“Independence.  They’re merged in the paper they write for.”

“Every man’s got to subordinate himself to his business, if he’s to do justice to it and himself, hasn’t he?”

“Yes.  If you’re buying or selling stocks or socks, it doesn’t matter.  The principles you live by aren’t involved.  In the newspaper game they are.”

“Not in reporting, though.”

“If reporting were just gathering facts and presenting them, it wouldn’t be so.  But you’re deep enough in by now to see that reporting of a lot of things is a matter of coloring your version to the general policy of your paper.  Politics, for instance, or the liquor question, or labor troubles.  The best reporters get to doing it unconsciously.  Chameleons.”

“And you think it affects them?”

“How can it help?  There’s a slow poison in writing one way when you believe another.”

“And that’s part of the dirt-eating?”

“Well, yes.  Not so obvious as some of the other kinds.  Those hurt your pride, mostly.  This kind hurts your self-respect.”

“But where does it get you, all this business?” asked Banneker reverting to his first query.

“I’m fifty-two years old,” replied Edmonds quietly.

Banneker stared.  “Oh, I see!” he said presently.  “And you’re considered a success.  Of course you are a success.”

“On Park Row.  Would you like to be me?  At fifty-two?”

“No, I wouldn’t,” said Banneker with a frankness which brought a faint smile to the other man’s tired face.  “Yet you’ve got where you started for, haven’t you?”

“Perhaps I could answer that if I knew where I started for or where I’ve got to.”

“Put it that you’ve got what you were after, then.”

“No’s the answer.  Upper-case No.  I want to get certain things over to the public intelligence.  Maybe I’ve got one per cent of them over.  Not more.”

“That’s something.  To have a public that will follow you even part way—­”

“Follow me?  Bless you; they don’t know me except as a lot of print that they occasionally read.  I’m as anonymous as an editorial writer.  And that’s the most anonymous thing there is.”

“That doesn’t suit me at all,” declared Banneker.  “If I have got anything in me—­and I think I have—­I don’t want it to make a noise like a part of a big machine.  I’d rather make a small noise of my own.”

“Buy a paper, then.  Or write fluffy criticisms about art or theaters.  Or get into the magazine field.  You can write; O Lord! yes, you can write.  But unless you’ve got the devotion of a fanatic like McHale, or a born servant of the machine like ‘Parson’ Gale, or an old fool like me, willing to sink your identity in your work, you’ll never be content as a reporter.”

“Tell me something.  Why do none of the men, talking among themselves, ever refer to themselves as reporters.  It’s always ‘newspaper men.’”