Bismarck weekly tribune. [volume] (Bismarck, Dakota [N.D.]) 1884-1943, 1890-02-21
\ NEWSPAPER IN THE ROCKIES.
How an Enterprising Business Manager
Got His Specials for Nothing.

How an Enterprising Business Manager
Got His Specials for Nothing.
In the winter Of 1ssIs5 I was managing
editor, city editor and the entire reportorial
corps of a little daily paper in a Colorado
mining town. We also had three printers, a
business manager and an Office boy, who act
ed as mailing clerk and carrier. The business
manager filed in his leisure time running q
cattle ranch and a coal mine.
The town had a "boom'' a year or two be-
fore, but the "boom" was gone and the place
was left with two daily newspapers and hard
~ business for one weekly. 1t was hard sled,
ding. Associated Press dispatches were out
OF the question. We had to depend upon the
Denver papers, which reached us the same
evening, for our telegraphic news. Our read
ems didn't like this, Of course, but it was the
best we could do, and as we were all holding
on like grim death for the return of the
"boom," which was always six months ahead
Of us, nobody cared to say too much.
But occasionally the trains got showed up
on the Pass for a week or more, and then we
were in a box. IN one of these occasions we
hadn't had a mail for four days, and things
were looking blue. There wasn't any local
news to speak of. The business manager sug-
gesteda chapter from the Bible with a sscare'
head. He thought it would be news out there.
and I guess he was right.
The town had gas and water works and q
Dig hotel as reminders Of its departed boom,
and it also had a telephone line which con-
nected with another little town, thirty miles
further up in the mountains, on a branch of
the same railroad. The telephone in the sta
ton thirty miles away was connected every
night with the one in our Office before the
central Office closed, so that in case of an &C.
cident in the mines we could get the news.
Several times, while using this telephone, I
had noticed that, late at night when all was
still, the clicking of the telegraph instrument
in the station up in the mountains could be
distinctly heard over the wire. This suggested
an idea. The railroad wire was used as a.
news wire late at night. If we had anybody
with an ear acute enough to read that faint
ticking in the telephone instrument we could
learn what was going on over the wires. The
business manager had been an operator, and
a good one, back in the States. He tried the
instrument and found that the scheme would
work. The next morning we had a column
Of specials" including two or three items of
Washington news which were of special in
terest just then, as every second man in the
town was a candidate for some Office under
the incoming administration.
The editor of the rival paper rushed to the
telegraph Office to inquire what it meant. He
was told that we had received nothing over
the wire. With the train showed up on top
of the pass talking" from the Denver papers
was out of the question. Yet there were the
dispatches, and Enthusiastically genuine, too.
The wires had been tapped, that was certain,
but where, when, how? The railroad people
ordered an investigation, but discovered
nothing. Nobody thought of the clicking
instrument in the closed railroad station
thirty miles away and the marvellous carry
ing power of the telephone in that clear, still
mountain air.
Our brother editor on the rival sheet
thought it was a dead cold fake" but he
was afraid to say too much about it, as he
had run out Of paper and we had him at our
mercy, at least until a train got in. OF
course the secret was jealousy guarded in
the office, but the ~''specials' were kept up
until the train got through. Then we quit.
The business manager was a conscientious
man, and didn't believe in stealing news when
it could be obtained in any other way. Be-
sides, he objected to do the work.-M. G. M.
in New York World.