"Certainly not!" replied Haynerd aggressively. "His father is no friend of mine, and--"
"We _shall_ keep him," calmly interrupted Carmen. "His father is a _very_ good friend of mine."
Carlson looked from one to the other quizzically. "H"m!" he mused.
"Well," squinting over his gla.s.ses at the girl, "this surely is woman"s era, isn"t it?"
A week later the Express, scarcely recognizable in its clean, fresh type and modest headlines, with its crisp news and well written editorials, very unostentatiously made its entry into the already crowded metropolitan field. Few noticed it. Adams picked it up and laughed, a short, contemptuous laugh. Fallom glanced over it and wondered. J. Wilton Ames, who had been apprised of its advent, threw it into the waste basket--and then drew it out again. He re-read the editorial announcing the policy of the paper. From that he began a careful survey of the whole sheet. His eye caught an article on the feminist movement, signed by Carmen Ariza. His lip curled, but he read the article through, and finished with the mental comment that it was well written. Then he summoned Willett.
"I want this sheet carefully watched," he commanded, tossing the paper to his secretary. "If anything is noticed that in any way refers to me or my interests, call my attention to it immediately."
The secretary bowed and departed. A moment afterward Henry Claus, nominal head of the great Claus brewing interests, was ushered in.
"We licked "em, Mr. Ames, we licked "em!" cried the newcomer, rushing forward and clasping the financier"s hand. "The city council last night voted against the neighborhood saloon license bill! Lined up solidly for us! Fine, eh?"
"Yes," commented the laconic Ames. "Our aldermen are a very intelligent lot of statesmen, Claus. They"re wise enough to see that their jobs depend upon whiskey. It requires very astute statesmanship, Claus, to see that. But some of our congressmen and senators have learned the same thing."
The brewer pondered this delphic utterance and scratched his head.
"Well," continued Ames, "have you your report?"
"Eh? Yes, sure, Mr. Ames. Here."
Ames studied the doc.u.ment. Then he looked severely at Claus. "Sales less than last month," he remarked dryly.
"It"s the local option law what done it, Mr. Ames," replied the brewer apologetically. "Them women--"
"Bah! Let a few petticoats whip you, eh? But, anyway, you don"t know how to market your stuff. Look here, Claus, you"ve got to encourage the young people more. We"ve got to get the girls and boys. If we get the girls, we"ll get the boys easily enough. It"s the same in the liquor business as in certain others, Claus, you"ve got to land them young."
"But, Mr. Ames, I can"t take "em and pour it down their throats!"
expostulated the brewer.
"You could if you knew how," returned Ames. "Why, man! if I had nothing else to do I"d just like to devote myself to the sales end of the brewing business. I"d use mental suggestion in such a way through advertising that this country would drown in beer! Beer is just plain beer to you dull-wits. But suppose we convinced people that it was a food, eh? Advertise a chemical a.n.a.lysis of it, showing that it has greater nutriment than beef. Catch the clerks and poor stenographers that way. Don"t call it beer; call it Maltdiet, or something like that. Why, we couldn"t begin to supply the demand!"
"How would you advertise, Mr. Ames?"
"Billboards in every field and along all railroads and highways; boards in every vacant lot in every town and city in the country; electric signs everywhere; handbills; lectures--never thought of that, did you? And samples--why, I"d put samples into every house in the Union! I"d give away a million barrels of beer--and sell a hundred million as a result! But I"d work particularly with the young people.
Work on them with literature and suggestion; they"re more receptive than adults. The hypnotism that works through suggestive advertising, Claus, is simply omnipotent! How about your newspaper contracts?"
"We have all the papers, excepting the Express, Mr. Ames."
"The Express?" Ames laughed. "Well, that"s a new venture. You can afford to pa.s.s it up. It"s run by a college professor and a doll-faced girl."
"But, Mr. Ames, our advertising manager tells me that the publishers of the Express called a meeting of the managers of all the other city papers, to discuss cutting out liquor advertising, and that since then the rates have gone up, way up! You see, the example set by the Express may--"
"Humph!" grunted Ames. Then he began to reflect. An example, backed by absolute fearlessness--and he knew from experience that the publishers of the Express were without fear--well, it could not be wholly ignored, even if the new paper had no circulation worth the name.
"Mr. Ames," resumed the brewer, "the Express is in every newsstand in the city. All the boys are selling it. It"s in every hotel, in every saloon, in every store and business house here. It"s in the dives. It isn"t sold, it"s given away! Where do they get their money?"
Ames himself wondered. And he determined to find out.
"Leave it to me, Claus," he said at length, dismissing the brewer.
"I"ll send for you in a day or so."
It was well after midnight when the little group a.s.sembled in the dining room of the Beaubien cottage to resume their interrupted discussions. Hitt and Haynerd were the last to arrive. They found Doctor Morton eagerly awaiting them. With him had come, not without some reluctance, his p.r.i.c.kly disputant, Reverend Patterson Moore, and another friend and colleague, Doctor Siler, whose interest in these unique gatherings had been aroused by Morton.
"I"ve tried to give him a resume of our previous deductions," the latter explained, as. .h.i.tt prepared to open the discussion. "And he says he has conscientious scruples--if you know what that means."
"He"s a Philistine, that"s all, eh?" offered Haynerd.
Doctor Siler nodded genially. "I am like my friend, Reverend Edward Hull, who says--"
"There!" interrupted Morton. "Your friend has a life job molding the plastic minds of prospective preachers, and he doesn"t want to lose the sinecure. I don"t blame him. Got a wife and babies depending on him. He still preaches h.e.l.l-fire and the resurrection of the flesh, doesn"t he? Well, in that case we can dispense with his views, for we"ve sent that sort of doctrine to the ash heap."
Reverend Moore opened his mouth as if to protest; but Hitt prevented him by taking the floor and plunging at once into his subject. "The hour is very late," he said in apology, "and we have much ground to cover. Who knows when we shall meet again?"
Carmen stole a hand beneath the table and grasped the Beaubien"s. Then all waited expectantly.
"As I sat in my office this morning," began Hitt meditatively, "I looked often and long through the window and out over this great, roaring city. Everywhere I saw tremendous activity, frantic hurry, and nerve-racking strife. In the distance I marked the smoke curling upward from huge factories, packing houses, and elevators. The incessant seething, the rush and bustle, the noise, the heat, and dust, all spelled business, an enormous volume of human business--and yet, _not one iota of it contributed even a mite to the spiritual nature and needs of mankind_!
"I pondered this long. And then I looked down, far down, into the streets below. There I saw the same diversified activity. And I saw, too, men and women, rich and comfortable, riding along happily in their automobiles, with not a thought beyond their physical well-being. But, I asked myself, should they not ride thus, if they wish? And yet, the hour will soon come when sickness, disaster, and death will knock at their doors and sternly bid them come out. And then?"
"Just what I have sought to impress upon you whenever you advanced your philosophical theories, Doctor," said Reverend Moore, turning to Morton. The doctor glowered back at him without reply. Hitt smiled and went on.
"Now what should the man in the automobile do? Is there anything he _can_ do, after all? Yes, much, I think. Jesus told such as he to seek first the kingdom of harmony--a demonstrable understanding of truth.
The automobile riding would follow after that, and with safety. Why, oh, why, will we go on wasting our precious time acquiring additional physical sensations in motor cars, amus.e.m.e.nt parks, travel, anywhere and everywhere, instead of laboring first to acquire that real knowledge which alone will set us free from the bitter woes of human existence!"
"Jesus set us free, sir," interposed Reverend Moore sternly. "And his vicarious atonement opens the door of immortality to all who believe on his name."
"But that freedom, Mr. Moore, you believe will be acquired only after death. I dispute that belief strenuously. But let us return to that later. At present we see mankind laboring for that which even they themselves admit is not meat. They waste their substance for what is not bread. And why? Because of their false beliefs of G.o.d and man, externalized in a viciously cruel social system; because of their dependence upon the false supports of _materia medica_, orthodox theology, man-devised creeds, and human opinions. Is it not demonstrably so?
"And yet, who hath believed our report? Who wants to? Alas! men in our day think and read little that is serious; and they reflect hardly at all upon the vital things of life. They want to be let alone in their comfortable materialistic beliefs, even though those beliefs rend them, rive them, rack and twist them with vile, loathsome disease, and then sink them into hideous, worm-infested graves! The human mind does not want its undemonstrable beliefs challenged. It does not want the light of unbiased investigation thrown upon the views which it has accepted ready-made from doctor and theologian. Again, why? Because, my friends, the human mind is inert, despite its seemingly tremendous material activity. And its inertia is the result of its own self-mesmerism, its own servile submission to beliefs which, as Balfour has shown, have grown up under every kind of influence except that of genuine evidence. Chief of these are the prevalent religious beliefs, which we are asked to receive as divinely inspired."
Doctor Morton glanced at Reverend Moore and grinned. But that gentleman sat stolid, with arms folded and a scowl upon his sharp features.
"Religion," continued Hitt, "is that which binds us to the real. Alas!
what a farce mankind have made of it. And why? Because, in its mad desire to make matter real and to extract all pleasures from it, the human mind has tried to eliminate the soul."
"We have been having a bad spell of materialism, that"s true,"
interposed Doctor Morton. "But we are progressing, I hope."
"Well," Hitt replied, "perhaps so. Yet almost in our own day France put G.o.d out of her inst.i.tutions; set up and crowned a prost.i.tute as the G.o.ddess of reason; and trailed the Bible through the streets of Paris, tied to the tail of an a.s.s! What followed? Spiritual dest.i.tution. And in this country we have enthroned so-called physical science, and, as Comte predicted, are about to conduct G.o.d to the frontier and bow Him out with thanks for His provisional services.
With what result? As our droll philosopher, Hubbard, has said, "Once man was a spirit, now he is matter. Once he was a flame, now he is a candlestick. Once he was a son of G.o.d, now he is a chemical formula.
Once he was an angel, now he is plain mud.""
"But," exclaimed Reverend Moore, visibly nettled, "that is because of his falling away from the Church--"