"We do not want descriptive writing," was the warning which the
manager of the great syndicate was always flashing to its
correspondents. "We do not pay you to send us pen-pictures or prose
poems. We want the facts, all the facts, and nothing but the facts."
And so, when at a presidential convention a theatrical speaker sat
down after calling James G. Blaine "a plumed knight," each of the
"special" correspondents present wrote two columns in an effort to
describe how the people who heard the speech behaved in consequence,
but the Consolidated Press man telegraphed, "At the conclusion of
these remarks the cheering lasted sixteen minutes."
No event of news value was too insignificant to escape the
watchfulness of the Consolidated Press, none so great that it could
not handle it from its inception up to the moment when it ceased to
be quoted in the news-market of the world. Each night, from thousands
of spots all over the surface of the globe, it received thousands of
facts, of cold, accomplished facts. It knew that a tidal wave had
swept through China, a cabinet had changed in Chili, in Texas an
express train had been held up and robbed, "Spike" Kennedy had
defeated the "Dutchman" in New Orleans, the Oregon had coaled outside
of Rio Janeiro Harbor, the Cape Verde fleet had been seen at anchor
off Cadiz; it had been located in the harbor of San Juan, Porto Rico;
it had been sighted steaming slowly past Fortress Monroe; and the
Navy Department reported that the St.
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