Sharon Whipple, the Philistine, never quite knew whether pragmatism was approved or condemned by Schilsky, and once he asked the dark-faced young man what it meant.  He was told that pragmatism was a method, and felt obliged to pretend that this enlightened him.  He felt a reluctant respect for Schilsky, who could make him feel uncomfortable.

And there was the colourful, youngish widow, Mrs. Truesdale, who wrote free verse about the larger intimacies of life, and dressed noticeably.  She would be a contributing editor of the New Dawn, having as her special department the release of woman from her age-long slavery to certain restraints that now made her talked unpleasantly about if she dared give her soul free rein.  This lady caused Sharon to wonder about the departed Truesdale.

“Was he carried away by sorrowing friends,” asked Sharon, “or did he get tired one day and move off under his own power?” No one ever enlightened him.

Others of the younger intelligentzia came under his biased notice.  He spoke of them as “a rabble rout,” who lived in a mad world—­“and God bless us out of it.”

But Sharon timed his criticism discreetly, and the New Dawn lit its pure white flame—­a magazine to refresh the elect.  Placed superbly beyond the need of catering to advertisers, it would adhere to rigorous standards of the true, the beautiful.  It would tell the truth as no other magazine founded on gross commercialism would dare to do.  It said so in well-arranged words.  The commercial magazines full well knew the hideous truth, but stifled it for hire.  The New Dawn would be honest.

The sinister truth about America as revealed in the initial number of the brave new venture was that America was crude, blatant, boastful, vulgar, and money-grubbing.  We were without ideals beyond the dollar; without desires save those to be glutted by material wealth.  It was the high aim of the New Dawn—­said the associate editor, Merle Dalton Whipple—­to dethrone the dollar, to hasten and to celebrate the passing of American greed.

Not until the second number was it revealed that the arch criminals were to be found in the exploiting class, a sinister combination, all-powerful, working to the detriment of the common people; an industrial oligarchy under whose rule the cowed wage slave toiled for his crust of bread.  This number unflinchingly indicted the capitalistic ruling class; fearlessly called upon the exploited masses to rise and throw off the yoke put upon them by this nefarious plunderbund.  The worker’s plight was depicted with no sparing of detail—­“the slaves groaning and wailing in the dark the song of mastered men, the sullen, satanic music of lost and despairing humanity.”