THE ADVENTURES OF A NEWSPAPER STORY
Great cities thrive on sensations. The yellow journal with its blatant
enthusiasms and its brazen effrontery finds a congenial habitat there,
not because it is brazen, nor even because it is enthusiastic, but
because it supplies a community need. The screaming headline is a mental
cocktail. Bellowed forth by a trombone-lunged newsboy, it crashes against
the eye, the ear and the brain simultaneously. It whips up tired nerves.
It keys the crowd to the keen tension necessary for the doing of the
city's business. And the crowd likes it. Fed hourly on mental stimulants,
it becomes a slave to its newspapers.
On the morning after Mary Randall's dramatic exit from her uncle's
mansion Chicago awoke and clutched at the morning papers with all the
eagerness of a drunkard reaching for his dram. A hint of a powerful new
thrill lay in the half disclosed first pages. Black headings and
"freaked" makeup meant but one thing--a big story.
And Chicago was not disappointed. Occupying the place of honor on the
first pages of all of the morning sheets was the announcement of a new
assault upon the Vice Trust. To the crowd the name Mary Randall meant
nothing. It knew little of her and cared less. But the idea of a young
girl, beautiful, socially prominent, immensely wealthy in her own right,
declaring war single-handed on a monster so mightily armored and
intrenched and so brutally strong as the Vice Trust appealed instantly to
the crowd's imagination. In the crowd's thought, at least, the girl
became a heroine. And though the man in the street openly wearing an air
of cheap cynicism spoke of her as "another crazy reformer" or as a
"notoriety-hunting crank," secretly he responded to the enthusiasm of the
headline writer who announced her as a "modern Joan of Arc."
Mary had given out the story herself. A simple letter from her to the
city editors announcing that she had left her home and all the luxuries
that such a home implied and, accompanied only by a maid, had set forth
on a war of extermination against the "vice ring" had been sufficient to
set every local room in the city in a frenzy. Re-write men and head
writers had done the rest. Every newspaper recorded the launching of her
adventure with a luxuriance of illustration and a variety of detail that
left nothing more to be said on the subject. Mary had counted rather
shrewdly on this. She possessed, among her other natural gifts, a keen
judgment of news values. She knew, too, the immense power of the press.
By enlisting the agencies of publicity behind her she had multiplied her
forces a thousand-fold. At the end of her letter Mary had written a
modest appeal to the public. Every newspaper printed it under display
type. It read as follows:
"TO THE MEN AND WOMEN OF CHICAGO.
"Our city, which should be the heart of American honor, is in the grip of
a hideous System. So quietly and surely has this monster worked that our
civic blood is poisoned. It feeds upon youth, innocence and purity--all
that we as decent citizens love best. I call upon you all to stand by me
now in my fight to kill the White Slave Traffic.
"Mary Randall."
Grove Evans read that appeal through and smiled at its naivete. Then he
looked across his office to his partner, William Brierly, a younger man
with pompadour hair and an habitual air of immense self-satisfaction.
Brierly was reading the same story in another newspaper. He, too, looked
up and smiled.
"You know this girl, don't you, Grove?" Brierly asked. "By George, she
must be interesting. A new kind of female maniac, eh?"
"You've met her," responded Evans. "She was at the Country Club during
trophy match last fall. Carries herself like a queen. I remember your
raving about her."
"Ah," Brierly's derisive smile faded. "That girl, eh? Say, I saw her make
the ninth hole in three. That girl! Say, look here, Grove," he struck the
open paper with his palm, "does she mean this stuff?"
Evans lighted a cigarette before replying. "She sure does," he stated
finally. "I was at the Randalls when she delivered her ultimatum and took
to the war path. Talk about a jolt! After she left us, you could hear the
shades of night falling. For ten minutes we sat there exhibiting all the
vivacity of a deaf and dumb man at a Quaker prayer-meeting."
Brierly laughed. "Oh, well," he said. "She'll do what all these
suffragettes do--run around in a circle, yell herself tired, then marry
some fellow and forget it."
He yawned. Evans turned to the huge safe and got out a heavy packet of
papers.
"What are you doing, Grove?" Brierly demanded lazily.
"Nothing," responded Evans curtly. "Just looking over some of our shady
leases."
"Hello!" said Brierly, getting on his feet. "Are you taking this thing
seriously?"
Evans turned with a folded paper in his hand.
"You bet your life I am," he replied. "I know this girl. There's a strain
of wild Irish in her and it's my opinion that she's going to raise merry
hell!"
The dreamer who had visited the Millville Button Works with the owner of
the mill lunched with his friend in the city that day. Quite casually,
among other items of interest, Mary Randall's adventure came up for
discussion.
"I don't know the girl," said the mill-owner, "but her announcement gives
me a fairly good mental picture of her."
"What's your picture?" inquired the journalist.
"A rag and a bone and a hank of hair, one of these raving suffragettes.
Since bomb-throwing and burning are not fashionable over here, she's
chosen this means of expending her surplus energy."
"My dear friend, you're entirely wrong!"
"What! You've seen her?"
"Oh, no, but I have quite a different mental picture of her. You remember
Joan of Arc? Mount her on a charger, hand her a sword of fire and send
her forth to fight for Mary Magdalene. That's my idea."
"You've borrowed that from the headline writers," the mill-owner said.
"Not at all. I know the type. A thoughtful young girl, healthy,
cultivated and, by the modern miracle, taught how to think. She studies
vice conditions in Chicago at first hand and what she sees turns her into
a crusader. This girl has spirit. Brought face to face with a great evil,
moved by the appeal of helpless womanhood, she throws aside her veneer of
false education."
"Unsexed!"
"Yes, if you would say that the crisis in her life unsexed Portia. Or the
crisis in France's history unsexed Charlotte Corday."
"You're fond of historical allusions," chided the practical man. "Always
the literary man, always the dreamer. This girl is a disturber. She'll
unsettle business."
"Ah, there you are. 'Unsettles business.' Did it ever strike you business
men that you take yourselves too damn seriously? Any movement, any
agitation that 'unsettles business' is ipse facto wrong. You business men
have had a hand in the martyring of most of the saints and all of the
reformers since time began. And, invariably, you are wrong. Why, you're
wrong even about yourselves. You firmly believe that the foundations of
the country rest upon you. As a matter of fact, not one per cent of you
are producers. You're middlemen, profit shavers, parasites."
"My dear fellow," asked his friend, "where would you be if business
men--publishers--didn't buy your wares?"
"Ha," answered the writer, "and where would the publishers be if I and
others didn't produce the wares to market? It won't do. The reason the
newspapers and magazines of this country are so bad is because most of
the publishers are not newspaper men and magazine writers, but merely
business men."
"Well, I suppose your Joan of Arc will have to have her fling. Then life
will swing back to its same old channels and we'll forget her."
"Yes, she will have her fling and perhaps we'll forget her, but life will
not swing back to the same old channel. She'll make a new channel,
forgotten though she may be, and it will be a better channel."
* * * * *
Captain Shammer of the Eighth police district read Mary Randall's open
letter through slowly and carefully. When he had finished he lighted a
long black cigar from a box that had been sent him by a world famous
confidence man. He smoked thoughtfully for some time. Then he put out a
heavy hand and, without looking, pressed a white button at the side of
his desk.
A sharp-eyed young man opened the captain's door.
"Nick," said the captain, "shut that door a minute and come over here."
He pointed to the black newspaper headline.
"Get that?" he demanded.
"Sure, first thing this morning, Captain."
"Well?"
"We should worry."
Captain Shammer rolled his cigar in his mouth. He wasn't exactly
satisfied with the answer.
"All right," he agreed finally, "but Nick--"
"Yes, Captain." Nick paused alertly, one hand on the door knob.
"Easy for a while until we see how things break on this."
"Aye, aye, sir!"
"Curtains drawn, you know, and back rooms quiet. Tell the girls to go
slow on the piano playing. Did Ike, the dip, come across?"
"Not yet, Captain."
"Pinch him today and give him the cooler. Get me?"
"It's done, cap."
"Close in on the stuss games. Pass the word to go easy."
"I get you."
"Mary Randall, eh?" asked Captain Shammer of vacancy when his aid had
gone. "Mary Randall! Well, Mary, you sure have got your nerve with you."
Senator Barker was a member of the Governor's vice investigating
committee. The committee had been appointed to frame a minimum wage law
for women. He was a person of ponderous bulk and mental equipment. He had
slipped into office, not because the people yearned for him, but because
there had happened to be a battle on between two factions of his natural
political opponents in the fortunate hour he had selected for aspiring to
office. Like most other American officeholders he spent his days and
nights scheming out ways to continue living at the public's expense. He
perused Mary Randall's screed as he sat over his morning grape-fruit.
In an intermission in the committee meeting Senator Barker leaned across
the heavy oak table and pointed out the letter to the Rev. Wallace
Stillwell.
"Did you see that?" he inquired huskily.
Mr. Stillwell nodded and drew his thin lips together. He was quite young
and just now carried the burden of having been called from an obscure
country pulpit to a fashionable church in Chicago. He knew that the
wealthy man who was his sponsor in this new position was interested in
whole blocks of houses whose curtains were always drawn. He had never
forgotten a certain phrase that great man had used when he came in his
own automobile to bear the young pastor to the new field of his labors.
"We want you, Mr. Stillwell," he had said, "because we believe you to be
a safe and sane man, one who will not be swept off his feet by wild-eyed
reformers and the anarchistic tendencies of the times."
Mr. Stillwell, therefore, knew why he was wanted in Chicago. The
knowledge made him cautious in all things. He thought Senator Barker's
question over carefully. Then he nodded calmly.
"Why, yes, Senator," he answered. "One could hardly avoid reading it."
"Well, what about it?"
"Just what do you mean, Senator?"
"You know. What do you think of it, eh?"
"It seems to me," purred the Rev. Wallace Stillwell, "that the whole
exploit is worse than fantastic. It is hardly in good taste.
Investigations of the kind this girl has undertaken ought to be left to
the men."
"That's all right," put in the Senator, gloomily, "but I've noticed
lately that the women don't seem to be willing to do that. They want to
take a hand in such matters themselves." He leaned back in his chair
sadly. "It certainly makes it hard for us politicians."
* * * * *
A woman of ample girth and a handmade complexion pushed her coffee cup
away and lighted a fresh cigarette. She had just finished reading Mary
Randall's manifesto. Nature had made her beautiful, but advancing years
and too much art had all but destroyed Nature's handicraft. She inhaled
the acrid smoke deeply and then raising her voice, called:
"Celeste! You, Celeste!"
A mulatto girl threw open the door, crying:
"Yes, madame?"
"What you doing?"
"Cleaning up."
"Get a bottle of wine. Or did those high rollers guzzle it all last
night, the drunken beasts?"
"No, madame. I've saved one for you." She opened the bottle and placed
the effervescent liquid before her mistress.
"All right, Celeste. Anybody up yet?"
"I hardly think so, madame."
"Well, I'm up and I wish I wasn't," announced a girl who appeared at that
moment coming down the broad staircase. She entered the room.
"Got a head this morning, eh, Nellie?" said the madame, knowingly.
"Yes, I've got a head," replied Nellie sullenly, "and a grouch."
"Make it two, Celeste," said the madame promptly, indicating the bottle.
The colored maid poured out another glass of the liquor. Madame threw the
paper across the table to the girl.
"There," she said, "that's something that will make you worse."
"Where?" asked the girl, as she caught up the paper.
"Front page, big headlines. You can't miss it."
The girl stepped to the window and pushed aside the heavy curtain. In the
morning light she was revealed there petite and charming, despite
penciled eyebrows and carmined lips. Her figure was daintily
proportioned. There was grace in every line. Her deep brown eyes glowed
as she read the words Mary Randall had written.
When she finished reading the girl crumpled the paper in her hand and
filled another glass. She lifted the wine slowly.
"Here's to you, Mary Randall," she said.
"That's a rotten toast," said the madame.
"Is it?" replied the girl. "Well, let me tell you something. I'd like to
go straight out of this house and find Mary Randall and say to her: 'I'm
with you, Mary Randall, and I hope to God you win out.'"
"You don't think of me," whined the older woman. "Look what a knock that
reform stuff gives business."
"You!" Nellie's temper flared into a flame. "Say, you ought to be in
jail! Now don't start anything you can't finish--" The older woman had
got to her feet menacingly. "You don't deserve no pity. You got into
this"--she indicated the gaudily furnished house by a gesture, "with your
eyes wide open. You picked out this business for yourself. But with me
it's different." She leaned across the table defiantly. "Yes, how about
me? How about Lottie and Emma--and that poor kid that came here happy
because she thought she'd found a decent job? Did we pick out this
business? Did we? Not on your life. We walked into a trap and we can't
get out. Yes, and there's thousands like us all over this country." She
snatched up the bottle and poured more wine. "I'm for you, Mary Randall,"
she said, raising the glass to the sunlight. "More power to your elbow!"
* * * * *
Mary Randall read the newspapers in a garret room of a tall lodging
house. A pile of letters, in a peculiar shade of dark blue, sealed,
stamped and ready for the postoffice, lay in a heap before her. She went
through each newspaper carefully, noting the display and studying the
"features" of her story that had impressed the newspaper men. At last she
laid them down.
"Well, Anna," she said, smiling, addressing her maid. "We've made a good
beginning. The town, you see, is interested in us."
Anna's ordinarily impassive face smiled back at her mistress' enthusiasm.
Her blue eyes lighted with admiring loyalty. She was blonde, big boned
and so strongly built as to look actually formidable. Competency and
reserve power fairly radiated from her. Her voice betrayed her
Scandinavian ancestry.
"Ya-as," she said, "and in another week they'll be fighting for us."
Mary got up from her chair and went to the window, threw it wide open and
looked out on the city. She saw its myriad lights rimming the shore of
the inland sea. She heard its roar--deep, passionate, powerful. In her
imagination she laid her ear close to the city's heart and she heard it
beat strong and true. The smile had left her face and a prayer formed
itself silently on her lips. The revery lasted only a moment.
"And now," she said, "for the next movement in the battle." She indicated
the letters. "There's our ammunition, Anna," she said. "Mail them. I've
picked you for a great honor. You're to open the engagement with a
fusillade of bombshells."