Common Cause

by Samuel Hopkins Adams

  “Send us a copy of the minutes,” retorted the exasperated Jem. “Perhaps we’ll give you an editorial on those.”

  He finished his writing and leaned back to meditate upon the possible results of this encounter when a well-remembered voice in the hall spoke his name, in a tone of business-like inquiry, to the youth on duty there.

  “Come right in, Buddy,” called Jeremy.

  Buddy Higman entered. He was dressed with extreme correctness, even to the extent of a whole and intact pair of suspenders, and his Sunday coat which he carried genteelly over his arm. Jeremy pointed an accusing finger at him.

  “I know what you’ve come here for.”

  “Gee!” murmured Buddy, impressed.

  “You’ve come to tell me how to run my paper.”

  “Me?” said Buddy.

  “Or to order something put in.”

  “What—”

  “Or kept out.”

  “No, sir,” said the astounded Buddy.

  “What!! Don’t you know how to run my paper better than I do?”

  “N-n-no, sir.”

  “Then you’re unique in this town. Come to my arms. I mean, sit down. What’s that you’re trying to get out of your pocket?”

  “A—a—a letter, sir.”

  “Hah! I knew it. From the Kaiser!”

  “No, sir. I don’t know him,” said Buddy nervously.

  “What are you calling me ‘sir’ for?” demanded Jeremy, suspicious at this unaccustomed courtesy.

  “I want a job.”

  “Oh, you want a job! Here?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What are you good for in a newspaper office?”

  “Nothin’.”

  “That’s a fine recommendation. Do you expect to get the job on the strength of it?”

  “Yes, sir. No, sir. On this.”

  After much painful struggling the urchin succeeded in extracting from his pocket a note which he placed in Jeremy’s hands. At sight of it, all residue of raillery died out of the editor’s face. Though he had but once seen Marcia’s writing, he knew, at the first glance, the bold, frank, delicate, upright characters for hers. The note was undated. He read, with a feeling that the world had changed and sweetened about him, her words.

  Dear Jem:

  If you ever can, give Buddy a chance; some work that will not interfere with his schooling. I wish you two to look after each other.

  And, oh, my dear, do please not quite altogether forget

  Marcia

  Jeremy sat in a long silence. The boy did not disturb it. Finally the young man looked up.

  “When did she give you this, Buddy?”

  “Before she went away.”

  “All right. You get the job.”

  “Thanks. I knew I would,” said the urchin confidently. “I c’n start in tomorrow.” He watched, sympathetically, the other fold the note and bestow it in his pocket.

  “Mr. Robson,” he said. “She said a queer thing when she gimme the letter.”

  “What was that?”

  “She said—you know how her eyes get solemn and big and—and kinda light up, deep inside, when she means a thing hard—she said, ‘Buddy, I shall like to think that you and he are looking after each other.’ What did she mean by that?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll have to think it over.”

  “Well, I been thinkin’ it over an’ I don’t get it.” He paused. Then with the self-centered simplicity of boyhood, “Mr. Robson, I miss her somethin’ fierce. You don’t know how I miss her.”

  “Don’t I!” retorted Jeremy involuntarily, with a stab of pain.

  “Nobody could,” stated the other with conviction.

  So Jeremy and Buddy Higman became fellow-workers. Buddy’s job was decidedly indeterminate. It didn’t matter. In taking him on Jeremy was performing his first definite service to Marcia.

  A week later his second was completed. Eli Wade was appointed a member of the Library Board. The Guardian chronicled the appointment more conspicuously than its unimportance as news warranted. Jeremy hoped that in some manner Marcia would see or hear of it.

  15

  Martin Embree more than fulfilled his word. As if a royal patent had been issued in favor of The Guardian, the Senator’s zealous partisans of the Northern Tier bestowed upon it their patronage. Max Verrall, who revealed himself as a brisk and unfettered spirit with political ambitions and a slavish fervency for Embree, did the actual work of establishing the circulation in the district, and did it so well that Jeremy Robson had no misgivings in turning over to him the circulation managership of the paper.

  In Fenchester the paper held about even for a time. The new features which Galpin had put on gained readers, though not as fast as he had hoped. To offset this, there had been some loss among the more rabid element of the Deutscher Club, Bausch having spread the report that the new ownership was anti-German. On his next visit to Fenchester, to deliver the formal address at a school dedication, Senator Embree reproached Jeremy for his tactlessness in handling the Prince Henry message.

  “Don’t stick your fighting-jaw out at me, young Robson,” he added cheerily. “Keep that for your enemies. Now you put in a nice, good-tempered philosophic little editorial paragraph on the ‘entente cordiale’ line.”

  Jeremy began. “I’m da—”

  “No, you’re not,” broke in the other. “Listen. Here’s the idea.” And he outlined an editorial so tactful, so deft, so diplomatic whilst still independently American in tone, that for sheer pleasure in good workmanship the editor agreed to adopt it.

  “And I’ll square it with Bausch,” said Embree. His smile expanded and enfolded the other. “Better come hear me speak tonight. I’ll have something to say about The Guardian. Watch the effect of the spread of the gospel for the next few days.”

  The one brief reference to the paper in Senator Embree’s address said little but implied much. Jeremy was inclined to be disappointed. He looked for no results. But the following day brought in thirty-seven new subscriptions, with others trailing in their wake at the rate of a dozen per day. Furthermore, a batch of letters to the editor urged upon him a more definite political stand, or invited (in one instance challenged) him to state his attitude regarding Embree and the new policies frankly. Since his taking over the paper, politics had been at slack tide in the State. Jeremy had wisely refrained from committing himself definitely. All his instinct was for independence of thought and speech. When the issues were cast, The Guardian would take its stand. But he had reckoned without that pervasive and acute political self-consciousness of the Middle West which expects every citizen to be definitely one thing or the other, and be it promptly! His tax editorials, he found, had already committed him in the general mind to the radical side. Whoever attacked the railroads was a Friend of the People. To be sure, Jeremy’s attack had been addressed to a few specific and flagrant instances; but the public does not discriminate finely. And Senator Embree’s word-of-mouth “gospel” had already premised for The Guardian a course which would considerably have surprised its proprietor.

  That keen-scented legal prowler, Judge Selden Dana, became uneasy. Young Robson, he feared, was getting deep into “Smiling Mart’s” toils.

  “It’s time we took a hand,” he warned Montrose Clark. “Don’t you think I’d better see Robson and have a talk with him?”

  “I will do it myself,” said the public utilitarian. “I have had more experience than you in handling newspaper men.”

  “All right. But—easy does it. Remember, this is no A. M. Wymett.”

  “If it were, I should leave it entirely in your hands,” retorted the magnate.

  Judge Dana left, reflecting pungently upon his employer’s capacity for unnecessarily disagreeable speeches.

  “If he tries that on Robson he’ll get bumped, or I miss my guess,” he surmised, and found some satisfaction in the thought.

  Nothing, however, could have been farther from the mind of President Clark. He purpose
d treating the young newspaper man kindly. Firmly, but kindly. Even benevolently. Point out to him the error he was committing: show him that he was unwittingly an enemy to civic interests and progress which could best be left to those equipped by experience and under Providence, for handling large affairs: indicate to him, delicately, wherein his own interests and those of his newspaper were consonant with the interests of such public benefactors as Montrose Clark and the P.-U. That was the way to handle a presumably reasonable young fellow with a property to consider! In his satisfied mind, the public utilitarian outlined the course of the conversation, with himself (naturally) as converser and his visitor contributing the antiphony of grateful assent. Summoning the hand-perfected private secretary, Mr. Clark entrusted to his reverent care a summons for Mr. Jeremy Robson.

  The message was duly transferred to the ’phone. It found the editor imparting some instructions to his new office boy and loyal personal heeler, Burton Higman. At the call which informed him that the Fenchester P.-U. Corporation office was on the ’phone, Jeremy’s mind reverted to the interview of some months before when Mr. Montrose Clark had issued his god-like directions to the fuming but helpless “rippawtah” from The Record, and an unholy light shone in his eye.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “This is Mr. Garson, Mr. Montrose Clark’s private secretary.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Mr. Clark wishes to see you.”

  “What about?”

  “Is that necessary?” queried the voice, in a tone of startled rebuke.

  “It’s usual.”

  “He will doubtless explain, himself,” said the voice, after a pause.

  “All right,” said Jeremy.

  “Three o’clock this afternoon,” specified the great man’s mouthpiece, and shut off.

  Such was the Montrose Clark method with inferiors. Time and the wish were stated. The place was assumed. A newspaper man was a natural inferior according to the Montrose Clark measure. The weak point of the theory, in this instance, was that the other party to the transaction had not subscribed to it. He returned to his writing. At three-ten the hand-perfected private secretary was on the ’phone again.

  “Mr. Garson speaking. Mr. Clark is waiting.”

  “So am I.”

  “I don’t understand.” The tone was incredulous.

  “Put Mr. Clark on the ’phone,” suggested the editor. “He may be quicker of comprehension.”

  The suggestion was not adopted. But in fifteen minutes the secretary, one button of his black cutaway flagrantly unbuttoned, was being admitted to the den by Buddy Higman.

  “This is most extraordinary, Mr. Robson,” he protested.

  “What’s extraordinary in it? Mr. Clark wants to see me on business, I assume?”

  “He does.”

  “This is my place of business.”

  “This is—you—you are going out of your way to be offensive,” accused the scandalized visitor.

  “Not going out of my way at all. I’m sitting tight. You might have noticed that yourself.”

  “Mr. Clark—that is to say, the Public Utilities Corporation has been a good friend to The Guardian.”

  “It’s been reciprocated in the past,” returned Jeremy dryly.

  “In the past? Am I to understand that the attitude of The Guardian toward the Corporation has changed?”

  “If Mr. Wymett was accustomed to run around whenever Mr. Clark chose to push a button, it has. Them good old days,” said Jeremy enjoyably, “is gone forever.”

  “Mr. Wymett returned courtesy for courtesies.”

  “So shall I. When I receive the courtesies.”

  “The advertising patronage—”

  “Don’t talk to me about advertising,” broke in the editor. “The few dollars that your concern pays into our cash drawer don’t entitle Mr. Clark to regard this paper as his errand boy.”

  Mr. Garson’s sensitive ear fixed upon the word “few.” “We aren’t doing much advertising anywhere just now,” he explained with a conciliating purr. “There will be more soon. Quite soon, in fact. But there were other ways, you understand, in which Mr. Clark’s friendship was useful to The Guardian—to Mr. Wymett.”

  “For example?”

  “News items. Inside information. Advance information, I may say, on the stock market, for instance, amounting to really advantageous opportunities.”

  “I see!”

  “Such information is still—er—available.”

  “I see, again. Would Mr. Clark confirm the proposition, do you think?”

  The hand-perfected private secretary beamed. His mission, self-inspired, was prospering famously. “Undoubtedly,” he averred.

  “In writing?”

  “Mr. Clark’s word is—”

  “As good as his bond. Naturally. I was merely thinking of such a letter not necessarily as a guarantee of good faith, but for publication.”

  A thin, gray veil appeared to draw itself across Mr. Garson’s countenance, out of which his eyes stared with an aspect of surprise and fright. This animal had claws!

  “For publication?” he gasped.

  “That’s it. You don’t think he’d do it? Well, he’s wise—to that extent, anyway. Now, you go back and tell Clark that when we open up for bribes we’ll take cash—and publish the news in the paper.”

  “What did you do to little Eddie Garson?” asked Andrew Galpin, coming in a moment later. “I just met him in the hall.”

  Jeremy explained.

  “You’re a rude thing!” grinned the general manager. “What’s your idea in going up against the P.-U.?”

  “Partly personal,” confessed Jeremy. “That puffy Clark thing rasps my nerves. Anyway, I don’t like the P.-U. methods, public or private, and I’m not going to stand any bulldozing.”

  “Going to fight?”

  “If it comes to that.”

  “Know what it’ll cost us?”

  “No.”

  “More than a thousand a year if they pull out all their regular advertising.”

  “It’s tough, Andy. But I don’t know any other way to run a paper.”

  “Oh, I’m not kickin’! It ain’t my money. I enjoy it. Maybe he won’t pull out, unless we go after him first.”

  “I’m going after him, though, the next raw deal the P.-U. tries to put through.”

  “Let’s pray they’ll be good, then,” said Galpin.

  Upon receipt of the hand-perfected private secretary’s report, though it was carefully edited to avoid too unbearable offense, Mr. Clark waxed exceedingly wroth. His first intent was to order all future advertising in The Guardian stopped. Passion always had the first word with Montrose Clark, but shrewdness had the last. Shrewdness said, “Wait.” Montrose Clark could be a good waiter. He waited.

  Jeremy Robson didn’t. He published on the following day an editorial, “Public Utilities and Public Rights,” stating unequivocally The Guardian’s attitude, which gave deep scandal to President Clark and inspired the darkest misgivings in the mind of the diplomatic Judge Dana. The lawyer hurried around to see his principal.

  “What did you do or say to young Robson?” he demanded.

  Outraged innocence sat blackly on the presidential brow. “Nothing,” he declared. “He—he sent me an insulting message. He refused to come and see me. I’ll smash him.”

  “Very likely. Meantime he’s smashed our transfer scheme. Or he will smash it when the time comes.”

  “I shall go ahead with it just the same.”

  “You’ll be swamped. He’s dug up some tax assessment material on us that wouldn’t look pretty in print if he sprung it now. We’ll have to go slow.”

  The President of the P.-U. swallowed his desire for immediate reprisals. He felt that his prey was sure in the long run. No newspaper could offend consistently the important people and interests of a community as The Guardian was doing, and continue to make a living. That way bankruptcy lay!

  Personally, Montrose Clark d
eclared against this young upstart a war of extermination. He would eliminate the noxious creature. He would make the town too hot for him.

  Vast would have been his rage could he have known that, at the same time, the editor was meditating much the same design concerning himself. War to the finish, on both sides. And all, in the first instance, because of a minor affectation expressed in the pronunciation of the hybrid word “rippawtah.” Of such petty stuff are human complications constructed, and thereby the plans of the mighty brought to dust!

  16

  Politics as such had never greatly interested Jeremy Robson. The trivial and blatant insincerities of party platforms offended a mind naturally direct and sincere. As he saw the game played at the Capitol, it seemed to consist mainly in clumsy finesse directed to unprofitable ends, on the part of the lawmakers, back of whom sat the little tin gods of finance and commerce, as players sit back of the pieces on a chessboard. Only, it dawned upon Jeremy, in this game it was the public that paid the stakes; the public which Jeremy intended that The Guardian should represent. His platform was “Fair play all around and a chance for all.”

  Being of such mind, he was naturally sympathetic to the fervent and altruistic radicalism of Senator Embree. Almost before he knew it, he was committed to the broad, general policies of a new faction whose immediate object was to capture the party machinery and elect Embree Governor. Farmers, the more thoughtful class of labor in the industrial centers, and that floating vote which is always restless of party control, made up the bulk of “Smiling Mart’s” support. His newspaper backing was scanty. In Bellair, the chief city of Centralia, The Journal lent its valuable support to most of his measures and to his general policies. A score of country journals were thick-and-thin adherents. The Guardian soon began to be classed with these for loyalty and with the Bellair Journal for weightiness, in support of the new movement.

  Jeremy Robson’s spirited editorial attacks upon the controlled State administration were now establishing his paper as a gospel to the fermenting political elements and had earned the indignant distrust of those interests which base loud claims to impregnable respectability upon the ground of returning reliable dividends to their stockholders. To these he was anathema; a “dangerous radical,” a “half-Socialist,” an “enemy of the American institutions,” a “confessed demagogue,” and the like impressive and silly characterizations. The Guardian was quoted, confuted, and abused over the State. It had become a power.