Iron County register. [volume] (Ironton, Iron County, Mo.) 1867-1965, 1916-01-27

entire business office force of the newspaper
prisoners behind their counters. The intruders
were threatening to shoot anybody who ttempte
to leave. Woolley had no gun. He entered the
office and proceeded to address some remarks
made up Of words ordinarily considered Of the
fighting kind to the armed intruders.
Woolley reached for a telephone, took it off the
receiver and was laughed at by the gunner, who
told him that they had cut the wire. Woolley
stood there with the receiver in his hand for q
minute while red-hot verbiage was exchanged.
Then Woolley walked straight by the two armed
men and went out Of the door, and neither one
cared or dared to interfere with him.
Later it developed that while the receiver was
off, although the wire had been cut, the chief
editor of the paper at his home had taken off
his own receiver to call up the Office, and found
he could not get it. But as only one wire was
severed he heard a large part of the converse
tion in the office by means of the uncut wire
connected with the office telephone. What he
heard afterwards was used in evidence, for
court proceedings were brought.
Now, it is just here that an ordinary newspaper
man would have become disguised with the pro-
fession which he was trying to follow and would
have thought that the whole world was out Of
joint. The mayor of the town and his son were
editors of a rival newspaper. This rival stood,
of course, for the municipal ring, and it was
SAAhoo WhANA aPPSNAO0 80 ~ A0IAh VNASA AAA
caused the other editor, Mr.. Woolley's chief, to
put the lie in print. While things seemingly were
still at white heat between the two camps the
mayor and his rival editor, whom he was ready
to shoot, or be shot by, made up their differences,
combined the two papers, and thus Woolley, who
had dared everything for his chief, was forced
out, and in the parlance Of the street, was left
to hold the bag" In other words, Bob Woolley
stood for right and principle and then lost his
job.
There was a celebrated law case in Kentucky
that attracted worldwide attention. After the
municipal ring episode and Mr.. Woolley had lost
his place as managing editor, he became a re.
porter and he handled this case. There came
down from Chicago at this time two newspaper
men who since have become widely kncwn-Eu-
gene Bertrand, now of the New York Herald, and
William e. Lewis, the editor of the New York
Telegraph. They had been sent down from Chi
cago to work on the matter Woolley had in hand,
and they became acquainted with him. They
found out a lot of things about him which ap-
pealed to their newspaper sense. They also dis
covered that he was fond of American sports.
They went back to Chicago and a short time
thereafter Woolley, who knew nothing about their
interest in him., received an offer from the Chi
cago Tribune to become a reporter in the sport
ing department of that paper. He went to Chi.
cago, and it was not long before he became the
sporting editor Of the newspaper whose staff he
Joined.
From Chicago the present director of the mint
went to New York, and for a long time was EN-
ployed on the New York World. A little later, as
somebody else has put it, che yielded to the temp
tation of a beautiful fruit plantation in Texas.
The fruit was not altogether golden, as far as the
proceeds from the sale Of the crops were con-
cerned, and Mr.. Wooley went back into the news
paper profession.