They dined together at Mouquin"s every night for a week. At the end of that time Vroom, still sarcastic and grumbling, was a convert. And a great accession Howard found him. He had sound judgment as to the value of news-items--what demanded first page, the "show-window," because it would interest everybody; what was worth a line on an inside page because it would interest only a few thousands. He was the most skillful of the _News-Record"s_ many good writers of headlines, a master of that, for the newspaper, art of arts--condensed and interesting statement, alluring the glancing reader to read on. Also he had an eye for effects with type. "You make every page a picture," Howard said to him. "It is wonderful how you balance your headlines, emphasising the important news yet saving the minor items from obscurity. I should like to see the paper you would make if you had the right sort of ill.u.s.trations to put in."
Vroom was amazed at himself. He who had opposed any "head" which broke the column rule was now so far degenerated into a "yellow journalist"
that, when Howard spoke of ill.u.s.trations, he actually longed to test his skill at distributing them effectively.
Two months of hard work, tedious, because necessarily so indirect, produced a newspaper which was "on the right lines," as Howard understood right lines. And he felt that the time had come to make the necessary radical changes in the editorial page.
The _News-Record_ had long posed as independent because it supported now one political party and now the other, or divided its support. But this superficial independence was in reality subservience to the financial interests of the two princ.i.p.al owners. They made their newspaper a.s.sail Republican or Democratic corruption and misgovernment in city, state or nation, according as their personal interests lay. They used the editorial page and, to even better advantage, the news-columns, in revenging themselves for too heavy levies of blackmail upon their corrupt interests or in securing unjust legislation and privileges.
Obedient and cynical Mr. Malcolm had made the editorial page corrupt and brilliant--never so effective as when a.s.sailing a good cause. The great misfortune of good causes is that they attract so many fatal friends--the superciliously conscientious; the well-meaning but feeble-minded and blundering; the most offensive because least deceptive kinds of hypocrites. Mr. Malcolm, as acute as he was intellectually unscrupulous, well understood how to weaken or to ruin a just cause through these supporters. Sometimes he stood afar off, showering the poisoned arrows of raillery and satire. Again he was the plain-spoken friend of the cause and warned its honest supporters against these "fool friends" whom he pretended to regard as its leaders. Again he played the part of a blind enthusiast and praised folly as wisdom and urged it on to more damaging activities.
"We abhor humbug here," he used to say; and perhaps he did in a measure excuse himself to his conscience with the phrase. But in fact his editorial page was usually a succession of humbugs, of brilliant hypocrisies and cheats perpetrated under the guise of exposing humbug.
Just as Howard was ready to reverse Malcolm"s editorial programme, New York was seized with one of its "periodic spasms of virtue." The city government was, as usual, in the hands of the two bosses who owned the two political machines. One was taking the responsibility and the larger share of the spoils; the other was maintaining him in power and getting the smaller but a satisfactory share. The alliance between the police and criminal vice had become so open and aggressive under this bi-boss patronage that the people were aroused and indignant. But as they had no capable leaders and no way of selecting leaders, there arose a self-const.i.tuted leadership of uptown Phariseeism and sentimentality, planning the "purification" of the city.
Every man of sense knowing human nature and the conditions of city life knew that this plan was foredoomed to ridiculous failure, and that the event would be a popular revulsion against "reform."
"Why not speak the truth about these vice-hunters?" Howard was discussing the situation with three of his editorial writers--Segur, Huntington and Montgomery.
"It"s mighty dangerous," Montgomery objected. "You will be sticking knives into a sacred Anglo-Saxon hypocrisy."
"Yes, we"ll have all the good people about our ears," said Segur.
"We"ll be denounced as a defender of depravity, a foe of purity. They"ll thunder away at us from every pulpit. The other newspapers will take it up, especially those that expect to sell millions of papers containing accounts of the "exposure" of the dives and dens."
"That"s good. I hope we shall," said Howard cheerfully. "It will advertise us tremendously."
The three were better pleased than they would have admitted to themselves by the seeming certainty of Howard"s impending undoing.
"No, gentlemen," Howard said, as they were about to go to their rooms for the day"s work. "There"s no danger in attacking any hypocrisy. Don"t attack beliefs that are universal or nearly universal--at least not openly. But don"t be afraid of a hypocrisy because it is universal.
People know that they are hypocrites in respect of it. They may not have the courage publicly to applaud you. But they"ll be privately delighted and will admire your courage. We"ll try to be discreet and we"ll be careful to be truthful. And we"ll begin by making these gentlemen show themselves up."
The next morning the _News-Record_ published a double-leaded editorial.
It described the importance of improving political and social conditions in New York; it went on to note the distinguished names on the committee for the destruction of vice; it closed with the announcement that on the following day the _News-Record_ would publish the views of these eminent reformers upon conditions and remedies.
The next day he printed the interviews--a collection of curiosities in utopianism, cant, ignorant fanaticism, provincialism, hypocrisy. These appeared strictly as news; for the cardinal principle of Howard"s theory of a newspaper was that it had no right to intrude its own views into its news-columns. On the editorial page he riddled the interviews. By adroit quotations, by contrasting one with another, he showed, or rather made the so-called reformers themselves show, that where they were sincere they were in the main silly, and where they were plausible they were in the main insincere; that every man of them had his own pet scheme for the salvation of wicked New York; and that they could not possibly accomplish anything more valuable than leading the people on the familiar, aimless, demoralizing excursion through the slums.
On the following day he frankly laughed at them as a lot of impracticables who either did not know the patent facts of city life or refused to admit those facts. And he turned his attention to the real problem, a respectable administration for the city--a practical end which could easily be accomplished by practical action. From day to day he kept this up, publishing a splendid series of articles, humorous, witty, satirical, eloquent, bold, with a dominant strain of sincerity and plain common sense. As his a.s.sociates had predicted, a storm gathered and burst in fury about the _News-Record_. It was denounced by "leading citizens," including many of the clergy. Its "esteemed"
contemporaries published and endorsed and amplified the abuse. And its circulation went up at the rate of five thousand a day.
When the storm was at its height, when the whole town seemed to be agreeing with the angry reformers but was quietly laughing at their folly and hypocrisy, Howard threw his bomb. On a Sat.u.r.day morning he gave half of his first page with big but severely impartial headlines to an a.n.a.lysis of the members of the vice committee--a broadside of facts often hinted but never before verified and published. First came those who owned property and sub-let it for vicious purposes, the property and purpose specified in detail; then those who were directors in corporations which had got corrupt privileges from the local boss, the privileges being carefully specified, and also the amounts of which they had robbed the city. Last came those who were directors in corporations which had bought from the State-boss injustices and licenses to rob, the specifications given in d.a.m.ning detail.
His leading editorial was ent.i.tled "Why We Don"t Have Decent Government." It was powerful in its simplicity, its merciless raillery and irony; and only at the very end did it contain pa.s.sion. There, in a few eloquent sentences he arraigned these professed reformers who were growing rich through the boss-system, who were trafficking with the bosses and were now engaged in wrecking the hopes of honesty and decency. On that day the _News-Record"s_ circulation went up thirty thousand. The town rang with its "exposure" and the attention of the whole country was arrested. It was one of the historic "beats" of New York journalism. The reputation of the _News-Record_ for fearlessness and truth-telling and news-enterprise was established. At abound it had become the most conspicuous and one of the most powerful journals in New York.
XVI.
MR. STOKELY IS TACTLESS.
Howard, riding in the Park one morning late in the spring, came upon Mrs. Carnarvon. She gave him no chance to evade her, but joined him and accommodated her horse"s pace to his.
"And are you still on the _News-Record?_" she said. "I hope not."
"Why?" Howard was smiling, glad to get an outside view of what he had been doing.
"Because it"s become so sensational. It used to be such a nice paper.
And now--gracious, what headlines! What attacks on the very best people in the town!"
"Dreadful, isn"t it?" laughed Howard. "We"ve become so depraved that we are actually telling the truth about somebodies instead of only about n.o.bodies."
"I might have known that you would sympathise with that sort of thing."
Mrs. Carnarvon was teasing, yet reproachful. "You always were an anarchist."
"Is it anarchistic to be no respecter of persons and to put big headlines over big items and little headlines over little items?"
"Oh, you know what I mean. You are encouraging the unruly cla.s.ses."
"Dear me! And we thought we were fighting the unruly cla.s.s. We thought that it was our friends--or rather, your friends--the franchise grabbers and legislature-buyers who won"t obey the laws unless the laws happen to suit their convenience. They"re the only unruly cla.s.s I know anything about. I"ve heard of another kind but I"ve never been able to find it.
And I never hear much about it except when a lot of big rascals are making off weighted down with plunder. They always shout back over their shoulders: "Don"t raise a disturbance or you"ll arouse the unruly cla.s.ses.""
Mrs. Carnarvon was laughing. "You put it well," she said, "and I"m not clever enough to answer you. But they all tell me the _News-Record_ has become a dangerous paper, that it"s attacking everybody who has anything."
"Anything he has stolen, yes. But that"s all."
"You can"t get me to sympathise with you. I like well-dressed, well-mannered people who speak good English."
"So do I. That"s why I"m doing all in my power to improve the conditions for making more and more people of the sort one likes to talk to and dine with."
"Why, I thought you sympathised with the lower cla.s.ses."
"Not a bit of it. Who has been maligning me to you? I abhor the lower cla.s.ses--so much so that I wish to see them abolished."
"Well, you"ll have to blame Marian for misleading me."
"Miss Trevor? How is she?" Mrs. Carnarvon was looking closely at him, and he was not sure that he succeeded in showing nothing more than friendly interest.
"Haven"t you heard from her? She"s in England, visiting in Lancashire.
You know her cousin married Lord Cranmore."
"I saw in the papers several months ago that she was going abroad. I haven"t heard a word since."
Mrs. Carnarvon started to say something, but changed her mind.
"When is she coming home?"