The color presses were already roaring, shedding streams of printed paper like swift waterfalls, down which shot an endless chain of Mona Lisas--for the Mona Lisa took the whole front page of the "Tribune" colored supplement that week. At the bottom, where the "folder" put the central creases in them, the paper torrents narrowed to a disappearing point, giving the illusion of a subterranean river, vanishing beneath the floor. But the river didn't vanish. It was caught, and measured, and folded, and cut, and counted by machinery, as swift, as eye-defying, as a moving picture; machinery which miraculously converted a cataract into prim piles of Sunday newspapers, which were, in turn, gathered up and rushed away to the mailing room--whither, presently, we followed.
In the mailing room I made the acquaintance of a machine with which, if it had not been so busy, I should have liked to shake hands, and sit down somewhere for a quiet chat. For it was a machine possessed of the Chicago spirit: modest, businesslike, effective, and highly intelligent. I did not interrupt it, but watched it at its work. And this is what it did: It took Sunday papers, one by one, from a great pile which was handed to it every now and then, folded them neatly, wrapped them in manila paper, sealed them up with mucilage, squeezed them, so that the seal would hold, addressed them to out-of-town subscribers and dropped them into a mail sack. There was a man who hovered about, acting as a sort of valet to this highly capable machine, but all he had to do was to bring it more newspapers from time to time, and to take away the mail bags when they were full, or when the machine had finished with all the subscribers in one town, and began on another. Nor did it fail to serve notice of each such change. Every time it started in on a new town it dipped its thumb in some red ink, and made a dab on the wrapper of the first paper, so that its valet--poor human thing--would know enough to furnish a new mail bag. I noted the name to which one red-dabbed paper was addressed: _E. J. Henry, Bosco, Wis._, and I wondered if Mr. Henry had ever wondered what made that florid mark.
It was near midnight then. All Bosco was asleep. Was Mr. Henry dreaming? And however wonderful his dream, could it surpass, in wonder, this gigantic organization which, for a tiny sum, tells him, daily, everything that happens everywhere?