Soon or late these questions would come to an issue between the new owner of The Guardian and those who had quietly controlled it for their own ends. So much Jeremy Robson apprehended. What he had not foreseen was a more immediate and imperative consideration. He had vaguely believed that he was taking possession of a semipublic agency of enlightenment. He found that he had bought a Struggle for Existence. Quite a number of shrewd and active citizens whose existence had not hitherto impressed him as important, loomed as figures and probably antagonists in the struggle. Jeremy found himself in the way of learning some new and important things about the newspaper business, with his local advertisers in the pedagogic chair. Newspapers do not live by the bread of circulation alone, but chiefly by the strong and sustaining meat of advertising patronage. This important fact had duly entered into Jeremy Robson’s calculations. On paper he had figured a clear profit for The Guardian, before purchasing. After taking over the property he found his estimates borne out by the formal accounts. But he also found, to his discomfiture, that The Guardian’s books had been kept by a sunny optimist with a taste for fiction. This gentleman had plugged up the discrepancies in the papers finances with ingenious figures, as a boat-jerry might doctor a leaky seam with putty and paint--for sale only. The book figures showed but one scale of advertising rates, with the normal discounts to heavy users of space. While the new toy was still agleam in the eyes of its proud possessor with all the glamour of novelty, he began to discover that instead of a standard price to advertisers. The Guardian had more scales than even so fishy a proposition was entitled to; that, in fact, A. M. Wymett had peddled about his precious advertising space like a man with stolen diamonds to sell, and covered the shady transactions by a system of ingenious and destructive rebates. Thus, the columns which young Mr. Robson had confidingly calculated at four to nine cents per line, were actually fetching from five cents downward. “That’s the first thing to be set right,” announced Jeremy after a profoundly unsatisfactory study of his property’s earning capacity as contrasted with its paper profits. “We’ll have a one-price-to-all system hereafter.” “Ay-ah,” drawled Andrew Galpin, to whom the decision was communicated. “Your advertisers ’ll just love that!” “They ought to be satisfied. It’s the only square way.” “Oh, they’ll be satisfied if you put the scale low enough. But if you put the scale low enough you’ll go broke.” “Wymett did n’t go broke.” “The Guardian had other sources of revenue under Wymett.” “Such as the Cheese Bill fund?” “Occasionally. Also the steady, reliable revenue from the advertising matter that does n’t bear the a-d-v sign.” “You mean store ‘readers’ and that sort of thing? I’m going to cut those out.”