TEMPORIZING
It was not until Paul was on his way home that the full significance of
Mr. Carter's action dawned upon him. He, Paul Cameron, had been bribed!
He had taken from the magnate of Burmingham a sum of money in return for
which he had tacitly pledged himself to use his influence to carry
through a business deal which he held to be wrong, and with which he had
no sympathy. To be sure, he had not done this monstrous deed
voluntarily. Mr. Carter had thrust it upon him. He had been put in a
difficult position and had failed to act. It was his passivity for which
he now blamed himself. He should have repudiated the whole thing, hurled
the odious money upon Carter's desk--since the man refused to take it
back--and fled from the place. The fact that Mr. Carter had given him no
opportunity to discuss the matter or refuse his offer was no excuse. He
should have made the opportunity himself.
The only apology he could offer for his conduct was that he was
completely stunned by the happenings of the afternoon. The drama had
moved too swiftly for him. Until it was over, he had not sensed its
trend. Was he really so much to blame?
Nevertheless, twist and excuse the fact as he would, the truth remained
that there he was with the hateful fifty-dollar bill in his possession.
It was appalling, terrible! He, who had always prided himself on his
honesty! He had not had the least notion of precipitating such a crisis
when he had inquired about selling his Liberty Bond. The query had been
a purely innocent one. He had to say something, and the chance of
getting information from Mr. Carter had seemed too opportune to let
slip. But as he reviewed the episode of the past half hour, he saw that
Mr. Carter was perfectly justified in misunderstanding him and thinking
that he laid himself open to the very situation that had come about.
Paul fingered the bill nervously. Fifty dollars! If he chose to use it
to meet the deficit on the school paper he could now take his own
savings for the new typewriter he wanted so much. Who would be the
wiser? Had not Mr. Carter given him the money? It was his, his own
property.
To forfeit that typewriter had been a wrench. He had not dared to admit
to himself how bitter had been his disappointment at giving it up. It
would be a long time before he could ever again earn enough money to
buy a machine. And he needed it so much--needed it right away. Suppose
he did buy a typewriter next year? A dozen typewriters would never mean
to him what one would mean just now. Until he had made up his mind to do
without it, it had seemed an indispensable possession, and now the
necessity of having it came back again with redoubled force. He
reflected on the machine's myriad advantages. Wasn't it almost
imperative that he buy one? Wasn't such a thing for the welfare of the
school? Surely it would not be a selfish action if he expended his money
for the good of others.
Suppose he were to urge the fellows to sell out the _March Hare_ to
Carter? After all, they were their own masters. They need not do so
unless they chose. He had no authority over them. To advise was a very
different thing from commanding. No matter what measure he advocated,
his opinion was neither final nor mandatory. He was no autocrat or
imperator before whose decree his subjects trembled. It would be absurd
to credit himself with such power.
And, anyway, the editorial board had never promised to bequeath the
_March Hare_ to the school. If parents, teachers, pupils, the general
public had assumed this, they had had no right to do so. The paper, as
Mr. Carter had said, was the property of those who had created it. Were
they not free to dispose of it as they chose?
Yet all the while he argued thus, Paul knew, deep down in his soul, that
although there had been no written or verbal agreement, the community
considered the publication a permanent school property.
Should it be sold to Mr. Carter and continue to be published, what
chances for success would another such paper have? It would be useless
for 1921 to attempt to duplicate the _March Hare_. People were familiar
with it; they knew and liked it. In all probability a great portion of
its regular subscribers would continue to take the magazine, regardless
of who published it. That it had ceased to be a school enterprise would
not influence them. They liked it for what it was, not as a
philanthropy. Probably, too, with Mr. Carter behind it, the _March Hare_
would branch out and be made much more attractive. If the _Echo_ press
took up the publication of such a monthly, it would, of course, be with
the intention of sweeping all other competitors out of the field. It
_would_ sweep them out, too. Mr. Carter would see to that. By fair means
or foul he had always accomplished that which he willed to do.
Another school paper running in opposition to such a power? Why, it
would not have the ghost of a chance to live! Besides, who would print
it? No, if Mr. Carter took over the _March Hare_, the school must say
good-by to further literary attempts.
But after all, was that his lookout? What concern of his would it be
what became of Burmingham and 1921. They could struggle on as best they
might. That was what his class had had to do.
Paul walked home very slowly, turning Mr. Carter's bill in his hand as
he went. How delicate its workmanship! How wonderful its dainty tracery!
He had never before noticed the accuracy with which a bill was
fashioned.
"Who prints United States money, Dad?" he asked quite irrelevantly of
his father, when next he saw him.
"Our United States greenbacks? Those are engraved and printed, my son,
at the United States Bureau of Engraving and Printing at Washington.
They are made from very fine and exquisitely prepared plates and printed
on a special sort of paper. This paper has numberless little silk
threads running through it which not only toughen it and prevent it from
tearing but also make it almost impossible to duplicate. A counterfeiter
would have to go to a deal of trouble to imitate such material."
Paul nodded. He had noticed the blue threads in his fifty-dollar bill.
In fact, there was not much about it that he had not noticed while
twisting and turning it in his fingers.
"Yes," continued his father, "our paper money and government notes are
fine examples of accurate and perfect workmanship. I suppose, as they
pass through our hands, we seldom consider the labor that goes into
making them. From the time the designer begins his work to the moment
the plates are made, tried out, and accepted, many, many hours of toil
are consumed. You know, of course, that our government runs a very
extensive printing plant where it uses tons of paper every year. There
is no end to the government printing. The Congressional Records must be
printed and filed, as must also thousands of reports from various boards
and committees. Then there is stationery for official use; official
documents of all sorts; catalogues; cards for government business."
"I never thought of that."
"Yes, indeed. Uncle Sam runs quite a jobbing office, all the details of
which must be carefully systematized, too. Great care is taken that the
spelling abbreviations and such details shall be uniform on all
government documents. You can readily see how necessary it is that they
should be. Therefore the government issues a manual for the use of its
employees, a list of punctuation and capitalization marks and rules, as
well as printers' marks which shall serve as a standard and must be
conformed to for all government purposes."
"That is interesting, isn't it?" murmured Paul.
"You can readily understand that in preparing government reports and
such things for the press a uniform abbreviation for the States, for
example, must be used. It would be out of the question to have one
person abbreviating Alabama one way and another person another. It would
not only result in a slipshod lot of documents but the variation might
mislead those who read it. In all such documents every detail must be
the same. Moreover, often employees are far from being expert in such
matters and a book to which they can refer is a great help to them. In
addition, it settles all disputes arising between the clerks who make up
the reports and the printers who print them; and it saves the time and
labor of correcting errors."
"I see."
"Not only does the government printing office do a vast amount of
printing for the use of the Washington authorities but it does a great
deal of work for the country at large. Think, for instance, of the care
and accuracy that goes into making out the United States census."
"Not only care but paper and ink," laughed Paul.
"All such tabulated documents consume quantities of paper," answered his
father. "Directories, telephone books, circulars, and advertising
matter in general demand tons and tons of paper every year, and the
printing of them provides employment for hundreds of printers. As time
goes on, more and more business is annually transacted by mail. The
country is so tremendous and the expense of sending out salesmen to
cover it so great that merchants now do much of their selling from
mail-order catalogues. Many of these books are very attractive, too. A
careful reproduction of the object for sale is made and the photograph
sent broadcast to speak for itself. Jewelry firms issue tempting lists
of their wares; china and glass dealers try to secure buyers by offering
alluring pages of pictures, many of them in color; dry goods houses send
out photographs of suits, hats, and clothing of all sorts. You have seen
scores of such books and know how they are indexed and priced. In fact,
there are commercial firms whose mail-order department is a business in
itself, catalogues entirely supplanting salesmen. It is a much cheaper,
wider-reaching means of selling, and often the results are quite as good
as are the more old-fashioned methods. Now that artistic cuts can be
reproduced with comparatively little expense this means of advertising
is becoming more and more popular. Many charities annually make their
appeal for funds by leaflet or card; stocks are offered to customers;
your patronage to theaters, entertainments, and hotels is thus
solicited. The combination of low postage rates and wide mail
distribution is accountable for an almost overwhelming amount of printed
business being transacted. Then, too, the mail is a great time-saver, or
should be, an advantage to be considered in our busy, work-a-day world."
"But people don't read half the stuff they get through the mails," said
Paul.
"No, of course not. If they did, they would do little else," smiled his
father. "Nevertheless, they glance at it and now and then, as their eye
travels over it, an item on the page catches their fancy. Any artistic
advertisement will usually command attention; so will the receipt of
some trifling article that is pretty or novel. Besides, it is chiefly
the rushed city person who tosses the advertisement away unread. Those
with more leisure, country people, perhaps, who receive little mail,
usually read every word of the printed matter that reaches them. They do
not have so many diversions as we do, and this printed stuff entertains
them and keeps them in touch with the cities. Therefore they generally
go over what is sent them quite carefully. Frequently they are miles
from large shops and are forced to do much of their purchasing by mail,
so such catalogues are a great convenience to them."
"I can see that," Paul admitted.
"Yes, indeed. Catalogues to those living in sparsely settled districts
are a profound blessing. I should not be surprised to see the paper,
ink, and printing business one of our largest industries. We cannot do
without any of these commodities. Have you thought, for example, of the
amount of material and labor that goes into producing the millions of
thick telephone directories annually circulated among the subscribers?
All these have to be printed somewhere."
"It must be an awful piece of work to get them out, Dad."
"It is. They must be printed absolutely correctly too, for an error will
cause both the exchange and the subscriber no end of trouble. So it is
with residence directories and many similar lists. If you consider, you
can readily see that as a nation we consume an unbelievable amount of
paper and ink in a year. That is why the shortage of these materials
during the war caused such universal inconvenience. And not only do we
demand a great deal of paper, and ink, and printer's skill in every
department of our business, but being a country alert for education, we
annually use a tremendous number of schoolbooks. Hundreds, thousands,
millions of schoolbooks are printed each year for the purpose of
educating and democratizing our growing citizens."
Paul stirred in his chair uneasily. The talk had drifted back into the
familiar channels of the present. Again the school, Mr. Carter, the
fifty-dollar bill, and the thoughts that for the instant had taken
flight now returned to his mind, bringing a cloud to his face.
His father, noticing the shadow, looked kindly into the boy's eyes.
"You are tired to-night, son," he said.
"A little."
"Not working too hard?"
"No, sir. I don't think so."
"Everything going all right at school?"
"Yes."
"Paper still booming?"
"Yes, Dad. Going finely."
"I am glad to hear that."
Mr. Cameron waited a second. A wild impulse to take his father into his
confidence seized Paul. He hesitated. Then it was too late. His father
rose and with a friendly touch on his shoulder strode across the hall
and into his den.
"You must not overwork at your editorial desk, my boy," he called
jocosely from the distant threshold. "It doesn't pay."
Paul heard the door slam. The moment for confession had passed. His
father had gone and he was alone with his conscience and Mr. Carter's
fifty-dollar bill.