Newspaper Writing and Editing

by Willard Grosvenor Bleyer

5. What are the faults in the following story, and how can you correct them?

Charles Johnson of 641 Washington Avenue, Jersey City, who is employed as a bookkeeper by the Harrison Felt Company in the company’s Mill No. 3, 16 Erie Street, started out from the factory yesterday morning to draw the money for the weekly payroll, following his custom. An associate of Johnson who usually made the trip to the bank with him was ill, and in his absence the bookkeeper was accompanied by Edward Wiley of 412 Oak Place, Jersey City, the 19-year-old son of the manager of the factory, who is also an employe of the establishment.

The man and the youth, carrying a small satchel, went first to the New York County Bank, Fourteenth Street and Eighth Avenue. A part of the pay roll was drawn out there, and then they went to the Gansevoort Branch of the Security Bank, Fourteenth Street and Ninth Avenue, where were withdrawn the remaining funds needed to make up the weekly wages.

Ordinarily, the weekly payroll of the Erie Street mill reaches a total of $3,000 to $3,500, but at the Christmas holidays a part of the employes had been paid off in advance. As a result, Johnson and Wiley drew from the two banks, instead of the usual amount, just $1,194, in currency and specie of small denomination.

They proceeded west on Fourteenth Street one block to Hudson Street, and south on Hudson Street four blocks to Abingdon Square. Here they crossed the street from east to west, and, going two blocks further, turned into Erie, rounding the corner where stands the saloon of Schmidt Brothers. Scarcely a block away in the same street is the factory of the Harrison Felt Company.

Jutting out on the north side of Erie Street from Schmidt Brothers’ saloon is a glass vestibule, and about ten feet to the[Pg 122] west of it is an iron railing fronting a five-story brown stone apartment house. The railing and the vestibule form something like a retreat from the sidewalk. As Johnson and Wiley neared this spot they saw two men standing in the space between the railing and the vestibule, but took no especial notice of them as they walked along, each holding to the handle of the satchel, Johnson on the outside and Wiley next to the building.

All of a sudden the two men who had been standing in the inclosure, drawing blackjacks from their pockets, pounced down upon the pay roll messengers. The foremost man made for Wiley first, got a wrestler’s hold around his neck and sent him whirling to the pavement as the bandit struck vigorously at his head. At almost the same instant Johnson was attacked by the second robber, who sank his fingers into the bookkeeper’s throat, and hurled him to the sidewalk. The satchel remained in the hands of Wiley.

The bookkeeper and his companion fought valiantly, but Johnson was quickly overcome by the short, heavily built man, while Wiley, still clutching the handle of the satchel, was rolled over the edge of the sidewalk by his assailant. Wiley was still holding to his satchel and trying to keep it from the grasp of his assailant, when a third man, wearing a gray overcoat, ran over from the south side of the street and gave him a violent kick on the arm, releasing his grip on the satchel. The man in the gray overcoat snatched it up and darted off west on Erie Street to Greenwich Street, followed closely by the first two assailants and a fourth man, who had been observed standing on the south side of Erie Street. Johnson and Wiley, regaining their feet, started in pursuit of the fleeing men, both yelling, “Stop thief!”

The man in the gray overcoat, carrying the satchel, turned north into Greenwich Street with another of the bandits close at his heels. The other two, according to confused statements made by the pay roll messengers, turned south into Greenwich Street. The first two men leaped into a black five-passenger automobile waiting just around the corner in front of Pietro Gatti’s barber shop, 551 Greenwich Street. They were whisked away at full speed just as Johnson and Wiley turned into Greenwich Street. They saw the fleeing automobile, several blocks away, swing into Gansevoort Street. The second pair jumped into an automobile waiting in Greenwich Street, south of Erie Street, which started off also at top speed.

Meanwhile a large crowd had collected, but none of those who were in the vicinity in time to see the struggle would venture to give any assistance, because, as several of them afterward said, they thought it was an affair between gangmen, and discretion forbade their interference.