LORD ROSEBERY'S CHESTERFIELD SPEECH.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume XLII, Issue 7379, 4 February 1902, Page 4

LORD ROSEBERY'S CHESTERFIELD SPEECH.

English files to hand \>y the last mail relate the extraordinary interest that was taken in Lord Uosebery's Chesterfield speech. There were more than 60 reporters present, and there was hardly a daily paper in the country which had not ordered or otherwise arranged for a verbatim report. Some weeks ago circulars had been sent out by. the Press Association and the Central News, the two great home news-supplying agencies, to their clients, requesting their instructions as to the length of the report they desired, and with very few exceptions every daily paper which did" not intend to send down their own reporters wanted to have every word that his Lordship said in their morning's issue ; while Eome of those who had their own men on the spot ordered ona or other of the agencies' supplies in case of accident. Eaoh aganoy had at least five or six men, and most of the principal morning paperd were represented by two jot three inon. The reporters, as on o'her big speech night?, formpd themselves into corps of eight oc ten men, each member taking notes for two or three minutes, and transcribing them while the " turn " went round. Something like 230,000 words were handed in at Chesterfield Post Office. London, naturally, was the great distributing centre, all the newspapers in the south and on all sides within a very large area receiving the reports from the Central Telegraph Office. It has to be remembered in this connection that although the Press Association and the Central News ha\ c probably a hundred or more papers on their list 3, they each handed in only one verbatim reuorfc of, say, tf n or eleven thousand words eaohj The representatives of the agenoies had in addition sent a concise summary of the speech to their London offices, when3e it would be given to all the clubs having tppe machines, and also telegraphed and cabled to leading foreign and Continental papers. Operators were sent specially from London to assist the local telegraphists in the gigantic task they were called upon to perform. Many of the leading Amerioan papers made arrangements for