Price $1.00 a year.
Advertising rates reduced one half to all women and
to friends of the Suffrage Movement in Jordan County.
This was bad enough, but the crowning affront was the leading editorial.
"The Signal has become the property of the Co-Citizens' Foundation Fund, bequeathed by the late Sarah Hayden Mosely for the purpose of obtaining suffrage for women in Jordan County," was the opening sentence. "Henceforth the paper will be published in the interest of the Suffrage Movement and in any other interests which do not conflict directly or indirectly with this movement. No matter containing adverse criticism of suffrage for women will be published. And no advertisements from any source not known to be friendly to the movement will be accepted. For this reason all those which have not been paid for in advance have been excluded. Business men who desire the use of our columns for advertising should call at the office of the Signal at their earliest convenience, to give assurance of their support of the policy of this paper in order that they may still use its columns as an advertising medium."
The paragraph which followed stated brazenly that the majority of the citizens of Jordan County were heartily in favour of suffrage for women, and that they were determined no longer to endure "taxation without representation," and so forth and so on. There was no hysterical railing about the partialities of men for men in the administering of law and the interpretation of the rights of citizenship.
The astonished readers understood for the first time, however, that Jordantown and Jordan County were in the grip of something stronger than feminine sentimentality or even the Democratic party.
The office of the Signal had actually been moved to the Woman's Building. The transit took place some time during the night. No one knew when. Carter came and went through a side entrance formerly used by delivery wagons when they brought Sarah Mosely her meagre household supplies. He remained in seclusion there, as modest as a girl, and only Susan Walton knew with what diligence he laboured. No man dared to seek him in the seclusion of that place. And when Mike Prim called him over the 'phone, after the first issue of the Signal under the new management, demanding that he should come to his office at once, Carter declined to obey the summons. This was incredible. For years he had been the henchman of Prim. He had received from time to time modest sums for publishing copy prepared under Prim's supervision and designed to influence public opinion in proper Prim channels.
However, late one night when Carter slipped into the quiet side street with a roll of proof under his arm, he walked not exactly into the arms of Mike Prim, who was standing in the shadows just outside, but it would be more exact to say that he slipped directly in vocative range of Mike's rage.
"Look here, Carter, what the —— do you mean by selling the Signal to these blankety-blank-blank women?" he exclaimed as the editor started back astonished and for the moment disconcerted.