Hard Hustle of Hall

IT GOT THE CZOLGOSZ PHOTO
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Buffalo Correspondent of “The Journal” Gets a Great Beat for His Paper.

     The story of how The Journal secured and published Monday the first authentic photograph of Czolgosz, the assassin, printed in the northwest, is rather interesting. Immediately after the shooting telegraphic instructions were sent H. W. Hall, The Journal’s Buffalo correspondent, to secure a photograph at any cost. Mr. Hall set to work at once, and to such good purpose that he secured and sent to The Journal one of the very few photographs that were permitted by the police to get out.
     At first the Buffalo police decided to spread photographs of the assassin broadcast over the country, hoping that in this way evidence of the plot, if there was one, would be voluntarily offered by persons who had seen Czolgosz. But Secretary Root put a veto on this and requested the police to see that no photographs of the assassin be permitted to go out. The secretary’s idea was that notoriety is what criminals of the Czolgosz variety crave, and that it would be better to prevent any feeding of that appetite. Then the state of public feeling was such that Mr. Root and the other advisers of the president felt that it would not do to add to the excitement.
     Before this request was received, however, the camera had been trained on the assassin and several prints had been struck off from the negative. It was one of those rare and valuable prints that Mr. Hall, by hard hustling, managed to obtain. How, does not matter. He was offered $50 for the print a few minutes after he secured it. The same afternoon the New York Journal offered $500 for a photograph and got none.
     One of the valuable features of the photograph is that the negative from which it is made has not been retouched and retains all the lines of the face necessary for making a study of the man’s character.