"'A certain city alderman residing not many miles from No. 1204 West Thirty-Second Street, has recently built a $10,000 residence. Votes in the city council must be getting higher.' "There were about fifteen items of the same kind and every one of them was a dead shot for big damages. I glanced at the society columns and saw a few harmless little squibs like the following: 'Mrs. General Crowder gave a big ball last night on Johnson Avenue. It does seem like she would get a divorce from that ticket agent in Kansas City before she tried to cut such a swell as old Crowder's wife.' "'Henry Baumgarten beat his wife again last night.' "'The Ladies' Histrionic Society met last evening over Klein's music store. Miss Sadie Dodson was overcome by the heat and was taken home in a hack. Heat! That's a new name for it.' "These are some of the least objectionable items. There were some that made my hair rise slowly on my head as I read them. "Mechanically I turned to the editorial page, thinking it hardly possible there could be anything wrong with it. The first article charged every city and county official with corruption in office, calling them by name, and wound up by offering to give $10,000 to any charity fund if the paper did not prove every charge within ten days. "I crept through the lot, knocked a board off the next fence and made my way to the back stairway of the office. I found two of my reporters cursing and kicking in the back yard. One of them was in a heap of soft coal dust and the other was hanging by his coat tail on a picket fence. Somebody had thrown them out the window. "Sick at heart I crept upstairs to the editorial rooms. There was considerable noise going on. I went in easy as I could and looked around. My $50 editorial writer was in a corner with half a chair in his hands defending himself manfully against a quorum of the city council. He had laid out three of them and was putting up a great fight. The city editor was lying on the floor with four men sitting on him, and a large, angry German was trying to punch the dramatic editor off the top of the book case with a piece of gas pipe. "It is enough to discourage any man to have a staff that is paying him $1,400 per month treated that way. "I went into my private office, and the enraged public followed me there. I knew it was no use to argue with them, so I pulled out my checkbook and tried to compromise. When all the money I had in the bank was exhausted, and another batch of infuriated citizens came in, I gave up in despair.