“The company owns some.”

“They’re filthy holes.”

“They are what the tenants make them.”

“The tenants didn’t build them with lightless hallways, did they?”

“They needn’t live there if they don’t like them.  Have you spent all your time, for which I am paying, nosing about like a cheap magazine muckraker?” It was clear that Mr. Vanney was annoyed.

“I’ve been trying to find out what is wrong with Sippiac.  I thought you wanted facts.”

“Precisely.  Facts.  Not sentimental gushings.”

“Well, there are your guards.  There isn’t much sentiment about them.  I saw one of them smash a woman in the face, and knock her down, while she was trying to catch a train and get out of town.”

“And what did you do?”

“I don’t know exactly how much.  But I hope enough to land him in the hospital.  They pulled me off too soon.”

“Do you know that you would have been killed if it hadn’t been for some of the factory staff who saved you from the other guards—­as you deserved, for your foolhardiness?”

The young man’s eyebrows went up a bit.  “Don’t bank too much on my foolhardiness.  I had a wall back of me.  And there would have been material for several funerals before they got me.”  He touched his hip-pocket.  “By the way, you seem to be well informed.”

“I’ve been in ’phone communication with Sippiac since the regrettable occurrence.  It perhaps didn’t occur to you to find out that the woman, who is now under arrest, bit the guard very severely.”

“Of course!  Just like the rabbit bit the bulldog.  You’ve got a lot of thugs and strong-arm men doing your dirty work, that ought to be in jail.  If the newspapers here ever get onto the situation, it would make pretty rough reading for you, Mr. Vanney.”

The magnate looked at him with contemptuous amusement.  “No newspaper of decent standing prints that kind of socialistic stuff, my young friend.”

“Why not?”

“Why not!  Because of my position.  Because the International Cloth Company is a powerful institution of the most reputable standing, with many lines of influence.”

“And that is enough to keep the newspapers from printing an article about conditions in Sippiac?” asked Banneker, deeply interested in this phase of the question.  “Is that the fact?”

It was not the fact; The Sphere, for one, would have handled the strike on the basis of news interest, as Mr. Vanney well knew; wherefore he hated and pretended to despise The Sphere.  But for his own purposes he answered: 

“Not a paper in New York would touch it.  Except,” he added negligently, “perhaps some lying, Socialist sheet.  And let me warn you, Mr. Banneker,” he pursued in his suavest tone, “that you will find no place for your peculiar ideas on The Ledger.  In fact, I doubt whether you will be doing well either by them or by yourself in going on their staff, holding such views as you do.”