Modern Journalism
The "Progressive Workers" has been especially busy in arranging for the joint debate between their own and the Republican candidates, and they were in full force and early at the meeting. When eight o'clock came and Gertrude Van Deusen had not appeared, they felt no anxiety, but as the moments passed and she did not come, they began to be surprised and then alarmed.
"Gertrude is always prompt," said Mrs. Bateman, as they waited in the ante-room. "I cannot imagine what is keeping her. Telephone over to her house, Anna, and see if she has left, won't you? I have to attend to things here."
Mrs. Stillman hurried to the telephone, coming back later with a puzzled expression on her aristocratic features.
"Her cousin says she left there at half past seven in an automobile," she said. "It is half past eight now."
"An automobile?" said Mrs. Bateman. "Did anybody send for her, I wonder?"
No one seemed to know. Their candidate had always been transported in her own carriage and no one had thought of sending for her. Still, some friend might have done so—and in an automobile, Bailey Armstrong, for instance—who had a new one. Nothing was more natural than—
But just then Bailey came into the ante-room.
"It's the strangest thing," he began, "Miss Van Deusen does not come, and nobody seems to know where she is. And Jack Allingham is missing, too. None of his friends can account for his absence. What are we going to do?"
"Do?" repeated Mrs. Bateman. "What can we do?"
"The audience—a crowded one—is getting impatient," Bailey went on. "We've got to begin somehow. The other side have a speaker whom they can put on, but we—"
"Go on yourself, Bailey," said Mrs. Mason. "You'll have to. We can fill up the time somehow until Gertrude comes."
After a hurried consultation with the representatives from Allingham's committee, the meeting was opened and the speaking began. But although those who addressed the audience were eloquent enough, they were unprepared, and moreover, were conscious that their listeners were keeping one eye upon the door; in short, everybody present desired only to hear the two appointed speakers; so that the affair was most perfunctory. The minutes grew into hours, and these did not arrive. Mrs. Mason, Mrs. Bateman, even Mary Snow, were sent out to the platform to represent the woman's side, and although they were well received, the meeting broke up at eleven o'clock with a distinct sense of disappointment, not to say failure. The audience dispersed with but one question:
"Where are they? and why have they not come?"
A little after two, Gertrude called up Mrs. Bateman and told her of the events which had transpired since she had started out for the joint debate; but it was too late to send explanations to any other member of the committee.
"Are you going to let it get into the newspapers?" asked Mrs. Bateman.
"Not I," said Gertrude. "Think what a miserable sensation it would make."
"Then I must call up Allingham's house and ask them to suppress it," answered Mrs. Bateman. "But what excuse can we make? Something must be said in explanation."
"I don't know," said Gertrude wearily. "I leave that to you and Judge Bateman. I do not want it to get into the newspapers."
"Very well; then I will call up the Allingham's" responded Mrs. Bateman. Which she did, and found that Mrs. Allingham was horror-stricken at the bare suggestion that the kidnaping of her son should be written up for the press.
"He is asleep," she said, "and has been since the doctor put on his last bit of plaster; but as soon as he wakens I will ask him what I shall tell you to say. Anyhow, we will keep it out of the papers, if possible."
But all the same the next morning the story was featured in every journal in town, with more or less display according to the style of each individual paper. Naturally, the more conservative of them strove to tell the story correctly and insinuated that the Burke party were behind the "contemptible trick;" but the sheet which upheld the "City Hall crowd," as all Roma termed its municipal authorities, gave a most sensational account, telling it with a flippant and gleeful inaccuracy which spoke volumes for the accomplishments of modern yellow journalism. It headed its article thus:
"CANDIDATES IN COLLISION"
"Handsome Woman Candidate and Aristocratic Aspirant for Mayoralty Flee from Joint Debate, only to Crash Together in the Woods and Return in Electric Cab Together."
A portion of the article ran as follows:
"For weeks the advocates of higher education for women and the shriekers for female suffrage who have been pushing the daughter of the late Senator Van Deusen forward in her attempt to become Mayor of Roma, have been laboring to arrange a joint debate in which their candidate should take the platform and discuss the issues of our city campaign with that scion of would-be American Royalty, Jack Allingham. They have left no stone unturned to interest the public in this expected clash of argument and trial of brain-power. (We refrain from commenting here upon the minimum quantity of the latter necessary to such a debate.) Finally they had, with great flourish of trumpets and beating of drums—(we are speaking politically, not literally now)—arranged for such a debate on the very evening before election day.
"Last night Brocklebank Hall was crowded with the usual audience of mixed social position and nationality in attendance at mass-meetings of the Republican and Independent parties in Roma. They had gathered to hear the accumulated perorations of wit and wisdom on the part of their two candidates. They were to decide, finally, which one to vote for today; to make up their little minds whether to put into the mayor's chair a stiff, conservative aristocrat who cares no more for the laboring classes of Roma than he does for its work-horses—(or its mules) or a young woman of good ancestry, but no actual knowledge of municipal affairs—only an inherited cock-sureness of opinion on any and every subject that may come up.
"Did they hear this great joint debate?
"No. Why? Because during the hours while the impatient audience were beguiled by feeble arguments from mushroom speakers, who attempted to amuse them while they waited, the principal actors in this farce were miles away, chasing each other about in electric cabs, which at a distance of twenty miles or more from Brocklebank Hall collided and threw the aspiring occupants out in a deep wood. Thus doth fate pursue the over-ambitious and wreck their plans.
"When the chauffeurs returned from the farmhouse whence they had gone for help in extricating their machines, Allingham, the aristocrat, lay prone on the ground with his head in the lap of her who had been his whilom opponent for the mayor's chair. A sight fit for the gods, truly—and also for the voters of Roma.
"The couple, erstwhile at swords' points, but now tucked cosily together in one electric cab, were later brought back to Roma at one o'clock in the morning—she none the worse for her skillful evasion of the platform contest, and he with a slight scalp wound only, to show that he had been worsted.
"It remains now for the voters of Roma to consider whether such candidates as these are to be considered fit to be trusted with the affairs of our enterprising young city—and to vote accordingly."