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Page 25
"Shall I put in that about Mr. Potter and the new line?" he called
to Mr. Emberg.
"No, I'll have Harvey attend to that part. You just tell of the
interview in regard to supporting Reilly. Make it a good story."
Larry did his best, and gave a graphic picture of the leader's
headquarters, without touching on how he had come to get the
information which so many other papers and reporters were anxiously
waiting for.
"Here, Tommy!" called the city editor to one of the copy boys, which
position Larry used to fill, "bring me Mr. Dexter's stuff, page by
page, as fast as he writes it. I'll get it upstairs and fix up a
head for it."
Larry smiled to hear Mr. Emberg call him "Mr. Dexter," but, no
matter how familiar an editor may become with his reporters, he
gives even the youngest the title of mister when speaking of him to
the copy boys.
Larry finished the first page of his story, pulled it from the
typewriter and handed it to Tommy, who rushed with it to Mr.
Emberg's desk. The editor glanced over it, made one or two
corrections, changed the wording a bit, and handed it back to Tommy,
who hurried with it to the pneumatic tube, in which it was shot
upstairs to the composing room.
There it was taken from the metal carrier that dropped from the
tube on the desk of the man in charge of distributing the various
pieces of copy to the compositors. This man put a mysterious-looking
blue mark on the first page of Larry's story. This was to identify
it later, and to make sure that all the succeeding pages would be
kept together.
Then the sheet was handed to the first of a long line of
compositors, who were standing in front of the desk of the
"copy-cutter," as he is called. It was close to the hour for the
first edition to go to press, and every one was in a hurry.
The compositor fairly ran to his type-setting machine and began to
operate the keys, which were arranged like those on a very large
typewriter. He did not strike them, as one does who operates a
typewriter, but gently touched them. As he pressed each finger down
the least bit there was a click, and from the rack above the machine
there tumbled down a small piece of brass, called a "matrix." This
contained on one edge a depression that corresponded to a letter.
In a short while enough matrixes had fallen into place to make a
complete line, just the width of one of the columns of the _Leader_.
The compositor looked at the row of matrixes as they were, arranged
before him, read it (no easy task to the uninitiated), took out a
wrong letter and inserted a right one, and then pressed down a
lever.
This lever operated the lead-casting machine at the back. A plunger
was shoved down into a pot of melted lead, kept molten by means of
a gas flame. A small quantity of lead was forced up against the line
of matrixes, which automatically moved in a position to receive it.
The lead was held there an instant to harden, then another lever
automatically removed the solid line of type from its place in front
of the matrixes, a long arm swooped down, took the brass pieces and
returned them to an endless screw arrangement which distributed
them, each one to its proper place, in the series of chutes that
held hundreds of others.
Everything was done automatically after the compositor had touched
the keys and then the lever, so that he was almost finished with the
second line of the story by the time the matrixes of the first were
being returned to their slots by the machine, which seemed almost
human.
Thus Larry's story was set up. In all, five men worked at putting it
into type, and finally the five sections were collected together on
a "galley" or long narrow brass pan. A proof was taken and rushed
down to Mr. Emberg so that he might see it was all right, but by
this time, some typographical errors in the story having been
corrected, men were placing it in the "form" or steel frame which
holds enough type to make a page of the paper. This was soon in
readiness for the stereotyping department.
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