Perhaps some part of the democracy of the _Sun_ office has come from the fact that men have rarely been taken in at the top. It was Dana’s plan to catch young men with unformed ideas of journalism and make _Sun_ men of them. They went on the paper as cubs at fifteen dollars a week--or even as office-boys--and worked their way to be “space men,” if they had it in their noddles. All space men were free and equal in the Jeffersonian sense. Their pay was eight dollars a column. That one man made one hundred and fifty dollars in a week when his neighbour made only fifty was usually the result, not of the system, but of the difference between the men. Some were harder workers than others, or better fitted by experience for more important stories; and some were born money-makers. If a diligent reporter, through no fault of his own, was making small “bills,” the city editor would see to it that something profitable fell to him--perhaps a long and easily written Sunday article. Through changed conditions in newspaper make-up and policies, the space system in the payment of reporters is now practically extinct. It had good points and bad ones. Undoubtedly it developed a large number of men to whom a salary would not have been attractive. Some, to whose style and activities the space system lent itself, remained in the profession longer than they would otherwise have stayed. On the other hand, it was not always fair to reporters with whom a condensed style was natural. The dynamics of a two-inch article, the very value of which lies in its brevity, cannot be measured with a space-rule. The _Sun’s_ ideas of fairness do not end with itself and its men. It has always had a proper consideration for the feelings of the innocent bystander. It never harms the weak, or stoops to get news in a dishonourable or unbecoming way. It would be hard to devise a set of rules of newspaper ethics, but a few examples of things that the _Sun_ doesn’t do may illuminate. [Illustration: SELAH MERRILL CLARKE ] Soon after one of the _Sun’s_ most brilliant reporters had come on the paper, he was sent to report the wedding of a noted sporting man and a famous stage beauty, the marriage ceremony being performed by a picturesque Tammany alderman. The reporter returned to the office with a lot of amusing detail, which he recited in brief to the night city editor. “Just the facts of the marriage, please,” said Mr. Clarke. “The two most important events in the life of a woman are her marriage and her death. Neither should be treated flippantly.” Another reporter wrote an amusing story about a fat policeman posted at the Battery, who chased a tramp through a pool of rain-water. The policeman fell into the water, and the tramp got away. No report of the occurrence was made at police headquarters, but a _Sun_ man saw the incident and wrote it.