The satisfaction of this
demand did not pay an immediate return; he obtained little or no actual
material to be transmuted into the coin of so-much-per-column, except as
he came upon suggestions for editorial use; and, since his earlier
experience of The Ledger's editorial method with contributions (which he
considered light-fingered), he had forsworn this medium. Notwithstanding
this, he wrote or sketched out many an editorial which would have
astonished, and some which would have benefited, the Inside Room where
the presiding genius, malicious and scholarly, dipped his pen
alternately into luminous ether and undiluted venom. Some day, Banneker
was sure, he himself was going to say things editorially.
His opinion of the editorial output in general was unflattering. It
seemed to him bound by formalism and incredibly blind to the immense and
vivid interest of the news whereby it was surrounded, as if a man, set
down in a meadow full of deep and clear springs, should elect to drink
from a shallow, torpid, and muddy trickle. Legislation, taxes,
transportation problems, the Greatness of Our City, our National Duty
(whatever it might be at the time--and according to opinion), the drink
question, the race problem, labor and capital; these were the reiterated
topics, dealt with informatively often, sometimes wittily, seldom
impartially.
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