But it's quite possible that if the Sippiac
Mills had been a heavy advertiser, the paper wouldn't have sent me to
the riots. Some one more sympathetic, maybe."
"Didn't they kick on your story?"
"Who? The mill people? Howled!"
"But it didn't get them anything?"
"Didn't it! You know how difficult it is to get anything for publication
out of old Rockface Enderby. Well, I had a brilliant idea that this was
something he'd talk about. Law Enforcement stuff, you know. And he did.
Gave me a hummer of an interview. Tore the guts out of the mill-owners
for violating all sorts of laws, and put it up that the mill-guards were
themselves a lawless organization. There's nothing timid about Enderby.
Why, we'd have started a controversy that would be going yet."
"Well, why didn't you?"
"Interview was killed," replied Edmonds, grinning ruefully. "For the
best interests of the paper. That's what the Vanney crowd's kick got
them."
"Pop, what do you make of Willis Enderby?"
"Oh, he's plodding along only a couple of decades behind his time."
"A reactionary?"
"Didn't I say he was plodding along? A reactionary is immovable except
in the wrong direction. Enderby's a conservative."
"As a socialist you're against any one who isn't as radical as you are.
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