Part 20 (1/2)

”I am going to retire at once,” Malcolm went on. ”I've been at it nearly fifty years--ever since I was a boy of eighteen and I've been in charge there almost a quarter of a century. I think I've earned a few years of leisure to work for my own amus.e.m.e.nt. I'm pretty sure they'll want you to take my place. Would you like it?”

”I'm not fit for it,” Howard said, and he meant it. ”I'm only an apprentice. I'm always making blunders--but I needn't tell you about that.”

”You can't say that you are not fit until you have tried. Besides, the question is not, are _you_ fit? but, is there any one more fit than you?

I confess I don't see any one so well equipped, so certain to give the paper all of the best that there is in him.”

”Of course I'd like to try. I can only fail.”

”Oh, you won't fail. But you may quarrel with Stokely and Coulter--especially Coulter. In fact, I'm sure you'll quarrel with them. But if you make yourself valuable enough, you'll probably win out.

Only----”

Malcolm hesitated, then went on:

”I stopped giving advice years ago. But I'll venture a suggestion.

Whenever your principles run counter to the policy of the paper, it would be wise to think the matter over carefully before making an issue.

Usually there is truth on both sides, much that can be said fairly and honestly for either side. Often devotion to principle is a mere prejudice. Often the crowd, the mob, can be better controlled to right ends by conceding or seeming to concede a principle for the time. Don't strike a mortal blow at your own usefulness to good causes by making yourself a hasty martyr to some fancied vital principle that will seem of no consequence the next morning but one after the election.”

”I know, Mr. Malcolm, judgment is all but impossible. And I have been trying to learn what you have been teaching me with your blue pencil, what you now put into words. But there is something in me--an instinct, perhaps--that forces me on in spite of myself. I've learned to curb and guide it to a certain extent, but as long as I am I, I shall never learn to control it. Every man must work out his own salvation along his own lines. And with my limitations of judgment, it would be fatal to me, I feel, to study the art of compromise. Where another, broader, stronger, more master of himself and of others, would succeed by compromising, I should fail miserably. I should be lost, compa.s.sless, rudderless. I have often envied you your calmness, your ability to see not only to-morrow but the day after. But, if I ever try to imitate you, I shall make a sad mess of my career.”

As he ended Howard looked uneasily at the old editor, expecting to see that caustic smile with which he preceded and accompanied his sarcasms at ”sentimental bosh.” But instead, Malcolm's face was melancholy; and his voice was sad and weary as he answered the young man who was just starting where he had started so many years ago:

”No doubt you are right. I'm not intending to try to dissuade you from--from the best there is in you. All I mean is that caution, self-examination, self-doubt, calm consideration of the other side--these are as necessary to success as energy and resolute action.

All I suggest is that its splendour does not redeem a splendid folly.

Its folly remains its essential characteristic.”

Three weeks later Howard became editor-in-chief of the _News-Record_.

His salary was fifteen thousand a year; and Stokely and Coulter, acting upon Malcolm's advice, gave him a ”free hand” for one year. They agreed not to interfere during that time unless the circulation or the profits showed a decrease at the end of a quarter.

The next morning Howard, in the Madison Avenue car on his way to the office, read among the ”Incidents in Society:”

Mrs. George Alexander Provost and her niece, Miss Marion Trevor, sailed in the _Campania_ yesterday. They will return in July for the Newport season.

XV.

YELLOW JOURNALISM.

While several of the New York dailies were circulating from two to three hundred thousand copies, the _News-Record_--the best-written, the most complete, and, where the interests of the owners did not interfere, the most accurate--circulated less than one hundred thousand. The Sunday edition had a circulation of one hundred and fifty thousand where two other newspapers had almost half a million.

The theory of the _News-Record_ staff was that their journal was too ”respectable,” too intelligent, to be widely read; that the ”yellow journals” grovelled, ”appealed to the mob,” drew their vast crowds by the methods of the fakir and the freak. They professed pride in the _News-Record's_ smaller circulation as proof of its freedom from vulgarity and debas.e.m.e.nt. They looked down upon the journalists of the popular newspapers and posed as the aristocracy of the profession.

Howard did not a.s.sent to these self-complacent excuses. He was democratic and modern, and the aristocratic pose appealed only to his sense of humour and his suspicions. He believed that the success of the ”yellow journals” with the most intelligent, alert and progressive public in the world must be based upon solid reasons of desert, must be in spite of, not because of, their follies and exhibitions of bad taste.

He resolved upon a radical departure, a revolution from the policy of satisfying petty vanity and tradition within the office to a policy of satisfying the demands of the public.

He gave Segur temporary charge of the editorial page, and, taking a desk in the news-room, centred his attention upon news and the news-staff.

But he was careful not to agitate and antagonise those whose cooperation was necessary to success. He made only one change in the management; he retired old Bowring on a pension and appointed to the city editors.h.i.+p one of the young reporters--Frank c.u.mnock.