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horses toward this crack. The horses, quite as well acquainted with the range and the crack, swerved away from it, while the boy, riding well out at one side, forced them over toward it, for horses will invariably swing in the opposite direction from a rider on their flank; it seems to be an inborn trait.

Eventually the band reached the edge of the crack, hesitated a moment, then swung to the left with the boy on the outside. There was a great curve in the crack at this point and the boy realized that his one chance was to cut across this curve, crowd the horse he wanted as closely as he could, and take a chance of getting within roping distance. As he rode, he had slipped the rope from his horse's nose, leaving the end tied in a hard knot about the neck close to the horse's head. His pony, crazy with excitement, needed no guiding rein; he knew what was expected of him. Then, when he had crowded his quarry to the last inch his pony could gain, the boy launched his rope in the air. The loop dropped straight over Steeldust's outstretched head and with a quick jerk he pulled it tight before it slipped back to the animal's shoulders.

The boy knew that the instant the gray felt the pull of the rope about his neck, if he had not forgotten his early training, he would in all probability swing round, face his pursuer, and become once more a broken horse.

But he was taking no chances, and as the rope pulled up he leaned forward, slapped his horse on the side of his head with his hat, thus forcing him to swing sharply to the left and away from the gray, and tightened the rope with a sudden jerk which rasped some hair from the pony's neck and jaws but brought the captured one up sharply.

Recalling that fateful day in the corral, with the keen-cutting whip making long welts on his satin sides, Steeldust swung quickly round and came straight up to the other horse with a look of inquiry on his face, as if to ask what on earth all this fuss was about. As the boy slipped from the back of his horse the gray went strong to the end of the rope again, but the other horse stood stock-still, receiving a fearful wrench on his neck. Carefully the boy worked his way along the rope to the now fairly docile animal, stroked him gently on the soft white nose, slipped his hand up along the side of his head and along his neck; meantime, in a voice that could be poured over a waffle, calling him all the flattering names in his boyish vocabulary.

Two hours later he rode into the freighter's camp, the proudest boy in northern Arizona, with Steeldust, the noted outlaw, at one end of his rope, his own saddle pony at the other, and fifty dollars in hard cash in plain sight.

THE EXPERIMENT OF A CHRISTIAN DAILY

BY CHARLES M. SHELDON

AT the close of the year 1899, the Twentieth Kansas Regiment, after its famous record in the Philippines during the Spanish War, was being reviewed on the Topeka State House grounds, and the whole city was out to see it. With a number of friends I happened to be watching the event from the home of the owner of the Topeka Daily Capital.

After the review was over and people had begun to go away, the conversation turned, I do not remember how or why, to that part of the story, In His Steps, in which there is a description of the attempt of a newspaper man to do everything as he believed Jesus would do it in the management of a daily paper.

It was the general opinion expressed by the friends who were discussing the subject that any such attempt was so visionary that it could not be carried out in actual practice. One or two thought it might be possible up to a certain point, but all believed that people were not ready for it, and that whoever tried it would not be able to make it pay financially.

As the discussion went on, everyone present grew more and more interested, until the proprietor of the Capital said to me, in jest, as I supposed, 'How would you like to try the experiment, for one week?'

I answered him in the same vein, saying that it would be interesting. And in reply he said that he was in

I

earnest, and went on to state the terms under which the Topeka Daily Capital might be turned over to me for one week in order that I might carry out my idea of what a Christian daily ought to be.

These terms as finally discussed included the following general agreements, which were carried out almost without change:

The entire paper for one week to be under my direction with the understanding that nothing would be done to jeopardize the property or the future of the paper.

The entire working force of the paper to remain intact, including the mechanical, editorial, reportorial, and office force.

Advertising rates to be on the basis of circulation, but weekly subscriptionrates to be twenty-five cents instead of ten cents, which was the regular city and local rate, in order to cover outside expenses and foreign postage.

The editor's rulings to be accepted in every department, including advertising matter, all editorial and submitted articles; and also in matters of personal conduct which involved such practices as the use of tobacco, drink, and profanity.

'News' was defined as any event worth knowing or telling, always published in the right proportion to its real importance.

All prize fights, scandals, crime, vice,

or human depravity, if published at all, to be defined as evil, and an attempt made in each case to discover the cause, and, if possible, the remedy.

All editorials to be signed by the writers, and all reporters' items to be signed by the reporters in order to ensure reliability, to reward good reporting, and to fix responsibility.

The editor to receive no financial compensation.

The rule to govern all the management of the paper, including the political, social, and financial interests, was to be determined as nearly as possible by the standard of what Jesus would probably do if He were publishing the paper as the owner of it.

II

The time set for the beginning of the experiment was the second week in March, 1900. Before that time, and following the published announcement of the plan, clubs were formed all over the country by churches, young people's societies, and various religious and social organizations, and subscriptions were sent in by the thousand. One church in Ohio sent in a list of nine hundred and twenty names. Subscriptions came from all over Great Britain, from almost every South American republic, from Australia, New Zealand, and Canada. A personal subscription came from Paul Kruger, President of the Boer Republic. The Boer War was going on at the time, but Oom Paul seemed interested in the plan, at least enough to send on twenty-five cents in stamps for the paper. In one day's mail I received subscriptions sent to me personally in over twelve hundred letters and I soon discovered that I needed secretarial help.

Before the month of January, 1900, was over, the force in the Capital

VOL. 134-NO. 5

office had been increased by more than forty persons, and the clerks at the general post office had been increased by the addition of six new carriers and office men. On Monday morning, one week before the experiment on the paper began, the Capital received, in the first mail delivered, 100,000 subscriptions which came from all over the United States and Canada. The total number of subscriptions was 367,000, and that number of copies of the paper was published every day for six days, in addition to a Saturday afternoon edition which took the place of the regular Sunday morning paper.

The size of the paper had to be determined by the mechanical conditions in the Capital office and also by the fact that one man could not possibly pass on every item, including advertising and articles, in a paper exceeding eight pages.

The normal circulation of the Capital up to that week had been 15,000 copies daily. The reserve capacity of the plant made it possible to handle 25,000 copies a day. As the subscriptions came pouring in, newspaper men all over the country were curious to know how the mechanical difficulties could be met in printing 367,000 copies on a press that had never turned out more than 25,000 a day. Innumerable inquiries came in asking about the plan.

The Staats-Zeitung of New York printed 120,000 copies from sets of matrices sent on each day from Topeka. A like number was printed by the Chicago Journal. The remainder of the issue was actually printed on the straight-line Goss press in the Topeka pressroom by running the machine day and night. It was kept swimming in oil and the press foreman, who was and still is one of the finest pressmen in America, overcame apparently insurmountable difficulties, including one

unexpected overflow of a sewer which backed up into the pressroom one night and submerged the press above the rollers.

The paper was sold on Broadway and Wall Street two days after it had appeared in Topeka, and in Chicago one day after. A fourth set of matrices. was sent to London to the Westminster Review and there reproduced and issued as soon as received.

The presswork of the Capital that week was a problem, but it was child's play compared with the mailing out. Twenty-four years ago the mailing system of a daily newspaper was perhaps one of the least efficient of its activities. The only apparatus the Capital had for its 15,000 list of subscribers was the modest hand-machine known as a 'Dick' mailer. It was, of course, out of the question to use this machine for mailing over 360,000 personal subscriptions.

The only way out was the method that we used. A large force of typists, over thirty, made lists of the names in column form, six copies of each, one for each day's paper. These lists were all arranged by states and sections and were expressed to Chicago and New York for the use of the Journal and the Staats-Zeitung in mailing the papers which they printed in their respective plants. All the copies of the paper for subscribers east of Pittsburg in a line running north and south, and in foreign lands, were dispatched from New York. All copies for subscribers between the Alleghenies and the Missouri River were sent out from Chicago. Topeka took care of all local subscriptions west of the Missouri as far as the Pacific Coast. To facilitate the mailing out, the Santa Fe loaned a mailing car from which, as headquarters, the papers were dispatched with comparatively little delay or confusion.

III

In relating my experiences during this week of experiment I am going to mention some things which have never been reported, not even by the crowd of uninvited newspaper correspondents, about forty in all, who came on that week to get a story for their papers. So far as they themselves were concerned, they came largely out of curiosity, but of course they all felt obliged to get something startling and new for their papers. I may as well confess that I did not welcome them, and that I shall always consider that their presence was undesirable and unfair. I was constantly hampered in my attempts to carry out my original plans, since each correspondent wanted special interviews, and each one was sending on to his paper every day some story that contained more imagination and less fact than the most brilliant writer of fiction ever dreamed. For a period of six days, during which I averaged less than three hours' sleep in each twenty-four, there was not an hour of the day that the newspaper correspondents did not try to interfere with my engagements; I was not even allowed to eat and write uninterrupted.

Therefore I may as well say frankly that the Press, as represented by the men and women who were sent on to get a story, did not give me a fair chance to illustrate in my own way the thing I was trying to do; and in looking over the press reports which were made during that week I might be indignant, even after the lapse of a quarter of a century, if they were not so tremendously untrue as to be humorous. One of the commonest reports published by nearly every paper was to the effect that the whole affair was a piece of the most astounding hypocrisy, because I was receiving between $10,000 and $25,000 as my

share of the week's profits! This story and hundreds of others as preposterous were published, and I suppose thousands of readers believed them. 'It was in the paper,' they said. 'It must be true.'

It is true that toward the end of the week the proprietor of the Capital sent to my house by messenger a roll of bills amounting to $1000; but that same messenger took them back to the office at once.

Having spoken my mind concerning the embarrassment and handicap arising from the presence of the newspaper men, I now want to testify to the wonderful helpfulness and loyalty of every person connected with the Capital, from the business manager to the Negro janitors and the youngest cub in the pressroom. They were the most enthusiastic and responsive group of human beings I have ever seen. They were not individuals whom I had trained and taught to carry out my ideas, but they could not have been more eager to make them a success if they had been in training for years. They obeyed every rule posted up, to their own discomfort and even against their own judgment. Every smoker went without his pipe or cigarette while on duty. There were countless occasions for profanity as the men faced unusual and unknown problems, but I do not remember hearing a single swear-word during the entire week, even from the men in the composing and mailing rooms where the tasks were stupendous and involved. In the pressroom, where a press that had never turned off more than 25,000 copies a day was being driven day and night to print 127,000, the foreman and his assistants lived a life of continual anxiety and were under a strain that was nerve-stretching every moment, but if they swore, it was silently; and to some of them it must have been an

experience in suppression that cost them much sweat and anguish of spirit.

The reporters and telegraph men, the city editor who sat up with me all night to see the thing through, the business manager who turned down thousands of dollars' worth of questionable advertisements without an audible murmur, all entered into the week's trial with a whole-hearted and unquestioning faith which was in marked contrast to the attitude of the press representatives, most of whom ridiculed and criticized and sent garbled reports of the week to their papers down East.

I do not wish to seem unfair to the Press as it was at that time, but I have not mentioned any of these things for more than twenty-four years, and I mention them now, not in any spirit of malice, but to state some facts which have never been published about that week. I could have carried out my plans with far greater freedom and happiness if the Press had let me alone. The reports sent out were so misleading that the public never had an opportunity to know what had really been done or what results were finally obtained.

IV

According to the definition of the word 'news' which we had made, the most important news item that came in on the night of March 12, 1900, was a brief notice of the India famine. No paper in the United States had given this great calamity any prominence. It seemed to me to be the most important world-news; therefore, supplementing the meagre Associated Press item with letters which I had received from missionaries, I featured the India famine in the first issue of the Capital, printing it on the first lefthand column on the front page, the

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