The daily morning journal and courier., 1905-01-14
THE MILLIoNkIREs SON NOT
 SUCCESS AS A REPORTER.

FFE W
 SUCCESS AS A REPORTER.
 Last summer. while was clubbing around the home office" remarked correspondent of a San Francisco newspaper. "a clean looking young fel- low walked into the city editors room and braced him for some work. The young chap was the scapegrace son of an Atlantic seaboard million aire who had gone broke in endeavor- | ing to buck aegainst his dads ideas as to what ought to be what. When he found himself that way he took it into his head that, as the old gentleman back east wasn't doing any digging in | response to his appeals by wire, he | ought to embark on the wide sea of | journalism < | ''So he presented himself to the city editor of the paper that pays my | wages. The city editor looked the young fellow over. He'd heard about | the Atlantic seaboard millionaire, of | course. and the young chap looked sort of likely, in his way. He had been through one of the big universities, and | the city editor figured that the news paper business might be drummed into him after a while,
 | "So he took the young fellow on. The university educated son of the | millionaire happened to b alone of all the reporters in the city room when | the city editor came across a half-stick item, stating that the body of very lovely young woman of evident refine- ment, had been taken from the Bay of San Francisco that afternoon, and
 that the body was at the morgle. | .'The city editor saw q story in that, of course, but he had all of his men out on assignments, and so he handed the clipping to the new young man who thought he'd like to have q
 whack at journalism and told him to hustle out and get the story.
 t''This gives you a chance, said the I city editor iii a kindly way, to the son of the eastern millionaire. It looks as if it ought to assay out into l spread yarn, Dig up all the details and | get me good story, and it won't hurt | you any around here if you make good on it.,
 < .t'The young fellow hiked out. looking | full of business, and he was gone until
 eleven o'clock at night.
 "In the meantime, hours before, the regular police reporter had telephoned
 in to the city editor that there was a big story back of the finding of the young woman's body in the bay. The police reporter added, however, that he himself was up to his ears in a l highbnders' murder story down in Chi natown, and he inquired of the city ed- itor if he had sent a man out on the
 morgue case. The city editor replied
 that he had. and the city editor al
 ready saw, in his minds eye, the huge
 bankhead on the big story the universl- ty-educated young man was going to I bring in. x
 well, he young Journalist strolled into the city room along about eleven o'clock that night while the city edi-
 tor was Seut for a bite of luncheon.
 and he, sat down and wrote a hundred
 words to the effect that the body of a
 young woman of pleasing aeppearance,
 with many ieweled rings on her fingers, had been piecked up in the bay by some Portuguese fishermen, and that the
 body was reposing on a slab at the
 morgue. af8&#es =!
 "He further set down the fact that a
 pocket4book had been found inside the dead young womans waist, contain Ii ing a number of visiting cards, en- araved with the name of Miss Thus Il and-So, and that there was in tlE
 hocketbooks, in addition an unsealed letter addressed to a prominent young
 cIubman of San Francisco. That's all.
 "The new young man had just fln- . ished writing his little hundred words, when the city editor came in, and sec ing the university-educated youth who had been out on the big story he
 rushed over to his desk and eagerly
 picked up his copy. '
 "The city editor came real close to |, falling down where he stood when he read those hundred words or so. "'Did you go to the dead young wo- mans address on Presidio Hights?" he
 gasped. r.
 "'No, sir, said the journalist hunt ing through his pockets for match to light his collegian's pipe. T thought that so long as I got her name from
 her visiting card that would do.' "The city editor backed up to the water cooler to get drink to moisten his parched throat.
 Did you hunt up the man whose
 name is given in that letter?' he man.
 aged to articulate to the son of the
 eastern millionaire. !,
 No, sir was the reply. I didn't suppose the poor chap was to blame in
 any way, y'know, and so thought
 Tn just two jumps the city editor { reached one of the rion-eollegian repor- ters, who was writing a story of no great importance, and in just twenty two seconds the non-collegian reporter was out on the street in quest of the
 details of one of the most sensational
 suicides that has occurred on the Paci-
 fic coast in years.
 ''The ordinary, everyday reporter
 was back at the office by one o'clock in
 the morning with enough notes scrawl-
 ed on his bunch of copy paper to make
 a first-page, double-leaded, three-ccI-
 umn story, and, it beat all of the other { s5s 8ss