Not long ago a few advertisers in a big American city wanted unfairly low rates for advertisements and tried to use force with the newspapers. Three or four of the biggest shops combined and gave notice that they would take their advertising away unless the rates came down. After a little, they drew in a few other lines of business with them, and suddenly one morning five or six full pages of advertisements were withdrawn from every newspaper in the city. The newspapers went on publishing all the news of the city except news as to what people could buy in department stores, and waited. They made no counter-move of any kind, and said nothing and seven days slipped past. They held to the claim that the service they performed in connecting the great stores with the people of the city was a real service, that it represented market value which could be proved and paid for. They kept on for another week publishing for the people all the news of the city except the news as to how they could spend their money. They wondered how long it would take the great shops with acres of things to sell to see how it would work not to let anybody know what the things were. The great shops tried other ways of letting people know. They tried handbills, a huge helpless patter of them over all the city. They used billboards, and posted huge lists of items for people to stop and read in the streets, if they wanted to, while they rushed by. For three whole weeks they held on tight to the idea that the newspapers were striking employees of department stores. One would have thought that they would have seen that the newspapers were the representatives of the people--almost the homes of the people--and that it would pay to treat them respectfully. One would have thought they would have seen that if they wanted space in the homes of the people--places at their very breakfast tables--space that the newspapers had earned and acquired there, they would have to pay their share of what it had cost the newspapers to get it. One would have thought that the department shops would have seen that the more they could make the newspapers prosper, the more influence the newspapers would have in the homes of the people, and the more business they could get through them. But it was not until the shopowners had come down and gazed day after day on the big, white, lonely floors of their shops that they saw the truth. Crowds stayed away, and proved it to them. Namely: a store, if it uses a great newspaper, instead of having a few feet of show windows on a street for people to walk by, gets practically miles of show windows for people--in their own houses--sells its goods almost any morning to the people--to a whole city--before anybody gets up from breakfast--has its duties as well as its rights.