Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man Part 16

"Did you know," he remarked to Laurence, "that the poor old _Clarion_ is ready to bust? It will have to write a death-notice for itself in a week or two, the editor told me this morning."

"So?" Laurence seemed as indifferent as I.

The b.u.t.terfly Man shot him a freighted glance. "Folks in this county will sort of miss the _Clarion_," he reflected. "After all, it's the one county paper. Seems to me," he mused, "that if _I_ were going in head, neck and crop for the sweet little job of reformer-general, I'd first off get me a grappling-hook on my town's one newspaper.

Particularly when grappling-hooks were going cheap."

"Hasn't Inglesby got a mortgage on it?"

"If he had would he let it die in its bed so nice and ladylike? Not much! It'd kick out the footboard and come alive. Inglesby must be getting rusty in the joints not to reach out for the _Clarion_ himself, right now. Maybe he figures it's not worth the price. Maybe he knows this town so well he's dead sure n.o.body that buys a newspaper here would have the nerve to print anything or think anything he didn't approve of. Yes, I guess that's it."

"Which is your gentle way," cut in Laurence, "of telling me I'd better hustle out and gather in the _Clarion_ before Inglesby beats me to it, isn't it?"

"Me?" The b.u.t.terfly Man looked pained. "I'm not telling you to buy anything. _I'm_ only thinking of the obituaries. Ask the parson.

I'm--I'm addicted to 'em, like some people are to booze. But if you'd promise to keep open the old corner for them, why, I might come out and _beg_ you to buy the _Clarion_, now it's going so cheap. Yep--all on account of the obituaries!" And he murmured:

"_Our dear little Johnny was left alive To reach the interesting age of five When_--"

"That's just about as much as I can stand of that, my son!" said I, hastily.

"The parson's got an awful tender heart," the b.u.t.terfly Man explained and Laurence was graceless enough to grin.

"Well, as I was about to say: I happened to think Inglesby would be brute enough to choke out my pet column, or make folks pay for it, and things like that haven't got any business to have price tags on 'em.

So I got to thinking of you. You're young and tender; also a college man; and you're itching to wash and iron Appleboro--" he took off his gla.s.ses and wiped them delicately and deliberately.

"Did you also get to thinking," said Laurence, crisply, "that I'm just about making my salt at present, and still you're suggesting that I tie a dead old newspaper about my neck and jump overboard? One might fancy you hankered to add my obituary to your collection!" he finished with a touch of tartness.

The b.u.t.terfly Man smiled ever so gently.

"The _Clarion_ is the county paper," he explained patiently. "It was here first. It's been here a long time, and people are used to it. It knows by heart how they think and feel and how they want to be told they think and feel. And you ought to know Carolina people when it comes right down to prying them loose from something they're used to!"

He paused, to let that sink in.

"There's no reason why the _Clarion_ should keep on being a dead one, is there? There's plenty room for a live daily right here and now, if it was run right. Why, this town's blue-molded for a live paper! Look here: You go buy the _Clarion_. It won't cost you much. Believe me, you'll find it mighty handy--power of the press, all the usual guff, you know! I sha'n't have to worry about obituaries, but I bet you dollars to doughnuts some people will wake up some morning worrying a whole lot about editorials. Mayne--people like to think they think what they think themselves. They don't. They think what their home newspapers tell them to think. And this is your great big chance to get the town ear and shout into it good and loud."

A week or so later Mayne & Son surprised Appleboro by purchasing the moribund _Clarion_. They didn't have to go into debt for it, either.

They got it for an absurdly low sum, although folks said, with sniffs, that anything paid for that rag was too much.

"Nevertheless," said the b.u.t.terfly Man to me, complacently, "that's the little jimmy that's going to grow up and crack some fat cribs.

Watch it grow!"

I watched; but, like most others, I was rather doubtful. It was true that the _Clarion_ immediately showed signs of reviving life. And that Jim Dabney, a college friend from upstate, whom Laurence had induced to accept the rather precarious position of editor and manager, wrote pleasantly as well as pungently, and so set us all to talking.

I suppose it was because it really had something to say, and that something very pertinent to our local interests and affairs, that we learned and liked to quote the _Clarion_. It made a neat appearance in new black type, and this pleased us. It had, too, a newer, clearer, louder note, which made itself heard over the whole county. The county merchants and farmers began once more to advertise in its pages, as John Flint, who watched it jealously--feeling responsible for Laurence's purchase of it--was happy to point out.

One thing, too, became more and more evident. The women were behind the _Clarion_ in a solid phalanx. They knew it meant for them a voice which spoke articulately and publicly, an insistent voice which must be answered. It noticed every Mothers' Meeting, Dorcas activity, Ladies' Aid, Altar Guild, temperance gathering; spoke respectfully of the suffragists and hopefully of the "public-spirited women" of the new Civic League. And never, never, never omitted nor misplaced nor misspelled a name! The boy from up-state saw to that. He was wily as the serpent and simple as the dove. Over the local page appeared daily:

"LET'S GET TOGETHER!"

After awhile we took him at his word and tried to ... and things began to happen in Appleboro.

"Here," said the b.u.t.terfly Man to me, "is where the bluejay begins to get his."

For in most Appleboro houses insistent women were asking hara.s.sed and embarra.s.sed men certain questions concerning certain things which ladies hadn't been supposed to know anything about, much less worry their heads over, since the state was a state. So determined were the women to have these questions fairly answered that they presently asked them in cold print, on the front page of the town paper. And Laurence told them. He had appalling lists and figures and names and dates. The "chiel among us takin' notes" printed them. Dabney's editorial comments were barbed.

Now there are mills in the South which do obey the state laws and regulations as to hours, working conditions, wages, sanitation, safety appliances, child labor. But there are others which do not. Ours notoriously didn't.

John Flint and my mother had had many a conference about deplorable cases which both knew, but were powerless to change. The best they had been able to do was to tabulate such cases, with names and facts and dates, but precious little had been accomplished for the welfare of the mill people, for those who might have helped had been too busy, or perhaps unwilling, to listen or to act.

But, as Flint insisted, the new Civic League was ready and ripe to hear now what Madame had to tell. At one meeting, therefore, she took the floor and told them. When she had finished they named a committee to investigate mill conditions in Appleboro.

That work was done with a painstaking thoroughness, and the committee's final report was very unpleasant reading. But the names signed to it were so una.s.sailable, the facts so incontrovertible, that Dabney thought best to print it in full, and later to issue it in pamphlet form. It has become a cla.s.sic for this sort of thing now, and it is always quoted when similar investigations are necessary elsewhere.

It was the b.u.t.terfly Man who had taken that report and had rewritten and revised it, and clothed it with a terrible earnestness and force.

Its plain words were alive. It seemed to me, when I read them that I heard ... a bluejay's ribald screech ... and the heart-rending and piercing cries of a little brown motherbird whose nest had been ravaged and destroyed.

Appleboro gasped, and sat up, and rubbed its eyes. That such things could be occurring here, in this pleasant little place, in the shadow of their churches, within reach of their homes! No one dared to even question the truth of that report, however, and it went before the Grand Jury intact. The Grand Jury very promptly called Mr. Inglesby before it. They were polite to him, of course, but they did manage to ask him some very unpleasant and rather personal questions, and they did manage to impress upon him that certain things mentioned in the Civic League's report must not be allowed to reoccur. One juror--he was a planter--had even had the temerity to say out loud the ugly word "penetentiary."

Inglesby was shocked. He hadn't known. He was a man of large interests and he had to leave a great deal to the discretion of superintendents and foremen. It might be, yes, he could understand how it might very well be--that his confidence had been abused. He would look into these things personally hereafter. Why, he was even now busily engaged compiling a "Book of Rules for Employees." He deplored the almost universal unrest among employees. It was a very bad sign. Very. Due almost entirely to agitators, too.

He didn't come out of that investigation without some of its slime sticking to him, and this annoyed and irritated and enraged him more than we guessed, for we hadn't as yet learned the man's ambition.

Also, the women kept following him up. They meant to make him comply with the strict letter of the law, if that were humanly possible.

He was far too shrewd not to recognize this; for he presently called on my mother and offered her whatever aid he could reasonably give.

Her work was invaluable; his foremen and superintendents had instructions to give her any information she asked for, to show her anything in the mills she wished to see, and to report to headquarters any suggestions as to the--er--younger employees, she might be kind enough to make. If that were not enough she might, he suggested, call on him personally. Really, one couldn't but admire the _savoir faire_ of this large unctious being, so fluent, so plausible, until one happened to catch of a sudden that hard and ruthless gleam which, in spite of all his caution, would leap at times into his cold eyes.

"Is he, or isn't he, a hypocrite pure and simple, or are such men self-deceived?" mused my mother, puckering her brows. "He will do nothing, I know, that he can well avoid. But--he gave me of his own accord his personal check for fifty dollars, for that poor consumptive s.h.i.+vers woman."

"She contracted her disease working in his mill and living in one of his houses on the wages he paid her," said I, "I might remind you to beware of the Greeks when they come bearing gifts."

"Proverb for proverb," said she. "The hair of the dog is good for its bite."

"Fifty dollars isn't much for a woman's life."

"Fifty dollars buys considerable comfort in the shape of milk and ice and eggs. When it's gone--if poor s.h.i.+vers isn't--I shall take the Baptist minister's wife and Miss Sally Ruth Dexter with me, and go and ask him for another check. He'll give it."

"You'll make him bitterly repent ever having succ.u.mbed to the temptation of appearing charitable," said I.

We were not left long in doubt that Inglesby had other methods of attack less pleasant than offering checks for charity. Its two largest advertisers simultaneously withdrew their advertis.e.m.e.nts from the _Clarion_.

"Let's think this thing out," said John Flint to Laurence. "Cutting out ads is a bad habit. It costs good money. It should be nipped in the bud. You've got to go after advertisers like that and make 'em see the thing in the right light. Say, parson, what's that thing you were saying the other day--the thing I asked you to read over, remember?"

_"When the scorner is punished, the simple is made wise; and when the wise is instructed, he receiveth knowledge,"_ I quoted Solomon.

"That's it, exactly. You see," he explained, "there's always the right way out, if you've got sense enough to find it. Only you mustn't get rattled and try to make your getaway out the wrong door or the front window--that spoils things. The parson's given you the right tip. That old chap Solomon had a great bean on him, didn't he?"

A few days later there appeared, in the s.p.a.ce which for years had been occupied by the bigger of the two advertis.e.m.e.nts, the following pleasant notice:

People Who Disapprove of Civic Cleanliness, A Better Town, Better Kiddies, and A Square Deal for Everybody, _Also_ Disapprove of Advertising in the Clarion.