of the mys
teries that simply amaze the close oh
server of their career.-Leander Richard
son in Boston Herald.