ound to affect all newspaperdom profoundly. How
was the newspaper to cope with the situation and make use of the news
that was coming in and would be coming in more and more over the wires?

For one thing, the newspapers needed better printing machinery. The
application of steam, or any mechanical power, to printing in America
was only begun. It had been introduced by Robert Hoe in the very years
when Morse was struggling to perfect the telegraph. Before that time
newspapers were printed in the United States, on presses operated as
Franklin's press had been operated, by hand. The New York Sun, the
pioneer of cheap modern newspapers, was printed by hand in 1833, and
four hundred impressions an hour was the highest speed of one press.
There had been, it is true, some improvements over Franklin's printing
press. The Columbian press of George Clymer of Philadelphia, invented
in 1816, was a step forward. The Washington press, patented in 1829 by
Samuel Rust of New York, was another step forward. Then had come Robert
Hoe's double-cylinder, steamdriven printing press. But a swifter machine
was wanted. And so in 1845 Richard March Hoe, a son of Robert Hoe,
invented the revolving or rotary press, on the principle of which larger
and larger machines have been built--machines so complex and wonderful
that they baffle description; which take in reels of white paper and
turn out great newspapers complete, folded and counted, at the rate of
a hundred thousand copies an hour. American printing machines are in use
today the world over. The London Times is printed on American machines.

Hundreds of new inventions and improvements on old inventions followed
hard on the growth of the newspaper, until it seemed that the last word
had been spoken. The newspapers had the wonderful Hoe presses; they
had cheap paper; they had excellent type, cast by machinery; they had a
satisfactory process of multiplying forms of type by stereotyping; and
at length came a new process of making pictures by photo-engraving,
supplanting the old-fashioned process of engraving on wood. Meanwhile,
however, in one important department of the work, the newspapers had
made no advance whatever. The newspapers of New York in the year 1885,
and later, set up their type by the same method that Benjamin Franklin
used to set up the type for The Pennsylvania Gazette. The compositor
stood or sat at his "case," with his "copy" before him, and picked the
type up letter by lett