I got hold of Percy Layton.  He was a graduate of the university, had gone in for journalism, and was then serving his apprenticeship as reporter on the most influential of the three newspapers.  He smiled when I asked him the reason the newspapers suppressed all mention of Jackson or his case.

“Editorial policy,” he said.  “We have nothing to do with that.  It’s up to the editors.”

“But why is it policy?” I asked.

“We’re all solid with the corporations,” he answered.  “If you paid advertising rates, you couldn’t get any such matter into the papers.  A man who tried to smuggle it in would lose his job.  You couldn’t get it in if you paid ten times the regular advertising rates.”

“How about your own policy?” I questioned.  “It would seem your function is to twist truth at the command of your employers, who, in turn, obey the behests of the corporations.”

“I haven’t anything to do with that.”  He looked uncomfortable for the moment, then brightened as he saw his way out.  “I, myself, do not write untruthful things.  I keep square all right with my own conscience.  Of course, there’s lots that’s repugnant in the course of the day’s work.  But then, you see, that’s all part of the day’s work,” he wound up boyishly.

“Yet you expect to sit at an editor’s desk some day and conduct a policy.”

“I’ll be case-hardened by that time,” was his reply.

“Since you are not yet case-hardened, tell me what you think right now about the general editorial policy.”

“I don’t think,” he answered quickly.  “One can’t kick over the ropes if he’s going to succeed in journalism.  I’ve learned that much, at any rate.”

And he nodded his young head sagely.

“But the right?” I persisted.

“You don’t understand the game.  Of course it’s all right, because it comes out all right, don’t you see?”

“Delightfully vague,” I murmured; but my heart was aching for the youth of him, and I felt that I must either scream or burst into tears.

I was beginning to see through the appearances of the society in which I had always lived, and to find the frightful realities that were beneath.  There seemed a tacit conspiracy against Jackson, and I was aware of a thrill of sympathy for the whining lawyer who had ingloriously fought his case.  But this tacit conspiracy grew large.  Not alone was it aimed against Jackson.  It was aimed against every workingman who was maimed in the mills.  And if against every man in the mills, why not against every man in all the other mills and factories?  In fact, was it not true of all the industries?

And if this was so, then society was a lie.  I shrank back from my own conclusions.  It was too terrible and awful to be true.  But there was Jackson, and Jackson’s arm, and the blood that stained my gown and dripped from my own roof-beams.  And there were many Jacksons—­hundreds of them in the mills alone, as Jackson himself had said.  Jackson I could not escape.