Common Cause

by Samuel Hopkins Adams

  “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 isn’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.”

  “Wasn’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 shouldn’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 editoria
l 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.

  13

  No advertising patronage was lost to The Guardian as the result of the luncheon-conference. But Jeremy Robson’s offer to let a committee investigate his circulation was costly. More than fifteen per cent of The Guardian’s list proved either “phony” or dubious. Jeremy reconstituted his rate card in accordance with the actual figures, and cut recklessly into his free list. Appeased by this practical and to them profitable concession, the Retailers’ Association abandoned the issue of rebates. For the time, at least, they accepted the new proprietor’s distasteful decision as to “readers.” The matter of “courtesies” extended to advertisers was left in abeyance. That was sure to come up in the inevitable course of events. The general status was that of a truce, with one side wary and the other disgruntled.

  Unsatisfactory though this might be to the mercantile element, it was more so to the newspaper. For The Guardian simply could not make a living at the reduced rates. There was but one thing to be done: increase circulation, thereby giving the paper augmented advertising value, and raise the advertising rates proportionately. It had been agreed between the Retailers’ Association committee and Jeremy that in view of his reduction of tariff, there would be no opposition to an increase when the circulation should warrant it. Ellison and the other committeemen did not believe that The Guardian could add to its circulation materially. Jeremy and his general manager did. They didn’t know just how. They only knew that it had to, or pass ignominiously out of existence!

  So they took the customary business-man’s gamble. In the hope of making money they spent money. The paper began to swell out and look lively and prosperous. But Jeremy’s bank account evidenced the ravages of a galloping consumption. And though the public talked about The Guardian and speculated interestedly upon its future, it did not fall over itself to subscribe. It waited to see and be convinced. The public has that habit.

  Meanwhile two able gentlemen with no ostensible interest in journalism were quietly watching and estimating the course of The Guardian. President Montrose Clark, of the Fenchester Public Utilities Corporation, and his legal aide-de-camp Judge Selden Dana, a pair far more potent in Fenchester’s political affairs than Fenchester’s undisceming citizenry ever dreamed, were concerned with the newspapers as affecting their own plans, and were specially concerned with Jeremy Robson’s newspaper because they possessed no reliable data on young Mr. Robson.

  “Do you know him?” asked Judge Dana.

  “No,” replied Montrose Clark, whose interview with the “rippawtah” of The Record had failed to leave any memory of the young man’s name. “What do you think of The Guardian since he got it?”

  “It’s silly,” pronounced Mr. Clark loftily.

  “Silly? Would you call it silly?”

  “I have called it silly. It is beginning to show leanings toward a half-baked radicalism.”

  “Robson is very young.”

  “Even socialistic tendencies,” pursued the other.

  “Socialism is anything that holds up our programme,” grinned the lawyer, who occasionally permitted himself the private luxury of frankness.

  The public utilitarian frowned. “Have you been reading the articles on tax-dodgers?”

  “I have.”

  “What is the purpose of them, if not to stir up socialistic unrest?”

  “Sensation, I should say. The series has been popular. When Mr. Average Citizen reads in his paper that he is being taxed twice as heavily as Mr. Rich Man next door, he’s interested. He begins to think the paper is a devil of a paper. He talks about it. That helps.”

  “Suppose The Guardian should attack Us on the tax issue?”

  “That also would be interesting,” remarked Dana. “But they won’t. Our trail is too well covered. It would take them a year to get at the facts.”

  “But what’s the young fool driving at, anyway, Dana?” The lawyer rubbed his long angular jaw, and the somnolent look of his eyes deepened into musing. “I figure he’s making a bid for the radical support. The radicals have never had a show here, and he may be able to rally them to him.”

  “What do they amount to, the radicals! A newspaper has got to have the support of people with money.”

  “That’s the accepted theory,” admitted the lawyer.

  “What do you know of young Robson’s financial status!”

  “Quite a bit. I handled the sale for Wymett.”

  “Yes; yes. A good bargain for Wymett. Eh?”

  “A stroke of fortune.”

  “How much has Robson got behind him?”

  “Not much. Twenty thousand. Perhaps twenty-five.”

  Mr. Clark looked relieved. “I think we need have no misgivings.”

  “I’m not so sure. A paper with radical leanings might find material in that transfer ordinance of ours when it comes up again. Even some of our good friends balk at that as pretty raw.”

  “An essential step to our expansion, Dana,” said the public utilitarian blandly.

  “Exactly. But an uncharitable mind mightn’t see it that way. Which reminds me: Embree is threatening a legislative investigation if the ordinance goes through.”

  “Local matters are no affair of Embree’s,” declared the other angrily. “Fortunately he has no newspaper backing.”

  “Hasn’t he? I wish I were sure.”

  “You don’t think that young Robson has sold out to Embree already?”

  “No.”

  “Very well, then—”

  “Not sold out. It isn’t a question of cash. This boy isn’t A. M. Wymett.”

  “Nevertheless a newspaper is a business proposition,” opined Montrose Clark dryly.

  “It ought to be. Much simpler if it were. But this boy is a bit of a sentimentalist. I’m afraid he’s in the way of being influenced by Smiling Mart’s line of clap-trap.”

  “Then we must act promptly.” The public utilitarian sat, thoughtful. “We’ll start a campaign of public education on the transfer question, through the newspapers,” he decided. “Including, of course, The Guardian.”

  “Straight-out, a-d-v kind of advertising?”

  “Hardly. The usual thing. Well-prepared articles. Perhaps a careful editorial or two. Do you think it too early?”

  “Not too early. Too late for The Guardian. It won’t take ’em.”

  “Oh, I think it will,” returned the other comfortably. “At our special rate.”

  “Not at any price, the editorials. The ‘readers,’ yes. But they’ll have the ‘a-d-v’ sign at the bottom. Maybe the ‘P.-U.’ trade-mark also.”

  Montrose Clark’s face puffed red. “Where do you get your information?”

  “From inside,” answered
Dana, whose special virtue and value was to be “inside” on all available sources of information. “Those are the new orders.”

  “Robson’s?”

  “I suppose so. Andrew Galpin may have a hand in it. He’s in general charge.”

  “I think I can persuade those young gentlemen,” remarked Montrose Clark sardonically, “that it is not to their interest to impose troublesome restrictions upon the corporation.”

  He pressed a button. There arrived upon the scene, with an effect of automatic response, that smooth, flawless, noiseless, expressionless piece of human mechanism, Edward Garson, the hand-perfected private secretary who, besides his immediate duties about the great man’s person, acted as go-between in minor matters, press-agent, and advertising manager for the Fenchester Public Utilities Corporation. Concerning him, Judge Dana had once remarked that the queerest thing about it was that it also had brains.

  “Garson,” barked Montrose Clark, in the tone which he deemed appropriate.

  The hand-perfected secretary bowed.

  “Bring in The Guardian advertising account.”

  The secretary bowed again and disappeared. Almost immediately he was back, bowing once more over a neatly typed single sheet of paper.

  “What is our total expenditure in The Guardian for the current year, up to date?”

  “For display advertising, eleven hundred and forty-seven dollars, sixty cents. For reading matter, two hundred and seventy-five.”

  “That includes editorial matter?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And in The Record?”

  “Seventeen hundred and twenty, sir. All display. They make no charge for editorials or readers, you recall, sir.”

  “True. We pay them a higher rate for display, and the editorial support is—er—”

  “By way of gratitude,” suggested Dana.

  “Exactly. Do you think, Dana, that either paper is in a position to discard the P.-U.’s support?”

  “Just a moment,” said the lawyer. “That display advertising bill of The Guardian’s; what was the bill as rendered?”

  Looking to Montrose Clark for permission and receiving it in a nod, the hand-perfected secretary replied, “Sixteen hundred dollars.”