With the coming of the Mexican War there were special trains to be run in the South. And now the telegraph, with its expensive tolls, was magnetizing money out of every newspaper’s till. Not only that, but there was only one wire, and the correspondent who got to it first usually hogged it, paying tolls to have a chapter from the Bible, or whatever was the reporter’s favourite book, put on the wire until his story should be ready to start. It was all wrong, and at last, through pain in the pocket, the newspapers came to realize it. At a conference held in the office of the _Sun_, toward the close of the Mexican War, steps were taken to lessen the waste of money, men, and time. [Illustration: MOSES SPERRY BEACH A Nephew of Benjamin H. Day and a Son of Moses Yale Beach. He Held “The Sun” Until Dana’s Time. This Picture is Reproduced from the First Edition of Mark Twain’s “Innocents Abroad.” Mr. Beach Was One of Clemens’s Fellow Voyagers. ] At this meeting, presided over by Gerard Hallock, the veteran editor of the _Journal of Commerce_, there were represented the _Sun_, the _Herald_, the _Tribune_--the three most militant morning papers--the _Courier and Enquirer_, the _Express_, and Mr. Hallock’s own paper. The conference formed the Harbour Association, by which one fleet of news-boats would do the work for which half a dozen had been used, and the New York Associated Press, designed for cooperation in the gathering of news in centres like Washington, Albany, Boston, Philadelphia, and New Orleans. Alexander Jones, of the _Journal of Commerce_, became the first agent of the new organization. He had been a reporter on both sides of the Atlantic, and it was he who invented the first cipher code for use in the telegraph, saving time and tolls. Thus in the office where some of the bitterest invective against newspaper rivals had been penned, there began an era of good feeling. So busy had the world become, and so full of news, through the new means of communication afforded by Professor Morse, that the invention of opprobrious names for Mr. Bennett ceased to be a great journalistic industry. As an example of the change in the personal relations of the newspaper editors and proprietors, the guests present at a dinner given by Moses Y. Beach in December, 1848, when he retired from business and turned the _Sun_ over to his sons Moses and Alfred, were the venerable Major Noah, then retired from newspaper life; Gerard Hallock, Horace Greeley, Henry J. Raymond, of the _Courier and Enquirer_, and James Brooks, of the _Express_. All praised Beach and his fourteen years of labour on the _Sun_, but there was never a word about Benjamin H. Day. Evidently that gentleman’s re-entry into the newspaper field as the proprietor of the _True Sun_ had put him out of tune with his brother-in-law. Richard Adams Locke was there, however--the only relic of the first régime.