THAT phenomenon of finance which has relegated many a business man to a pained and bewildered retirement, increase of receipts attended with a parallel deficit, had marked The Guardian’s first year under the new control. No question but that The Guardian was a much livelier, newsier, more influential, and better paper. No question but that the public appreciated this. The increased and steadily increasing circulation bore proof. With reluctance the local advertisers also accepted the fact. Rates had been raised, to the accompaniment of loud protests, which were largely formal, for the merchants paid the higher charge, and, in many cases, increased their advertising appropriation. The Guardian was recognized as a good medium. It was on the way to being recognized as a necessary medium. When a newspaper reaches that point, its fortune is made.

But a newspaper is like an automobile or a loaf of bread in this fundamental respect, that it costs more to make a good than a bad one. All the special features which Andrew Galpin had put on, mounted up into money. The staff was more expensive. The telegraphic service cost more. At no time had swelling revenues quite overtaken rising expenditures. Galpin, however, who had originally suggested to the new boss A Short Life and a Merry One as The Guardian’s appropriate motto, was now optimistic. He confidently believed the paper to be within measurable distance of assured success.

“But we’re pretty near at the end of our rope—my rope,” Jeremy pointed out.

“Ay-ah. There’s other ropes dangling around loose. Why not hitch to one?”

“Borrow?”

“I’ve heard of its being done in business,” replied the general manager quizzically. “Somebody’s got to help the banks make a living.”

“How much do you think we need?”

Galpin juggled with a pencil and a sheet of paper. “Let’s get enough while we’re at it. Twenty thousand ought to be the last cent we’ll ever have to ask for.”

“Can we get that much?” asked the other doubtfully. “On the security of the plant? Easy.”

Jeremy’s money was in the Fenchester Trust Company, of which Robert Wanser was president. No difficulty whatsoever was made by him when Jeremy called. Wanser was an anomaly in national sentiment. The grandson of a leader of the Young German movement who had found refuge in this country from the rigorous repression of Germany in ’48, the son of a major who fought with distinction for the Union through the Civil War, he remained impregnably Teutonic in thought, sentiment, and prejudice. He was a large, softish man who suggested in his appearance a sleek and benignant walrus. He sat back in his chair and listened and puffed and nodded, and when the applicant was through, made a notation on a bit of paper. The rest was merely a matter of “Jeremy Robson” at the bottom of a dated form, and “Do you wish to draw it now or leave it on deposit, Mr. Robson?” To the borrower it seemed like the nearest thing to magic since his great-aunt’s bequest.

“And how is the paper getting on, Mr. Robson?” asked Wanser benevolently.

“First-rate. We can feel it taking hold harder and harder every day.”

“Ah!” Robert Wanser’s “Ah” had just the faintest touch of a medial “c” in it; just a hint of the guttural, the only relic left in his speech of a Teutonicism which three generations had failed to Americanize. “That must be a great satisfaction.”

“It is.”

“And a great responsibility. What a power for good a newspaper may be, even in a small community such as this! Or for evil. Or for evil,” he repeated sorrowfully.

Jeremy waited.

“It can radiate enlightenment. Or it can scatter poison. The poison of class hatred, of political unrest, of racial dissension.” He sighed.

Always for the direct method Jeremy asked, “You think The Guardian is too radical?”

“A(c)h!” said Robert Wanser. “I have not assumed to criticize.”

“I’m asking for information. That’s the only way I can make the paper better. By finding out what people think of it.”

“A(c)h, yes! There is much to commend in your paper. Much! But it is not always quite kindly, is it? Not quite kindly.”

“Probably not. What have you got in mind?”

“Nothing in particular,” disclaimed the banker. “I feel that in our complicated system there is room for all classes of thought, and that all of us who are, in a sense, leaders should set the example of a broad tolerance. The imputation of unworthy motives, for example, can do nothing but harm. A community such as this should be a brotherhood, all working for the common good of the town. Don’t you agree with me, Mr. Robson?”

To agree with so pious a banality would have been easy; was, in fact, almost a requirement of politeness. But Jeremy was wondering what lay behind all these words. “I don’t know,” he said. “It sounds all right. But I don’t get your real meaning.”

Mr. Wanser hastily disclaimed any real meaning, and the interview proceeded in a mist of steamy generalities contributed by the banker, of which one alone impressed the editor as embodying the kernel of a thought.

“You may gain temporary circulation by making enemies, but you lose support.”

“But a newspaper has got to take sides on public questions,” protested Jeremy.

“Why so? Why should it not be a lens, to collect and focus facts for the public’s attention?”

“It should, in the news columns. But editorially?”

“Comment,” said Wanser blandly. “Simple, explanatory, enlightening comment.”

“It won’t do the business. Take this tax matter—”

“A(c)h! Very unfortunate! Very unfortunate!” murmured the banker.

“Of course it’s unfortunate,” returned Jeremy warmly. “It’s unfortunate that those best able to pay taxes should get off light at the expense of those less able to pay.”

“That is not what I meant. These attacks upon property—”

“They’re not attacks on property, when property plays fair. Would a simple comment have brought old Madam Taylor to time?”

“Perhaps. Why not?”

Jeremy rubbed his nose thoughtfully. “Perhaps it would. The facts were enough just as they stood.” Madam Taylor, the daughter of the dead statesman who had founded The Guardian, was not only the richest woman in Fenchester, but was also a highly respected and considerably feared local institution. Because of that her taxes had not been raised in thirty years, though her property had quadrupled in value, until The Guardian shocked the community by running afoul of her.

“You might have so enraged her that she would have left Fenchester forever,” accused Wanser.

“Small loss, then,” returned Jeremy heatedly, he having been the victim of the old lady’s spiciest line of commentary, after publication of the article.

“A(c)h! It would be a misfortune to the town,” said the banker, thinking, on his part, of the heavy balance in the name of Taylor at his bank.

“Anyway, Mr. Wanser,” said Jeremy, rising to go, “I’m no neutral. I’m for or against. And, in reason, The Guardian will be the same. Maybe I’m wrong. But it’s the only way I know. If it makes enemies, I’m sorry.” Indeed it had seemed to the young editor that circulation for The Guardian and enmities for its owner were inevitable concomitants in the making. Every local question upon which he took sides landed him upon somebody’s tender toes. Much of the news that he printed—such as had not been printed for fear of hurting some more or less influential person’s feelings, before The Guardian espoused the policy that news is a commodity to which the public is entitled by virtue of its purchase of the paper—exasperated and even alienated the sympathies of the formerly favored elements. But it did n’t cause them to stop buying the paper, because they shrewdly hoped to find equally interesting and annoying items, later, about their friends. Then there was the matter of special consideration to the advertising patrons; a principle by which the mercantile crowd resolutely held, despite Jeremy’s pronunciamento at the luncheon. At least three fourths of the advertisers in town, Jeremy estimated, were fitfully concerned either in getting into The Guardian matters which didn’t belong there, or in keeping out matters which did; or, if not they, themselves, then their wives, children, or intimate associates. With respect to all these requests, he cultivated a determined and expensive habit of saying “No.” Thereby, if the paper became newsier and scored a more than occasional “beat” on its rival, The Record, it also became a heavier burden to carry, as the wrath of the afflicted gathered stormily about its head.

Though local advertisers resented the policy of the paper, they appreciated its value. That is all that kept them in. Verrall, in his activities as advertising manager, was constantly reporting evidences of a hostile spirit. Half of the big stores in town, he said, would knife The Guardian in a minute if they dared. He represented himself as being obliged to spend more time in diplomatic soothings than he could well spare from the routine of his work, and while advocating the utmost freedom of criticism in public matters, as befitted a follower of Embree, was mildly deprecatory of what he termed “Mr. Robson’s hedgehoggishness toward advertisers.” Malicious tongues, moreover, had been at work among the Germans, who formed an important part of the local mercantile world, spreading the report that The Guardian was secretly anti-German. If Mr. Robson could see his way clear to giving the German-Americans an editorial pat on the back occasionally, it would aid Verrall considerably in building up his space. Mr. Robson replied that, as it was, he was publishing a fair amount of German press-stuff, and he saw no reason to do any editorial soft-sawdering for Mr. Bausch and his faction.

Foreign advertising, such as the nationally exploited automobiles, soaps, razors, breakfast foods, and the like was now coming in in good volume, a most encouraging development, for these big advertisers exercise a keen discrimination in the matter of newspaper space, and their general support not only makes a paper “look good” to the technical eye, but also gives it a certain cachet among lesser concerns. To the high-grade national businesses The Guardian had made special appeal by expelling from its columns the fake financial, oil, gold, rubber, and real-estate dollar-traps, and the quack cure-alls, whose neighborhood in print the reputable concerns resent.

To offset this, the paper had lost in volume of local advertising. Several of the large stores had cut down their space, in token of resentment over the raise in rates, and had restored it only gradually and not to the full. Barclay & Bull had stayed out for more than six months. But this helped more than it hurt The Guardian, for their business showed a marked falling-off and their being obliged to come back in, rather shamefacedly, was testimony to the paper’s value. Turnbull Brothers, of The Emporium, the largest of the department stores, had, however, cut off The Guardian wholly, in consequence of its reporting a fire in the local freight yard, with the detail that a large consignment to The Emporium of the bankrupt stock of Putz & Lewin, of Chicago, was included in the losses. As the arrival of this consignment was coincident with the announcement of The Emporium’s annual “Grand Clearance Sale,” the effect was, as their advertising manager passionately stated to Jeremy, “derogatory as hell.” He demanded a retraction. The editor politely regretted that facts were both untractable and unretractable matter to deal with. The Turnbulls threatened libel. Jeremy told them to go ahead and promised to print daily accounts of the proceedings. The Turnbulls resorted to violent names and called off their contract for advertising. Jeremy dismissed them with his blessing, and told them not to come back until they had learned the distinction between advertising and news. Thereupon Verrall bewailed the sad fate of the advertising manager of a paper whose chief was an irreconcilable stiff-neck, and appealed to Andrew Galpin, but got nothing by that step other than unsympathetic advice to confine his troubles to his own department lest a worse thing befall him.

Then there was the case of Aaron Levy, of The Fashion, who, starting on the proverbial shoestring, was building up a wide low-class trade, and spreading his gospel through the columns of The Guardian, to the extent of occasional one-eighth pages. One phase of the Levy trade was a legal but unsavory installment business, the details of which were frequently threshed out in petty civil court actions. One of these, with a “human interest” end, was reported in The Guardian. Mr. Levy promptly called on Jeremy.

“What you want to do? Ruin my business?” he demanded.

“Is that account true?” asked Jeremy.

“Neffer mind if it’s true. It didn’t have to get printed.”

“Your business ought to be ruined, from what the Court thinks of it.”

“You take my money for advertising it all right,” the protestant pointed out with justice.

“So we do. We won’t any more. The Guardian won’t carry your installment business, Mr. Levy.”

“Maybe you’re too good to have my ads in your paper at all!”

“Oh, no. We’ll be glad to have everything but that one line.”

“You can’t run my business for me, don’t you think it!” adjured Mr. Levy in one emphatic breath, and departed with a righteous conviction of unmerited injury.

The Fashion’s one-eighth pages no longer graced The Guardian. Too shrewdly devoted to his trade to stay out entirely, Mr. Levy confined himself to terse announcements in the briefest and cheapest possible space. He also helped to spread the evil rumor that young Robson was “sore on the business men of Fenchester.” Business men there were, however, shrewd, fair-minded, and far-seeing enough to appreciate The Guardian’s one-standard policy, even while they deprecated what they regarded as its abuse of independence. These formed a strong minority of defenders and supporters. Little by little their ranks were increasing. Andrew Galpin’s optimism, and the debt which represented it, seemed fairly justified as the election of the fall of 1913 drew near.

Already The Guardian had far outstripped The Record in circulation and in advertising revenue. The rival paper was being hard pressed to make a respectable showing, and had adopted a decidedly acidulous tone toward Jeremy and his publication, letting no opportunity pass to impugn its motives and jeer at its principles. Ever ready for a fight, Jeremy was for joining issue on the editorial page, but Galpin’s wiser counsel withheld him.

“Nobody cares for newspaper squabbles but newspaper men,” said that sage. “We’re not making a newspaper for newspaper men. We’re making a newspaper for Bill Smith and Jim Jones and their missises. And we’re getting ’em!”

But Jeremy Robson was making a newspaper to meet another, more demanding, more changeful standard which was yet in a great measure the same. He was making a newspaper for Jeremy Robson; for Jeremy Robson, who, with a surprised and humble and hungry mind, was being educated by that very newspaper which he himself was making. More and more Jeremy Robson, editor of The Guardian, was identifying himself in mind and spirit with Bill Smith and Jim Jones and their missises, readers and followers of The Guardian. Because of that fellowship, because of the implied link of faith and trust that had grown up, impalpable, between them, evidenced in hundreds of letters to and scores of calls upon “the editor,” there had been established standards to which The Guardian was inviolably if tacitly committed. There were things which The Guardian might not do. There were things which, when the time came, it might not refrain from doing. An implicit faith was pledged. So and not otherwise does a newspaper become an institution.

Yet The Guardian was Jeremy’s very own. He felt for it the proprietary pride and interest of a man with a growing business and a growing influence to wield, and, added to that the affection of a child for a toy machine—which actually goes! He coddled his paper and petted it, and treated it, when he could, to new and better equipment, and awoke one day to the unpleasant realization that the editorials which he so enjoyed writing, and the growing, widening response to which constituted his most satisfactory reward, were physically a blotch and a blur and an affront to the staggering and baffled eye. The Guardian needed a new dress and needed it badly!

Now the garmenture of a newspaper is of a costliness to make Paquin, Caillot, and their Parisian congeners of the golden needle appear like unto ragpickers, when the bills come in. Jeremy bought The Guardian a new dress of type. It made a hideous hole, a chasm, an abyss in the loan negotiated from the Trust Company. But the paper became a festival to the proud eye of its owner. Galpin helped salve his chief’s conscience by agreeing that they would have had to do it sooner or later anyway.

Well advised of the loan, the status of the paper’s finances, and the new plunge, Montrose Clark and his legal satellite, Judge Dana, held consultation. Now, they decided, was the providentially appointed time for trying out the transfer ordinance in the City Council. The Guardian, whose opposition they had feared, had put itself in a position where it must “be good.”

“That young cub,” said Montrose Clark confidently, “will have to come into line.”

“With management. With careful management,” amended Judge Dana.

“Anyway!” returned the public utilitarian. “He’ll need every cent he can get and when he sees five or six hundred dollars as his share of our advertising campaign of education, with more to follow, he’ll take his orders like the others. I’ll send for him in a day or two.”

“What, again?” said Judge Dana.

The puffy jowl of Montrose Clark deepened in color. “I shall not tolerate any more of his impudence,” he declared. “He will come when sent for or—”

“Now, Mr. Clark, this is a case for diplomacy.”

“For you, you mean, Dana.”

“What do you employ me for?” soothed the lawyer. “Just you have a copy of the ordinance drawn up. Tell Garson to get up the advertising figures and give them to me. I’ll talk to young Mr. Robson.”

The magnate assented, though with an ill grace. “Will you take up the matter of your candidacy with him at the same time?”

Matters were so shaping themselves in politics, that with the figure of Martin Embree looming and the probability of a strong radical vote in the Legislature, the P.-U. and its allied traction interests in the State deemed it advisable to place a safe representative on the Court of Appeals bench, where much may be done by “interpretation” to offset destructive legislation. Dana had been selected as the man. In his early days the Judge had weathered, with difficulty and not without damage to his reputation, two or three legal tempests, one of which had all but caused his disbarment. Had not Montrose Clark, already finding him valuable as a clever quasher of damage suits in their early stages, employed his influence, the Judge would have ceased to ornament the legal profession. He had since gone far to rehabilitate himself in the eyes of the public, by sticking close to high-class, quiet (not to say secret) corporation work. But the better men of his own profession, while recognizing his abilities, were still suspicious of him, though not to the point where any protest was likely to be made in the face of such powerful interests as were backing him.

Judge Dana pondered his patron’s question. “That depends on how he takes the transfer plan,” he replied.

“You gave me advice about him,” said Montrose Clark rather maliciously; “to handle him with gloves. You see how it came out. Now I’ll give you some in return. Put the screws on the young fool!”

“Not my way. And not his description. He’s got a lot to learn. I’m going there as his teacher. I would n’t be, if he was a fool.”

Channels of communication bring information (and even more misinformation) from many sources into an editor’s office. Through one of these Jeremy had learned of the projected transfer plan’s recrudescence. Therefore he was prepared when Judge Dana, having called by appointment, stated the case flatly.

“We want your support,” he said.

“This is a pretty raw deal, Judge Dana,” remarked Jeremy.

The lawyer’s thin and solemn face did not alter its expression of bland disinterestedness. “Not if looked at in the right light.”

“What is the right light?”

“The P.-U. needs the new arrangement in order to perfect its service to the public. The greatest good to the greatest number.”

“Number One,” suggested Jeremy. “Mr. Montrose Clark.”

“Setting aside any personal prejudice in the matter, what have you against the Public Utilities Corporation?”

“It does n’t play fair. It is always begging for special privileges and then establishing them as rights after it has got them.”

The lawyer reflected that this theory, presented and amplified editorially in The Guardian, would be unpleasantly difficult to refute.

“After all, it performs a public service,” he pointed out, a bit lamely.

“The public could do it for itself better and cheaper.”

“That’s Embreeism. It’s Socialism.”

“Call it what you like. It’s common sense.”

“Let me advise you, in the friendliest spirit, not to take up any such scatter-brained theories in your paper. They’d wreck it.”

“That may come later. I’ll tell you this now, Judge. We won’t support the transfer plan.”

“I never thought you would,” said the lawyer calmly. “What’s the idea of this call, then?”

“To suggest that you keep your hands off and let us fight it out in Council.”

Jeremy laughed outright. “You don’t ask me to hold the easy mark while you go through his pockets. Only to stand by and not interfere.”

Judge Dana grinned. “I don’t care much for the style of your metaphor,” he confessed.

“Judge, I’m afraid it’s no go. You can easily bulldoze or bribe the Council, if we keep our hands off.”

“Fair words, my boy! Fair words! Has n’t The Guardian ever done any bulldozing?”

“Expect it has—in a good cause.”

“This is a good cause. It’s going to be good for you as well as us—and the public.”

“As how?” queried Jeremy.

“Our plan is to present the new system to the public through a series of advertisements. Education, you understand. The modern way: through the press. Would you like to see the outline?”

“Come to the point. What’s the amount?”

Where the hand-perfected Garson would have seen hope in the question, the warier lawyer scented danger to his plans. Nevertheless he went ahead. “Five hundred, minimum. Perhaps as high as a thousand, if the public is slow to learn. Our total advertising appropriation this year,” stated Judge Dana with great deliberation, “will run to five thousand dollars. There is no reason why The Guardian should not get a half of it. At least a half.”

“Did Mr. Clark ever get the message that I sent him by Garson, as to bribes?”

“Bribes?” The lawyer looked properly startled. “I don’t know. I doubt it.”

“I sent word to Clark that when I got ready to take bribes, I’d take them direct, in the form of cash.”

“But I’m not offering to bribe you or The Guardian,” protested the other. “It’s a matter of simple business. We institute an advertising campaign in a newspaper. We don’t ask it to advocate our measures; to a finicking mind that might seem to be a form of bribery. No; we only ask that, having published our advertising and accepted us as customers, the paper refrain from rendering the service we’ve paid for useless or worse than useless, by attacking our arguments editorially. Is n’t that fair and reasonable?” pleaded the lawyer, with a plausible gesture of laying the matter out for equitable judgment.

Jeremy passed the argument. “Do you think Garson ever delivered my message?”

“I should think it unlikely,” returned the other, taken slightly aback.

“Afraid?”

“Politic.”

“The same thing, usually. Are you afraid of Montrose Clark?”

The lawyer reddened. “I came here as one gentleman to another—”

“With an offer of hush-money,” broke in the editor. “Come, Judge; you and I are down to hard-pan. We can dispense with bluff. However, if you don’t like the word ‘afraid’—I don’t like it much, myself, but that’s because there are so many things I’m trying not to be afraid of—I’ll take it back. Now; will you take my message to Clark, as Garson would n’t?”

“No; I will not.”

“Then I’ll have to write it to him. Or, I might print it in The Guardian, in the form of an open letter following this interview.”

“This is a confidential visit,” cried the lawyer, shocked clean out of his professional calm.

“You’ve got me there,” admitted the other. “I’ve got to play square if I put up the bluff, have n’t I, Judge? Even with you.”

“I’m damned if I understand you, young man.”

“Cheer up. We’ve got many long years to learn all about each other in.”

“You think The Guardian will last?” Dana could not resist the temptation to impart the dig.

“It’ll be remembered, if it doesn’t,” promised its editor. “Won’t you reconsider the matter of that message, Judge? You can tone it down, you know, and temper it to the dignity of the little great man, whereas if I write him—”

“I’ll do it,” declared Dana suddenly. “And I won’t tone it down.”

“And you’ll enjoy it,” added Jeremy with a grin, which met an unexpected response. The two men understood each other. In a certain complementary sense they were even sympathetic to each other.

Devastating was the wrath of Montrose Clark upon receipt of Judge Dana’s report, wholly unexpurgated. He fumed, first redly, then purply, as if some strange chemical reaction were taking place inside him; and from the exhalations of that turmoil, there crystallized a most unwise decision. Montrose Clark decided upon reprisals with his enemy’s own weapon. He had Garson write several personal attacks upon Jeremy Robson, and intimidated Farley into publishing them in The Record, at special advertising rates, a procedure decidedly painful to Farley’s views of professional ethics and journalistic fellowship. Jeremy retorted with a series of hasty but rather brilliant imaginary interviews with one “President Puff,” which all but drove the subject of them into an apoplexy, and were a source of joy to the ungodly, albeit discreetly subdued as to expression, for the P.-U. head was a man of power in many directions. At this point the Church rushed into the breach in the person of the Reverend Mr. Merserole, Montrose Clark’s rector, and the benefidary of a five thousand dollar gift to the fund of the Nicklin Avenue Church only a week previous. Both the high-minded Mr. Clark and the high-church rector would have been profoundly and quite honestly shocked at the suggestion that there was the faintest element of financial influence (in impious circles called “graft”) in what followed. But the reverend gentleman preached an able and severe sermon upon the topic “Poisoned Pens,” in which a certain type of reckless, demagogic, passion-inciting, self-seeking, conscienceless journalism was lifted up to public reprobation in a pillar of fiery invective. The Guardian violated all precedent by publishing the livelier portions of the sermon under the caption, “Whom can the Reverend Gentleman Mean?” and followed this up with a report on the Clark contribution, paralleled with further excerpts from the more spiritual and lofty portions of the sermon, headed with the text, “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” The Reverend Mr. Merserole was pained and annoyed for the remainder of the week by a steady influx of marked copies of The Guardian. He was stimulated to a holy but helpless wrath by the subsequent discovery that he, the impeccable pastor of the fashionable Nicklin Avenue Church, had been impiously dubbed “the Nickle-in-the-Slot rector.” This ribaldry he ascribed to Jeremy Robson’s unprofessional wit, wherein he was wrong. As a matter of fact, it was a flash from the quaint mind of Eli Wade, the Boot & Shoe Surgeon. But Jeremy had earned another implacable enemy.

The Guardian did not get its share of the $500-or-more educational advertising from the P.-U. Indeed, there was no educational advertising. The transfer issue was passed, for the time, rather than venture into the open where, as Judge Dana observed, “The Guardian was waiting for it with a fish-horn and a brick”; and the P.-U.‘s legal lights set about drafting a blanket franchise for the consideration of some future legislature, which should enable the corporation to do about what it pleased without reference to dubious councils or pestilent journalistic demagogues.