In withholding advertising patronage from the Surtaine daily, the
business men were not only seeking reprisals, but also following a sound
business principle. For according to information sedulously spread
abroad, it was doubtful whether the "Clarion" would long survive. Elias
M. Pierce's boast that he would put it out of business gained literal
interpretation, as he had intended that it should. Contrary to his
accustomed habit of reticence, he had sought occasion to inform his
friends that he expected verdicts against the libeler of his daughter
which would throw the concern into bankruptcy, and, perhaps, its
proprietor into jail. No advertiser cares to put money into a
publication which may fail next week. Hence, though the circulation of
the "Clarion" went up pretty steadily, the advertising patronage did not
keep pace. Hal found himself hard put to it, at times, to cling to his
dogged hopes. But it was worth while fighting it out to the last dollar.
So much he was assured of by the messages of praise and support which
began to come in to him, not from "representative citizens," but from
the earnest, thoughtful, and often obscure toilers and thinkers of the
city: clergymen, physicians, laboring-men, working-women, sociological
workers--his peers.
Then, too, there was the profound satisfaction of promised victory over
the pest. For at the end of six weeks the battle was practically won; by
what heroisms, at the cost of what sacrifices, through what
disappointments, reversals, and set-backs, against the subtleties of
what underground opposition of political influence and twelve per cent
finance, is not to be set down here. The government publications tell,
in their brief and pregnant records, this story of one of the most
complete and brilliant victories in the history of American hygiene. My
concern is with the story, not of the typhus epidemic, but of a man who
fought for and surrendered and finally retrieved his own manhood and the
honor of the paper which was his honor. His share, no small one, in the
wiping-out of the pestilence was, to him, but part of the war for which
he had enlisted.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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