“oh, you did!” he laughed. “well, you may be right at that. hang around. you may get something. now i’ll tell you something: this national democratic convention will open in june. they’ll have to take on a few new men here then. i can’t see why they shouldn’t give you a chance as well as anybody else. but it’s a hell of a business to be wanting to get into,” he added.
he began taking off his coat and waistcoat, rolling up his sleeves, sharpening his blue pencils and taking up stacks of copy. the while i merely stared at him. every now and then he would look at me through his round glasses as though i were some strange animal. i grew restless and went out. but after that he greeted me each day in a friendly way, and because he seemed inclined to talk i stayed and talked with him.
what it was that finally drew us together in a minor bond of friendship i have never been able to discover. i am sure he considered me of little intellectual or reportorial import and yet also i gathered that he liked me a little. he seemed to take a fancy to me from the moment of our first conversation and included me in what i might call the globe family spirit. he was interested in politics, literature, and the newspaper life of chicago. bit by bit he informed me as to the various editors, who were the most successful newspaper men, how some reporters did police, some politics, and some just general news. from him i learned that every paper carried a sporting editor, a society editor, a dramatic editor, a political man. there were managing editors, sunday editors, news editors, city editors, copy-readers and editorial writers, all of whom seemed to me marvelous—men of the very greatest import. and they earned—which was more amazing still—salaries ranging from eighteen to thirty-five and even sixty and seventy dollars a week. from him i learned that this newspaper world was a seething maelstrom in which clever men struggled and fought as elsewhere; that some rose and many fell; that there was a roving element among newspaper men that drifted from city to city, many drinking themselves out of countenance, others settling down somewhere into some fortunate berth. before long he told me that only recently he had been copy-reader on the chicago times but due to what he characterized as “office politics,” a term the meaning of which i in no wise grasped, he had been jockeyed out of his place. he seemed to think that by and large newspaper men while interesting and in some cases able, were tricky and shifty and above all, disturbingly and almost heartlessly inconsiderate of each other. being young and inexperienced this point of view made no impression on me whatsoever. if i thought anything i thought that he must be wrong, or that, at any rate, this heartlessness would never trouble me in any way, being the live and industrious person that i was.
