The Bread Line: A Story of a Paper

by Albert Bigelow Paine

Perner brightened.

Barrifield rose to go.

"We can't get him any too quick, either," he added. "You've got your hands about full. I can see that!"

In fact, Perner was beginning to look worn. It had been decided some weeks previous that a time had arrived when one of them must devote himself wholly to the affairs of the forthcoming publication, and as Perner was to be editor as well as manager pro tem., besides having but little cash to put in, as he had confessed in the beginning, he was selected for the sacrifice. A stated salary was agreed upon, which amount was to be applied each week on his stock subscription in lieu of cash. How he was to live on the comfortable-looking, though intangible, figure that he passed each Saturday to his credit on stock until such times as returns began to assume definite form, he did not, with all his business experience, pause to consider. He began at once the task of shaping their more or less formless fancies, and the equally difficult one of subsisting on the returns from certain labors already concluded and disposed of to those periodicals here and there which, in some unexplained manner, have assumed the privilege of holding matter to suit their convenience and paying for it on publication. These checks fluttered in now and then, and were as rare jewels found by the wayside. He was still confident of success. If his enthusiasm and flesh had waned the least bit, it was because realities hitherto unconsidered were becoming daily more assertive and vigorous. Of these there were many. From the moment of his return from breakfast—two hours earlier than he had ever thought necessary in the old days—there were men and also women waiting to see him. The fact of the "Whole Family" had become known, even as the hunted stag becomes known to birds of prey in the far empyrean, and solicitors of all kinds had begun to gather at the first croaking note of rumor.

There were those who wished to advertise it upon illuminated cards set in frames to be placed in country hotels and railway stations; there were others who would announce it by a system of painted signs sown broadcast on the fences; and still others who for a consideration would display the good news upon dizzy mountain cliffs and the trees of the mighty forest, where even the four-footed kingdoms might see and rejoice at the glad tidings.

Of those who solicited for publications there were a legion. Monthlies and weeklies of which Perner had not even heard marshalled their clans and swooped down in companies, battalions, and brigades. All of these he could turn over to Bates when he came on: the printers, engravers, contributors, and the people with circulation schemes were enough for him.

As to the latter contingent, Van Dorn and Livingstone relieved him somewhat, and rather enjoyed doing so. It was in the nature of a diversion to them to listen to these wordy emissaries of the east wind, who unfolded more or less startling schemes that ranged all the way from a house-to-house canvass for subscribers, through various voting contests, up to the securing by lobby an act of Congress adopting the paper as the official organ of some forty millions of school-children. It was more pleasant to listen and to discuss with this garrulous advance-guard of fortune in her various guises than to pursue her more ploddingly at the easel. This gave some relief to Perner, though, on the whole, he would have preferred seeing them at work. Livingstone, it is true, did work feverishly at his painting now and then, for as much as an hour or more at a time, and between him and Van Dorn the various headings and one or two other drawings had come into being. But there was still much for them to do, and their seeming inability to get down to business, now that matters were really under way, was sometimes, as he had hinted to Barrifield, altogether discouraging. Later in the day he abused them roundly.

"How do you expect we are going to get out a paper once a week?" he asked. There had come the lull which precedes lunch-time, and Perner was standing in his door and glaring at them with undisguised scorn. His disarranged hair and the light on his glasses gave him the appearance of a very tall beetle. "Once a week! Do you know what that means? It means not once a year, nor once a month, but every seven days! Here we've been going nearly seven months, and you haven't got pictures for one issue yet! How in the world do you expect to get out from six to eight pictures a week for the next issues? That's what you've got to do, you know, until we get started and money is coming in to buy outside work with. Even then we can't depend on that for the class of stuff we want. You could do it, too, without turning a hair, if you'd just puncture a few of these wind-bags that come along, and get down to work!"

"Oh, pshaw! Perny; there's plenty of time," said Van Dorn, pacifically. "Stony and I are Committee on Circulation."

"That's so," said Livingstone. "We had one man to-day who wanted to put copies of our first issue into seventeen million packages of starch for distribution throughout the entire civilized world. Van told him it was a stiff proposition."