“From what they say,” remarked Hal flippantly, “the nurse ought to be arrested for trying to bump a sixty-horsepower car out of the roadway.”

“We strive to please, in the local newspaper shops.”

Ellis turned to answer the buzzing telephone.  “Get on your life preserver,” he advised his principal.  “Shearson’s coming up to weep all over you.”

The advertising manager entered, his plump cheeks sagging into lugubrious and reproachful lines, speaking witnesses to a sentiment not wholly unjustifiable in his case.  To see circulation steadily going up and advertising as steadily going down, is an irritant experience to the official responsible for the main income of a daily paper, advertising revenue.

“Advertisers have some rights,” he boomed, in his heavy voice.

“Including that of homicide?” asked Hal.

“Let the law take care of that.  It ain’t our affair.”

“Would it be our affair if Pierce didn’t control advertising?”

Shearson’s fat hands went to his fat neck in a gesture of desperation.  “That’s different,” he cried.  “I can’t seem to make you see my point.  Why looka here, Mr. Surtaine.  Who pays for the running of a newspaper?  The advertisers.  Where do your profits come from?  Advertising.  There never was a paper could last six months on circulation alone.  It’s the ads. that keep every paper going.  Well, then:  how’s a paper going to live that turns against its own support?  Tell me that.  If you were running a business, and a big buyer came in, would you roast him and knock his methods, and criticize his family, and then expect to sell him a bill of goods?  Or would you take him out to the theater and feed him a fat cigar, and treat him the best you know how?  You might have your own private opinion of him—­”

“A newspaper doesn’t deal in private opinions,” put in Hal.

“Well, it can keep ’em private for its own good, can’t it?  How many readers care whether E.M.  Pierce’s daughter ran over a woman or not?  What difference does it make to them?  They’d be just as well satisfied to read about the latest kick-up in Mexico, or the scandal at Washington, or Mrs. Whoopdoodle’s Newport dinner to the troupe of educated fleas.  But it makes a lot of difference to E.M.  Pierce, and he can make it a lot of difference to us.  So long as he pays us good money, he’s got a right to expect us to look out for his interests.”

“So have our readers who pay us good money, Mr. Shearson.”

“What are their interests?” asked the advertising manager, staring.

“To get the news straight.  You’ve given me your theory of journalism; now let me give you mine.  As I look at it, there’s a contract of honor between a newspaper and its subscribers.  Tacitly the newspaper says to the subscriber, ’For two cents a day, I agree to furnish you with the news of your town, state, nation, and the outside world, selected to the best of my ability, and presented without fear or favor.’  On this basis, if the newspaper fakes its news, if it distorts facts, or if it suppresses them, it is playing false with its subscribers.  It is sanding its sugar, and selling shoddy for all-wool.  Isn’t that true?”