St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1891-10-18
NEWS OF THE BANGING.

~ Il W = III f1EANUlNOs
A great public newspaper like the
GLOBE has more important functions
than to print the details of an execution
which those of its readers who care for
such news may read. But this is one of
its functions; and this journal, alert in
every direction when its energies can
be legitimately eXerted, has made it
principle not to be found tagging, even in
this. Rightly or wrongly, many people
enjoy information about mems bearing
i'll the face of death; and they turn to
the columns where is told the story of
the condemned murderer's last hours,
of his march to the scaffold and of his
physical agony as the moose tightens
about his neck, with a lower grade of
the same sort of qualification with which
other people weep over the deathbed
scenes of the great writer's of fiction, or
strain their ears and eyes that they may
not miss line or movement of the
tragic hero whom an adverse fate pros
trates on the stage. Why mankind
should find pleasure in things of this
sort is one of the great mysteries of hu-
man nature which philosophers have
debated ever sinca the time when
SOCRATES undertook to prove that
there was no essential difference be-
tween a comedy and tragedy.
1t is a newspapers place not to solve
such problems, but. knowing the CON-
plexion Of mems minds, to afford them
what they demand, provided it is con-
sistent with proper consideration for
the laws of decency and morality. This
the GLOBE endeaYorS to do, and its
large and growing circulation is proof
of the success it is attaining. When it
appeared that executive clemency would
not be exercised on behalf of WILLIAM
ROSE, condemned to die for the muir
der of MOSES LUFKIN, the GLOBE un-
dertook to let the public know the news
of his taking off. 1t assigned the duty
to skilled and yigiiant employe, who
on the scene sent the completeSt, the
promptest and the most accurate re-
ports obtainable of what was doing by
the officers of the law to carry out the
laws decree. Peculiar difficulties sur
round such work, because the existing
statutes forbid the presence of reporters
at the execution, and they have to de-
pend on the information they can OBJ
tain from others, who attend it not to
tell, but to act. But this paper in this
case used every legitimate means avail
able, that none of its contemporaries
should get the better of it.
In the cold gray of Friday morning
the GLOBES representative was wait
ing about the death chamber of WILL
D.- Il, G,I-.
Falls, and, when the sounds of the fall
ing weights told him that the deed was
done, with marvellous celebrity he hur-
ried to the telegraph Office and flashed
the news over the wires to this Office.
1t was received long before the other
papers knew of it at all, and appeared
as an item of news in the GLOBES first
edition. A little later, when the depu-
ties and other attendants appeared and
recounted the CHASTITY mishap which
had made double hanging necessary,
lie again, long in advance of his compet-
itorS, supplemented the information he
had already sent. and by O'Clock
the GLOBE had ready and on sale a
second edition, announcing these I'M
portant additional tidings. Such enter
prise and celebrity are inconceivable to
journals of the drowsy temperament
and parsimonious methods of the Pho
neer Press and Minneapolis Tribune.
Clippings from the current magazines,
frightened by new titles, are the meas
ure of their conception of an EDITORS
work; and their kilograms, even if: they
are day or two late, are as accurate
as a careful reading Of the Chicago
papers and pair of shears can make
them. A dash for the telegraph Office
worthy of young GALLAGHER, first
edition announcing the fact, second
edition giving the details, and all within
an hour. are achievements altogether
beyond their power to understand. The
GLOBE is and proposes to be first-frst
with the news of the hanging as we'll
as first with everything else.