ABSTRACT
Every man who has to do with newspapers, has occasion to wonder now and then what that intangible thing is that is spoken of as The Associated Press. In the beginning a New York paper made a practice of sending a man down the harbor to intercept vessels arriving from distant ports, with a view of giving the news a little earlier than it would appear in the columns of a competitor. As the advance information so obtained proved to be valuable, the other papers had to do the same thing, but to avoid duplication of service one messenger gave his news to all the others and they divided the cost. By and by papers in other cities wished the service, and were allowed to share in it, paying a reasonable portion of the expense incurred, and then other sorts of news were gathered by the Association, and now all sorts of news is dealt with; the Association has representatives at important—and unimportant—points the world over, and the right to participate is not accorded to every applicant, but has become a privilege worth tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars to the particular journals that have acquired a membership.
