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Page 22
On February 9, 1878, the Herald was issued for the first time from the
new building erected by its proprietors at No. 255 Washington Street.
This structure has a lofty and ornate front of gray granite with
trimmings of red granite; it covers an irregular shaped lot, something
in the form of the letter L. From Washington Street, where it has a
width of thirty-one feet nine inches, it extends back one hundred and
seventy-nine feet, and from the rear a wing runs northward to Williams
Court forty feet. This wing was originally twenty-five feet wide on the
court; but in 1882 an adjoining lot, formerly occupied by the old Herald
Building, was purchased and built upon, increasing the width of the wing
and its frontage on the court to eighty-five feet. The structure forms
one of the finest and most convenient newspaper-offices in the country.
In the basement are the pressroom, where at the present time six Bullock
perfecting-presses (two with folders attached) are run by two
45-horse-power engines; the stereotype-room, where the latest
improvements in machinery have enabled the casting, finishing, and
placing on the press of two plates in less than eight minutes after the
receipt of a "form"; the two dynamos and the engine running them, which
supply the electricity for the incandescent lights with which every room
in the building is illuminated; and the storage-room for paper and other
supplies. On the first floor are the business-office, a very handsome
and spacious apartment facing Washington Street, and finished in
mahogany, rare marbles, and brasswork; the delivery and mailing rooms,
whence the editions are sent out for distribution at the Williams-court
door. On the second floor are the reception-room, the library, and the
apartments of the editor-in-chief, managing editor, and department
editors. On the third floor are the general manager's office and the
rooms of the news and city editors and the reporters. The entire fourth
floor is used as a composing-room, where stand "frames" for ninety-six
compositors; the foreman and his assistants have each a private office,
and a private room is assigned to the proofreaders. All the editors' and
reporters' rooms are spacious, well lighted, and admirably ventilated;
they are finished in native woods, varnished, and are handsomely
furnished. Electric call-bells, speaking-tubes, and pneumatic-tubes
furnish means of communication with all the departments, and no expense
has been spared in supplying every convenience for facilitating work and
the comfort of the employees.
With increased facilities came continued prosperity. The business
depression in 1877 affected the circulation of the Herald, as it did
that of every newspaper in the country, and the circulation that year
was not so large as during the year previous; still, the daily average
was one hundred and three thousand copies.
The array of men employed in the various departments of the Herald at
the present time would astonish the founders of the paper. In 1846 the
editorial and reportorial staff consisted of two men; now it comprises
seventy-seven. Six compositors were employed then; now there are one
hundred and forty-seven. One pressman and an assistant easily printed
the Herald, and another daily paper as well, in those days, upon one
small handpress; now forty men find constant employment in attending the
engines and the six latest improved perfecting-presses required to issue
the editions on time. The business department was then conducted with
ease by one man, who generally found time to attend to the mailing and
sale of papers; now twenty-one persons have plenty to do in the
counting-room, and the delivery-room engages the services of twenty.
Then stereotyping the forms of a daily newspaper was an unheard-of
proceeding; now fourteen men are employed in the Herald's foundery. The
salaries and bills for composition aggregated scarcely one hundred and
fifty dollars a week then; now the weekly composition bill averages over
three thousand dollars, and the payroll of the other departments reaches
three thousand dollars every week, and frequently exceeds that sum. Then
the Herald depended for outside news upon the meagre dispatches of
telegraph agencies in New York (the Associated Press system was not
inaugurated until 1848-49, and New England papers were not admitted to
its privileges until some years later), and such occasional
correspondence as its friends in this and other States sent in free of
charge. Now it not only receives the full dispatches of the Associated
Press, but has news bureaus of its own in London, Paris, New York, and
Washington, and special correspondents in every city of any considerable
size throughout the country. All these are in constant communication
with the office and are instructed to use the telegraph without stint
when the occasion demands. The Herald has grown from a little four-paged
sheet, nine by fourteen inches in dimensions, to such an extent that
daily supplements are required to do justice to readers as well as
advertisers, and it is necessary to print an eight-paged edition as
often as four times a week during the busy season of the year.
The Herald has achieved a great success; it has broadened from year to
year since the present proprietors assumed control. It has been their
steadily followed purpose gradually to elevate the tone of their paper,
till it should reach the highest level of American journalism. They have
done this, and, at the same time, they have retained their enormous
constituency. The wonderful educating power of a great newspaper cannot
easily be overestimated. It is the popular university to which thousands
upon thousands of readers resort daily for intelligent comment on the
events of the world--the great wars, the suggestions of science, the
achievements of the engineers, home and foreign politics, etc. That such
a great newspaper as the Herald, wherein the elucidating comment is kept
up from day to day by cultivated writers trained in journalism, must
perform many of the functions of a university is clear. The news columns
of the Herald are a perfect mirror of the great world's busy life. The
ocean-cable is employed to an extent which would have seemed recklessly
extravagant ten years ago. It has its news bureaus in the great capitals
of civilization; its roving correspondents may be found, at the date of
this writing, exploring the Panama Canal, the interior of Mexico,
studying the railway system of Great Britain, investigating Mormon
homelife, scouring the vast level stretches of Dakota, traversing the
great Central States of the Union for presidential "pointers," making a
tour of the Southern States to secure trustworthy data as to the
progress achieved in education there, and journeying along the coast of
hundred-harbored Maine for the latest information as to the growth of
the newer summer resorts in that picturesque region. In large and quiet
rooms in the home office a force of copy-readers is preparing the
correspondence from all over the world for the compositors; at the news
desks trained men are working day and night over telegrams flashed from
far and near, eliminating useless words, punctuating, putting on
"heads," and otherwise dressing copy for the typesetters. The enormous
amount of detail work in a great paper is not easily to be conveyed to
the non-professional reader. From the managing editor, whose brain is
employed in inventing new ideas for his subordinates to carry into
execution, to that very important functionary, the proof-reader, who
corrects the errors of the types, there is a distracting amount of
detail work performed every day. The Herald is managed with very little
friction; the great machine runs as if oiled. With an abundance of
capital, an ungrudging expenditure of money in the pursuit of news, a
great working-force well disciplined and systematized, it goes on
weekday after weekday, turning out nine editions daily, and on Sundays
giving to the public sixteen closely-crowded pages, an intellectual
bill-of-fare from which all may select according to individual
preference.
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