MOTIVES not fully formulated had impelled Jeremy Robson to the purchase of The Fenchester Guardian. Now that he was face to face with the multiform problem of what he was to do with his new responsibility, he sought to determine why he had possessed himself of it, hoping to discover in that Why a clue to his future course.

Several figures at once stepped to the front of his mind and imperiously claimed credit for inspiring his action. There was Montrose Clark who had capped his impersonal insolences by the shibboleth, “rippawtah.” Nobody was ever going to give Jeremy Robson curt orders as a “rippawtah” again. (But he had the saving sense to grin at himself for the triviality of it!) There was Andrew Galpin, who had said of the pleasant pursuit of editorial writing that the practitioner of it “was licked—a beaten man,” thus taking all the gloss from that phase. There was Milliken, crude, coarse, malicious, with his inept but biting epithets, and his blatant jibes at the necessities of hired-man (or worse-than-hired-woman) journalism. There was Eli Wade, whom he had written down to order—though herein Jeremy was still dallying with self-delusions, since it was the lure of his own facile pen that had betrayed him there—and to whom he owed a reparation which he could perhaps now make. There was his old purpose of some day owning a paper; quite a different paper, however, from the feeble and dubious Guardian. More potent was the influence, never wholly abated, of that talk with Senator Martin Embree wherein the shrewd judge of men and agencies had suggested the power to be exerted for good by a fair-minded, independent daily. But the real motivating power was Marcia Ames. Withdrawing herself from him, she had left him a legacy of influence which was, at the same time, a debt. He owed it to himself to prove to her that he could be as honorable as she had deemed him dishonorable; as trustworthy as she had deemed him unfit to be trusted; and he must do this through this same medium of print whereby he had offended. Something dogged in him prescribed that he should work out his salvation there on the spot. She might never return to see it. She might never even know of it. But it would be her work. By so much, at least, Jeremy would hold her. And in doing what she would have him do, he would fill that bleak and arid void, which, lacking hope, can be appeased only by activity.

It was no easy task which Jeremy Robson had set himself, that of making his new property a vehicle for ideals. He was content that it should not be easy. He craved hard, exacting, stimulant work. The Guardian offered it in more generous measure than a better paper could have done. Jeremy purposed to save The Guardian’s soul. Perhaps he had some underlying notion that he might save his own, in the process.

That bad name which, given to a dog, is proverbially alleged to bring down upon him a peculiarly un-canine fate at the hangman’s hands, had long attached to The Fenchester Guardian. But the paper’s ill-repute was no man’s gift. It had been justly earned. Once the stiffly high-minded personal organ of a stilted and honorable old-school statesman, it had fallen, under A. M. Wymett, to become a mongrel of journalism, a forlorn and servile whiner, fawning for petty favors, kicked about by the financial and political interests of the State, and not infrequently ornamented with a tin can of scandal to its tail in the form of dirty work performed for some temporary subsidizer in the background. Thanks to shrewd legal advice and his own editorial adroitness, its guiding spirit had contrived to escape the law, and, up to the episode of the disastrously imprudent “cheese-check” letter, open and public contumely. Further, he had, by dint of sheer ability of a low ethical order but high technical grade, maintained a fair circulation for his paper.

Its only competitor in the bustling, growing State capital, with its seventy thousand inhabitants, was The Record. There was no morning newspaper. Several plans to start one had come to naught, because of the secret opposition of the local leaders of politics and industry, who were well content with the two mild and amenable specimens of journalism already in the field. The Record represented stolid, stodgy, profitable, and unprogressive respectability in a community now astir with new and uneasy fermentations. The Guardian had always represented what it was bidden to represent. What attitude it might adopt under the new control, was a question not assumed to be troublesome by those whom a change might conceivably trouble in no small degree. It was comfortably taken for granted that The Guardian would “be good” when the time and test came. For the corruptible to put on incorruptibility, in the newspaper world, is a phenomenon so rare as to be practically negligible.

Soon or late these questions would come to an issue between the new owner of The Guardian and those who had quietly controlled it for their own ends. So much Jeremy Robson apprehended. What he had not foreseen was a more immediate and imperative consideration. He had vaguely believed that he was taking possession of a semipublic agency of enlightenment. He found that he had bought a Struggle for Existence. Quite a number of shrewd and active citizens whose existence had not hitherto impressed him as important, loomed as figures and probably antagonists in the struggle. Jeremy found himself in the way of learning some new and important things about the newspaper business, with his local advertisers in the pedagogic chair.

Newspapers do not live by the bread of circulation alone, but chiefly by the strong and sustaining meat of advertising patronage. This important fact had duly entered into Jeremy Robson’s calculations. On paper he had figured a clear profit for The Guardian, before purchasing. After taking over the property he found his estimates borne out by the formal accounts. But he also found, to his discomfiture, that The Guardian’s books had been kept by a sunny optimist with a taste for fiction. This gentleman had plugged up the discrepancies in the papers finances with ingenious figures, as a boat-jerry might doctor a leaky seam with putty and paint—for sale only.

The book figures showed but one scale of advertising rates, with the normal discounts to heavy users of space. While the new toy was still agleam in the eyes of its proud possessor with all the glamour of novelty, he began to discover that instead of a standard price to advertisers.

The Guardian had more scales than even so fishy a proposition was entitled to; that, in fact, A. M. Wymett had peddled about his precious advertising space like a man with stolen diamonds to sell, and covered the shady transactions by a system of ingenious and destructive rebates. Thus, the columns which young Mr. Robson had confidingly calculated at four to nine cents per line, were actually fetching from five cents downward.

“That’s the first thing to be set right,” announced Jeremy after a profoundly unsatisfactory study of his property’s earning capacity as contrasted with its paper profits. “We’ll have a one-price-to-all system hereafter.”

“Ay-ah,” drawled Andrew Galpin, to whom the decision was communicated. “Your advertisers ’ll just love that!”

“They ought to be satisfied. It’s the only square way.”

“Oh, they’ll be satisfied if you put the scale low enough. But if you put the scale low enough you’ll go broke.”

“Wymett did n’t go broke.”

“The Guardian had other sources of revenue under Wymett.”

“Such as the Cheese Bill fund?”

“Occasionally. Also the steady, reliable revenue from the advertising matter that does n’t bear the a-d-v sign.”

“You mean store ‘readers’ and that sort of thing? I’m going to cut those out.”

“Are, you? They’re semi-legitimate. Compared with some of the stuff we’ve carried they’re so high-principled they’re almost holy.”

“Well, what, for instance?”

“Paid editorials. Paid political articles. Paid puffs and roasts. Brewery checks. Railroad checks. P.-U. checks. Paving and other contractors’ checks. You can read it all in the back files, if you’re newspaper man enough to read between the lines.”

“I never saw any of that on The Record.”

“It ain’t there. The Record don’t do it that way; a little more decent. The Record’s a kept-lady. We’re on the street—or were.”

“‘Were’ is right.” Jeremy ran his hands through his hair and regarded his companion anxiously. “Andy?” he said.

“Ay-ah?”

“Were you—Did you—Never mind. It does n’t matter.”

“Ay-ah; it matters all right. You were going to ask me whether I had to write any of that bought-and-paid-for stuff. And you were afraid to. Is that right?”

Jeremy turned red.

“It’s right,” confirmed the other. “Well, I never did. I would n’t. I gave ’em notice that I was fired the noon of the morning I got one of those jobs. They were decent about it. But I had to do the next worse thing. I had to let myself be called off a story so that some other guy could write it, and write it crooked.”

“Have we had any—any offers since we took hold of the paper?”

“Give ’em time, Boss. It’s only a month, and in the slack period at that. But I’ll tell you one thing. If you’re going to change the entire advertising policy, you’ll have to change your advertising manager, for Perley don’t know anything different from the news-selling and rebate game.”

“Perley’s fired.”

“So far, so good. Who ’ve you got to take his place?”

“Nobody, yet. Could you manage it, Andy?”

“Temporarily, I might. But I’m going to have my hands too full re-making the old sheet on the news side to give much time to advertising, in the next year or so.”

“Temporarily will do. I’m going to get the principal merchants together and talk it out with them. And I want to show ’em a change in the advertising managership that’ll convince ’em the change of policy is real.”

“Ay-ah,” assented Galpin. “It sounds like the rumble of distant thunder to me.”

“Not at all. All I want is a decent, living rate for the paper. Every merchant expects a living profit on his merchandise. Why should n’t a newspaper get the same?”

“Logical. Perfectly logical. But can you get ’em to see it that way?” Andrew Galpin paused and then delivered himself of a characteristic bit of shrewdness. “The average storekeeper regards advertising outlay as a sort of accepted blackmail which he pays under protest; he don’t know exactly why, and he don’t know exactly for what. If you made him reason it out, he’d probably say that he don’t believe it pays, but everybody does it. Of course, he don’t know whether it pays or not. Nobody does, really.”

“Then why does he do it?”

“Because his competitors do. He’s afraid not to. He has some dim sort of fear that the papers will soak him if he don’t. That’s where the blackmail comes in, if he had sense enough to figure it.”

“There won’t be any blackmail with us.”

“But the merchants won’t know it. They’ll advertise, and because they advertise they’ll think they’re entitled to a say in the paper. They’ll try to run it for you, too.”

“Will they?” muttered Jeremy in a tone which suggested that there might be difficulties attending the fulfillment of the ambition.

“Ay-ah. In good faith, too. There’s something in their theory—I guess—from their point of view.”

“Well, I’ll give them a chance to explain it,” said the new owner. “My plan is to round ’em up at a lunch, and then have it out with ’em. What do you think?”

“Fine! Feed ’em. Then kick ’em in the stomach.”

“No, sir! pat ’em on the back and talk reason to them. That’s where you come in. They know you’re a real newspaper man. They’ve got to find it out yet, about me.” Out of thirty of the principal local advertisers in The Guardian, twenty-one accepted Jeremy Robson’s invitation to lunch with him at the Fenchester Club, with a “business conference” to follow. Their attitude toward the gustatory part of the proceedings was that of wary fish toward food which might conceal a hook. Very nice luncheon, but—what was behind it? They had never had confidence in The Guardian under A. M. Wymett. Why should they have more in an unknown quantity like young Robson?

Sensing plainly this feeling, Jeremy perceived that here was the time and place for finesse. Unfortunately he lacked that particular quality. What was the next best thing to having it at call, he appreciated his want of it, and instead of blundering strategically around the point he went straight to it in the briefest of speeches.

“Gentlemen: I’ve brought you here to state the new policy of The Guardian. The advertising rate will be that of the rate card. The same system of discounts to all. No rebates. I’d be glad to hear your views.”

He sat down. A hum of surprise went about the table. Some one started applause: the effort was abortive. It was no occasion for empty courtesies. This was business!

“Talks straight,” remarked Betts, of Kelter & Betts, dry goods, in a loud whisper, to his neighbor Arthur Turnbull, of the Emporium.

“Bluff,” opined Turnbull.

“Get up and call it,” suggested A. Friedland, proprietor of the Big Shop who had overheard.

“Let Ellison do the talking,” returned Turnbull. “He’s president of our association.”

Obedient to several suggestions, Matthew Ellison, head of Ellison Brothers’ department store and president of the Retailers’ Association, reared his ample form, and smiled his conscientious smile, from above a graying chin whisker, upon the assembled feasters. In a long and rambling talk which Andrew Galpin would have fairly slaughtered with an editorial blue pencil, Mr. Ellison referred to Jeremy something more than two dozen times as “our esteemed young friend” and at least a dozen as “my dear young friend”; both of which were equally accurate and sincere. The gist of his speech, so far as any one present could grasp it, seemed to indicate a guarded agnosticism concerning the announced policy of the paper. Upon the heels of the windy compliment with which he closed, Adolph Ahrens, junior partner and advertising manager of the Great Northwestern Stores, popped up. Mr. Ahrens was a young, blackish, combative-jawed man with twitchy eyes.

“This don’t go,” he said belligerently. “I’ve got a letter in my files, stipulating a rebate, that’s as good as a contract.”

“Signed by?” queried Jeremy suggestively.

“Signed by The Guardian, per A. M. Wymett.”

“So have I,” declared Turnbull, and was echoed by Lehn, of Stormont & Lehn, Betts, and half a dozen more.

“It seems to have been a habit,” remarked Jeremy. “But, gentlemen, A. M. Wymett is no longer The Guardian. His secret rebates do not bind us indefinitely.”

“The courts ’ll have a word to say on that,” declared the combative Ahrens.

“Easy, gentlemen! Let’s be friendly,” purred Matthew Ellison.

“We need n’t go to the courts,” put in Andrew Galpin. “In the cases where rebates were offered, the rate will be raised to a point where it covers the rebates.”

“Where do you come in?” demanded Ahrens.

“As acting advertising manager of The Guardian.”

“What becomes of your ‘one-rate-for-all’ claim?” Turnbull turned upon Jeremy.

“Discarded,” said the owner, promptly accepting Galpin’s strategy.

“Why ain’d I neffer gud any discound?” inquired Bernard Stockmuller, the leading jeweler of the town, in a powerful and plaintive voice.

“Because you never had the sense to stick out for it, Barney,” retorted Betts. “You were easy.”

“There you have the unfairness of the system,” Jeremy pointed out. “Mr. Stockmuller is as frequent a user of space as some of you who have taken rebates. Gentlemen, it does n’t go any more.”

“Well, this is a hell of a note!” murmured a discontented voice which seemed to emanate from the depths of the abdominal curve of the senior partner of Arndt & Niebuhr, furniture dealers.

“Did any of these private letters from Mr. Wymett mention reading notices as an extra inducement?” asked the host of the occasion. .

“There was no need,” stated Ellison. “‘Readers’ are a recognized courtesy to advertisers.”

“They take up space,” Jeremy pointed out. “They cost money, for ink, paper, and setting up. From the newspaper’s viewpoint, they’re a dead loss.”

“We pay for ’em in our advertising bills,” said Friedland, of the Big Shop.

“Then you regard them as advertising?”

“Certainly.”

“But they don’t appear as advertising. They are in regular news type, made up to look like news items, and they carry no a-d-v mark.”

Matthew Ellison took it upon his kindly self to enlighten this innocent young adventurer in untried fields. “If they appeared as advertising, the public would be less likely to read them.”

“Then they’re a fraud on the public.”

“Fraud? Oh, really, Mr. Robson,” deprecated the merchant. “A—a harmless—er—subterfuge.”

“The Guardian cuts them out,” announced The Guardian’s revolutionary proprietor. “No more ‘readers’ except with the a-d-v sign, and paid for at full rates.”

“What are you trying to do—insult us?” growled the saturnine Mr. Ahrens.

“You would have to be mighty thin-skinned to find an insult in that.”

“Well, drive us out of the paper, then?”

“That would be pretty foolish of me, would n’t it?”

“Would be? It is. First you violate an agreement—”

“To which I was not a party.”

“—and then you try to raise rates on us; and now you cut out the best advertising the department store gets.”

“As for raising rates, I have n’t suggested it except as an offset to rebates.”

“Comes to the same thing,” said several voices.

“Gentlemen,” said Jeremy with an accession of positiveness, “you’re getting the best advertising rate in the State of Centralia to-day. With practically ten thousand circulation—”

“Bunk!” interjected Turnbull.

“Upwards of nine thousand, seven hundred.”

“A good third of it pads and graft copies,” put in Betts.

For the first time Jeremy was at a disadvantage. He glanced quickly at Galpin.

“Nothing of the sort,” declared that gentleman readily.

“How much is your list padded?” challenged Vogt the florist, in his slightly thickened accent. “Come on, now! On the level.”

“Tell them, Mr. Galpin,” directed Jeremy. “Our cards are on the table.”

“I don’t know. But it’s padded all right,” confessed the general manager. “Not a third. Not a quarter. But—well, enough.”

For the second time that day Jeremy Robson took a snap resolution. “Appoint a committee to go over the books, Mr. Ellison,” said he. “Make your estimate of bona fide circulation, and I’ll adjust my rate to make it as low per thousand as any daily in the State of equal size. Is that fair?”

“Yes. I guess that’s fair enough,” answered the Retailers’ Association president, hesitantly.

“That don’t satisfy me,” asserted Ahrens.

“What will, Mr. Ahrens?” asked Jeremy politely.

“‘Readers,’ like the Great Northwestern’s always had.”

“The next time I come to your store to buy a necktie, will you throw in a box of collars?”

“It ain’t the same thing.”

“Pardon me; it’s precisely the same, considered as a deal. You don’t give people more than they pay for. Why should you expect to get it? All I ask for The Guardian is a living profit on the plant and product.”

“Wymett made a living out of it.”

“What Mr. Wymett did is not under discussion.”

“I’ll say this for it, though,” interjected Galpin. “We’re not going to make the kind of living in the kind of way that Mr. Wymett made his. Get that, you men?”

The stir that this roused was sufficient evidence of general knowledge concerning The Guardian’s former management.

“Now, you’re talking!” said Betts.

“Dot’s goot. I like dot,” added Stockmuller.

It was the first evidence of approval that the new policy had elicited.

“So much having been said,” proceeded Jeremy: “I’ll tell you gentlemen this. The Guardian is going to be run straight. If you ever see any evidence that it is n’t, I want to know it.”

“That’s fine, Mr. Robson,” said Ellison warmly.

“That’s the kind of thing we want to hear. We’re all for that and will wish you the success you deserve. And now there’s one more matter I think ought to be taken up here. We considered it at the last meeting of the association, and this is as good a time and place as any to thrash it out. Speaking for myself and associates, Mr. Robson, we’d like to know what consideration an advertiser in The Guardian may expect at its hands.”

“Consideration?” Jeremy said, puzzled.

“In the matter of news.”

Another side-glance at Galpin apprised Jeremy that this was at least as important as anything that had gone before.

“I’m afraid that I shall have to ask you to explain,” said Jeremy.

“I will give you an example: the case which we had up for discussion at our last meeting. It concerns one of our members, Mr. Barclay, of Barclay & Bull, shoe dealers. Barclay & Bull are liberal advertisers in The Guardian, Mr. Robson.”

“Yes.”

“Last Tuesday The Guardian published a report of the Blair Street Methodist Church meeting, which put Mr. Barclay in a quite unfortunate light.”

“Was n’t our report accurate?”

“I am not saying whether it was accurate or inaccurate,” returned Ellison conservatively. “The point is that it was unfortunate. It subjected Mr. Barclay to criticism. How could Mr. Barclay foresee that The Guardian, which his firm had always patronized, would catch up a hasty and somewhat violent expression used in the heat of debate, and publish it?”

“The meeting was a public meeting. Why should n’t we report it?”

“My dear young friend, I am endeavoring to tell you. Do you not owe something to Mr. Barclay, as an advertiser?”

“Does Mr. Barclay owe anything to me because I buy my shoes at his store?”

Mr. Ellison’s face shone with the prognostication of argumentative triumph. “Pree-cisely the point! He does. He owes you courtesy as a patron. You owe him courtesy as a patron. That article should, if I may express an opinion, have omitted his name.”

“I see. Because Mr. Barclay is an advertiser in The Guardian.”

“Quite so,” beamed Ellison.

“But I’m selling Mr. Barclay advertising, not news.”

“The courtesy due to an—”

“Pardon me. It’s no question of courtesy. The Guardian sells its news to its readers. It sells its advertising to its advertisers. You’ve got two different things badly mixed.”

Mr. Ellison looked crestfallen, but rallied to another and more direct argument. “Barclay & Bull intend withdrawing their advertising from The Guardian.”

“That’s their affair,” said Jeremy shortly.

“But, surely, my dear young friend, it is equally the affair of your paper.”

“If it’s a question of Barclay & Bull withdrawing their advertising or The Guardian withdrawing its news policy, we’ll have to hump along without the advertising.”

“Look here!” The twitchy eyes of Adolph Ahrens focused themselves angrily on the host. “S’pose I go motoring up to Bellair. S’pose I get pinched by a joy constable. S’pose I send around word I want it kept out of the paper. Don’t I get a show?”

“Not a show,” declared Jeremy good-humoredly. “You’re too prominent a character, Mr. Ahrens, not to make good reading.”

From the ventriloqual depths of Mr. Arndt there again emanated that gentleman’s conviction concerning the infernal quality of the note of Mr. Robson’s conversation.

Engel the grocer saw The Guardian’s finish, and made no secret of his prophetic vision.

Aaron Levy, pursuing his trade under the ambitious title of “The Fashion,” expressed the opinion that no man’s business was safe in a town where such practices were permitted.

“Und you maig funny-nesses aboud the Chermans, too,” accused Bernard Stockmuller, the jeweler, unexpectedly.

Vogt came to his support. “That reporter ought to be fired,” he proclaimed. “The one that wrote the police court article about the brewery driver.”

“‘Why, there was no malice in that,” defended Jeremy. “It was all good-natured fun.”

“It wass fun at the Chermans,” declared Stockmuller. “Cherman accents. Cherman ignorances. What you wan ta pigk on the Chermans for, always?”

“We don’t, Mr. Stockmuller. That’s absurd. We’d print an Irish dialect story just as quickly. In fact we do, frequently.”

“You should understand,” said Blasius the hatter, heavily, “that we Germans are as good citizens as anybody else.”

“Granted, but—”

“And priddy heavy advertisers in The Guardian.” This was Vogt’s contribution.

Jeremy began to lose his temper. “Gentlemen,” said he sharply, “if you take over the job of running The Guardian as you seem to wish to do, where do I come in?”

“Easy! Friendly!” pacified Ellison. “No use in getting excited.”

“Thinks he can run the town,” growled Ahrens.

“There is much in Mr. Robson’s point of view,” continued the pourer of oil. “And I am sure that he will concede the force of much that has been said upon the other side. In any case I am sure we have all come to a better understanding, and that we thank Mr. Robson most appreciatively for his bounteous hospitality. And, now, gentlemen, I propose that we—er—adjourn.”

Ahrens and two of the others forgot to bid Jeremy good-bye. When all had left, the giver of the feast turned to his lieutenant.

“Well, they know where we stand. How many advertisers will it lose us?”

“I don’t know that it’ll lose us any, right away.”

“Ahrens, surely.”

“Don’t believe it. He’ll be afraid to drop out. He don’t understand your go-to-hell attitude.”

“Was I as bad as that, Andy?”

“I’m taking his point of view. He don’t understand it, and probably he don’t believe it. Thinks it’s bluff. But he’s scared and he’s cautious. So he’ll stay in—for a while, anyway. What we’ve got to do in the long run, is to keep ’em all scared.”

“Going in for blackmail, Andy?” smiled his boss.

“Keep ’em scared, by making the paper so strong that they dassent do without it.”

“That means more circulation.”

“It means more circulation, a lot of it, and pretty darn quick. That’s my job.”

Arrived at the office, Jeremy got his final glimpse of the day into the ramifications of advertising. In his editorial sanctum waited a mild, self-possessed, and profoundly laconic Chinaman.

“Take ad?” inquired he.

“Your ad? What is it?”

“Laundry.” He proffered a neat and competently prepared two-inch single column “card,” announcing that Wong Kee stood ready to perform high-class laundering for the discerning public at reasonable prices.

“All right. Take it to the Advertising window.”

“No good.”

“Why not?”

“Turn down.”

“Nonsense!”

“Chinese laundry. Turn down,” asseverated Wong Kee evenly.

“When did you try?”

“Nineteen-eight. Nineteen-nine. Nineteen-ten. Nineteen-eleven.”

“Every year? Nineteen-twelve wins.”

Jeremy marked “Must J. R.” on the copy and sent the satisfied Celestial downstairs.

On the following morning, eight local professional apostles of cleanliness, comprising the Laundry Association of Fenchester, indignantly notified The Guardian of the withdrawal of their patronage.

“Even the laundrymen want to edit the paper for us,” the disgusted Jeremy observed to Galpin. “Well, they can stay out till hell breaks loose under the State of Centralia.”

As a matter of fact, that is exactly what they did.