And so it proved, for the Leader was the only paper in New York that had an account of the incident, and nearly all of the later editions of the afternoon sheets had to use the story, copying it from the Leader.
“It was a good beat, and a good story of the outing besides,” said Mr. Emberg, shortly after the last edition had gone to press, for he liked the half-humorous manner in which Larry had written about the sack race and the other sports in which the members of the club had indulged. “You are doing fine work,” he added, at which praise Larry felt much gratified.
Things were slacking up a bit in the office, now that the paper had gone to press for the day, when one of the reporters who was looking over the front page suddenly cried out:
“Here’s a bad mistake in that account of the meeting of the County Republican Committee last night. It says Jones voted for Smith for chairman, and that’s wrong. I was there. The compositor must have made a mistake. It ought to be corrected, or it will make trouble.”
“I’m afraid it’s too late,” remarked Mr. Emberg, as he grabbed a paper to see the error. “The presses are running, and part of the last edition is off. The only way we can do is to have them smash Jones’s name, and blur it so no one can tell what it is. That’s what I’ll do.”
He tore part of the page off, marked out the name to be smashed, and called to Larry, there being no copy boys in the room then:
“Here, Larry, go down in the pressroom, and tell Dunn, the foreman, to smash that name.”
Though Larry had been on the paper some time he had never been in the pressroom. Nor did he know what the operation of smashing a name might mean, but he decided the best thing to do would be to carry the message.
He hurried down to the basement. As soon as he opened the door leading to it, down a steep flight of steps, Larry thought he had gotten into a boiler factory by mistake. The noise was deafening, and the presses were thundering away like some giant machine grinding tons of rocks to atoms.
Half-naked men were running about here and there. In one corner was a furnace full of melted lead for making the stereotype plates. Larry made his way through the maze of wheels, machinery, and presses.