DONNYBROOK
Worthington began to find the "Clarion" amusing. It blared a new note.
Common matter of everyday acceptance which no other paper in town had
ever considered as news, became, when trumpeted from between the rampant
roosters, vital with interest. And whithersoever it directed the public
attention, some highly respectable private privilege winced and snarled.
Worthington did not particularly love the "Clarion" for the enemies it
made. But it read it.
Now, a newspaper makes its enemies overnight. Friends take months or
years in the making. Hence the "Clarion," whilst rapidly broadening its
circle of readers, owed its success to the curiosity rather than to the
confidence which it inspired. Meantime the effect upon its advertising
income was disastrous. If credence could be placed in the lamenting
Shearson, wherever it attacked an abuse, whether by denunciation or
ridicule, it lost an advertiser. Moreover the public, not yet ready to
credit any journal with honest intentions, was inclined to regard the
"Clarion" as "a chronic kicker." The "Banner's" gibing suggestion of a
reversal of the editorial motto between the triumphant birds to read
"With malice toward all," stuck.
But there were compensations. The blatant cocks had occasional
opportunity for crowing. With no small justification did they shrill
their triumph over the Midland & Big Muddy Railroad. The "Mid and Mud"
had declared war upon the "Clarion," following the paper's statement of
the true cause of the Walkersville wreck, as suggested by Marchmont, the
reporter, at the breakfast. Marchmont himself had been banished from
the railroad offices. All sources of regular news were closed to him.
Therefore, backed by the "Clarion," he proceeded to open up a line of
irregular news which stirred the town. For years the "Mid and Mud" had
given to Worthington a passenger service so bad that no community less
enslaved to a _laissez-faire_ policy would have endured it. Through
trains drifted in anywhere from one to four hours late. Local trains,
drawn by wheezy, tin-pot locomotives of outworn pattern, arrived and
departed with such casualness as to render schedules a joke, and not
infrequently "bogged down" between stations until some antediluvian
engine could be resuscitated and sent out to the rescue. The day coaches
were of the old, dangerous, wooden type. The Pullman service was utterly
unreliable, and the station in which the traveling populace of
Worthington spent much of its time, a draft-ridden barn. Yet Worthington
suffered all this because it was accustomed to it and lacked any means
of making protest vocal.
Then the "Clarion" started in publishing its "Yesterday's Time-Table of
the Midland & Big Muddy R.R. Co." to this general effect:
Day Express Due 10 A.M. Arrived 11.43 A.M. Late 1 hour 43 min.
Noon Local Due 12 A.M. Arrived 2.10 P.M. Late 2 hrs. 10 min.
Sunrise Limited Due 3 P.M. Arrived 3.27 P.M. Late 0 hrs. 27 min.
And so on. From time to time there would appear, underneath, a special
item, of which the following is an example:
"The Eastern States Through Express of the Midland & Big Muddy Railroad
arrived and departed on time yesterday. When asked for an explanation of
this phenomenon, the officials declined to be interviewed."
Against this "persecution," the "Mid and Mud" authorities at first
maintained a sullen silence. The "Clarion" then went into statistics. It
gave the number of passengers arriving and departing on each delayed
train, estimated the value of their time, and constructed tables of the
money value of time lost in this way to the city of Worthington, per
day, per month, and per year. The figures were not the less inspiring of
thought, for being highly amusing.
People began to take an interest. They brought or sent in personal
experiences. A commercial traveler, on the 7.50 train (arriving at
10.01, that day), having lost a big order through missing an
appointment, told the "Clarion" about it. A contractor's agent, gazing
from the windows of the stalled "Limited" out upon "fresh woods and
pastures new" twenty miles short of Worthington, what time he should
have been at a committee meeting of the Council, forfeited a $10,000
contract and rushed violently into "Clarion" print, breathing slaughter
and law-suits. Judge Abner Halloway and family, arriving at the New York
pier in a speeding taxi from the Eastern Express (five hours late out of
Worthington), just in time to see the Lusitania take his forwarded
baggage for a pleasant outing in Europe, hired a stenographer (male) to
tell the "Clarion" what he thought of the matter, in words of seven
syllables. Professor Beeton Trachs, the globe-trotting lecturer, who
arrived via the "M. and M." for an eight o'clock appearance, at 9.54,
gave the "Clarion" an interview proper to the occasion of having to
abjure a $200 guaranty, wherein the mildest and most judicial opinion
expressed by Professor Trachs was that crawling through a tropical
jungle on all fours was speed, and being hurtled down a mountain on the
bosom of a landslide, comfort, compared to travel on the "Mid and Mud."
All these and many similar experiences, the "Clarion" published in its
"News of the M. and M." column. It headed them, "Stories of Survivors."
For six weeks the railroad endured the proddings of ridicule. Then the
Fourth Vice-President of the road appeared in Mr. Harrington Surtaine's
sanctum. He was bland and hinted at advertising. Two weeks later the
Third Vice-President arrived. He was vague and hinted at reprisals. The
Second Vice-President presented himself within ten days thereafter,
departed after five unsatisfactory minutes, and reported at
headquarters, with every symptom of an elderly gentleman suffering from
shock, that young Mr. Surtaine had seemed bored. The First
Vice-President then arrived on a special train.
"What do you want, anyway?" he asked.
"Decent passenger service for Worthington," said the editor. "Just what
I've told every other species _and_ number of Vice-President on your
list."
"You get it," said the First Vice-President.
Thus was afforded another example of that super-efficiency which, we are
assured, marks the caste of the American railroad as superior to all
others, and which consists in sending four men and spending several
weeks to do what one could do better in a single day. In the course of a
few weeks the Midland & Big Muddy did bring its service up to a
reasonable standard, and the owner of the "Clarion" savored his first
pleasant proof of the power of the press.
Vastly less important, but swifter and more definite in results and more
popular in effect, was the "Clarion's" anti-hat-check campaign. The
Stickler, Worthington's newest hotel, had established a coat-room with
the usual corps of girl-bandits, waiting to strip every patron of his
outer garments before admitting him to the restaurant, and returning
them only upon the blackmail of a tip. All the other good restaurants
had followed suit. Worthington resented it, as it resented most
innovations; but endured the imposition, for lack of solidarity, until
the "Clarion" took up the subject in a series of paragraphs.
"Do you think," blandly inquired the editorial roosters, "that when you
tip the hat-check girl she gets the tip? She doesn't. It goes to a man
who rents from the restaurant the privilege of bullying you out of a
dime or a quarter. The girl holds you up, because if she doesn't extort
fifteen dollars a week, she loses her job and her own munificent wages
of seven dollars. The 'Clarion' takes pleasure in announcing a series of
portraits of the high-minded pirates of finance whom you support in
luxury, when you 'give up' to the check-girl. Our first portrait, ladies
and gentlemen, is that of Mr. Abe Hotzenmuller, race-track bookmaker and
whiskey agent, who, in the intervals of these more reputable
occupations, extracts alms from the patrons of the Hotel Stickler."
Next in line was "Shirty" MacDonough, a minor politician, "appropriately
framed in silver dimes," as the "Clarion" put it. He was followed by
Eddie Perkins, proprietor of a dubious resort on Mail Street. By this
time coat-room franchises had suffered a severe depreciation. They
dropped almost to zero when the newspaper, having clinched the lesson
home with its "Photo-graft Gallery of Leading Dime-Hunters," exhorted
its readers: "If you think you need your change as much as these men do,
watch for the coupon in to-morrow's 'Clarion,' and Stick it in Your
Hat." The coupon was as follows:
I READ THE CLARION. I WILL NOT GIVE ONE CENT IN TIPS TO ANY
COAT-ROOM GRAFTER. WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO ABOUT IT?
The enterprise hit upon the psychological moment. Every check-room
bristled with hats proclaiming defiance, and, incidentally, advertising
the "Clarion." The "cut-out coupon" ran for three weeks. In one month
the Stickler check-room, last to surrender, gave up the ghost, and Mr.
Hotzenmuller sued the proprietor for his money back!
Over the theatrical managers the paper's victory was decisive in this,
that it established honest dramatic criticism in Worthington. But only
at a high cost. Not a line of theater advertising appeared in the
columns after the editorial announcement of independence. Press tickets
were cut off. The "Clarion's" dramatic reporter was turned back from the
gate of the various theaters, after paying for admittance. Nevertheless,
the "Clarion" continued to publish frank criticism of current drama,
through a carefully guarded secret arrangement with the critic of the
"Evening News." About this time a famous star, opening a three days'
engagement, got into difficulties with the scene-shifters' union over an
unjust demand for extra payment, refused to be blackmailed, and canceled
the second performance. One paper only gave the facts, and that was the
"Clarion," generally regarded as the defender and mouthpiece of the
laboring as against the capitalistic interests. Great was the wrath of
the unions. Boycott was threatened; even a strike in the office. In
response, the editorial page announced briefly that its policy of giving
the news accurately and commenting upon it freely exempted no man or
organization. The trouble soon died out, but, while making new enemies
amongst the rabid organization men, strengthened the "Clarion's" growing
repute for independence. One of the most violent objectors was Max
Veltman, whose protest, delivered to Hal and McGuire Ellis, was so
vehement that he was advised curtly and emphatically to confine his
activities and opinions to his own department.
"Look out for that fellow," advised Ellis, as the foreman went away
fuming. "He hates you."
"Only his fanaticism," said Hal.
"More than that. It's personal. I think," added the associate editor
after some hesitancy, "it's 'Kitty the Cutie.' He's jealous, Hal. And I
think he's right. That girl's getting too much interested in you."
Hal flushed sharply. "Nonsense!" he said, and the subject lapsed.
Meantime the manager of the Ralston Opera House, where the labor
trouble had occurred, made tentative proffer of peace in the form of
sending in the theater advertising again. Hal promptly refused to accept
it, by way of an object-lesson, despite the almost tearful protest of
his own business office. This blow almost killed Shearson.
In fact, the unfortunate advertising manager now lived in an atmosphere
of Stygian gloom. Two of the most extensive purchasers of newspaper
space, the Boston Store and the Triangle Store, had canceled their
contracts immediately after the attack on the Pierces, through a "joker"
clause inserted to afford such an opportunity. All the other department
stores threatened to follow suit when the "Clarion" took up the cause of
the Consumers' League.
Mrs. Festus Willard was president of the organization, which had been
practically moribund since its inception, for the sufficient reason that
no mention of its activities, designs, or purposed reforms could gain
admission to any newspaper in Worthington. The Retail Union saw to that
through its all-potent Publication Committee. Perceiving the crescent
emancipation of the "Clarion," Mrs. Willard, after due consultation with
her husband, appealed to Hal. Would he help the League to obtain certain
reforms? Specifically, seats for shopgirls, and extra pay for extra
work, as during Old Home Week, when the stores kept open until 10 P.M.?
Hal agreed, and, in the face of the dismalest forecasts from Shearson,
prepared several editorials. Moreover, "Kitty the Cutie" took up the
campaign in her column, and her series of "Lunch-Time Chats," with their
slangy, pungent, workaday flavor, presented the case of the overworked
saleswomen in a way to stir the dullest sympathies. The event fully
justified Shearson in his rôle of Cassandra. Half of the remaining
stores represented in the Retail Union notified the "Clarion" of the
withdrawal of their advertising. Thus some twelve hundred dollars a week
of income vanished. Moreover, the Union, it was hinted, would probably
blacklist the "Clarion" officially. And the shop-folk gained nothing by
the campaign. The merchants were strong enough to defeat the League and
its sole backer at every point. This was one of the "Clarion's"
failures.
Coincident with the ebb of the store advertising occurred a lapse in
circulation, inexplicable to the staff until an analysis indicated that
the women readers were losing interest. It was young Mr. Surtaine who
solved the mystery, by a flash of that newspaper instinct with which
Ellis had early credited him.
"Department store advertising is news," he decided, in a talk with Ellis
and Shearson.
"How can advertising be news?" objected the manager.
"Anything that interests the public is news, on the authority of no less
an expert than Mr. McGuire Ellis. Shopping is the main interest in life
of thousands of women. They read the papers to find out where the
bargains are. Watch 'em on the cars any morning and you'll see them
studying the ads. The information in those ads. is what they most want.
Now that we don't give it to them, they are dropping the paper. So we've
got to give it to them."
"Now you're talking," cried Shearson. "Cut out this Consumers' League
slush and I'll get the stores back."
"We'll cut out nothing. But we'll put in something. We'll print news of
the department stores as news, not as advertising."
"Well, if that ain't the limit!" lamented Shearson. "If you give 'em
advertising matter free, how can you ever expect 'em to pay for it?"
"We're not giving it to the stores. We're giving it to our readers."
"In which case," remarked McGuire Ellis with a grin, "we can afford to
furnish the real facts."
"Exactly," said Hal.
From this talk developed a unique department in the "Clarion." An
expert woman shopper collected the facts and presented them daily under
the caption, "Where to Find Real Bargains," and with the prefatory note,
"No paid matter is accepted for this column." The expert had an
allowance for purchasing, where necessary, and the utmost freedom of
opinion was granted her. Thus, in the midst of a series of items, such
as--"The Boston Store is offering a special sale of linens at
advantageous prices"; "The necktie sale at the Emporium contains some
good bargains"; and "Scheffler and Mintz's 'furniture week' is worth
attention, particularly in the rocking-chair and dining-set
lines"--might appear some such information as this: "In the special
bargain sale of ribbons at the Emporium the prices are slightly higher
than the same lines sold for last week, on the regular counter"; or,
"The heavily advertised antique rug collection at the Triangle is mostly
fraudulent. With a dozen exceptions the rugs are modern and of poor
quality"; or, "The Boston Shop's special sale of rain coats are mostly
damaged goods. Accept none without guarantee."
Never before had mercantile Worthington known anything like this.
Something not unlike panic was created in commercial circles. Lawyers
were hopefully consulted, but ascertained in the first stages of
investigation, that wherever a charge of fraud was brought, the
"Clarion" office actually had the goods, by purchase. All this was
costly to the "Clarion." But it added nearly four thousand solid
circulation, of the buying class, a class of the highest value to any
advertiser. Only with difficulty and by exercise of pressure on the part
of E.M. Pierce, were the weaker members among the withdrawing
advertisers dissuaded from resuming their patronage of the "Clarion."
"I wouldn't have thought it possible," said the dictator, angrily, to
his associates. "The thing is getting dangerous. The damned paper is out
for the truth."
"And the public is finding it out," supplemented Gibbs, his
brother-in-law.
"Wait till my libel suit comes on," said Pierce grimly. "I don't believe
young Mr. Surtaine will have enough money left to indulge in the luxury
of muckraking, after that."
"Won't the old man back him up?"
"Tells me that the boy is playing a lone hand," said Pierce with
satisfaction.
Herein he spoke the fact. While the "Clarion's" various campaigns were
still in mid-career, Dr. Surtaine had made his final appeal to his son
in vain, ringing one last change upon his Pæan of Policy.
"What good does it all do you or anybody else? You're stirring up muck,
and you're getting the only thing you ever get by that kind of activity,
a bad smell." He paused for his effect; then delivered himself of a
characteristically vigorous and gross aphorism:
"Boyee, you can't sell a stink, in this town."
"Perhaps I can help to get rid of it," said Hal.
"Not you! Nobody thanks you for your pains. They take notice for a
while, because their noses compel 'em to. Then they forget. What thanks
does the public give a newspaper? But the man you've roasted--he's after
you, all the time. A sore toe doesn't forget. Look at Pierce."
"Pierce has bothered me," confessed Hal. "He's shut me off from the
banks. None of them will loan the 'Clarion' a cent. I have to go out of
town for my money."
"Can you blame him? I'd have done the same if he'd roasted you as you
roasted his girl."
"News, Dad," said Hal wearily. "It was news."
"Let's not go over that again. You'll stick to your policy, I suppose,
till it ruins you. About finances, by the way, where do you stand?"
"Stand?" repeated Hal. "I wish we did. We slip. Downhill; and pretty
fast."
"Why wouldn't you? Fighting your own advertisers."
"Some advertising has come in, though. Mostly from out of town."
"Foreign proprietary," said Dr. Surtaine, using the technical term for
patent-medicine advertising from out of town, "isn't it? I've been doing
a little missionary work among my friends in the trade, Hal; persuaded
them to give the 'Clarion' a try-out. The best of it is, they're getting
results."
"They ought to. Do you know we're putting on circulation at the rate of
nearly a thousand a week?"
"Expensive, though, isn't it?"
"Pretty bad. The paper costs a lot more to get out. We've enlarged our
staff. Now we need a new press. There's thirty-odd thousand dollars, in
one lump."
"How long can you go on at this rate?"
"Without any more advertising?"
"You certainly aren't gaining, by your present policy."
"Well, I can stick it out through the year. By that time the advertising
will be coming in. It's _got_ to come to the paper that has the
circulation, Dad."
"Hum!" droned the big doctor, dubiously. "Have you reckoned the Pierce
libel suits in?"
"He can't win them."
"Can't he? I don't know. He intends to try. And he feels pretty cocky
about it. E.M. Pierce has something up his sleeve, Boyee."
"That would be a body-blow. But he can't win," repeated Hal. "Why, I saw
the whole thing myself."
"Just the same you ought to have the best libel lawyer you can get from
New York. All the good local men are tied up with Pierce or afraid of
him."
"Can't afford it."
To this point the big man had been leading up. "I've been thinking over
this Pierce matter, Hal, and I've made up my mind. Pierce is getting to
think he's the whole thing around here. He's bullied this town all his
life, just as he's bullied his employees until they hate him like
poison. But now he's gone up against the wrong game. Roast Certina, will
he? The pup! Why, if he'd ever run his factories or his store or his
Consolidated Employees' Organization one hundredth part as decently as
I've run our business, he wouldn't have to stay in nights for fear some
one might sneak a knife into him out of the dark."
This was something less than just to Elias M. Pierce, who, whatever his
other faults, had never been a fearful man.
"Libel, eh?" continued the genius of Certina, quietly but formidably.
"We'll teach him a few things about libel, before he's through. Here's
my proposition, Boyee. You can fight Pierce, but you can't fight all
Worthington. Every enemy you make for the 'Clarion' becomes an ally of
Pierce. Quit all these other campaigns. Stop roasting the business men
and advertisers. Drop your attack on the Mid and Mud: you've got 'em
licked, anyway. Let up on the street railway: I notice you're taking a
fall out of them on their overcrowding. Treat the theaters decently:
they're entitled to a fair chance for their money. Cut out this
Consumers' League foolishness (I'm surprised at Milly Neal--the way
she's lost her head over that). Make friends instead of foes. And go
after Elias M. Pierce, to the finish. Do this, and I'll back you with
the whole Certina income. Come on, now, Boyee. Be sensible."
Hal's reply came without hesitation. "I'm sorry, Dad: but I can't do it.
I've told you I'd stand or fall on what you've already given me. If I
can't pull through on that, I can't pull through at all. Let's
understand each other once and for all, Dad. I've got to try this thing
out to the end. And I won't ask or take one cent from you or any one
else, win or lose."
"All right, Boyee," returned his father sorrowfully. "You're wrong, dead
wrong. But I like your nerve. Only, let me tell you this. You think
you're going to keep on printing the news and the whole news and all
that sort of thing. I tell you, it can't be done."
"Why can't it be done?"
"Because, sooner or later, you'll bump up against your own interests so
hard that you'll have to quit."
"I don't see that at all, sir."
"No, you don't. But one of these days something in the news line will
come up that'll hit you right between the eyes, if ever it gets into
print. Then see what you'll do."
"I'll print it."
"No, you won't, Boyee. Human nature ain't built that way. You'll smother
it, and be glad you've got the power to."
"Dad, you believe I'm honest, don't you?"
"Too blamed honest in some ways."
"But you'd take my word?"
"Oh, that! Yes. For anything."
"Then I put my honor on this. If ever the time comes that I have to
suppress legitimate news to protect or aid my own interests, I'll own up
I'm beaten: I'll quit fighting, and I'll make the 'Clarion' a very
sucking dove of journalism. Is that plain?"
"Shake, Boyee. You've bought a horse. Just the same, I hate to let up on
Pierce. Sure you won't let me hire a New York lawyer for the libel
suit?"
"No. Thank you just as much, Dad. That's a 'Clarion' fight, and the
'Clarion's money has got to back it."
It was the gist of this decision which, some days later, had reached
E.M. Pierce, and caused him such satisfaction. With the "Clarion"
depending upon its own resources, unbacked by the great reserve wealth
of Certina's proprietor, he confidently expected to wreck it and force
its suspension by an overwhelming verdict of damages. For, as Dr.
Surtaine had surmised, he held a card up his sleeve.