CLICK-CLICK! Click-click! Clickety-click! One hundred pairs of knitting
needles furnished a subdued castanet accompaniment to the voice of a
long, lean lady-droner who stood upon the platform of the Fenchester
Club Auditorium, and read from a typed list. At times she referred to
various issues of The Guardian ranged on a flag-bedecked table. And at
times the clickers paused to make notes in small books wherewith they
had provided themselves for that very purpose. The gathering was the
every morning meeting of the Fenchester Ladies War Reading Club.
Socially it was a comprehensively representative gathering, and
something more. Pretty much every family whose comings and goings
were wont to be entered (by Buddy Higman or some other arbiter of the
elegancies) in The Guardian’s Society Notes had at least one member
present. Sprinkled among the women who made up the active list of
membership were a few associate members, mere males, and in the
presiding officer’s chair sat Mr. Montrose Clark; for, after the regular
proceedings of the day, special business was in order.
Miss Rappelje, the secretary, read from her list: “Nicholas Engel,
grocer. Last year, two columns a week, average. Since The Fair Dealer
announcement, half a column.”
The castanet chorus diminished while the knitters and crocheters entered
a note against Herr Engel’s grocery.
“The Fliess Brewing Company,” continued the reader. “Last year five
columns; now, none.”
“Hurray for Prohibition! Beer’s a German drink anyway,” cried a voice,
and there was a wave of laughter as the clicking resumed.
“The Great Northwestern Stores. Last year three full pages, regularly,
and on special sales as high as five--”
“Pardon me.” A member rose in the center of the house. “Mr. Ahrens sent
a representative to tell me that, in spite of unsettled conditions, they
have contracted to use more space in The Guardian than ever before, and
to ask me to report it here.”
“Let ’em!” commented a determined and ominous voice. “I shall wait and
see.”
From the murmur of assent which greeted this, it was evident that many
would wait and see. So the reading went on, through dairies, laundries,
undertakers, soft drinks, ice dealers, stationers, milliners, garages,
all the lines of industry which bid in print for trade, while the
knitters alternately toiled and made their notes.
Outside, in a small anteroom off the stage, Mr. Jeremy Robson put his
obstinate head down and balked. Ten days’ enforced rest, except for his
one escape, had gone far to restore him to fitness. Now he fended off
Judge Selden Dana and demanded enlightenment.
“Not a step farther till I know what I’m up against,” he declared.
“All you have to do,” returned the lawyer soothingly, “is to trust to me
and do as I tell you.”
“Is that all!” retorted Jeremy, with intent. “Who are these people
outside and what are they doing?”
“They’re your well-earned enemies, and they’re saving the paper for
you.”
“Somebody’s certainly done a job in that direction.-But how? These sound
like mostly women.”
“So they are. As to how they’re pulling your paper through, that’s the
simplest thing in the world. We got up a War Reading Club.”
“Reading Club,” repeated Jeremy. “Perfectly simple! Of course! Andy
Galpin _said_ the whole town had gone crazy since I was laid up. Andy
was right.”
“A great authority once proposed a classic question: ‘Who’s loony now?’
Wait until you hear the rest of this. The club meets here every morning
to do knitting and other war-work while certain extracts from the local
papers are read to them.”
“Good idea,” remarked Jeremy, weary but polite. “Shall I have something
put in the paper about it?”
“My Lord, no!” almost shouted Dana.
Jeremy leaped in his chair. “I wish you would n’t do that sort of
thing,” he protested.
“Still a bit jumpy? Well, I’ll explain in words of one syllable. But
first apply your eye to this peep-hole and tell me what you think of our
membership.”
Doing as he was directed, the editor looked out over what, in earlier
days, he would have identified as a mass-meeting of The Guardian’s
enemies.
“How much purchasing power per year in the local stores would you
suppose they represent?” asked Dana. “A big lot. Quarter of a million,
maybe.”
“Nearer twice that. Now, we’ve got a little committee called the
Committee on Selective Reading. I happen to be chairman of it. Our
committee chooses what advertisements--you get that, Jem?--what
advertisements shall be read each day. That’s our White List. Our
members deal only with merchants whose loyalty is above suspicion. What
would you think of the loyalty of an advertiser who quit The Guardian to
go into The Fair Dealer?”
“Don’t ask me. I’m prejudiced.”
“So is the War Reading Club. It’s my committee’s business to keep ’em
prejudiced--against any merchant who advertises in the wrong place. Now,
our theory is that our members read no advertisements, themselves, and
don’t intend to; certainly not after The Fair Dealer appears. Therefore
they know of the local advertising only as the Committee on Selective
Reading chooses it for them. That’s the _theory_.”
“What’s the fact?”
“The fact is that ninety-nine per cent of those women will see any
merchant in town doubly damned before they spend a cent in his shop
unless he sticks by The Guardian as long as The Guardian sticks by the
country. Do you get it now?”
“Boycott!”
“And blackmail. You should have seen the weak-kneed among the
store-people when we let our programme leak out! You heard part of it
from Galpin.”
“Dana,” said the editor, “if you’d told me this before, you’d have saved
me some mighty tough days.”
“Couldn’t risk it. Can’t you see that we’ve been skirting the ragged
edge of the law? If you’d been in on it, The Fair Dealer could have
charged conspiracy.”
“Then why tell me now?”
“We-ell, we can’t work under cover much longer. Besides, I doubt if
there’s much of any fight left in Embree and his crowd.” He peered out
through the peep-hole. “They’ve turned it into an experience meeting
now,” he remarked. “Then you come on. They’re expecting you. Will you
come peaceably or be escorted?”
“Let me keep out of sight until it’s my turn, anyway,” pleaded Jeremy.
So the lawyer, leading him in, established him behind a wing where he
was half-hidden, and placed himself as a screen. As he settled himself
down, a plump and luxuriously dressed woman at the rear of the hall rose
and said austerely:
“I disapprove The Guardian’s local policy. I consider it unfair and
prejudiced against--er--ah--against our kind of people. But while we
are at war I agree to support it loyally and to deal only with those who
support it.”
“Are my eyes playing tricks?” whispered Jeremy in Dana’s ear. “Or is
that Mrs. Ambrose Galsworth, who tried to have me blackballed at the
Canoe Club?”
“She’s a new member. Wait! There’s worse to come,” chuckled the lawyer.
A little, lean, brisk, twinkling old maid projected herself out of her
seat with a jumping-jack effect.
“I never expected to live to see the day I’d speak for The Guardian
after they printed that awful political attack on my dear uncle,” she
declared. “But the country first! Put down Celia Jenney on your list.
And”--her black bright eyes snapped out sparks--“if there’s a store in
town that don’t want my trade while this war is on, all it has to do
is to take its advertising out of The Guardian and put it into The Fair
Dealer--if that’s its silly name.”
“She spends only about fifteen thousand a year in this town,” observed
Dana aside to Jeremy.
“No wonder the advertisers have been falling over themselves to get back
into the paper!” murmured the editor.
After further informal pledges the chairman called for reports from the
“Missionary Workers.” Up rose Aider-man Crobin--Crooked Crobin, as The
Guardian had dubbed him for years.
“T’ree of my constitchoonts assured me this mahmin’--voluntarily, ye
ondherstand; quite voluntarily--that they are cancelin’ their contract
wid th’ noo paper.”
A tall, pale young woman rose in the center of the house, and as
she moistened her nervous lips a murmur and a rustle swept over the
audience; for this was Mrs. Dennis Robbins, Governor Embree’s sister.
“I bring five pledges of advertisers to stand by The Guardian--and
America,” she said in a low voice; and a quick ripple of sympathetic
applause answered her.
Before it had died away, old Madam Taylor rustled silkily to her feet.
“I’m the tax-dodger,” she cackled. “See The Guardian if you don’t
believe it. But I never dodged a good fight. Two stores that I trade
with cut down their advertising in The Guardian. So I cut down my
trade with them. I cut it down to nothing. Now I understand they feel
differently about the paper,” she concluded malevolently.
Up popped pursy little Mrs. Stockmuller. “Me, I quit Ahrens anyway,”
she announced, and sat down flushed with the resultant applause of the
multitude and suddenly conscious of latent and hitherto unsuspected
capabilities as a public speaker.
Then little Anne Serviss pledged the support of three hundred University
girls, and following her, the Reverend Mr. Merserole reared himself
impressively into sight and hearing.
“Inter arma, rixæ minores silent,” he proclaimed oracularly, “if my
friend Judge Dana, whom I observe upon the stage, will permit me to
alter a legal proverb to fit the occasion. ‘In time of war, lesser
quarrels are stilled.’ Many of us have had our--er--trials with The
Guardian. But all that is forgotten in the larger cause. I beg to
report, Mr. Chairman, that eighteen members of my church--leading
members, I may add--have signed an agreement to advertise in no local
morning paper during the war.”
“But that’s boycott and against the law, isn’t it?” queried some
cautious member.
Dana jumped to his feet.
“Let ’em take it up!” he cried, his face lighted by a joyous snarl.
“Just let us get ’em into court on it!”
A shout answered him. There was no mistaking the temper of that crowd.
Friends or enemies of The Guardian’s lesser policies, they were shoulder
to shoulder now in the common cause. A conservative old judge was just
resuming his seat, after reporting, when the door was jerked open and
there burst into the aisle Andrew Galpin, livid with the excitement of
great tidings.
“They’ve quit!” he shouted. Then, recalling himself to the proprieties,
he added: “I beg pardon, Mr. Chairman. But they’ve quit!”
Mr. Montrose Clark rose. “Mr. Andrew Galpin, of The Guardian,” he
announced. “Mr. Galpin has, perhaps, matter of interest to present
before this meeting.”
“They’ve quit. That’s all,” said the excited Galpin. His wild and roving
glance fell upon Jeremy Robson who had incautiously moved forward at
sight of his associate, and the last vestige of parliamentary decorum
departed from him. “Do you get that, Boss?” he bellowed. “The Botches
have quit. We win.”
“Who’s quit?”
“What’s a Botch?”
“Platform!”
“Tell us about it.”
“What’s a Botch?” repeated the general manager. “Bausch is a Botch.
Wanser’s a Botch. The Deutscher Club’s a batch of Botches. ‘Smiling
Mart’ Embree’s a Botch, The Fair Dealer would have been a Botch, but
there is n’t going to be any Fair Dealer. They could n’t stand the gaff
you folks put to ’em. Publication day’s indefinitely postponed.”
Hardly had he finished when Jeremy Robson found himself being hustled
by Judge Dana and the chairman, who had possessed themselves of an arm
apiece, to the front of the platform. The house rose to him in a burst
of acclaim. He looked out, with nerves aquiver, across that waiting
audience of one-time enemies, opponents bitter and implacable, bitterly
and implacably fought in many an unforgotten campaign; now his allies,
rallying to a service greater than all past hatreds, higher than all
past loyalties.
Judge Dana’s words echoed back to him: “In the same cause--with the last
drop of blood--to the finish!” What terms could he find wherein to speak
to these, his enemies of old, looking up at him with such befriending
eyes?
Montrose Clark had delivered himself of a hurried and unheeded
introduction, and now Jeremy stood, with shaking knees, gazing down at
them. Opportunely and suddenly the parable of Nick Milliken came into
his mind.
“My friends,” he said unsteadily, “I can’t make you a speech. There are
n’t thanks made for this sort of thing. But I can tell you the parable
of Milliken. You know Milliken, the Socialist--one of us. He was talking
to a bunch that were ripe for a strike, arguing against it because it
would hinder one little corner of our war. This is what he told them:
‘All my life,’ he said, ‘I’ve been fighting Wall Street and the firm of
J. P. Morgan & Company. I’m against everything they represent. I expect
to go on fighting them the rest of my life. But if I were walking down
the street with Mr. Morgan and we met a mad wolf in the road I’d say to
him: “Pierpont, let’s get together and kill that wolf. Our little scrap
can wait.” That’s what Milliken told them, my friends. That’s all I
can say to you now. We’ve had our differences, you and I. We’ll have
them again. They seemed big and bitter at the time. How little they
seem now! For now we’re facing the mad wolf of Germany right here in
Centralia. He’s in the heart of our State. “Let’s get him out! Our little
scrap can wait!”’”
They rose to him again.
“But, God bless your dear hearts,” cried young Jeremy Robson with
shining eyes and outstretched hands, “how can we ever fight each other
after this!”
Up in a far corner of the gallery a pair of strong, little, sun-tanned,
eager, tremulous hands went forth involuntarily as if to meet Jeremy’s,
unseen.
*****
While that very unliterary and decidedly militant organization, the
Fenchester War Reading Club, was pouring forward to overwhelm the editor
of The Guardian, there gathered in the little side room a hasty and
earnest conference of three. Andrew Galpin and Montrose Clark having
left it, the lone survivor, Judge Selden Dana, remained to catch Jeremy
as he came out.
“Jem,” he said, “you’ve won.”
“Thanks to you people!”
“Thanks to a good fight. Galpin tells me The Fair Dealer backers are
through. We’ve scared the local advertisers out of their contracts and
the paper can’t hold ’em because of the change of publication date.
Verrall made a fatal break when he put a date in that contract. They’re
through. But The Fair Dealer is going on.”
“No! Who’s going to back it?”
“Montrose Clark. He’s going to take it over.”
“For his corporation campaign. I see. Then this means another fight of
another kind on my hands.”
“He’s going to use it to beat out Martin Embree with his own candidate.”
Jeremy’s eyes narrowed. “You know The Guardian can’t and won’t stand for
you fellows’ kind of candidate.”
“You’ll stand for this one.”
“Who is it?”
“Jeremy Robson.”
“Jer--Andy was right, _sure!_” gasped the other. “The town has gone
crazy and I’ve gone with it.”
“On a platform of Centralia for the War,” continued the other. “Now put
your lower jaw back on its hinges and I’ll explain how this is n’t as
crazy from our point of view as you’d think. You’ll be elected--for
we’ll lick ‘Smiling Mart’--only for the unfinished term. The war will
last that long, and while the war lasts internal polides don’t matter.
After the war--why, we’ll have a newspaper of our own to lick you with
when you come up for reelection.”
“I’ll give you a good run both ways,” promised Jeremy. And the two men
soberly shook hands upon it.
“What a scheme; the woman’s boycott!” said Jeremy presently. “I might
have known that was your fine Italian hand.”
“It was n’t.”
“No? Who did work it out?”
“A much cleverer politician than I ever thought of being.”
“There ain’t no sich animule,” denied Jeremy. “Show it to me.”
“I have been sitting at the feet of Wisdom, Wile, and Woman. Her other
name,” said Judge Dana, “is Marcia Ames. And my professional advice to
you is to be on your way.”