The situation was unthinkable.
Still, unthinkable as it was, it continued. Mr. Myson had thought of everything except this. Naturally it had not occurred to him that an immense and serious effort for the general weal was going to be blocked by a gang of tatterdemalions.
He complained, with dignity, to the Signal, and was informed, with dignity, by the Signal that the Signal could not be responsible for the playful antics of its boys in the streets; that, in short, the Five Towns was a free country. In the latter proposition Mr. Myson did not concur.
After trouble in the persuasion of parents—astonishing how indifferent the Five Towns' parent was to the loss of blood by his offspring!—a case reached the police-court. At the hearing the Signal gave a solicitor a watching brief, and that solicitor expressed the Signal's horror of carnage. The evidence was excessively contradictory, and the Stipendiary dismissed the summons with a good joke. The sole definite result was that the boy whose father had ostensibly brought the summons got his ear torn within a quarter of an hour of leaving the court. Boys will be boys.
Still, the Daily had so little faith in human nature that it could not believe that the Signal was not secretly encouraging its boys to be boys. It could not believe that the Signal, out of a sincere desire for fair play and for the highest welfare of the district, would willingly sacrifice nearly half its circulation and a portion of its advertisement revenue. And the hurt tone of Mr. Myson's leading articles seemed to indicate that in Mr. Myson's opinion his older rival ought to do everything in its power to ruin itself. The Signal never spoke of the fight. The Daily gave shocking details of it every day.
The struggle trailed on through the weeks.
Then Denry had one of his ideas. An advertisement was printed in the Daily for two hundred able-bodied men to earn two shillings for working six hours a day. An address different from the address of the Daily was given. By a ruse Denry procured the insertion of the advertisement in the Signal also.
"We must expend our capital on getting the paper on to the streets," said Denry. "That's evident. We 'll have it sold by men. We 'll soon see if the Signal ragamuffins will attack them. And we won't pay 'em by results; we'll pay 'em a fixed wage; that 'll fetch 'em. And a commission, on sales into the bargain. Why! I would n't mind engaging five hundred men. Swamp the streets! That's it! Hang expense. And when we 've done the trick, then we can go back to the boys; they'll have learnt their lesson."
And Mr. Myson agreed, and was pleased that Denry was living up to his reputation.
The state of the earthenware trade was supposed that summer to be worse than it had been since 1869, and the grumblings of the unemployed were prodigious, even seditious. Mr. Myson, therefore, as a measure of precaution engaged a couple of policemen to ensure order at the address, and during the hours, named in the advertisement as a rendezvous for respectable men in search of a well-paid job. Having regard to the thousands of perishing families in the Five Towns, he foresaw a rush and a crush of eager breadwinners. Indeed, the arrangements were elaborate.