Chamberlin was born in Great Bend, Pennsylvania, March 12, 1866. While he was still a boy he went to Jersey City, where he worked in newspaper offices and became the local correspondent of several newspapers, including the Sun. He came to be known as “Jersey” Chamberlin to the Sun men who did not know how much he detested the nickname. His intimates called him Wilbur, and the office knew him generally as “W. J.”—an easy way of distinguishing him from other Chamberlins and Chamberlains. He lacked Ralph’s rather distinguished personal appearance, but his strong personality, his courage, ability, and industry overshadowed any lack of fashion.
Like Ralph, he was indefatigable. Like his brother, E. O. Chamberlin, he let nothing stop him in the pursuit of news. Like Henry R. Chamberlain, he had the gift of divining rapidly the necessary details of any intricate business with which his assignment dealt. If a bank cashier had gone wrong, “W. J.” was the man to describe how the sinner had manœuvred the theft; to wring from usually unwilling sources the story which appeared in the bank only in figures, but which must appear in the Sun in terms of human life. The world of finance was more dumb then than it is now, for Wall Street had not learned the wisdom of uttering its own pitiless publicity.
Chamberlin had one idiosyncrasy and one hatred. The mental peculiarity was a wish to conceal his own age. Unlike most successful men, he wished to be thought older than he was; and he looked older. He was only thirty-five when he died in Carlsbad, on his way home from China; yet he had packed into that brief life the work of an industrious man of fifty.
His single enmity was directed against cable companies, and he had good reason to dislike them. One day, during the Spanish-American War he boarded the Sun boat, the Kanapaha, and ran to Port Antonio, Jamaica, with an exclusive story. The women clerks in the telegraph office took his despatch and counted the words three times before they would start sending it. They told Chamberlin the cost, about a hundred dollars, which he promptly paid in cash.
Three or four days later he went back to Port Antonio with another important despatch. The cable clerk told him that on his previous visit their count had been one word short.
“That’s all right,” said Chamberlin, and he threw down a shilling to pay for the one word.
“Thank you,” said the lady. “Now we can send the message!”
The cable hoodoo pursued Chamberlin to China. As soon as he arrived in Peking he began sending important news stories by telegraph to Tientsin, where he had left a deposit of three hundred dollars with the cable company that was to forward the messages to New York. After working in Peking for two weeks, he discovered that all his stories were lying in a pigeonhole at Tientsin; not one had been relayed.
A third time an important despatch was held up overnight because it had not been written on a regular telegraph-blank. But Chamberlin’s most bitter grudge against the cable companies was the result of his adding to a message sent to the Sun on Christmas Eve, 1900, the words “Madam Christmas greeting.” This was a short way of saying, “Please call up Mrs. Chamberlin and tell her that I wish her a Merry Christmas.” Under the cable company’s rules nothing could be sent at the special newspaper rate except what was intended for publication. Chamberlin got a despatch from the manager of the cable company as follows:
Your cable Sun New York December 24 words “Madam Christmas greeting” not intended for publication. Please explain.