Just at this time a man whose name I have forgotten—Leland, I think—the Washington correspondent of the St. Louis _Globe-Democrat_, came to Chicago to report the preliminary preparations for the great World’s Fair which was to open the following spring. Already the construction of a number of great buildings in Jackson Park had been begun, and the newspapers throughout the country were on the alert as to its progress. Leland, as I may as well call him, a cool, capable observer and writer, was an old friend of McEnnis. McEnnis introduced me to him and made an impassioned plea in my behalf for an opportunity for me to do some writing for the _Globe-Democrat_ in St. Louis under his direction. The idea was to get this man to allow me to do some World’s Fair work for him, on the side, in addition to my work on the _Globe_, and then later to persuade Joseph B. McCullagh of the former paper to make a place for me in St. Louis.
“As you see,” he said when he introduced me, “he’s a mere boy without any experience, but he has the makings of a first-rate newspaper man. I’m sure of it. Now, Henry, as a favor to me, I want you to help him. You’re close to Mac” (Joseph B. McCullagh, editor-in-chief of the St. Louis _Globe-Democrat_), “and he’s just the man this boy ought to go to to get his training. Dreiser has just completed a fine piece of journalistic work for me. He’s closed up the fake auction shops here, and I want to reward him. He only gets fifteen a week here, and I can’t do anything for him in Chicago just now. You write and ask Mac to take him on down there, and I’ll write also and tell him how I feel about it.”
The upshot of this was that I was immediately taken into the favor of Mr. Leland, given some easy gossip writing to do, which netted me sixteen dollars the week for three weeks in addition to the fifteen I earned on the _Globe_. At the end of that time, some correspondence having ensued between the editor of the _Globe-Democrat_ and his two Chicago admirers, I one day received a telegram which read:
“You may have reportorial position on this paper at twenty dollars a week, beginning next Monday. Wire reply.”
I stood in the dusty little _Globe_ office and stared at this, wondering what so great an opportunity portended. Only six months before I had been jobless and hanging about this back door; here I was tonight with as much as fifty dollars in my pocket, a suit of good clothes on my back, good shoes, a good hat and overcoat. I had learned how to write and was already classed here as a star reporter. I felt as though life were going to do wonderful and beautiful things for me. I thought of Alice, that now I should have to leave her and this familiar and now comfortable Chicago atmosphere, and then I went over to McEnnis to ask him what I ought to do.