“Do you know him, Pop?” inquired McHale.

“Never saw him.  Don’t have to.  I’ve read his stuff.”

“And you see it there?”

“Plain as Brooklyn Bridge.  He’ll eat mud like the rest of us.”

“Come off, Pop!  Where do you come in to eat mud?  You’ve got the creamiest job on Park Row.  You never have to do anything that a railroad president need shy at.”

This was nearly true.  Edmonds, who in his thirty years of service had filled almost every conceivable position from police headquarters reporter to managing editor, had now reverted to the phase for which the ink-spot had marked him, and was again a reporter; a sort of super-reporter, spending much of his time out around the country on important projects either of news, or of that special information necessary to a great daily, which does not always appear as news, but which may define, determine, or alter news and editorial policies.

Of him it was said on Park Row, and not without reason, that he was bigger than his paper, which screened him behind a traditional principle of anonymity, for The Courier was of the second rank in metropolitan journalism and wavered between an indigenous Bourbonism and a desire to be thought progressive.  The veteran’s own creed was frankly socialistic; but in the Fabian phase.  His was a patient philosophy, content with slow progress; but upon one point he was a passionate enthusiast.  He believed in the widest possible scope of education, and in the fundamental duty of the press to stimulate it.

“We’ll get the Social Revolution just as soon as we’re educated up to it,” he was wont to declare.  “If we get it before then, it’ll be a worse hash than capitalism.  So let’s go slow and learn.”

For such a mind to be contributing to an organ of The Courier type might seem anomalous.  Often Edmonds accused himself of shameful compromise; the kind of compromise constantly necessary to hold his place.  Yet it was not any consideration of self-interest that bound him.  He could have commanded higher pay in half a dozen open positions.  Or, he could have afforded to retire, and write as he chose, for he had been a shrewd investor with wide opportunities.  What really held him was his ability to forward almost imperceptibly through the kind of news political and industrial, which he, above all other journalists of his day, was able to determine and analyze, the radical projects dear to his heart.  Nothing could have had a more titillating appeal to his sardonic humor than the furious editorial refutations in The Courier, of facts and tendencies plainly enunciated by him in the news columns.

Nevertheless, his impotency to speak out openly and individually the faith that was in him, left always a bitter residue in his mind.  It now informed his answer to Van Cleve’s characterization of his job.

“If I can sneak a tenth of the truth past the copy-desk,” he said, “I’m doing well.  And what sort of man am I when I go up against these big-bugs of industry at their conventions, and conferences, appearing as representative of The Courier which represents their interests?  A damned hypocrite, I’d say!  If they had brains enough to read between the lines of my stuff, they’d see it.”