II

On the day of the appearance of the first issue of the _Five Towns Daily_, the offices of the new paper at Hanbridge gave proof of their excellent organisation, working in all details with an admirable smoothness. In the bas.e.m.e.nt a Marinoni machine thundered like a sucking dove to produce fifteen thousand copies an hour. On the ground floor ingenious arrangements had been made for publishing the paper; in particular, the iron railings to keep the boys in order in front of the publishing counter had been imitated from the _Signal_. On the first floor was the editor and founder, with his staff, and above that the composing department. The number of stairs that separated the composing department from the machine room was not a positive advantage, but bricks and mortar are inelastic, and one does what one can. The offices looked very well from the outside, and they compared pa.s.sably with the offices of the _Signal_ close by. The posters were duly in the ground-floor windows, and gold signs, one above another to the roof, produced an air of lucrative success.

Denry happened to be in the _Daily_ offices that afternoon. He had had nothing to do with the details of organisation, for details of organisation were not his speciality. His speciality was large, leading ideas. He knew almost nothing of the agreements with correspondents and Press a.s.sociation and Central News and the racing services and the fiction syndicates, nor of the difficulties with the Compositors' Union, nor of the struggle to lower the price of paper by the twentieth of a penny per pound, nor of the awful discounts allowed to certain advertisers, nor of the friction with the railway company, nor of the sickening adulation that had been lavished on quite unimportant news agents, nor-worst of all-of the dearth of newsboys. These matters did not attract him. He could not stoop to them. But when Mr. Myson, calm and proud, escorted him down to the machine room, and the Marinoni threw a folded pink _Daily_ almost into his hands, and it looked exactly like a real newspaper, and he saw one of his own descriptive articles in it, and he reflected that he was an owner of it-then Denry was attracted and delighted, and his heart beat. For this pink thing was the symbol and result of the whole affair, and had the effect of a miracle on him.

And he said to himself, never guessing how many thousands of men had said it before him, that a newspaper was the finest toy in the world.

About four o'clock the publisher, in shirt sleeves and an ap.r.o.n, came up to Mr. Myson and respectfully asked him to step into the publishing office. Mr. Myson stepped into the publishing office, and Denry with him, and they there beheld a small, ragged boy with a bleeding nose and a bundle of _Dailys_ in his wounded hand.

"Yes," the boy sobbed; "and they said they 'd cut my eyes out and plee [play] marbles wi' 'em, if they cotched me in Crown Square agen." And he threw down the papers with a final yell.

The two directors learnt that the delicate threat had been uttered by four _Signal_ boys who had objected to any fellow-boys offering any paper other than the _Signal_ for sale in Crown Square or anywhere else.

Of course, it was absurd.

Still, absurd as it was, it continued. The central publishing offices of the _Daily_ at Hanbridge, and its branch offices in the neighbouring towns, were like military hospitals, and the truth appeared to the directors that while the public was panting to buy copies of the _Daily_, the sale of the _Daily_ was being prevented by means of a scandalous conspiracy on the part of _Signal_ boys. For it must be understood that in the Five Towns people prefer to catch their newspaper in the street as it flies and cries. The _Signal_ had a vast army of boys, to whom every year it gave a great fete. Indeed, the _Signal_ possessed nearly all the available boys, and a.s.suredly all the most pugilistic and strongest boys. Mr. Myson had obtained boys only after persistent inquiry and demand, and such as he had found were not the fittest, and therefore were unlikely to survive. You would have supposed that in a district that never ceases to grumble about bad trade and unemployment, thousands of boys would have been delighted to buy the _Daily_ at fourpence a dozen and sell it at sixpence. But it was not so.

On the second day the dearth of boys at the offices of the _Daily_ was painful. There was that magnificent, enterprising newspaper waiting to be sold, and there was the great enlightened public waiting to buy; and scarcely any business could be done because the _Signal_ boys had established a reign of terror over their puny and upstart rivals!

The situation was unthinkable.

Still, unthinkable as it was, it continued. Mr. Myson had thought of everything except this. Naturally it had not occurred to him that an immense and serious effort for the general weal was going to be blocked by a gang of tatterdemalions.

He complained, with dignity, to the _Signal_, and was informed, with dignity, by the _Signal_ that the _Signal_ could not be responsible for the playful antics of its boys in the streets; that, in short, the Five Towns was a free country. In the latter proposition Mr. Myson did not concur.

After trouble in the persuasion of parents-astonishing how indifferent the Five Towns' parent was to the loss of blood by his offspring!-a case reached the police-court. At the hearing the _Signal_ gave a solicitor a watching brief, and that solicitor expressed the _Signal's_ horror of carnage. The evidence was excessively contradictory, and the Stipendiary dismissed the summons with a good joke. The sole definite result was that the boy whose father had ostensibly brought the summons got his ear torn within a quarter of an hour of leaving the court. Boys will be boys.

Still, the _Daily_ had so little faith in human nature that it could not believe that the _Signal_ was not secretly encouraging its boys to be boys. It could not believe that the _Signal_, out of a sincere desire for fair play and for the highest welfare of the district, would willingly sacrifice nearly half its circulation and a portion of its advertis.e.m.e.nt revenue. And the hurt tone of Mr. Myson's leading articles seemed to indicate that in Mr. Myson's opinion his older rival _ought_ to do everything in its power to ruin itself. The _Signal_ never spoke of the fight. The _Daily_ gave shocking details of it every day.

The struggle trailed on through the weeks.

Then Denry had one of his ideas. An advertis.e.m.e.nt was printed in the _Daily_ for two hundred able-bodied men to earn two shillings for working six hours a day. An address different from the address of the _Daily_ was given. By a ruse Denry procured the insertion of the advertis.e.m.e.nt in the _Signal_ also.

"We must expend our capital on getting the paper on to the streets,"

said Denry. "That's evident. We 'll have it sold by men. We 'll soon see if the _Signal_ ragam.u.f.fins will attack _them_. And we won't pay 'em by results; we'll pay 'em a fixed wage; that 'll fetch 'em. And a commission, on sales into the bargain. Why! I would n't mind engaging _five_ hundred men. Swamp the streets! That's it! Hang expense. And when we 've done the trick, then we can go back to the boys; they'll have learnt their lesson."

And Mr. Myson agreed, and was pleased that Denry was living up to his reputation.

The state of the earthenware trade was supposed that summer to be worse than it had been since 1869, and the grumblings of the unemployed were prodigious, even seditious. Mr. Myson, therefore, as a measure of precaution engaged a couple of policemen to ensure order at the address, and during the hours, named in the advertis.e.m.e.nt as a rendezvous for respectable men in search of a well-paid job. Having regard to the thousands of perishing families in the Five Towns, he foresaw a rush and a crush of eager breadwinners. Indeed, the arrangements were elaborate.

Forty minutes after the advertised time for the opening of the reception of respectable men in search of money four men had arrived. Mr. Myson, mystified, thought that there had been a mistake in the advertis.e.m.e.nt.

But there was no mistake in the advertis.e.m.e.nt. A little later two more men came. Of the six, three were tipsy, and the other three absolutely declined to be seen selling papers in the streets. Two were abusive, one facetious. Mr. Myson did not know his Five Towns; nor did Denry. A man in the Five Towns, when he can get neither bread nor beer, will keep himself and his family on pride and water.

The policemen went off to more serious duties.

III

Then came the announcement of the thirty-fifth anniversary of the _Signal_, and of the processional fete by which the _Signal_ was at once to give itself a splendid spectacular advertis.e.m.e.nt and to reward and enhearten its boys. The _Signal_ meant to liven up the streets of the Five Towns on that great day by means of a display of all the gilt chariots of Snape's Circus in the main thoroughfares. Many of the boys would be in the gilt chariots. Copies of the anniversary number of the _Signal_ would be sold from the gilt chariots. The idea was excellent, and it showed that after all the _Signal_ was getting just a little more afraid of its young rival than it had pretended to be.

For, strange to say, after a trying period of hesitation, the _Five Towns Daily_ was slightly on the upward curve-thanks to Denry. Denry did not mean to be beaten by the puzzle which the _Daily_ offered to his intelligence. There the _Daily_ was, full of news, and with quite an encouraging show of advertis.e.m.e.nts, printed on real paper with real ink-and yet it would not "go." Notoriously the _Signal_ earned a net profit of at the very least five thousand a year, whereas the _Daily_ earned a net loss of at the very least sixty pounds a week-and of that sixty quite a third was Denry's money. He could not explain it. Mr.

Myson tried to rouse the public by pa.s.sionately stirring up extremely urgent matters-such as the smoke-nuisance, the increase of the rates, the park question, German compet.i.tion, technical education for apprentices; but the public obstinately would not be roused concerning its highest welfare to the point of insisting on a regular supply of the _Daily_. If a mere five thousand souls had positively demanded daily a copy of the _Daily_ and not slept till boys or agents had responded to their wish, the troubles of the _Daily_ would soon have vanished. But this ridiculous public did not seem to care which paper was put into its hand in exchange for its halfpenny so long as the sporting news was put there. It simply was indifferent. It failed to see the importance to such an immense district of having two flourishing and mutually opposing daily organs. The fundamental boy difficulty remained ever-present.

And it was the boy difficulty that Denry perseveringly and ingeniously attacked, until at length the _Daily_ did indeed possess some sort of a brigade of its own, and the bullying and slaughter in the streets (so amusing to the inhabitants) grew a little less one-sided.

A week or more before the _Signal's_ anniversary day Denry heard that the _Signal_ was secretly afraid lest the _Daily's_ brigade might accomplish the marring of its gorgeous procession, and that the _Signal_ was ready to do anything to smash the _Daily's_ brigade. He laughed; he said he did not mind. About that time hostilities were rather acute; blood was warming, and both papers, in the excitation of rivalry, had partially lost the sense of what was due to the dignity of great organs.

By chance a tremendous local football match-Knype v. Bursley-fell on the very Sat.u.r.day of the procession. The rival arrangements for the reporting of the match were as tremendous as the match itself, and somehow the match seemed to add keenness to the journalistic struggle, especially as the _Daily_ favoured Bursley and the _Signal_ was therefore forced to favour Knype.

By all the laws of hazard there ought to have been a hitch on that historic Sat.u.r.day. Telephone or telegraph ought to have broken down, or rain ought to have made play impossible. But no hitch occurred. And at five-thirty o'clock of a glorious afternoon in earliest November the _Daily_ went to press with a truly brilliant account of the manner in which Bursley (for the first and last time in its history) had defeated Knype by one goal to none. Mr. Myson was proud. Mr. Myson defied the _Signal_ to beat his descriptive report. As for the _Signal's_ procession-well, Mr. Myson and the chief sub-editor of the _Daily_ glanced at each other and smiled.

And a few minutes later the _Daily_ boys were rushing out of the publishing-room with bundles of papers-a.s.suredly in advance of the _Signal_.

It was at this juncture that the unexpected began to occur to the _Daily_ boys. The publishing door of the _Daily_ opened into Stanway Rents, a narrow alley in a maze of mean streets behind Crown Square. In Stanway Rents was a small warehouse in which, according to rumours of the afternoon, a free soup kitchen was to be opened. And just before the football edition of the _Daily_ came off the Marinoni, it emphatically was opened, and there issued from its inviting gate an odour-not, to be sure, of soup, but of toasted cheese and hot jam-such an odour as had never before tempted the nostrils of a _Daily_ boy; a unique and omnipotent odour. Several boys (who, I may state frankly, were traitors to the _Daily_ cause, spies and mischief-makers from elsewhere) raced unhesitatingly in, crying that toasted cheese sandwiches and jam tarts were to be distributed like lightning to all authentic newspaper lads.

The entire gang followed-scores, over a hundred-inwardly expecting to emerge instantly with teeth fully employed, followed like sheep unto a fold.

And the gate was shut.

Toasted cheese and hot jammy pastry were faithfully served to the ragged host-but with no breathless haste. And when, loaded, the boys struggled to depart, they were instructed by the kind philanthropist who had fed them to depart by another exit and they discovered themselves in an enclosed yard of which the double doors were apparently unyielding. And the warehouse door was shut also. And, as the cheese and jam disappeared, shouts of fury arose on the air. The yard was so close to the offices of the _Daily_ that the chimney-pots of those offices could actually be seen. And yet the shouting brought no answer from the lords of the _Daily_, congratulating themselves up there on their fine account of the football match, and on their celerity in going to press, and on the loyalty of their brigade.

The _Signal_, it need not be said, disavowed complicity in this extraordinary entrapping of the _Daily_ brigade by means of an odour.

Could it be held responsible for the excesses of its disinterested sympathisers? ... Still, the appalling trick showed the high temperature to which blood had risen in the genial battle between great rival organs. Persons in the very inmost ring whispered that Denry Machin had at length been bested on this critically important day.

IV

Snape's Circus used to be one of the great shining inst.i.tutions of North Staffordshire, trailing its magnificence on sculptured wheels from town to town, and occupying the dreams of boys from one generation to another. Its headquarters were at Axe, in the Moorlands, ten miles away from Hanbridge, but the riches of old Snape had chiefly come from the Five Towns. At the time of the struggle between the _Signal_ and the _Daily_ its decline had already begun. The aged proprietor had recently died, and the name, and the horses, and the chariots, and the carefully repaired tents had been sold to strangers. On the Sat.u.r.day of the anniversary and the football match (which was also Martinmas Sat.u.r.day) the circus was set up at Oldcastle, on the edge of the Five Towns, and was giving its final performances of the season. Even boys will not go to circuses in the middle of a Five Towns' winter. The _Signal_ people had hired the processional portion of Snape's for the late afternoon and early evening. And the instructions were that the entire _cortege_ should be round about the _Signal_ offices, in marching order, not later than five o'clock.

But at four o'clock several gentlemen with rosettes in their b.u.t.ton-holes and _Signal_ posters in their hands arrived important and panting at the fair-ground at Oldcastle and announced that the programme had been altered at the last moment in order to defeat certain feared machinations of the unscrupulous _Daily_. The cavalcade was to be split into three groups, one of which, the chief, was to enter Hanbridge by a "back road" and the other two were to go to Bursley and Longshaw respectively. In this manner the forces of advertis.e.m.e.nt would be distributed and the chief parts of the district equally honoured.

The special linen banners, pennons, and ribbons-bearing the words "Signal: Thirty-fifth Anniversary," etc.-had already been hung, and planted, and draped about the gilded summits of the chariots. And after some delay the processions were started separating at the bottom of the Cattle-market. The head of the Hanbridge part of the procession consisted of an enormous car of Jupiter, with six wheels and thirty-six paregorical figures (as the clown used to say), and drawn by six pie-bald steeds guided by white reins. This coach had a windowed interior (at the greater fairs it sometimes served as a box-office), and in the interior one of the delegates of the _Signal_ had fixed himself; from it he directed the paths of the procession.

It would be futile longer to conceal that the delegate of the _Signal_ in the bowels of the car of Jupiter was not honestly a delegate of the _Signal_ at all. He was, indeed, Denry Machin, and none other. From this single fact it will be seen to what extent the representatives of great organs had forgotten what was due to their dignity and to public decency. Ensconced in his lair, Denry directed the main portion of the _Signal's_ advertising procession by all manner of discreet lanes round the skirts of Hanbridge and so into the town from the hilly side. And ultimately the ten vehicles halted in c.r.a.pper Street, to the joy of the simple inhabitants.

Denry emerged and wandered innocently towards the offices of his paper, which were close by. It was getting late. The first yelling of the imprisoned _Daily_ boys was just beginning to rise on the autumn air.

Suddenly Denry was accosted by a young man.

"h.e.l.lo, Machin!" cried the young man. "What have you shaved your beard off for? I scarcely knew you."

"I just thought I would, Swetnam," said Denry, who was obviously discomposed.

It was the youngest of the Swetnam boys; he and Denry had taken a sort of curt fancy to one another.