Americus times-recorder. [volume] (Americus, Ga.) 1891-current, 1902-01-29
WORKOUT NEWSPAPER MEN.

We doubt if the reading public has
any conception of the vast amount of
labor involved in the publication of the
daily newspaper, especially on the part
of those who in editorial and reporto-
rial sanctums are constantly at work
exhausting both mind and body in the
wearisome occupation of acquainting
the world of readers with the latest de-
veIopments of the day.
As the business man chances hurri-
eddy over the columns of the morning
newspaper to see what has happened IN
the world of business since he went to
sleep on the evening before, he seldom
stops to think of the sleepless hours
which the men on duty in the news
paper office have spent in order that he
may get the information which he de-
YOURS with such an eager appetite. He
knows nothing of the wear and tear of
newspaper work; nothing of the dull
feeling of monotony which Expresses
The brain of the WORKOUT editor as he
grinds away at his desk, turning out
page after page of copy; nothing of the
ceaseless activity entailed upon the
ubiquitous reporter as he goes upon
his daily round of news gathering; but
whether he knows it or not, the fact
remains that back of the printed sheet
lies an appalling amount of hard work,
whose record for the day is written in
exhausted nerve force and in sheer
physical and mental WEAKNESS.
On account of the heavy pressure
under which the average newspaper
man is required to work III order to
meet the demands of twentieth century
journalism there are few constitutions
which are able to stand the severe tax
which is put upon them, and the con-
sequence is that the world today is full
of broken down newspaper men, who
have put the best they had to give of
blood and brain into newspaper work,
only to fall under the stress of the bur-
den. Why has not some phllanthropic
millionaire endowed an institution for
superannuated newspaper men? We
have been almost as free as the wind
with our charities during the past few
years, yet strange to say the eyes of
philanthropy have failed to rest upon
this deserving army of men.
However, We are glad to see that
Henry Watterson has taken up the
editorial cudgel and is making one Of
his characteristic pleas for them. Writ
ing in The Louisville CourIer-J oarnal
of the stress of adverse fortune which
has overtaken many of the knights If
the pan throughout the country, msL
ing them the proper objects of philal
thropic consideration, Colonel Waite =
son says:
We speak in the name of those sol
diers of the day and night whose life
from the cradle 10 the grave is one long
epic-One grear, heroic struggle with
destiny; that destiny whose handspring
is glory; that destiny which began in
the love of letters and adventure is to
end only in victory or the poor house;
that destiny which, for all It's pitfalls of
one sort or another-of drink too often
of the perlls of the town IN every
shape-has vouchsafed some of them q
glimse of the nobility of truth TO:
truths sake, along with little feet
ing taste of fame-for many of them
the sublime, all-satisfying emotion of
duty brsvely done, for all of them the
travail of the subaltern-that destiny
which unlike the service of the army
and the navy, carries little promotion
and no pension-in a word, the work
ing boys on the force, the silent singers
of the press, who, beginning at IS, to
be no longer efficient at so, unless along
the route they have secured some safe
retreat or quiet corner, where they may
work out their dependency the while
before the final summons that equalizes
us all comes to take them home.
This ringing appeal from the eloquent
editor of The Louisville Courier-J our
nal should not be lost upon those for
whose ears 1t is specially intended, for
If there is any class of men IN this
country deserving of the good will of
the public it Is the class of men for
whom Colonel Watterson speaks. They
have served the public we'll and the
public cannot be too thoughtful of
them. Atlanta Constitution.