It was pleasant, too, to have a live idea, as Laurel discovered when she went back to the studio next day to see if there was any mail. The most astounding thing! there was a table piled with letters addressed to Mary Morrow, and all from persons who had written and mailed their letters on the previous afternoon or evening! She had to pick some of them up and examine them, before she could believe her eyes. There were so many they filled a big carton box, and a boy had to carry it down and put it into a taxi for her. At home she would sit and open them, trembling with delight. When Lanny came in they would do a little dance together.
No, the American people very certainly didn’t want World War III! They wanted it so little that they would pay handsomely to escape it; they would put checks and dollar bills and ten dollar bills into envelopes and mail them to an unknown voice out of the air! Apparently the way to get money in America was to say that you didn’t want it. The flood lasted a week, and it brought enough money to pay for the opening quarter-hour. It also brought no fewer than three proposals of marriage from gentlemen who declared themselves to be eligible. But Laurel was not.
BOOK EIGHT
Tell Truth and Shame the Devil
23
New World Coming
I
The four Peace conspirators had the task of choosing names for their various enterprises. “What’s in a name?” Shakespeare had asked, and America’s answer was, “Everything.” Give a thing a good name and people would remember it and talk about it. A good name must be short and must tell you what it was all about. “Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives Section”—how could anybody remember that? The result was that few people had heard of it, and those who had would describe its purpose rather than try to remember its name. But people remembered the “Blue Eagle,” the “New Deal,” the “GOP.”
Lanny said, “What our program boils down to is Public Ownership and Peace. Let’s call it POP.” But Laurel, all for dignity, said they would confuse it with a concert of light music. They tried other combinations but without finding one that pleased them all, until Nina remarked, “Peace is what we want, and that seems to me a good word, short and sweet. Why not call the paper Peace? Move into the class with Life and Time.”
From the point of view of circulation that prospect appealed to them and they agreed upon it. They would use General Grant’s immortal words, “Let us have peace,” as their slogan, putting it at the masthead of the paper and opening and closing their radio programs with it. The “Peace Program,” it would be called. As for their syndicate proposition, that must look as little like propaganda as possible; it wouldn’t really be propaganda, for they would take any good writing they came upon provided it wasn’t antisocial. They would help to circulate it, and make it pay if they could. They wanted a neutral title and decided upon the “Edgemere Bureau.”
Rick had taken to that job like a swan to the little pond at The Reaches. He liked nothing better than to lie propped up in bed with a stack of mss. by his side. And oh, how easy it was to get such a stack in the great metropolis of Mammon! So many people thought of writing as a “settin’ down job,” easy, dignified, and sumptuously rewarded. Send out one call, and it spread all over the land; envelopes large and small poured in, frequently without return postage and sometimes without the author’s address.
But a skilled editor learns to save his time. The wine taster does not have to take a single swallow, and an egg taster surely does not have to eat the whole egg. Rick knew what he wanted, and his quick eye roamed over page after page. It didn’t necessarily have to be the work of a skilled writer; it didn’t even have to be someone who knew how to spell; it just had to be somebody who had something worth while to say. Somebody who had had an experience and had felt it deeply; somebody who knew the world and had thought about life, whether his thoughts were sad or gay, hopeful or desperate. Copy could be edited and fixed up; but intensity, novelty, significance—these were qualities that were not kept on tap in editorial offices, and editors were like placer miners, hoping for nuggets and mostly getting sand and silt.
II
Rick and Laurel had paid a visit to the offices of the Acme Syndicate. Laurel had gone along because this was the concern which had handled her New Mexico bomb story and done very well with it. They were pleased to meet her English editor friend and to hear about the project for a writers’ bureau. Needless to say, the two adventurers didn’t say anything about their idea of changing the world; they hinted mildly that they were interested in material of a forward-looking nature, and these business people replied that they would handle anything their papers would take, and they would be glad to consider anything a successful playwright and a popular novelist thought it worth while to submit. New talent? Yes indeed, they were eager for it, and if this competent pair were willing to serve as talent scouts, on a percentage basis, what could be gladder news?
They were going to have a radio program and a little weekly paper to reprint its text, together with other material. They would use both these media to promote the writers’ bureau. Mr. Adams and Mr. Mackenzie said “Fine!” and called in Mr. Smythe and Mr. Goldfarb to hear about the setup; they too said “Fine!” They were businessmen; and when anyone looked at this couple he could see that they had money, and when anyone listened to them he could see that they had brains. When the word “Peace” was brought in it didn’t frighten anybody; of course, everybody wanted peace, and if you could manage to make readable copy out of it, the newspapers would want it too. When Rick asked if it would be permissible for them to use some of the syndicate copy in their paper, subsequent to the newspaper date, the answer was that no one would object to that. With newspapers, copy was alive one day and the next day was in the morgue.
So the happy pair went off and reported to their respective spouses. With the advice of their publisher friend and a lawyer recommended by him, they worked out a contract to be submitted to authors. They would deal in first serial rights only, and not try to rob the author of book or motion picture or other rights. With small stuff, they would buy the first serial rights for cash. With other material, such as a series, or something that they felt was speculative, they would pay the author ten per cent of the purchase price for a thirty-day option, which would give them time to try the manuscript out with the syndicate. They adopted a statement of program to go on their letterheads:
The Edgemere Bureau is a non-profit organization, established to promote the output of material of a liberal tendency. It does not seek to make a profit out of its authors, but to recover the costs of its operation. Its books will be audited and an annual report will be sent to its authors. If the enterprise is so fortunate as to make a profit, the sum will be turned over to the American Peace Foundation, for use in its Peace Program and the weekly newspaper Peace.
The very agreeable elderly lawyer who prepared their contract and checked all their business arrangements did not send any bill, and when they reminded him about it he told them that he was a poet and would be pleased if they would help to circulate his verses. He didn’t want to be paid for his legal services because he too was interested in peace. They would have that sort of experience more than once.
III
When Rick wasn’t reading mss., he was interviewing writers and editors. He chose for his top assistant a rewrite man on one of the big dailies. Philip Edgerton had been classified 4-F by the Army because he had flat feet, but that wouldn’t interfere with the reading of manuscripts. He was in his early thirties, a chap after Rick’s own heart, nervous, high strung, and keen as a rabbit hound on the scent of good writing. He was chained to a desk, reading stuff in which he had no sort of interest, and the idea of being able to read copy along his own line of thinking sent him zooming, as he phrased it. He knew the newspaper game, having been in it since leaving college. He was from the Middle West and had earned his education as a book agent, selling good literature to farm wives and eating with the harvest hands. Now he had a wife and two children and was living in
New York on eighty dollars a week; if the Foundation would pay him that he would work double hours, and maybe write something himself.
Each of the four conspirators had to have a secretary—four well-trained ladies, two of them young and two middle-aged, and all willing to be separated from the bright lights and eager to try living in the country for a while. It would be a safe guess that at least half the people in Megalopolis were yearning to get out of it—or at any rate they said they were. Edgemere was near enough so that you could go in now and then, and your friends could come out week ends. It wouldn’t be bad at all, and they would hunt up a boarding-house, or two of them set up housekeeping in a small apartment if they could find one.
Edgemere was willing to welcome them all. The day came when they moved, bag and baggage, and that was a day of uproar. Before they had time to get their things unpacked, Edgemere arrived, in the form of a dairyman who wanted to sell them milk, a vegetable man who made the rounds twice a week, a baker the same, and so on. Most important of all was Comrade Tipton, who came to ask for their laundry, and at the same time to welcome them in the name of the working class of this community. Comrade Tipton drove the laundry wagon, white painted, but a long time ago, paint having been scarce in wartime. He had white handlebar mustaches and abundant hair and some one of his forefathers must have kissed the Blarney stone.
What a life story he had to tell—and he told it! Nina happened to be outdoors and received him, and later passed the tale on to the others. He had emigrated to Australia. Then he had become a vendor of patent medicine; that was how he had learned psychology and absorbed his radical ideas.
“I’m really a philosophical Anarchist,” he said, “but my wife is a Socialist, so I have to belong to the local and help them with a few libertarian ideas. My wife is a Methodist too, so I belong to the church, and we have converted a few of the people. Also, I deliver an idea or two along with the laundry, so you’ll find that you have a lot of friends and well-wishers in this town—but not among the well-to-do, God forbid. They’re not at all sure they want you, but the money you’ve been spending has carried the day, and they won’t ride you out on a rail. You’re from England, I’m told, Comrade Nielson, and we’re proud of what the English are doing. When you get settled you must all come and get acquainted with the local. My wife cooks the bean suppers, and that’s the way we get the young folks; they’re not so keen for idealism as we oldsters, but they have good appetites. My wife works in the laundry, and I call for and deliver it—they were glad to have an old man do it in wartime, and I’m hanging on, expecting the next war. I’m not so optimistic as you folks but I’m ready to do my share of trying to wake the people up. I come to this part of town every Friday, but I’ll make it another day if it’s more convenient for you. We Reds have to stick together.”
“Comrade” Nielson told her friends, “That could hardly have happened in England.”
IV
The bureau was already working; it didn’t need much paraphernalia, just a secretary and a file of large cards to keep track of manuscripts. Laurel had written an article about Göring in defeat, based on Lanny’s interview and Jerry’s letters. She had written another about the German scientists, their failure with the atomic bomb and how they had taken the American success. These two were musts, as you might say; they were interesting and important, and the syndicate took them and so did the papers. Rick wrote a short article, strictly objective and factual, about the plight of the British Isles, which had fifty million people crowded onto a very small space, and living by coal, iron, and shipping. Their savings were nearly all gone, and they must export or die. It didn’t matter very much whether they had a Labour or Conservative government, it would have to make them work hard and live on short-commons. Rick didn’t mention how President Truman had abruptly and unceremoniously cut off lend-lease, for that would have been propaganda and might have killed the story.
The starting of the radio and the magazine was another matter. Both would have to be ready at the same time, and it wouldn’t be like an automobile, which can start slowly, but like a jet plane, which has to leap into the air. They knew by experience that the day after they sent out a radio call there would be a flood of mail, and there must be the machinery waiting and ready to handle it. Haldeman-Julius obligingly wrote, telling them how these things were done in Girard, Kansas. There was a long table in the center of the room, and girls sat opposite each other and put the money in piles in front of them—thus making it a little more difficult to steal. Each letter or order must be marked with a colored pencil, stating the amount of money enclosed and whether it was cash, check, or money order, and also the initials of the girl who handled it. There must be a severe, stern-eyed forewoman to watch these proceedings, and every now and then another girl must take up the orders and the money, add up the total, and see to it that the money was there. If it wasn’t, the erring girl’s attention was called to it, and if it happened again she was fired. This didn’t sound so pleasant, but you were in the business world now. The forewoman was a matron supplied by Mrs. Tipton from among her Methodist Church members; the matron had run an office before her marriage, and now her children were grown and she was going to run another.
The orders were turned over to another girl who put the names and addresses on stencils, which were filed alphabetically. When mailing time came these stencils were fed into a machine which picked up a paper, stamped it through the stencil, and then shoved it out ready for mailing. It was Sam de Witt who got that machine for them; you had to have pull to get anything of the sort in these days. It was quite a wonderful machine, which increased your respect for the age in which you lived. If only the age wouldn’t plunge into war every now and then and destroy the millions of wonderful things it had created!
V
There was everything ready, except the papers that were to be printed and mailed; that was another job, an editorial job about which they were greatly excited. So much depended upon the first issue! It must justify the hopes of all the enthusiastic persons who had already written, and of others who would write after the first broadcast. The paper would be pitifully small and cheap, but the people who took it up and glanced at it must realize at once that here was something alive and significant, something they would want to read and keep on reading.
At the top was the title PEACE, and under it: “Let Us Have Peace.—General Grant.” In one corner was the serial number, Vol. 1, No. 1, and in the other corner, “A Weekly Paper. Subscription Price, 50 cents per year. Bundle orders, 100 for one dollar.” Beginning at the right was a “Statement of Policy,” which Rick wrote and which they discussed and revised with care. In its final form it read:
PEACE believes that World Wars have causes, and that modern science should be able to discover these causes, and at least to suggest remedies.
PEACE is endowed, and is published by a non-profit trusteeship. It is published in the cheapest possible form in the hope that no one may be too poor to possess it.
PEACE will call upon the best minds it can find to contribute their wisdom on the subject of world peace and how to maintain it. The paper’s policy will be that of an open forum. Within the limits of its small space an earnest effort will be made to cover all aspects of the question.
PEACE is conducted in co-operation with the Peace Program on Radio Station WYZ, New York, on Thursday at 7 P.M., and will include a reprint of the previous week’s broadcast.
PEACE will take no advertising, except of publications and enterprises of a character allied to its program.
PEACE solicits your support, not in the form of cash donations, but of subscriptions. Under post-office regulations you may subscribe for other persons. You may send us a list of your friends, your club members, your schoolmates, any list whatever, remitting fifty cents for each name. You may even send a telephone book and have all the subscribers in your town receive the paper.
The publishers and editors of PEACE are undertaking a public service, and t
heir interests and your own are the same. We shall all suffer alike in an atomic war if it is permitted to come.
That statement, in not too large or obtrusive type, was to appear in every issue of the paper. The radio program would go on the back page; they discovered by experiment that a typewritten double-spaced page took about two minutes to read, and so twelve minutes of program would be somewhat less than two thousand words, just about a page of their small paper. They would use one or two of their short syndicate articles published during the previous week. The editorial would deal as a rule with the broadcast, embodying such comments as the editors might think were called for. No doubt there would be letters coming in; and they would remember Richard Armour’s injunction to have something from the poets. Most editors of reform papers kept handy an anthology called The Cry for Justice, in which the wisdom and passion of the ages were to be found. In Vol 1, No. 1 they would include some verses which had appeared in the New York World more than a generation ago, sent in on a crumpled scrap of paper by an author who gave his address as Fourth Bench, City Hall Park. The verses were addressed “To a Nine-Inch Gun,” and read:
Whether your shell hits the target or not,
Your cost is Five Hundred Dollars a Shot.
You thing of noise and flame and power,
We feed you a hundred barrels of flour
Each time you roar. Your flame is red
With twenty thousand loaves of bread.
Silence! A million hungry men
Seek bread to fill their mouths again.
VI
The four decided to have a housewarming, to get acquainted with their authors and let them know that there really was a plant and a business. The plant being out of town, the authors and their wives would have a journey; those who lived on Long Island or in Westchester would have a long journey, and it would be late at night and cold when they got home. The decision was for Sunday afternoon at five o’clock, the cocktail hour in Megalopolis. The invitation would read “to a denatured cocktail party,” which would give everyone fair warning; those who couldn’t live without alcohol could take a nip before they came in and another after they had left. The hosts would serve a buffet supper, which it was fashionable to name, Swedish fashion, a smörgåsbord.
O Shepherd, Speak! Page 49
