PUBLICITY
As soon as the first necessities of their business were provided for at
Vicksburg, Phil wandered off in search of newspapers. He had become
interested in many things through his newspaper reading in connection
with Jim Hughes, and concerning many matters he was curious to know the
outcome. So he sought not only for the latest newspapers, and not
chiefly for them, but rather for back numbers covering the period during
which _The Last of the Flatboats_ had been wandering in the woods. He
secured a lot of them, some of them from New York, some from Chicago,
some from St. Louis, and some from other cities.
To his astonishment, when he opened the earliest of them,--those that
had been published soon after the affair at Memphis,--he found them
filled with portraits of himself and of his companions, with pictures
of _The Last of the Flatboats_, and even with interviews, of which
neither he nor Irv Strong, who was the other one chiefly quoted, had
any recollection. Yet when they read the words quoted from their lips,
they remembered that these things were substantially what they had
said to innocent-looking persons not at all known to them as newspaper
reporters, who had quite casually conversed with them at Memphis.
Neither had either of them posed for a portrait, and yet here were
pictures of them, ranging all the way from perfect likenesses to
absolute caricatures, freely exploited.
Phil and Irv were so curious about this matter that they asked everybody
who came on board for an explanation. Finally, one young man, who had
come to them with an inquiry as to the price at which they would be
willing to sell out the boat and cargo at Vicksburg instead of going on
to New Orleans, smiled gently and said, in reply to Phil’s questions:--
“Well, perhaps you don’t always recognize a reporter when you see him.
Sometimes he may come to you to talk about quite other things than those
that he really wants you to tell him about. Sometimes your talk will
prove to be exactly what he wants to interest his readers with, and as
a reporter usually has a pretty accurate memory, he is able to reproduce
all that you say so nearly as you said it, that you can’t yourself
afterward discover any flaw in his report. Sometimes, too, the reporter
happens to be an artist sent to get a picture of you. He may have a
kodak concealed under his vest, but usually that does not work. It is
clumsy, you know, and generally unsatisfactory. It is a good deal easier
for a newspaper artist who knows his business to talk to you about
turnips, or Grover Cleveland, or Christian Science, or the tariff, or
any of those things that people always talk about, and while you think
him interested in the expression of your views, make a sketch of you on
his thumb nail or on his cuff, which he can reproduce at the office for
purposes of print. By the way, have you talked with any reporters since
you arrived at Vicksburg?”
“No,” answered Phil; “none of them have come aboard.”
“Are you sure of that?”
“Well, yes; I haven’t seen a single man from the press.”
“Well, if any of the papers should happen to ‘get on’ to the fact that
you are here, and print something about it, I will send you copies in
the morning.”
The next morning the promised copies came. One of them contained not
only a very excellent portrait of Phil and a group picture of the crew,
but also an almost exact reproduction of the conversation given above.
A new light dawned upon Phil’s mind.
“After all, that fellow was a reporter and a very clever one. He didn’t
want to buy the boat or its cargo or anything else. But I wonder if he
was an artist also. If not, who made those pictures?”
“Well,” said Irv, “you remember there was a young woman who came on
board about the same time that he did. She was very much interested in
Baby, but I noticed that she went all over the boat, and when you and
that young fellow were talking, she sat down on the anchor, there, and
seemed to be writing a letter on a pad. Just then, as I remember, we
fellows were gathered around the new lantern you had just bought and
examining it--and, by the way, here’s the lantern in the group picture.”
All this was a revelation to Phil, and it interested him mightily. As
for Irv Strong, he was so interested that he made up his mind to beard
the lion in his den. He went to the office of one of the newspapers and
asked to see its editor. But out of him he got no satisfaction whatever.
The editor hadn’t the slightest idea where the interviews or the
pictures had come from.
“All that,” he said, “is managed by our news department. I never know
what they are going to do. I judge them only by results. But I do not
mind saying to you that there would have been several peremptory
discharges in this office if this paper had not had a good picture of
_The Last of the Flatboats_, a portrait of your interesting young
captain and other pictures of human interest tending to illustrate the
arrival of this boat at our landing, although we rarely print pictures
of any kind in our paper. This is an exceptional case. And I think that
the chief of our news department would have had an uncomfortable quarter
of an hour if he and his subordinates had failed to secure a talk with
persons so interesting as those who captured Jim Hughes, as he is
called, and secured the arrest of the others of that bank burglar’s
gang, and afterward rescued one of the most distinguished citizens of
Mississippi and his family from death by starvation. Really, you must
excuse me from undertaking the task of telling you how our boys do these
things. It is not my business to know, and I have a great many other
things to do. It is their business to get the news. For that they are
responsible, and to that end they have control of adequate means. Oh, by
the way, that suggests to me a good editorial that ought to be written
right now. Perhaps you will be interested to read it in to-morrow
morning’s paper. I am just going to write it.”
As it was now midnight, Irv was bewildered. How in the world was he to
read in the next morning’s paper an editorial that had, at this hour,
just occurred to the man who was yet to write it? How was it to be
written, set up in type, and printed before that early hour when the
newspaper must be on sale?
The editor knew, if Irv did not. He knew that the hour of midnight sees
the birth of many of the ablest and most influential newspaper
utterances of our time. Irv’s curious questions had suggested to him a
little essay upon the value of Publicity, and it was upon that theme
that he wrote. He showed, with what Irv and Phil regarded as an
extraordinary insight into things that they had supposed to be known
only to themselves, how their very irregular reading of the newspapers,
from time to time, as they received them, had first awakened their
interest in a vague and general way in the bank burglary case; how, as
their interest became intenser, and the descriptions of the fleeing
criminal became more and more detailed, they had at last so far coupled
one thing with another as to reach a correct conclusion at the critical
moment. He showed how, but for this persistent and minute Publicity,
they would never have dreamed of arresting the fugitive who was posing
as their pilot--how, but for this, the criminals would probably never
have been caught at all; how their escape would have operated as an
encouragement to crime everywhere by relieving it of the fear of
detection,--and much else to the like effect. It was a very interesting
article, and it was one which set the boys thinking.
“After all,” said Ed, “we owe a great deal more to the newspapers than I
had ever thought. And the more we think of it, the more we see that we
owe it to them. I don’t know whether they are always sincere in their
antagonism to wrong or not, but at any rate in their rivalry with each
other to get the earliest news and to stand best with the public, they
manage pretty generally to expose about all the wrongs there are, and to
rouse public opinion against them. I suppose that, but for the
newspapers, we should not have a very good country to live in,
especially so far as big cities are concerned.”
“As to those sentiments,” said Irv, “I’m afraid one Thomas Jefferson got
ahead of you, Ed. I remember reading that he said somewhere, that he
would rather have a free press without a free government than a free
government without a free press. I imagine his meaning to have been that
we could not long have a free government without a free press, and that
if we have a free press it must pretty soon compel the setting up of a
free government.”
“But the newspapers do publish such dreadful things,” said Constant.
“They make so many sensations that their moral influence, I suppose, is
pretty bad.”
“Well, is it?” asked Irv. “If there is a pest-hole in any city, where
typhus or smallpox is breeding, and a newspaper exposes it, it is not
pleasant reading, of course, but it arouses public attention and brings
public opinion to bear to compel a remedy. If there is a health board,
the newspapers all want to know what the health board is doing; if there
isn’t a health board, the newspapers all cry out, ‘Why isn’t there a
health board?’ and presently one is organized. Now I suppose it is very
much the same way about moral plague spots. If vice or crime prevail in
any part of the city, the newspapers print the news of it and call upon
the police to suppress it. This arouses public attention and brings
pressure to bear upon public officials until the bad thing is done away
with, or at least reduced to small proportions.”
“Yes,” said Ed, thinking and speaking slowly, “and there is another
thing. Even when the newspapers print the details about scandals, and we
say it would be better not to publish such things, it may be that the
newspapers are right; because every rascal that is inclined to do
scandalous things knows by experience or observation that the
newspapers, if they get hold of the facts, will print them and hold him
up to the execration of mankind. If the newspapers did not print the
news of such things, every scoundrel would know that he could do what he
pleased without fear of being made the subject of scandal. The first
thought of every rascal seems to be to keep his affairs out of the
newspapers. Now perhaps it is better that he cannot keep them out; as he
certainly cannot. In very many cases, without doubt or question, men are
restrained from doing outrageous things merely by the fear that their
conduct will be exploited with pictures of themselves and fac-similes of
their letters and everything of the kind, in so-called sensational
newspapers.”
“Well, all that is so, I suppose,” said Will, “though I hadn’t thought
of it quite to the extent that you have, Ed. I have always been told
that the newspapers were horribly sensational and immoral, but, now that
I think of it, when they publish a story of immorality, it is because
somebody has been doing the immoral thing that they report; and as you
say, the fact that the newspapers are pretty sure to get hold of the
truth and publish it in every case is often a check on men’s tendency to
do immoral things.”
Before parting with their rescued friends at Vicksburg, the boys had to
go ashore and be photographed, at the planter’s solicitation.
“I want my children always to think of you young men as their friends,”
he said,--“friends to whom they owe more than they can ever repay. I
don’t want ‘Baby’ to forget you as she might--she is so young still--if
she did not have your portraits to remind her as she grows older. As for
myself and my wife--I cannot say how much of gratitude we feel. There
are some things that one can’t even try to say. But be sure--” He broke
down here, but the boys understood.
Irv Strong, whose objection to anything like a “scene” is a familiar
fact to the reader, diverted the conversation by saying:--
“It would be a pity to perpetuate the memory of these clothes of ours,
or to let the little ones learn as they grow up what a ragamuffin crew
it was with whom an unfortunate accident once compelled them to
associate for a time. So suppose we have only our faces photographed
now, and send you pictures of our best clothes when we get back home.”
The triviality served its purpose, and the party went to the
photographer’s.
When the time of leave taking came there were tears on the part of the
mother and the children, while “Baby” stoutly insisted upon remaining
on the flatboat with “my big boys,” as she called her rescuers. She was
especially in love with Phil, who, in spite of his absorbing duties,
had found time to play with her and tell her wonderful stories. During
the clothes-making wait at Vicksburg, indeed, Phil had done little
else than entertain the beautiful big-eyed child. He repeated to her
all the nursery rhymes and jingles he had ever heard in his infancy
or since, and to the astonishment of his companions, he made up many
jingles of his own for her amusement. He made up funny stories for her
too,--stories that were funny only because he illustrated them with
comical faces and grotesque gestures.
So when the time of parting came the child clung to him, and had to be
torn away in tears. I suppose I ought not to tell it on Phil, but he too
had to turn aside from the others and use his handkerchief on his eyes
before he could give the command to “cast off” in a husky and not very
steady voice.