The Clarion

CHAPTER XXI

THE POW­ER OF PRINT

Hal paid thir­ty-​two thou­sand dol­lars for the new press. It was a del­icate gi­ant of mech­anism, able not on­ly to act, but al­so to think with stu­pen­dous ac­cu­ra­cy and swift­ness; lack­ing on­ly ar­tic­ulate speech to be whol­ly su­per­hu­man. But in sign­ing the check for it, Hal, for the first time in his lux­uri­ous life ex­pe­ri­enced a fi­nan­cial qualm. Al­ways be­fore there had been an in­ex­haustible source where­from to draw. Now that he had is­sued his dec­la­ra­tion of pe­cu­niary in­de­pen­dence, he be­gan to ap­pre­ci­ate the per­ish­able na­ture of mon­ey. He came back from his week's jour­ney to New York feel­ing dis­tinct­ly poor­er.

More­over there was an un­com­fort­able para­dox con­nect­ed with his pur­chase. That he should be put to so se­vere an ex­pen­di­ture mere­ly for the pur­pose of in­cur­ring an in­creased cur­rent ex­pense, struck him as a rather sar­don­ic joke. Yet so it was. Cir­cu­la­tion does not mean di­rect prof­it to a news­pa­per. On the con­trary, it im­plies loss in many cas­es. For some weeks it had been cost­ing the “Clar­ion,” to print the ex­tra pa­pers ne­ces­si­tat­ed by the in­creased de­mand, more than the mon­ey re­ceived from their sale. Un­til the sta­tus of the jour­nal should jus­ti­fy a high­er ad­ver­tis­ing charge, ev­ery added pa­per sold would in­volve a loss. True, an aug­ment­ed cir­cu­la­tion log­ical­ly com­mands a high­er ad­ver­tis­ing rate; it is thus that a news­pa­per reaps its har­vest; and soon Hal hoped to be able to raise his ad­ver­tis­ing rate from fif­teen to twen­ty-​five cents a line. At that re­turn his books would show a prof­it on a nor­mal vol­ume of ad­ver­tis­ing. Mean­time he per­formed an act of in­vol­un­tary phi­lan­thropy with ev­ery in­crease of is­sue, Nev­er­the­less, Hal felt for his me­chan­ical gi­ant some­thing of the new-​toy thrill. To him it was a sym­bol of pro­duc­tive pow­er. It made ap­peal to his imag­ina­tion, typ­ify­ing the re­born “Clar­ion.” He saw it as a mas­ter-​loom weav­ing fresh pat­terns, day by day, in­to the fab­ric of the city's life and thought. That all might view the pro­cess, he had it mount­ed high from the base­ment, be­hind a broad plate-​glass show win­dow set in the front wall, a high­ly un­strate­gic po­si­tion, as McGuire El­lis point­ed out.

“Sup­pose,” said he, “a horse runs wild and makes a dive through that win­dow? Or a cou­ple of bums get shoot­ing at each oth­er, and a stray bul­let comes whif­fling through the glass and catch­es young Mr. Press in his de­lik­it in­sides. We're out of busi­ness for a week, maybe, mend­ing him up.”

Shear­son, how­ev­er, was in fa­vor of it. It sug­gest­ed pros­per­ity and aroused pub­lic in­ter­est. On Hal's re­turn from New York, the fat and melan­cho­lious ad­ver­tis­ing man­ag­er had ex­hib­it­ed a some­what mol­li­fied pes­simism.

“The Boston Store is com­ing back,” he vis­it­ed Hal's sanc­tum to an­nounce.

“Why, that's John M. Gibbs's store, isn't it?”

“Sure.”

“And he's E.M. Pierce's broth­er-​in-​law. I thought he'd stick by his fam­ily in fight­ing the 'Clar­ion.'”

“Fam­ily is all right, but Grinder Gibbs is for busi­ness first and ev­ery­thing else af­ter­wards. Our rates look good to him, with the cir­cu­la­tion we're show­ing. And he knows we bring re­sults. He's been us­ing us on the qui­et for a lit­tle side is­sue of his own.”

“What's that?”

“Some sewing-​girls' em­ploy­ment thing. It's in the 'Clas­si­fied' de­part­ment. Don't amount to much; but it's proved to him that the 'Clar­ion' ad does the busi­ness. I've been on his trail for two weeks. So the store starts in Sun­day with half-​pages. They say Pierce is crazy mad.”

“No won­der.”

“The best of it is that now the Re­tail Union won't fight us, as a body, for tak­ing up the Con­sumers' League fight. They can't very well, with their sec­ond biggest store us­ing the 'Clar­ion's' columns.”

McGuire El­lis, too, was feel­ing quite cheer­ful over the mat­ter.

“It shows that you can be in­de­pen­dent and get away with it,” he de­clared, “if you get out an in­ter­est­ing enough pa­per. By the way, that's a hot lit­tle sto­ry 'Kit­ty the Cutie' turned in on the Breen girl's sui­cide.”

“It was on­ly at­tempt­ed sui­cide, wasn't it?”

“The first time. She had a sec­ond tri­al at it day be­fore yes­ter­day and turned the trick. You'll find Neal's copy on your desk. I held it for you.”

From out of a wait­ing heap of mail, proof, and manuscript, Hal se­lect­ed the sheets cov­ered with Mil­ly Neal's neat busi­ness chi­rog­ra­phy. She had writ­ten her ac­count briefly and with re­straint, build­ing her “sto­ry” around the girl's let­ter. It set forth the tragedy of a pet­ty swin­dle.

The scheme was as sim­ple as it was cru­el. A con­cern call­ing it­self “The Sewing Aid As­so­ci­ation” ad­ver­tised for sewing-​wom­en, of­fer­ing from ten to fif­teen dol­lars a week to work­ers; ex­pe­ri­ence not nec­es­sary. Mag­gie Breen an­swered the ad­ver­tise­ment. The man­ag­er ex­plained to her that the job was mak­ing chil­dren's un­der­cloth­ing from pat­tern. She would be re­quired to come dai­ly to the fac­to­ry and sew on a ma­chine which she would pur­chase from the com­pa­ny, the price, thir­ty dol­lars, be­ing reck­oned as her first three weeks' wages. To all this, du­ly set forth in a specious con­tract, the girl af­fixed her sig­na­ture.

She was set to work at once. The la­bor was hard, the fore­wom­an a driv­er, but ten dol­lars a week is good pay. Hop­ing for a pos­si­ble raise Mag­gie turned out more gar­ments than any of her fel­low work­ers. For two weeks and a half all went well. In an­oth­er few days the ma­chine would be paid for, the mon­ey would be­gin to come in, and Mag­gie would get a re­al­ly square meal, which she had come to long for with a per­sis­tent and se­vere han­ker­ing. Then the trap was sprung. Mag­gie's work was found “un­sat­is­fac­to­ry.” She was sum­mar­ily dis­charged. In vain did she protest. She would try again; she would do bet­ter. No use; “the house” found her gar­ments un­mar­ketable. Sor­row­ful­ly she asked for her mon­ey. No mon­ey was due her. Again she protest­ed. The man­ag­er thrust a copy of her con­tract un­der her nose and turned her in­to the street. Thus the “Sewing Aid As­so­ci­ation” had re­al­ized up­on fif­teen days' la­bor for which they had not paid one cent, and the “in­stall­ment” sewing-​ma­chine was ready for its next vic­tim. This is a very pleas­ant and prof­itable pol­icy and is in use, in one form or an­oth­er, in near­ly ev­ery Amer­ican city. Proof of which the suf­fi­cient­ly dis­cern­ing eye may find in the ad­ver­tis­ing columns of many of our lead­ing news­pa­pers and mag­azines.

To Mag­gie Breen it was small con­so­la­tion that she was but one of many. Even her sim­ple mind grasped the “jok­er” in the con­tract. She tore up that pre­cious doc­ument, went home, re­flect­ed that she was rather hun­gry and like­ly to be hun­gri­er, quite wretched and like­ly to be wretched­er; and so made a de­coc­tion of sul­phur match­es and drank it. An am­bu­lance sur­geon dis­oblig­ing­ly ar­rived in time to save her life for once; but the sec­ond time she bor­rowed some car­bol­ic acid, which is more ex­pe­di­tious than any am­bu­lance sur­geon.

This was the sto­ry which “Kit­ty the Cutie,” while stick­ing close to the facts, had con­trived to in­form with a wom­an's wrath and a wom­an's pity. Read­ing it, Hal took fire. He de­ter­mined to back it up with an ed­ito­ri­al. But first he would look in­to the mat­ter for him­self. With this end in view he set out for Num­ber 65 Sper­ry Street, where Mag­gie Breen's younger sis­ter and bedrid­den moth­er lived. It was his maid­en es­say at re­port­ing.

Sper­ry Street shocked Hal. He could not have con­ceived that a care­ful­ly reg­ulat­ed and well-​kept city such as Wor­thing­ton (he knew it, be it re­mem­bered, chiefly from above the wheels of an au­to­mo­bile) would per­mit such a slum to ex­ist. On ei­ther side of the street, gaunt wood­en bar­racks, fire-​traps at a glance, reared them­selves five rack­ety sto­ries up­ward, for the length of a block. Across in­ter­sect­ing Grant Street the sky-​line dropped a few yards, show­ing ragged through the met­al cor­nice and sick­ly brick chim­neys of a ten­ement row on­ly a de­gree less for­bid­ding than the first. The street it­self was a mere refuse patch smeared out over bumpy cob­bles. The vis­itor en­tered the ten­ement at 65, be­tween reek­ing bar­rels which had wait­ed over­long for the garbage cart.

He was re­ceived with­out ques­tion, as a re­porter for the “Clar­ion.” At first Sadie Breen, anæmic, hope­less-​eyed, tim­orous, was re­luc­tant to speak. But the moth­er proved Hal's al­ly.

“Let 'im put it in the pa­per,” she ex­hort­ed. “Maybe it'll keep some oth­er girl away from them sharks.”

“Why didn't your sis­ter sue the com­pa­ny?” asked Hal.

“Where'd we get the mon­ey for a lawyer?” whined Sadie.

“It's no use, any­way,” said Mrs. Breen. “They've tried it in Mu­nic­ipal Court. The sharks al­ways wins. Some­body ought to shoot that man­ag­er,” she added fierce­ly.

“Yes; that's great to say,” jeered Sadie, in a whine. “But look what hap­pened to that Ma­son girl from Hop­pers Hol­low. She hit at him with a pair of scis­sors, an' they sent her up for a year.”

“Bet­ter that than Cis­sy Green's way. You know what be­come of her. Went on the street,” ex­plained Mrs. Breen to Hal.

They poured out sto­ry af­ter sto­ry of poor wom­en en­trapped by one or an­oth­er of those lures which wring the fi­nal drop of blood from the bleak­est pover­ty. In the midst of the recital there was a knock at the door, and a tall young man in black en­tered. He at once in­tro­duced him­self to Hal as the Rev­erend Nor­man Hale, and went in­to con­fer­ence with the two wom­en about a place for Sadie. This be­ing set­tled, Hal's mis­sion was ex­plained to him.

“A re­porter?” said the Rev­erend Nor­man. “I wish the pa­pers _would_ take this thing up. A lit­tle pub­lic­ity would kill it off, I be­lieve.”

“Won't the courts do any­thing?”

“They can't. I've talked to the judge. The con­cern's con­tract is wa­ter-​tight.”

The two young men went down to­geth­er through the black hall­ways, and stood talk­ing at the out­er door.

“How do peo­ple live in places like this?” ex­claimed Hal.

“Not very suc­cess­ful­ly. The death-​rate is pret­ty high. Par­tic­ular­ly of late. There's what a friend of mine around the cor­ner--he hap­pens to be a bar­keep­er, by the way--calls a live­ly trade in fu­ner­als around here.”

“Is your church in this dis­trict?”

“My club is. Peo­ple call it a mis­sion, but I don't like the word. It's got too much the fla­vor of reach­ing down from above to dis­pense con­de­scend­ing char­ity.”

“Char­ity cer­tain­ly seems to be need­ed here.”

“Help and de­cent fair­ness are need­ed; not char­ity. What's your pa­per, by the way?”

“The 'Clar­ion.'”

“Oh!” said the oth­er, in an al­tered tone. “I shouldn't sup­pose that the 'Clar­ion' would go in much for any kind of re­form.”

“Do you read it?”

“No. But I know Dr. Sur­taine.”

“Dr. Sur­taine doesn't own the 'Clar­ion.' I do.”

“You're Har­ring­ton Sur­taine? I thought I had seen you some­where be­fore. But you said you were a re­porter.”

“Par­don me, I didn't. Mrs. Breen said that. How­ev­er, it's true; I'm do­ing a bit of re­port­ing on this case. And I'm go­ing to do some writ­ing on it be­fore I'm through.”

“As for Dr. Sur­taine--” be­gan the young cler­gy­man, then checked him­self, pon­der­ing.

What fur­ther he might have had to say was cut off by a startling oc­cur­rence. A door on the floor above opened; there was a swift pat­ter of feet, and then from over­head, a long-​drawn, ter­ri­ble cry. Im­me­di­ate­ly a young girl, her shawl drawn about her face, ran from the dark­ness in­to the half-​light of the low­er hall and would have passed be­tween them but that Nor­man Hale caught her by the arm.

“Lemme go! Lemme go!” she shrieked, paw­ing at him.

“Qui­et,” he bade her. “What is it, Emi­ly?”

“Oh, Mr. Hale!” she cried, rec­og­niz­ing him and clutch­ing at his shoul­der. “Don't let it get me!”

“Noth­ing's go­ing to hurt you. Tell me about it.”

“It's the Death,” she shud­dered.

The man's face changed. “Here?” he said. “In this block?”

“Don't you go,” she be­sought. “Don't you go, Mr. Hale. You'll get it.”

“Where is it? An­swer me at once.”

“First-​floor front,” sobbed the girl. “Mrs. Schwarz.”

“Don't wait for me,” said the min­is­ter to Hal. “In fact you'd bet­ter leave the place. Good-​day.”

Thus abrupt­ly dis­card­ed from con­sid­er­ation, Hal turned to the fugi­tive.

“Is some one dead?”

“Not yet.”

“Dy­ing, then?”

“As good as. It's the Death,” said the girl with a strong shud­der.

“You said that be­fore. What do you mean by the Death?”

“Don't keep me here talkin',” she shiv­ered. “I wan­ta go home.”

Hal walked along with her, won­der­ing. “I wish you would tell me,” he said gen­tly.

“All I know is, they nev­er get well.”

“What sort of sick­ness is it?”

“Search me.” The pet­ty slang made a grim medi­um for the un­cer­tain­ty of ter­ror which it sought to ex­press. “They've had it over in the Rook­eries since win­ter. There ain't no name for it. They just call it the Death.”

“The Rook­eries?” said Hal, caught by the word. “Where are they?”

“Don't you know the Rook­eries?” The girl point­ed to the long dou­ble row of gris­ly wood­en ed­ifices down the street. “Them's Sadler's Shacks on this side, and Tam­many Bar­racks on the oth­er. They go all the way around the block.”

“You say the sick­ness has been in there?”

“Yes. Now it's bro­ken out an' we'll all get it an' die,” she wailed.

A lit­tle, squat, dark man hur­ried past them. He nod­ded, but did not pause.

“I know him,” said Hal. “Who is he?”

“Doc De Vi­to. He tends to all the cas­es. But it's no good. They all die.”

“You keep your head,” ad­vised Hal. “Don't be scared. And wash your hands and face thor­ough­ly as soon as you get home.”

“A lot o' good that'll do against the Death,” she said scorn­ful­ly, and left him.

Back at the of­fice, Hal, set­tling down to write his ed­ito­ri­al, put the mat­ter of the Rook­eries tem­porar­ily out of mind, but made a note to ques­tion his fa­ther about it.

Mil­ly Neal's ar­ti­cle, touched up and am­pli­fied by Hal's pen, ap­peared the fol­low­ing morn­ing. The ed­ito­ri­al was to be a fol­low-​up in the next day's pa­per. Com­ing down ear­ly to put the fin­ish­ing touch­es to this, Hal found the ar­ti­cle torn out and past­ed on a sheet of pa­per. Across the top of the pa­per was writ­ten in pen­cil:

“_Clipped from the Clar­ion; a Dead­ly Par­al­lel_.”

The pen­ciled leg­end ran across the sheet to in­clude, un­der its cap­tion a sec­ond ex­cerpt, al­so in “Clar­ion” print, but of the ad­ver­tise­ment style:

WANT­ED--Sewing-​girls for sim­ple ma­chine work. Ex­pe­ri­ence not nec­es­sary. $10 to $15 a week guar­an­teed. Ap­ply in per­son at 14 Man­ning Street. THE SEWING AID AS­SO­CI­ATION.

Be­low, in the same hand writ­ing was the query:

“_What's your per­cent­age of the blood-​mon­ey, Mr. Har­ring­ton Sur­taine?”_

Hal threw it over to El­lis. “Whose writ­ing is that?” he asked. “It looks fa­mil­iar to me.”

“Max Velt­man's,” said El­lis. He took in the mean­ing of it. “The in­so­lent whelp!” he said.

“In­so­lent? Yes; he's that. But the worst of it is, I'm afraid he's right.” And he tele­phoned for Shear­son.

The ad­ver­tis­ing man­ag­er came up, puff­ing.

Hal held out the clip­ping to him.

“How long has that been run­ning?”

“On and off for six months.”

“Throw it out.”

“Throw it out!” re­peat­ed the oth­er bit­ter­ly. “That's easy enough said.”

“And eas­ily enough done.”

“It's out al­ready. Tak­en out by ear­ly no­tice this morn­ing.”

“That's all right, then.”

“_Is_ it all right!” boomed Shear­son. “_Is_ it! You won't think so when you hear the rest of it.”

“Try me.”

“Do you know _who_ the Sewing Aid As­so­ci­ation is?”

“No.”

“It's John M. Gibbs! That's who it is!”

“Yell loud­er, Shear­son. It may save you from apoplexy,” ad­vised McGuire El­lis with ten­der so­lic­itude.

“And we lose ev­ery line of the Boston Store ad­ver­tis­ing, that I worked so hard to get back.”

“That'll hurt,” al­lowed El­lis.

“Hurt! It draws blood, that does. That Sewing Aid As­so­ci­ation is Gibbs's scheme to sup­ply the chil­dren's de­part­ment of his store. Why couldn't you find out who you were hit­ting, Mr. Sur­taine?” de­mand­ed Shear­son pa­thet­ical­ly, “be­fore you went and mucksed ev­ery­thing up this way? See what comes of all this re­form guff.”

“Are you sure that John M. Gibbs is back of that sewing-​girl ad?”

“Sure? Didn't he call me up this morn­ing and raise the dev­il?”

“Thank you, Mr. Shear­son. That's all.”

To his ed­ito­ri­al gal­ley-​proof Hal added two lines.

“What's that, Mr. Sur­taine?” asked the ad­ver­tis­ing man­ag­er cu­ri­ous­ly.

"That's out­side of your de­part­ment. But since you ask, I'll tell you. It's an ed­ito­ri­al on the kind of swin­dle that caus­es tragedies like Mag­gie Breen's. And the sen­tence which I have just added, thanks to you, is this:

“'The pro­pri­etor of this scheme which drives pen­ni­less wom­en to the street or to sui­cide is John M. Gibbs, prin­ci­pal own­er of the Boston Store.'”

Words failed Shear­son; al­so mo­tive pow­er, al­most. For reck­on­able sec­onds he stood strick­en. Then slow­ly he got un­der way and rolled through the door. Once, on the stairs, they heard from him a pro­tract­ed rum­bling groan. “Ru­in,” was the one dis­tin­guish­able word.

It left an echo in Hal's brain, an echo which rang hol­low­ly amongst mis­giv­ings.

“_Is_ it ru­in to try and run a news­pa­per with­out tak­ing a per­cent­age of that kind of prof­its, Mac?” he asked.

“Well, a news­pa­per can't be too squeamish about its ads.” was the cau­tious an­swer.

“Do all news­pa­pers car­ry that kind of stuff?”

“Not quite. Most of them, though. They need the mon­ey.”

“What's the mat­ter with busi­ness in this town? Ev­ery­thing seems to be rot­ten.”

El­lis took refuge in a proverb. “Busi­ness is busi­ness,” he stat­ed suc­cinct­ly.

“And it's as bad ev­ery­where as here? This is all new to me, you know. I rather ex­pect­ed to find ev­ery con­cern as de­cent­ly and hu­man­ly run as Certi­na.”

One swift, sus­pi­cious glance El­lis cast up­on his su­pe­ri­or, but Hal's face was can­dor it­self. “Well, no,” he ad­mit­ted. “Per­haps it isn't as bad in some cities. The trou­ble here is that all the pa­pers are ter­ror­ized or bribed in­to si­lence. Un­til we be­gan hit­ting out with our lit­tle shillalah, no­body had ev­er dared ven­ture a peep of dis­ap­proval. So, busi­ness got to think­ing it could do as it pleased. You can't re­al­ly blame busi­ness much. Im­mu­ni­ty from crit­icism isn't ev­er good for the well-​known hu­man race.”

Hal took the mat­ter of the “Sewing Aid” swin­dle home with him for con­sid­er­ation. Hith­er­to he had con­sid­ered ad­ver­tis­ing on­ly as it af­fect­ed or in­flu­enced news. Now he be­gan to see it in an­oth­er light, as a fac­tor in it­self of im­mense moral mo­ment and re­spon­si­bil­ity. It was dim­ly out­lined to his con­science that, as a part­ner in the prof­it, he be­came al­so a part­ner in the en­ter­prise. Thus he faced the ques­tion of the hon­esty or dis­hon­esty of the ad­ver­tis­ing in his pa­per. And this is a ques­tion fraught with fi­nan­cial por­tent for the hon­or­able jour­nal­ist.