“Ay-ah. That was a fool question of mine. But I mean, you can feel the paper taking hold all the time, can’t you? We’re certainly putting it over. We’ve made a Governor already. What do you expect? Want to elect a President and Congress?” “The Governor is one of my troubles, Andy.” “Butting in?” “You can’t call it that.” “What can you call it?” demanded the downright Galpin. “Well, boosting. Without him we would n’t be where we are.” “Nor anywhere else,” added the other with emphasis. “Probably not. I appreciate that. I’d _give_ him the paper, if he needed it, as far as that goes. But as long as my name is on it, I want it to be my paper.” “Well, ‘Smiling Mart’ isn’t trying to pry it away from you, is he?’ “Of course not. It’s hard to put into words. But I feel as if I--we--The Guardian were being surrounded by a sort of political web.” “The Governor being the spider?” “No. It’s his web, in a way; but he is n’t spinning it. It’s being spun for him and for us. All our readers identify us completely with his policies. If I say anything editorially, it commits the Governor. People take it for granted that we ‘re his mouthpiece. It is n’t fair to him or to us.” “Does he take advantage of it?” “We--ell; I don’t know. He does n’t mean to. Every now and then, though, something will come up where he wants us to do this or not to do that--always some unimportant thing--because of its influence on more important things that we ‘re both interested in.” “As for instance?” “Take all this boosting, press-agent stuff that comes along and that Embree wants in,” replied Jeremy. “Sometimes it’s political. Sometimes it’s personal. Sometimes it’s the German stuff that Wymett used to talk about. I’ve got to admit that Embree’s view is always for the practical good of the paper. By following his advice, we’ve held sulky advertisers more than once. But I know this, I’m doing for him--and for the politics of it--and for the paper itself, in a way, I guess--what I would n’t do for any advertiser. And sometimes it’s been a matter of principles. Not very important, maybe, but principles just the same. Compromise, Andy.” “Life’s mostly compromise, I guess. There’s a little more of it in the newspaper game than in other lines because the newspaper touches life at more points than any other business.” “I’ve always thought,” pursued Jeremy, “that when I came to own a newspaper it would be independent if it was n’t anything else. Well, look at The Guardian!” “Ay-ah. I’m looking at it. What’s wrong with it?” “It’s ducking a little here, and dodging a little there, and trying to be cautious about this issue and polite about that man, and so on. That is n’t my notion of being independent.” “What is? I guess we’re as cocky as any paper in the country. You can’t tell all the people to go to hell all the time,” pointed out the general manager, reasonably. “I don’t want to. But I want to be able to if I do want to. Am I talking like a fool, Andy?”