POLITICS as such had never greatly interested Jeremy Robson. The trivial and blatant insincerities of party platforms offended a mind naturally direct and sincere. As he saw the game played at the Capitol, it seemed to consist mainly in clumsy finesse directed to unprofitable ends, on the part of the lawmakers, back of whom sat the little tin gods of finance and commerce, as players sit back of the pieces on a chessboard. Only, it dawned upon Jeremy, in this game it was the public that paid the stakes; the public which Jeremy intended that The Guardian should represent. His platform was “Fair play all around and a chance for all.”
Being of such mind, he was naturally sympathetic to the fervent and altruistic radicalism of Senator Embree. Almost before he knew it, he was committed to the broad, general policies of a new faction whose immediate object was to capture the party machinery and elect Embree Governor. Farmers, the more thoughtful class of labor in the industrial centers, and that floating vote which is always restless of party control, made up the bulk of “Smiling Mart’s” support. His newspaper backing was scanty. In Bellair, the chief city of Centralia, The Journal lent its valuable support to most of his measures and to his general policies. A score of country journals were thick-and-thin adherents. The Guardian soon began to be classed with these for loyalty and with the Bellair Journal for weightiness, in support of the new movement.
Jeremy Robson’s spirited editorial attacks upon the controlled State administration were now establishing his paper as a gospel to the fermenting political elements, and had earned the indignant distrust of those interests which base loud claims to impregnable respectability upon the ground of returning reliable dividends to their stockholders. To these he was anathema; a “dangerous radical,” a “half-Socialist,” an “enemy of American institutions,” a “confessed demagogue,” and the like impressive and silly characterizations. The Guardian was quoted, confuted, and abused over the State. It had become a power.
While Jeremy and Andrew Galpin and their lesser aides were struggling with the various immediate and insistent problems of a newspaper’s existence and sustenance, and establishing their organ before the public as genuinely independent in thought and unhampered in the expression of it, political prestige, which is not acquired in a day by a newspaper any more than by an individual, steadily accrued to it. Jeremy Robson had owned The Guardian for a year before he fully realized his political responsibilities in that what was said editorially in his paper greatly mattered to some thousands of earnest and groping minds. Not only this. He himself mattered, individually, as controlling The Guardian. His visiting list became inconveniently large. People took to dropping in at the office to discuss, advise, approve, or object, particularly visitors from the outlying districts who deemed it an all-sufficient introduction to state that they were “friends of Mart Embree.” Whether through the direct procurement of that energetic campaigner or otherwise, Jeremy found that The Guardian was considered to be not only the representative but the proprietary organ of the new movement. Financially this was an important asset. Nevertheless, the editor disrelished it. Remembering A. M. Wymett’s disquisition, he heartily resented his newspaper’s being regarded as the horn to any one’s phonograph! Moreover, all these calls ate up time. But that paid for itself in widened acquaintance and a more sympathetic understanding of the people who, after all, made up the Commonwealth cf Centralia. He made friends readily with them. They liked him as soon as they adjusted themselves to the shock of his apparel which they deemed dudish.
The World-War was still more than a year distant, still but the dream of such pessimistic and flighty minds as A. M. Wymett’s, when politics began to boil again in Centralia, and in that steaming stew of policies, principles, pretenses, ambitions, and chicaneries there simmered, all unseen, one of the minor but far-spread schemes of the Teutonic war-lord’s propaganda. It came to Jeremy’s ears through a call from Magnus Laurens, already being talked of as opposition candidate to Martin Embree, and already the subject of frank rather than well-judged comment, in the pages of The Guardian, as representing franchise-holding control of government. The water-power magnate looked squarer, ruggeder, more determined and formidable even than on the occasion when Jeremy had first seen him grimly facing the ridicule of the German societies. He was nearer sixty than fifty and walked like a football captain, and the blue eyes under the severe brows, as they met Jeremy’s, were alert and hard. The editor rose to greet him, holding out his hand.
“I did n’t come here to shake your hand,” said Laurens quietly. “I came to tell you something.”
Jeremy sat down. “Tell ahead,” said he.
“You’ ve been using my name too freely in your paper.”
“You’re a public character.”
“My name is my own. I’m particular about it. I keep it clean. Your paper has coupled it up with names that are n’t clean.”
“Did I choose your political associates, Mr. Laurens?” said Jeremy keenly.
“Political criticism is one thing. Innuendoes of crookedness and graft are another.”
“We’ll reach no common ground as regards your waterpower operations. I’m against you there. You’re selling to the people, at a profit, power that should belong to them.”
“That’s theory. With that I’ve no quarrel. But when your paper moralizes about franchise-grafting, and hints at bribery, leave me out of it.”
The editor reflected. On Martin Embree’s representations, he had assumed Laurens’s operations to be founded in corruption. But what proof had he, after all?
“The Dollard’s Falls Charter—” he began and was cut short.
“The records are open to you. The books of the company are open to you. I’ll even go that far, if it’s facts you’re after. Or is it hush-money?”
“Which do you think?”
The hard, blue eyes looked at him with a more interested scrutiny. Magnus Laurens grunted. “Bird of a different feather from Wymett,” he surmised doubtfully.
“A little.”
“Well, I’m different from Sellers and Corey and Bellows and that lot. Bear that in mind. If you couple me up with them again, I’ll be back here forrealtrouble.”
“Coming back to lick the editor?” asked Jeremy, contemplating the muscle-packed figure of the other with a smile. “If so, I’ll lay in a length of lead pipe.”
“Lay in a lawyer and a good one,” advised the visitor grimly. “For I’ll be after you for criminal libel. No fiddling little damage suits for me. That’s what I came to tell you.”
“All right. I’ve got it. Anything else?”
“No.”
“Then it’s my turn. You control the Oak Lodge Pulp Company.”
“I have an interest in it.”
“The Guardian buys its print paper from you.”
“Yes.”
“When you came here did you have in mind any—well, exchange of courtesies, editorial for business consideration, in respect to future deals?”
“I did not. I don’t do business that way,” retorted Magnus Laurens with emphasis.
“Did you think that perhaps I was aiming in that direction, with my comments on you?”
The magnate changed color a little. “I might have suspected something of the sort.”
“You were wrong.”
“Very well. I was wrong. Anything else?”
“Yes. If I’ll undertake that The Guardian shall say nothing more along the line which you find objectionable without specific and definite charges taken from the records, will you acquit me—that is, will you consider that you’ve scared me sufficiently?”
Magnus Laurens blinked. “I’m not a fool,” he said presently. “Scared you? You’re no more afraid of me than I am of you.”
“Then you’ve done better than scare me. You’ve convinced me that you mean what you say. You and I can fight fair.”
“I’ll shake hands now,” said Laurens, and did. “You’re all wrong. You’ve been misled by that quack, Embree. But I suppose a man can be wrong and still be straight.”
“Exactly what I’m supposing about you,” retorted Jeremy. “Now, sit down, Mr. Laurens, and tell me some real political news.”
Laurens drew a chair up opposite the editor. “Do you think you’d print it?”
“News is The Guardian’s stock in trade.”
“Here’s some, then. A bill is going to be introduced this fall to Germanize our public schools farther.”
“What’s the substance of it?”
“Making German practically compulsory in the grade schools.”
“They’ll never pass it.”
“Watch them! What leader is going to oppose it? In a governorship election year?”
“Who will introduce it?”
“Some nonentity. It will have the most powerful radical support. You can guess from whom.”
“I don’t guess, professionally.”
“Then I’ll tell you. Martin Embree.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“Ask him. My sources of information are reliable.”
“Can I get a copy of the bill?”
“Here’s a rough outline of it. It is n’t fully decided on yet, as to details.”
“Who drew it up?”
“The Reverend Theo Gunst, Henry Dolge, and Professor Brender, of the German Department at Old Central, on the basis of a plan which Herr Professor Koerner left when he was here. It’s one of the moves in the development of ‘Deutschturn.’ Have you ever seen the Germanizing scheme for Centralia gotten up in the eighties?”
“No. I’ve heard there was such a thing.”
“Colonization up to a certain point. Then the establishment of a Little Germany through making German the official language of the schools, the courts, and the Legislature. Peaceful conquest idea.”
“And this bill is a revival of that plan, you think?”
“It has that appearance. Will The Guardian support it?”
“No.”
“Will it oppose it?”
“Who’s doing this interviewing, you or me, Mr. Laurens?” smiled Jeremy.
“Call it an exchange.”
“All right. Yes: we’ll oppose it. What about you?”
“It’s well enough known where I stand.”
“As a private citizen, yes. But as candidate for Governor?”
“I am not a candidate for Governor.”
“Not formally. But you’re going to be. What about this German school bill then? Will you oppose it?”
“I certainly won’t dodge it. Are you going to pass on this conversation to ‘Smiling Mart’ Embree?”
“Not if it’s confidential.”
“Then I think this latter part is, for the present. To be quite frank, I don’t want to meet that issue till I have to.”
“You’re right. It’ll probably beat you.”
“Possibly. But if the issue is once raised, it won’t die out of people’s minds readily. That’s something.” He paused, then added casually: “By the way, our first meeting was in a pretty German atmosphere. Do you recall the meeting where little Miss Ames stood up for the flag? That took character.”
Jeremy’s face became wistful. “Do you ever hear from her—Miss Ames?”
“Eh? My daughter does. Did you—Why, you were the one that put her on the golf team, were n’t you! I’d forgotten. You must be a good teacher.”
“She was a good pupil. Never knew when she was beaten.”
“It didn’t happen often enough for her to know, I guess,” laughed the magnate. “She came out to visit Elizabeth and made a fool of me on my own course. I owe you a grudge for that, young man! Will you take me out and show me some of the tricks some time when I’m down here? We’ll talk politics while we go around, so you can soothe your conscience for taking the time off.”
“Glad to. Miss Ames and I used to play in the early morning, but I guess I can take an afternoon off when you come down. By the way, where is she?”
“In Hamburg, I believe. There was some hint of an engagement.—a relative of her stepfather’s, I believe. Very advantageous match.”
Jeremy heard the reply “Is that so?” in a tone of flat and polite simulation of interest, issue upon the air. It was obviously the result of a mechanical ventriloquism of his own, for he was quite sure that his lips had been for the moment incapable of speech. Of course he had always known that it must come. Inevitable with a girl like Marcia. But hope, though it withers, clings hardily to the last pulsing of secret life in the young. Even in the heart-emptiness of a long year of silence—except for the one note delivered by Buddy Higman—Jeremy had cherished a delusion dear as on the day when he first met her.... He became aware that Laurens was saying something to him. Politics—that was it. He had to fix his mind on politics, and though life had abruptly become sterile of hope and dreams, nevertheless there was a job to do. For the next twenty minutes, Jeremy passed through an ordeal which entitled him to a hero’s medal. He forced his aching mind to take in what Laurens was telling him, and afterward he fashioned from it a skillful and dispassionate interview.
After Laurens’s departure the editor opened the drawer in his desk which was always kept locked. Therein were a dozen golf scores—he was still very young, and his stock of souvenirs had been pathetically scant—her note and the little photograph. He understood, now, why she had written him no letter. When she gave him up, she had mapped out her course for herself. If she were not formally betrothed then, she had determined upon the step. And having determined, she ended it all, then and there. It was the honorable way. It was the direct, definite, frank way. It was the right way. It was Marcia’s way.
He looked yearningly at the photograph. Wonderful how that tiny oblong of paper, touched with a few flat tints could so evoke the very essence and fragrance and challenging sweetness of her! She looked out at him, all soft radiance in the hard radiance of the sunlight which flooded her, and his fingers, bidden to tear the likeness to fragments and scatter it—not in resentment but as a sacrificial formality—trembled and slackened. What harm, after all, in keeping the picture? It meant nothing—and therein Jeremy Robson lied to his own soul. It meant that he still clung to his vision, which nothing had blurred. For no other woman had so much as impinged upon the outskirts of his imagination. There was neither time nor space for women other than Marcia. He restored the picture, the note, the prim numerals of the golf scores—how vividly he could see the full, lithe swing of the young body vivid with untainted health and vitality as her brassie flicked the ball cleanly from its turfy lie!—and locked the drawer again. There lay hopes dead and ideals still unconquerably alive.
Reading the Laurens interview, conspicuously played up, on its merits as news, Martin Embree felt rise within him dark misgivings as to his supporter. He was of that type which, in its self-centered mind, forbodes disloyalty and suspects betrayal in any divergence of opinion or policy from its own standards. But his smile was as brilliant as usual, perhaps even more so, when he next met Jeremy.
“Pretty handsome send-off you gave Laurens.”
“Yes. I like him. He’s straight.”
“So’s a snake—when it’s dead. I told you to look out for him.”
“I did,” said the editor good-humoredly. “I don’t think he fooled me any. Or even tried to.”
“He’s likely to be the man we’ve got to fight for the governorship.”
“We’ll fight him, when the time comes.”
“And meantime you boost him.”
“You’ll never understand the newspaper game, Martin. That was news; therefore worth printing.”
“I understand this, my boy; that you can’t afford to mix up with Laurens and his gang.”
“Oh, cheer up, Martin! I don’t intend to. But I can’t take your point of view in everything, much as I appreciate what you’ve done for the paper.”
Indeed, Jeremy had always given ungrudging acknowledgment of Embree’s services to The Guardian. That first boost in circulation through Embree’s efforts in the Northern Tier had been invaluable. And now, through his strength in local labor circles, Embree was being of assistance to Jeremy, in preventing strikes, and allaying trouble in the press-room. The center of disturbance there was the white-haired, sharp-tongued Socialist, Nick Milliken.
Most correct in his attitude toward his employer in work hours, Milliken asserted his independence outside the “shop” by invariably addressing him as “young feller” and usually reproaching him for “hanging onto a half-mile-post, like Mart Embree,” instead of coming out fair and square for Socialism and the millennium. As against him Embree played the big, stolid German-American foreman Girdner, who had influence among the men, and who was a political adherent of the Northern Tier Senator’s. On the whole the internal affairs of the office were satisfactory. Another connection between Embree and The Guardian office was maintained through Max Verrall, the Senator’s protégé, who, having made good as circulation manager, was now handling the paper’s advertising, as sub-head of that department under the general supervision of Andrew Galpin.
For all favors The Guardian repaid Martin Embree by its loyal and effectual political support. If the Senator’s friends were not always acceptable to Jeremy’s somewhat squeamish political standards, at least his enemies were The Guardian’s enemies. No “conspiracy of silence” on the part of the press opposed him now. The Guardian paid so much heed to his utterances that The Record was forced to take them up as a matter of news. Without this aid, Embree could not have been certain of the nomination for Governor at that time. Now it was practically assured to him. The account between him and Jeremy Robson stood fairly balanced to date.
Jeremy wondered how hard he would take the projected editorial campaign against the Germanizing of the public schools.
THAT phenomenon of finance which has relegated many a business man to a pained and bewildered retirement, increase of receipts attended with a parallel deficit, had marked The Guardian’s first year under the new control. No question but that The Guardian was a much livelier, newsier, more influential, and better paper. No question but that the public appreciated this. The increased and steadily increasing circulation bore proof. With reluctance the local advertisers also accepted the fact. Rates had been raised, to the accompaniment of loud protests, which were largely formal, for the merchants paid the higher charge, and, in many cases, increased their advertising appropriation. The Guardian was recognized as a good medium. It was on the way to being recognized as a necessary medium. When a newspaper reaches that point, its fortune is made.
But a newspaper is like an automobile or a loaf of bread in this fundamental respect, that it costs more to make a good than a bad one. All the special features which Andrew Galpin had put on, mounted up into money. The staff was more expensive. The telegraphic service cost more. At no time had swelling revenues quite overtaken rising expenditures. Galpin, however, who had originally suggested to the new boss A Short Life and a Merry One as The Guardian’s appropriate motto, was now optimistic. He confidently believed the paper to be within measurable distance of assured success.
“But we’re pretty near at the end of our rope—my rope,” Jeremy pointed out.
“Ay-ah. There’s other ropes dangling around loose. Why not hitch to one?”
“Borrow?”
“I’ve heard of its being done in business,” replied the general manager quizzically. “Somebody’s got to help the banks make a living.”
“How much do you think we need?”
Galpin juggled with a pencil and a sheet of paper. “Let’s get enough while we’re at it. Twenty thousand ought to be the last cent we’ll ever have to ask for.”
“Can we get that much?” asked the other doubtfully. “On the security of the plant? Easy.”
Jeremy’s money was in the Fenchester Trust Company, of which Robert Wanser was president. No difficulty whatsoever was made by him when Jeremy called. Wanser was an anomaly in national sentiment. The grandson of a leader of the Young German movement who had found refuge in this country from the rigorous repression of Germany in ’48, the son of a major who fought with distinction for the Union through the Civil War, he remained impregnably Teutonic in thought, sentiment, and prejudice. He was a large, softish man who suggested in his appearance a sleek and benignant walrus. He sat back in his chair and listened and puffed and nodded, and when the applicant was through, made a notation on a bit of paper. The rest was merely a matter of “Jeremy Robson” at the bottom of a dated form, and “Do you wish to draw it now or leave it on deposit, Mr. Robson?” To the borrower it seemed like the nearest thing to magic since his great-aunt’s bequest.
“And how is the paper getting on, Mr. Robson?” asked Wanser benevolently.
“First-rate. We can feel it taking hold harder and harder every day.”
“Ah!” Robert Wanser’s “Ah” had just the faintest touch of a medial “c” in it; just a hint of the guttural, the only relic left in his speech of a Teutonicism which three generations had failed to Americanize. “That must be a great satisfaction.”
“It is.”
“And a great responsibility. What a power for good a newspaper may be, even in a small community such as this! Or for evil. Or for evil,” he repeated sorrowfully.
Jeremy waited.
“It can radiate enlightenment. Or it can scatter poison. The poison of class hatred, of political unrest, of racial dissension.” He sighed.
Always for the direct method Jeremy asked, “You think The Guardian is too radical?”
“A(c)h!” said Robert Wanser. “I have not assumed to criticize.”
“I’m asking for information. That’s the only way I can make the paper better. By finding out what people think of it.”
“A(c)h, yes! There is much to commend in your paper. Much! But it is not always quite kindly, is it? Not quite kindly.”
“Probably not. What have you got in mind?”
“Nothing in particular,” disclaimed the banker. “I feel that in our complicated system there is room for all classes of thought, and that all of us who are, in a sense, leaders should set the example of a broad tolerance. The imputation of unworthy motives, for example, can do nothing but harm. A community such as this should be a brotherhood, all working for the common good of the town. Don’t you agree with me, Mr. Robson?”
To agree with so pious a banality would have been easy; was, in fact, almost a requirement of politeness. But Jeremy was wondering what lay behind all these words. “I don’t know,” he said. “It sounds all right. But I don’t get your real meaning.”
Mr. Wanser hastily disclaimed any real meaning, and the interview proceeded in a mist of steamy generalities contributed by the banker, of which one alone impressed the editor as embodying the kernel of a thought.
“You may gain temporary circulation by making enemies, but you lose support.”
“But a newspaper has got to take sides on public questions,” protested Jeremy.
“Why so? Why should it not be a lens, to collect and focus facts for the public’s attention?”
“It should, in the news columns. But editorially?”
“Comment,” said Wanser blandly. “Simple, explanatory, enlightening comment.”
“It won’t do the business. Take this tax matter—”
“A(c)h! Very unfortunate! Very unfortunate!” murmured the banker.
“Of course it’s unfortunate,” returned Jeremy warmly. “It’s unfortunate that those best able to pay taxes should get off light at the expense of those less able to pay.”
“That is not what I meant. These attacks upon property—”
“They’re not attacks on property, when property plays fair. Would a simple comment have brought old Madam Taylor to time?”
“Perhaps. Why not?”
Jeremy rubbed his nose thoughtfully. “Perhaps it would. The facts were enough just as they stood.” Madam Taylor, the daughter of the dead statesman who had founded The Guardian, was not only the richest woman in Fenchester, but was also a highly respected and considerably feared local institution. Because of that her taxes had not been raised in thirty years, though her property had quadrupled in value, until The Guardian shocked the community by running afoul of her.
“You might have so enraged her that she would have left Fenchester forever,” accused Wanser.
“Small loss, then,” returned Jeremy heatedly, he having been the victim of the old lady’s spiciest line of commentary, after publication of the article.
“A(c)h! It would be a misfortune to the town,” said the banker, thinking, on his part, of the heavy balance in the name of Taylor at his bank.
“Anyway, Mr. Wanser,” said Jeremy, rising to go, “I’m no neutral. I’m for or against. And, in reason, The Guardian will be the same. Maybe I’m wrong. But it’s the only way I know. If it makes enemies, I’m sorry.” Indeed it had seemed to the young editor that circulation for The Guardian and enmities for its owner were inevitable concomitants in the making. Every local question upon which he took sides landed him upon somebody’s tender toes. Much of the news that he printed—such as had not been printed for fear of hurting some more or less influential person’s feelings, before The Guardian espoused the policy that news is a commodity to which the public is entitled by virtue of its purchase of the paper—exasperated and even alienated the sympathies of the formerly favored elements. But it did n’t cause them to stop buying the paper, because they shrewdly hoped to find equally interesting and annoying items, later, about their friends. Then there was the matter of special consideration to the advertising patrons; a principle by which the mercantile crowd resolutely held, despite Jeremy’s pronunciamento at the luncheon. At least three fourths of the advertisers in town, Jeremy estimated, were fitfully concerned either in getting into The Guardian matters which didn’t belong there, or in keeping out matters which did; or, if not they, themselves, then their wives, children, or intimate associates. With respect to all these requests, he cultivated a determined and expensive habit of saying “No.” Thereby, if the paper became newsier and scored a more than occasional “beat” on its rival, The Record, it also became a heavier burden to carry, as the wrath of the afflicted gathered stormily about its head.
Though local advertisers resented the policy of the paper, they appreciated its value. That is all that kept them in. Verrall, in his activities as advertising manager, was constantly reporting evidences of a hostile spirit. Half of the big stores in town, he said, would knife The Guardian in a minute if they dared. He represented himself as being obliged to spend more time in diplomatic soothings than he could well spare from the routine of his work, and while advocating the utmost freedom of criticism in public matters, as befitted a follower of Embree, was mildly deprecatory of what he termed “Mr. Robson’s hedgehoggishness toward advertisers.” Malicious tongues, moreover, had been at work among the Germans, who formed an important part of the local mercantile world, spreading the report that The Guardian was secretly anti-German. If Mr. Robson could see his way clear to giving the German-Americans an editorial pat on the back occasionally, it would aid Verrall considerably in building up his space. Mr. Robson replied that, as it was, he was publishing a fair amount of German press-stuff, and he saw no reason to do any editorial soft-sawdering for Mr. Bausch and his faction.
Foreign advertising, such as the nationally exploited automobiles, soaps, razors, breakfast foods, and the like was now coming in in good volume, a most encouraging development, for these big advertisers exercise a keen discrimination in the matter of newspaper space, and their general support not only makes a paper “look good” to the technical eye, but also gives it a certain cachet among lesser concerns. To the high-grade national businesses The Guardian had made special appeal by expelling from its columns the fake financial, oil, gold, rubber, and real-estate dollar-traps, and the quack cure-alls, whose neighborhood in print the reputable concerns resent.
To offset this, the paper had lost in volume of local advertising. Several of the large stores had cut down their space, in token of resentment over the raise in rates, and had restored it only gradually and not to the full. Barclay & Bull had stayed out for more than six months. But this helped more than it hurt The Guardian, for their business showed a marked falling-off and their being obliged to come back in, rather shamefacedly, was testimony to the paper’s value. Turnbull Brothers, of The Emporium, the largest of the department stores, had, however, cut off The Guardian wholly, in consequence of its reporting a fire in the local freight yard, with the detail that a large consignment to The Emporium of the bankrupt stock of Putz & Lewin, of Chicago, was included in the losses. As the arrival of this consignment was coincident with the announcement of The Emporium’s annual “Grand Clearance Sale,” the effect was, as their advertising manager passionately stated to Jeremy, “derogatory as hell.” He demanded a retraction. The editor politely regretted that facts were both untractable and unretractable matter to deal with. The Turnbulls threatened libel. Jeremy told them to go ahead and promised to print daily accounts of the proceedings. The Turnbulls resorted to violent names and called off their contract for advertising. Jeremy dismissed them with his blessing, and told them not to come back until they had learned the distinction between advertising and news. Thereupon Verrall bewailed the sad fate of the advertising manager of a paper whose chief was an irreconcilable stiff-neck, and appealed to Andrew Galpin, but got nothing by that step other than unsympathetic advice to confine his troubles to his own department lest a worse thing befall him.
Then there was the case of Aaron Levy, of The Fashion, who, starting on the proverbial shoestring, was building up a wide low-class trade, and spreading his gospel through the columns of The Guardian, to the extent of occasional one-eighth pages. One phase of the Levy trade was a legal but unsavory installment business, the details of which were frequently threshed out in petty civil court actions. One of these, with a “human interest” end, was reported in The Guardian. Mr. Levy promptly called on Jeremy.
“What you want to do? Ruin my business?” he demanded.
“Is that account true?” asked Jeremy.
“Neffer mind if it’s true. It didn’t have to get printed.”
“Your business ought to be ruined, from what the Court thinks of it.”
“You take my money for advertising it all right,” the protestant pointed out with justice.
“So we do. We won’t any more. The Guardian won’t carry your installment business, Mr. Levy.”
“Maybe you’re too good to have my ads in your paper at all!”
“Oh, no. We’ll be glad to have everything but that one line.”
“You can’t run my business for me, don’t you think it!” adjured Mr. Levy in one emphatic breath, and departed with a righteous conviction of unmerited injury.
The Fashion’s one-eighth pages no longer graced The Guardian. Too shrewdly devoted to his trade to stay out entirely, Mr. Levy confined himself to terse announcements in the briefest and cheapest possible space. He also helped to spread the evil rumor that young Robson was “sore on the business men of Fenchester.” Business men there were, however, shrewd, fair-minded, and far-seeing enough to appreciate The Guardian’s one-standard policy, even while they deprecated what they regarded as its abuse of independence. These formed a strong minority of defenders and supporters. Little by little their ranks were increasing. Andrew Galpin’s optimism, and the debt which represented it, seemed fairly justified as the election of the fall of 1913 drew near.
Already The Guardian had far outstripped The Record in circulation and in advertising revenue. The rival paper was being hard pressed to make a respectable showing, and had adopted a decidedly acidulous tone toward Jeremy and his publication, letting no opportunity pass to impugn its motives and jeer at its principles. Ever ready for a fight, Jeremy was for joining issue on the editorial page, but Galpin’s wiser counsel withheld him.
“Nobody cares for newspaper squabbles but newspaper men,” said that sage. “We’re not making a newspaper for newspaper men. We’re making a newspaper for Bill Smith and Jim Jones and their missises. And we’re getting ’em!”
But Jeremy Robson was making a newspaper to meet another, more demanding, more changeful standard which was yet in a great measure the same. He was making a newspaper for Jeremy Robson; for Jeremy Robson, who, with a surprised and humble and hungry mind, was being educated by that very newspaper which he himself was making. More and more Jeremy Robson, editor of The Guardian, was identifying himself in mind and spirit with Bill Smith and Jim Jones and their missises, readers and followers of The Guardian. Because of that fellowship, because of the implied link of faith and trust that had grown up, impalpable, between them, evidenced in hundreds of letters to and scores of calls upon “the editor,” there had been established standards to which The Guardian was inviolably if tacitly committed. There were things which The Guardian might not do. There were things which, when the time came, it might not refrain from doing. An implicit faith was pledged. So and not otherwise does a newspaper become an institution.
Yet The Guardian was Jeremy’s very own. He felt for it the proprietary pride and interest of a man with a growing business and a growing influence to wield, and, added to that the affection of a child for a toy machine—which actually goes! He coddled his paper and petted it, and treated it, when he could, to new and better equipment, and awoke one day to the unpleasant realization that the editorials which he so enjoyed writing, and the growing, widening response to which constituted his most satisfactory reward, were physically a blotch and a blur and an affront to the staggering and baffled eye. The Guardian needed a new dress and needed it badly!
Now the garmenture of a newspaper is of a costliness to make Paquin, Caillot, and their Parisian congeners of the golden needle appear like unto ragpickers, when the bills come in. Jeremy bought The Guardian a new dress of type. It made a hideous hole, a chasm, an abyss in the loan negotiated from the Trust Company. But the paper became a festival to the proud eye of its owner. Galpin helped salve his chief’s conscience by agreeing that they would have had to do it sooner or later anyway.
Well advised of the loan, the status of the paper’s finances, and the new plunge, Montrose Clark and his legal satellite, Judge Dana, held consultation. Now, they decided, was the providentially appointed time for trying out the transfer ordinance in the City Council. The Guardian, whose opposition they had feared, had put itself in a position where it must “be good.”
“That young cub,” said Montrose Clark confidently, “will have to come into line.”
“With management. With careful management,” amended Judge Dana.
“Anyway!” returned the public utilitarian. “He’ll need every cent he can get and when he sees five or six hundred dollars as his share of our advertising campaign of education, with more to follow, he’ll take his orders like the others. I’ll send for him in a day or two.”
“What, again?” said Judge Dana.
The puffy jowl of Montrose Clark deepened in color. “I shall not tolerate any more of his impudence,” he declared. “He will come when sent for or—”
“Now, Mr. Clark, this is a case for diplomacy.”
“For you, you mean, Dana.”
“What do you employ me for?” soothed the lawyer. “Just you have a copy of the ordinance drawn up. Tell Garson to get up the advertising figures and give them to me. I’ll talk to young Mr. Robson.”
The magnate assented, though with an ill grace. “Will you take up the matter of your candidacy with him at the same time?”
Matters were so shaping themselves in politics, that with the figure of Martin Embree looming and the probability of a strong radical vote in the Legislature, the P.-U. and its allied traction interests in the State deemed it advisable to place a safe representative on the Court of Appeals bench, where much may be done by “interpretation” to offset destructive legislation. Dana had been selected as the man. In his early days the Judge had weathered, with difficulty and not without damage to his reputation, two or three legal tempests, one of which had all but caused his disbarment. Had not Montrose Clark, already finding him valuable as a clever quasher of damage suits in their early stages, employed his influence, the Judge would have ceased to ornament the legal profession. He had since gone far to rehabilitate himself in the eyes of the public, by sticking close to high-class, quiet (not to say secret) corporation work. But the better men of his own profession, while recognizing his abilities, were still suspicious of him, though not to the point where any protest was likely to be made in the face of such powerful interests as were backing him.
Judge Dana pondered his patron’s question. “That depends on how he takes the transfer plan,” he replied.
“You gave me advice about him,” said Montrose Clark rather maliciously; “to handle him with gloves. You see how it came out. Now I’ll give you some in return. Put the screws on the young fool!”
“Not my way. And not his description. He’s got a lot to learn. I’m going there as his teacher. I would n’t be, if he was a fool.”
Channels of communication bring information (and even more misinformation) from many sources into an editor’s office. Through one of these Jeremy had learned of the projected transfer plan’s recrudescence. Therefore he was prepared when Judge Dana, having called by appointment, stated the case flatly.
“We want your support,” he said.
“This is a pretty raw deal, Judge Dana,” remarked Jeremy.
The lawyer’s thin and solemn face did not alter its expression of bland disinterestedness. “Not if looked at in the right light.”
“What is the right light?”
“The P.-U. needs the new arrangement in order to perfect its service to the public. The greatest good to the greatest number.”
“Number One,” suggested Jeremy. “Mr. Montrose Clark.”
“Setting aside any personal prejudice in the matter, what have you against the Public Utilities Corporation?”
“It does n’t play fair. It is always begging for special privileges and then establishing them as rights after it has got them.”
The lawyer reflected that this theory, presented and amplified editorially in The Guardian, would be unpleasantly difficult to refute.
“After all, it performs a public service,” he pointed out, a bit lamely.
“The public could do it for itself better and cheaper.”
“That’s Embreeism. It’s Socialism.”
“Call it what you like. It’s common sense.”
“Let me advise you, in the friendliest spirit, not to take up any such scatter-brained theories in your paper. They’d wreck it.”
“That may come later. I’ll tell you this now, Judge. We won’t support the transfer plan.”
“I never thought you would,” said the lawyer calmly. “What’s the idea of this call, then?”
“To suggest that you keep your hands off and let us fight it out in Council.”
Jeremy laughed outright. “You don’t ask me to hold the easy mark while you go through his pockets. Only to stand by and not interfere.”
Judge Dana grinned. “I don’t care much for the style of your metaphor,” he confessed.
“Judge, I’m afraid it’s no go. You can easily bulldoze or bribe the Council, if we keep our hands off.”
“Fair words, my boy! Fair words! Has n’t The Guardian ever done any bulldozing?”
“Expect it has—in a good cause.”
“This is a good cause. It’s going to be good for you as well as us—and the public.”
“As how?” queried Jeremy.
“Our plan is to present the new system to the public through a series of advertisements. Education, you understand. The modern way: through the press. Would you like to see the outline?”
“Come to the point. What’s the amount?”
Where the hand-perfected Garson would have seen hope in the question, the warier lawyer scented danger to his plans. Nevertheless he went ahead. “Five hundred, minimum. Perhaps as high as a thousand, if the public is slow to learn. Our total advertising appropriation this year,” stated Judge Dana with great deliberation, “will run to five thousand dollars. There is no reason why The Guardian should not get a half of it. At least a half.”
“Did Mr. Clark ever get the message that I sent him by Garson, as to bribes?”
“Bribes?” The lawyer looked properly startled. “I don’t know. I doubt it.”
“I sent word to Clark that when I got ready to take bribes, I’d take them direct, in the form of cash.”
“But I’m not offering to bribe you or The Guardian,” protested the other. “It’s a matter of simple business. We institute an advertising campaign in a newspaper. We don’t ask it to advocate our measures; to a finicking mind that might seem to be a form of bribery. No; we only ask that, having published our advertising and accepted us as customers, the paper refrain from rendering the service we’ve paid for useless or worse than useless, by attacking our arguments editorially. Is n’t that fair and reasonable?” pleaded the lawyer, with a plausible gesture of laying the matter out for equitable judgment.
Jeremy passed the argument. “Do you think Garson ever delivered my message?”
“I should think it unlikely,” returned the other, taken slightly aback.
“Afraid?”
“Politic.”
“The same thing, usually. Are you afraid of Montrose Clark?”
The lawyer reddened. “I came here as one gentleman to another—”
“With an offer of hush-money,” broke in the editor. “Come, Judge; you and I are down to hard-pan. We can dispense with bluff. However, if you don’t like the word ‘afraid’—I don’t like it much, myself, but that’s because there are so many things I’m trying not to be afraid of—I’ll take it back. Now; will you take my message to Clark, as Garson would n’t?”
“No; I will not.”
“Then I’ll have to write it to him. Or, I might print it in The Guardian, in the form of an open letter following this interview.”
“This is a confidential visit,” cried the lawyer, shocked clean out of his professional calm.
“You’ve got me there,” admitted the other. “I’ve got to play square if I put up the bluff, have n’t I, Judge? Even with you.”
“I’m damned if I understand you, young man.”
“Cheer up. We’ve got many long years to learn all about each other in.”
“You think The Guardian will last?” Dana could not resist the temptation to impart the dig.
“It’ll be remembered, if it doesn’t,” promised its editor. “Won’t you reconsider the matter of that message, Judge? You can tone it down, you know, and temper it to the dignity of the little great man, whereas if I write him—”
“I’ll do it,” declared Dana suddenly. “And I won’t tone it down.”
“And you’ll enjoy it,” added Jeremy with a grin, which met an unexpected response. The two men understood each other. In a certain complementary sense they were even sympathetic to each other.
Devastating was the wrath of Montrose Clark upon receipt of Judge Dana’s report, wholly unexpurgated. He fumed, first redly, then purply, as if some strange chemical reaction were taking place inside him; and from the exhalations of that turmoil, there crystallized a most unwise decision. Montrose Clark decided upon reprisals with his enemy’s own weapon. He had Garson write several personal attacks upon Jeremy Robson, and intimidated Farley into publishing them in The Record, at special advertising rates, a procedure decidedly painful to Farley’s views of professional ethics and journalistic fellowship. Jeremy retorted with a series of hasty but rather brilliant imaginary interviews with one “President Puff,” which all but drove the subject of them into an apoplexy, and were a source of joy to the ungodly, albeit discreetly subdued as to expression, for the P.-U. head was a man of power in many directions. At this point the Church rushed into the breach in the person of the Reverend Mr. Merserole, Montrose Clark’s rector, and the benefidary of a five thousand dollar gift to the fund of the Nicklin Avenue Church only a week previous. Both the high-minded Mr. Clark and the high-church rector would have been profoundly and quite honestly shocked at the suggestion that there was the faintest element of financial influence (in impious circles called “graft”) in what followed. But the reverend gentleman preached an able and severe sermon upon the topic “Poisoned Pens,” in which a certain type of reckless, demagogic, passion-inciting, self-seeking, conscienceless journalism was lifted up to public reprobation in a pillar of fiery invective. The Guardian violated all precedent by publishing the livelier portions of the sermon under the caption, “Whom can the Reverend Gentleman Mean?” and followed this up with a report on the Clark contribution, paralleled with further excerpts from the more spiritual and lofty portions of the sermon, headed with the text, “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” The Reverend Mr. Merserole was pained and annoyed for the remainder of the week by a steady influx of marked copies of The Guardian. He was stimulated to a holy but helpless wrath by the subsequent discovery that he, the impeccable pastor of the fashionable Nicklin Avenue Church, had been impiously dubbed “the Nickle-in-the-Slot rector.” This ribaldry he ascribed to Jeremy Robson’s unprofessional wit, wherein he was wrong. As a matter of fact, it was a flash from the quaint mind of Eli Wade, the Boot & Shoe Surgeon. But Jeremy had earned another implacable enemy.
The Guardian did not get its share of the $500-or-more educational advertising from the P.-U. Indeed, there was no educational advertising. The transfer issue was passed, for the time, rather than venture into the open where, as Judge Dana observed, “The Guardian was waiting for it with a fish-horn and a brick”; and the P.-U.‘s legal lights set about drafting a blanket franchise for the consideration of some future legislature, which should enable the corporation to do about what it pleased without reference to dubious councils or pestilent journalistic demagogues.