The age-herald., 1901-07-30
Building Caught Fire as Press Started But Machine
 Kept Going
MEN STOOD 10 THEIR POSTS
Business Leaders Pronounce the Num- Der the Best Ever Issued in Bir- mingham-Filied With Inter-
 esting Facts of District.

Reporters for the Age-Herald in mak- ing the rounds of the city yesterday heard nothing but compliments for the anniversary edition issued on Sunday morning.
 Tt was great, the best paper of the kind ever gotten out in Birmingham" Is the way one man put it and this seemed to be the concensus of opinion.
 The editorial and business departments began gathering matter for the edition on July 4. The work was carefully planned and every man assigned to cer- tain duties The task was as carefully mapped out as one would arrange for a trip around the world
 A few days before the paper appeared the advertising matter and the descrip- tive articles on the industrial plants was gotten together and edited. Then the mass of matter was thrown on the me- chanical department This work required The greatest amount of energy. For forty-eight hours the men in the com posing and stereotyping rooms worked night and day. The edition was brought out on time without a hitch and the re- suits the public knows, because the pa- per has been widely read and commented upon
 Not so many years ago a paper of that size was almost unknown. It was too big a proposition for a newspaper plant in a city the size of Birmingham to tac- kle. Something of the magnitude of the job can be conceived when 1t IS figured that one copy of the anniversary edition is just about ten times as large as 0 regular edition of the Age Herald. It required 10000 pounds of white paper or one pound to two copies
 The promptness with which the number was issued is compliment to the Age Heralds mechanical facilities. With it's new press and additional machines the mammoth paper was gotten. out with more ease than a paper half the size could have been printed a few years ago.
 Issued During Fire.
 Just when the tired employees were about to see the fruition of their months work a fire broke cut in the building.
 The Age-Herald building narrowly es- escaped destruction. It was 4sO o'clock and the last twenty plates of the anniver- sary edition had just been put upon the cylinder of the press and the great per fectlng machine had just about started running when the fire alarm was sound ed by newsboys congregated on the sec ond floor
 The rear end of the building was on fire, some of the frame work having caught from the smokestack of the boiler room. The blaze leaped up and was on the scene in a few minutes that end of the roof projecting over the alley was in flames. The fire department was on the scene and in a few minutes and lines of hose were run up to the sec ond story and other lines to the roof
 Bremen were climbing ladders cutting away partitions and parts of the roof and running here and there throughout the building to reach the flames. Yet every man of The Age-Herald mechanical force stood at his post and apparently gave no attention whatever to the fire It was their desire to print the paper in time to catch the early morning malls and the great press was turning them out at the rate of 2O000 an hour.
 The mailing clerks the circulators and the men who rush from The Age-Herald office to the station with push carts filled with mail sacks did not stop a second. Through the lines of firemen they scram- bled with these mall sacks and for thirty minutes there was a perfect stream of boys making their way from the mailing room to catch the six or seven early morning trains.
 While the firemen were extinguishing the flames the press continued to run and