CHAPTER SEVEN

WITH THE DETROIT NEWS-TRIBUNE

Detroit, the land of opportunity for Jim Curwood. This was the lone thought that raced through the young writer’s mind as the train sped toward the great city. In fact, that was the only thing he could think about. Here he would have the opportunity of writing for some 465,000 individuals every day.

Two days passed after their arrival in Detroit before Jim at last went to see Pat Baker. During that time Jim had once again sat down to another improvised desk, in newly-found quarters, and had begun two new stories. He was not actually writing them now, but only making general outlines which he carefully filed away for future use. Some of his work, however, was awaiting completion and these Jim promptly finished and mailed out to various magazine and newspaper publishers.

Jim’s meeting with Pat Baker was short and to the point. He was put on the pay-roll and assigned to work forthwith.

George Snow, editor of the Sunday edition of the _News_, asked Jim to write some “feature stuff” for him and Jim promptly complied. Snow complained, however, that Jim’s plots had been written and rewritten a thousand and one times. He wanted to give the readers something new, something with a snap in it. This peeved Jim a great deal and for four successive days he pouted and thought it over seriously. Then he came to the conclusion that if George Snow and Pat Baker wanted something different and unusual, they would most certainly get it.

Jim began wracking his brains for a story with an unusual angle and twist to it. Eventually such a story came to him, and he began receiving larger assignments from the Detroit _News-Tribune_.

From the very beginning of Jim’s newspaper career with the Detroit paper he had had to start out on small items of interest in order to learn the ropes. That procedure was as usual then as it is now on all newspapers of major importance. Despite the fact that it was one of the customs governing the publication of the _News-Tribune_, Jim Curwood disliked it very much when he found that he had to cover funerals, fires and auto accidents to start with. All of these were well handled and he received due credit for them. But all the praise and glory Pat Baker could heap upon his shoulders could not make Jim happy, for he was dissatisfied. He even had to handle “obits” and state deaths in the very beginning, and to a writer of any ability at all, this practically is an insult. However, Jim took it like a man and kept his chin high and went on.

Coincident with handling his newspaper work, Jim was writing his own stories and sending them out. He now was writing with the blood of a true adventurer surging through his veins ... he was inspired.

Perhaps the most disheartening factor of all was that Jim’s salary on the paper was only $8.00 a week. This was not nearly enough for two people to live on.

Fortunately enough, George Snow frequently asked Jim for a feature story for the Sunday edition. Payment for this, together with his regular salary, helped immensely.

Pat Baker assigned Jim early one morning to accompany Stewart, another reporter, into Canada, just across the river from Detroit, and cover a “hanging.” Jim went and covered the execution, but nearly fainted when the trap was sprung on the gallows. “To add insult to injury,” Baker then only used twenty lines of what Jim had written. All this led Jim Curwood to believe that he was not worth eight cents a week, let alone $8.00, as a reporter. But he finally got over the shock of the execution and the fact that only twenty lines of all he had written had been used, and went back to the steady grind.

Jim’s “big chance” finally came. He was ordered to watch police headquarters for “something big.” Here he would have an opportunity for a “scoop.” For days upon end he practically haunted the Detroit Police Headquarters. True enough, there were many stories that could have been written about the various arrests and charges, but that was not what Jim was looking for. He wanted something big. After several days had elapsed it came. When the story broke, he thought it had amazing possibilities, so he immediately wrote it up and shot it into the office. The entire staff handled it as if it was almost “too hot to handle.” George Snow, Pat Baker and all the so-called “big shots” patted the young reporter on the back and told him that he was really one of them now, that it was a job well done. Baker even went so far as to grant the raise in salary that Jim had so thoughtfully asked for. Jim now felt as if he were firmly established with the Detroit _News-Tribune_ and he was indeed proud and happy. He was highly elated at his future possibilities and was feeling very confident of himself now. He was handling “Big Time” news. He was a real reporter of the first school.

The next morning, however, the “payoff” came. When Jim arrived at the office he discovered that there was a most unusual conference going on in Baker’s office. It was a conference of editors. Several minutes after Jim had sat down to his desk, the men in Baker’s office filed out and as they did so they all looked straight at Jim. Why were they all looking so hard at him, was the thought that entered his excited mind.

It seemed that everyone in the office was down on him, and to save his soul he could not figure out just why. All those stares were bothering Jim and interfering with his work. Upon asking for an explanation he discovered that he had not heard the culprit’s name correctly and it appeared in the newspaper as if one of Detroit’s most highly respected citizens had been “horsewhipped.” This, Jim slowly began to realize, was the beginning of the end for him and his newspaper career. He had made a mistake and he would have to pay for it.

That day Jim Curwood was fired from his job and all his back pay was withheld from him. It was all due to the fact that he had not checked a name in the city directory and thus it had appeared that one of Detroit’s most illustrious citizens had been the object of a common “horsewhipping.” It was the end of his short but eventful career with the _News-Tribune_. It was then that Jim Curwood found out just how hard it was to find work in Detroit in those days. Being undaunted, however, Jim kept right on with his writing and was determined that despite the losing of his job he wasn’t whipped yet. Unfortunately, Jim was able to sell very few of his stories and very soon both he and his wife began to look underfed and their clothing began to appear rather shabby.

At long last the struggling young author received another break of good fortune. He chanced upon Alfred Russell, then one of Michigan’s greatest lawyers, who promptly offered him a job with a pharmaceutical company. It was named the Parke-Davis Company and was located on Jefferson Avenue. Jim’s salary to begin with would be $50.00 per month and a chance for a raise if he worked hard enough and showed enough improvement. So Jim Curwood turned to making “pills.”

It was indeed most fortunate that the young man knew that this was not his type of work and he grew discontented with it on each passing day. Nevertheless, he had a wife to support and to make a living for the both of them. So he was making pills. He wanted to write, but this moulding of so-called medicine was constantly interfering.

It seemed to Jim that all his plans, his hopes and his aspirations, all his fondest dreams and optimistic outlooks on life had all come to an abrupt end. Would he have to go through life as a “pillmaker,” was a constant query in his active and alert mind. He shuddered at the thought.

One day, as he was hard at work, a fellow employee told Jim that there was a man living very near the company who claimed to be a baron, a man whose ancestry dated back several hundred years in the old country. Jim later found out that this man was actually working right there in the factory, as a common laborer. In those days it was great news to find one of noble heritage, let alone one who worked at common labor. So, Jim promptly made it a point to see and talk to the man, gain his well wishes and get his permission to have a story concerning him published. Jim carefully gathered the material he needed and at once wrote it up and mailed it to the Detroit _News-Tribune_.

Being quite capable of seeing far enough in front of their noses, the editors of the paper not only bought the story but put Jim back on the payroll. This time, however, it was on a much more important job, for Jim was made a special writer on the Sunday edition of the _News-Tribune_ at a salary of $18.00 every week.

Besides the promotion, Jim now had his own private office, tastefully furnished, on the second floor of the older section of the building. Jim plunged joyfully into his new assignments. This was not a job for him; it was a labor of love.

In a comparatively short time Jim was turning out one and two-page features that were promptly published. He was now working seven days each week and many times he even worked late into the night.

Time was passing rather rapidly for Jim now and inside of two years after returning to the _News-Tribune_, his salary had been increased to $25.00. It was during this time that the first of Jim’s two daughters was born and there was not to be found a happier man on the face of the earth than James Oliver Curwood. He had a fine wife, he loved the work which he was doing, and he actually possessed a wonderful baby daughter named Carlotta.

Many things were now entering into Jim Curwood’s life and his writing output was also bothering him considerably. He was striving to do more than he had been doing in the past, but just how he was going to go about this he did not know. His time was more than just rationed and he had to use it sparingly.

Jim at last decided that he would do away with all of his pleasure-filled hours and devote what time he could at the office as well as those out of the office to purely creative work and nothing else. He would, furthermore, branch out farther and with more scope than he had ever imagined. So he began a series of slick-paper magazine stories and immediately sold the first one, “The Captain of the Christopher Duggan,” to the _Munsey_ magazine. He was paid $75.00 for this story, the most he had ever received for any story before. Jim Curwood now thought seriously of quitting his newspaper work and devoting himself exclusively to his literary efforts. But when the _News-Tribune_ raised his salary to $28.00, he decided to forego his dreams until a more propitious time. This decision probably saved the genius of James Oliver Curwood from certain disaster. For as yet he was not fully prepared to enter the great field of literature entirely upon his own, even though he did not realize it then.

At the _News-Tribune_ Jim was under the constant tutelage of Annesley Burrowes, who saw to it that the young writer’s burning spark was never extinguished and that his imagination was always afire with creative efforts. Burrowes believed strongly in young James Curwood’s chances of rising to truly great heights in the field of newspaper writing and in the fictional world. Time has shown that Mr. Burrowes’ intuition was correct and accurate.

Shortly after Jim received his raise in salary, Mr. Burrowes resigned his post at the _News-Tribune_, due to an eye ailment, and with his going Jim took his place. He now was getting $30.

“I am sure that I only partly filled the position.”

This remark Jim Curwood made in his own modest manner.

Through the years beginning with 1902 up to and including 1905 the rapidly rising young author published quite a number of articles and short stories, among which were: “Pills,” which ran in _Frank Leslie’s Popular Monthly_; another _Munsey_ story, and Jim’s first juvenile serial was published in _The American Boy_. In 1905 Jim vacationed in the wilds, whereby he obtained the basis for a number of articles which appeared in _Outing_, _Outlook_, _Woman’s Home Companion_, _Cosmopolitan_, and others. It was also during this hectic period that Jim edited a banker’s publication which was called “_Dollars and Sense_.”

With the appearance of these numerous articles and fiction works, Hewitt Hanson Howland, editor of a magazine published by Bobbs-Merrill in Indianapolis, began to take notice of the rising writer’s works and asked him to do a series of articles on the Great Lakes for his magazine. Jim also was contributing nature sketches to _Leslie’s Weekly_. Of this group he published more than one hundred articles.

Having now been on the staff of special writers of the _News-Tribune_ for three years, Jim Curwood was really beginning to feel like a veteran “news-hawk.” It was in his third year as a special writer that Jim’s wife presented him with his second daughter, who was named Viola. Now he was the father of two fine girls. Jim was gloriously happy, of that there was little doubt, but for some apparently unknown reason, his wife was not. Perhaps it was because he had excluded her from his real life.

With the birth of her second child Mrs. Curwood began to seem rather discontented and nervous. In fact she seemed dissatisfied with her life with Jim Curwood altogether. Why, Jim was never able fully to find out, except for the fact that the life of a writer was too confining for her. Had she stopped to realize that her husband was on his way to the top of the ladder and would eventually reach that goal, the marriage might have lasted.

Following his successful contacts with _Munsey’s_ and other famous magazines, Jim was made one of the “bigshots” of the Detroit paper and served in that capacity until 1907. He had been writing continuously for fourteen years, sticking everlastingly to his chosen profession. He deserved success much more than the average writers of the time.

As fast as the so-called “big breaks” would come to Jim Curwood, he would turn out better articles and stories than ever before. With each successive sale it seemed certain that his writing actually was of a high order. Evidently scores of various publications thought as much, for Jim was receiving requests for his stories from papers and magazines throughout the United States and Canada. His work was in great demand at this time as it so continued to be for many years to pass.

In 1906 Jim Curwood began writing two novels. This was his very first attempt at book length work and though somewhat hesitant at first, Jim fought his way through valiantly. The first was entitled “The Wolf Hunters,” a tale of the Hudson Bay country, and the second one was “The Courage of Captain Plum.” The latter was an adventurous yarn of the Mormon settlements on Beaver Island in Lake Michigan.

Late in 1907, the year of Jim’s 29th birthday, he completed both “The Wolf Hunters” and “The Courage of Captain Plum,” and sent them both off to the Bobbs-Merrill Company in Indianapolis. Many anxious weeks passed during which time Jim waited with prayerful hopes as he continued his newspaper work. Then one day a letter came with the wonderful news that both his manuscripts had been accepted for publication, and that “The Courage of Captain Plum” was so well liked that he was being offered a contract for one book yearly for the next five years. Jim’s books were to sell for one dollar and a half of which he was to receive a ten per cent royalty. To say that the young man was jubilant and happy would be putting it mildly. Jim very nearly tore up the city room of the Detroit _News-Tribune_ when he had read the letter from the Indianapolis publishers. Both books were published in 1908.

Now more than ever Jim Curwood realized how swell Pat Baker, George Snow and Annesley Burrowes, as well as the entire staff of the paper, had been to him in affording him the great opportunities that he had had. What they did for him were enshrined as memories deep within his tender, loving heart. For they had provided the chance for Jim to get his name before the reading public and thus enabled his works to be read.

Within a few days after receiving the notice that his two book-length manuscripts had been accepted, James Oliver Curwood handed in his resignation to the Detroit _News-Tribune_ as assistant editor, and began to plan and devote his life wholly to literary work. Thus, the _News-Tribune_ lost one of its finest writers. Jim was a natural born newspaperman and with his resignation the paper suffered a great loss.

Upon his leaving the Detroit paper, Jim wrote to his brother Ed, who still was in Ohio and invited him on a long vacation trip into the wilderness. Ed accepted and the two brothers enjoyed one of the grandest adventures of their lives in the country surrounding Hudson’s Bay.