“Oh, you can. What does he want out of us?”
“I suppose he wants to know who wrote the article, and if we purpose a series. I shall tell him we do, and that I hope the next number of it will be an article by him on the Grievances of Employers. We need one, and it ought to sweeten him. Anyhow it will show him we’ve no prejudice in the matter. He can say all workers are pampered and all days too short, if he likes. I should think that would be him coming up now.”
It was not him, but a sturdy and sweet-faced young man with an article on the Irrelevance of the Churches to the World’s Moral Needs. The editors, always positive, never negative, altered the title to the Case for Secularism. It was to be set next to an article by a Church Socialist on Christianity the Only Remedy. The sweet-faced young man objected to this, but was over-ruled. In the middle of the discussion came the factory owner, and Eddy was left alone to deal with him. After that as many of the contributors as found it convenient met at lunch at the Town’s End Tavern, as they generally did on Fridays, to discuss the next week’s work.
This was at the end of January, when Unity had been running for two months. The first two months of a weekly paper may be significant, but are not conclusive. The third month is more so. Mr. Wilfred Denison, who published Unity, found the third month conclusive enough for him. He said so. At the Town’s End on a foggy Friday towards the end of February, Arnold and Eddy announced at lunch that Unity was going to stop. No one was surprised. Most of these people were journalists, and used to these catastrophic births and deaths, so radiant or so sad, and often so abrupt. It is better when they are abrupt. Some die a long and lingering death, with many recuperations, artificial galvanisations, desperate recoveries, and relapses. The end is the same in either case; better that it should come quickly. It was an expected moment in this case, even to the day, for the contract with the contributors had been that the paper should run on its preliminary trial trip for three months, and then consider its position.
Arnold, speaking for the publishers, announced the result of the consideration.
“It’s no good. We’ve got to stop. We’re not increasing. In fact, we’re dwindling. Now that people’s first interest in a new thing is over, they don’t buy us enough to pay our way.”
“The advertisements are waning, certainly,” said someone. “They’re nearly all books and author’s agencies and fountain pens now. That’s a bad sign.”
Arnold agreed. “We’re mainly bought now by intellectuals and non-political people. As a political paper, we can’t grow fat on that; there aren’t enough of them.... We’ve discussed whether we should change our aim and become purely literary; but after all, that’s not what we’re out for, and there are too many of such papers already. We’re essentially political and practical, and if we’re to succeed as that, we’ve got to be partisan too, there’s no doubt about it. Numbers of people have told us they don’t understand our line, and want to know precisely what we’re driving at politically. We reply we’re driving at a union of parties, a throwing down of barriers. No one cares for that; they think it silly, and so do I. So, probably, do most of us; perhaps all of us except Oliver. Ned Jackson, for instance, was objecting the other day to my anti-Union article on the Docks strike appearing side by side with his own remarks of an opposite tendency. He, very naturally, would like Unity not merely to sing the praise of the Unions, but to give no space to the other side. I quite understand it; I felt the same myself. I extremely disliked his article; but the principles of the paper compelled us to take it. Why, my own father dislikes his essays on the Monistic Basis to be balanced by Professor Wedgewood’s on Dualism as a Necessity of Thought. A philosophy, according to him, is either good or bad, true or false. So, to most people, are all systems of thought and principles of conduct. Very naturally, therefore, they prefer that the papers they read should eschew evil as well as seeking good. And so, since one can’t (fortunately) read everything, they read those which seem to them to do so. I should myself, if I could find one which seemed to me to do so, only I never have.... Well, I imagine that’s the sort of reason Unity’s failing; it’s too comprehensive.”
“It’s too uneven on the literary and artistic side,” suggested a contributor. “You can’t expect working-men, for instance, who may be interested in the more practical side of the paper, to read it if it’s liable to be weighted by Raymond’s verse, or Le Moine’s essays, or Miss Dawn’s drawings. On the other hand, the clever people are occasionally shocked by coming on verse and prose suitable for working men. I expect it’s that; you can’t rely on it; it’s not all of a piece, even on its literary side, like Tit-Bits, for instance. People like to know what to expect.”
Cecil Le Moine said wearily in his high sweet voice, “Considering how few things do pay, I can’t imagine why any of you ever imagined Unity would pay. I said from the first ... but no one listened to me; they never do. It’s not Unity’s fault; it’s the fault of all the other papers. There are hundreds too many already; millions too many. They want thinning, like dandelions in a garden, and instead, like dandelions, they spread like a disease. Something ought to be done about it. I hate Acts of Parliament, but this is really a case for one. It is surely Mr. McKenna’s business to see to it; but I suppose he is kept too busy with all these vulgar disturbances. Anyhow, we have done our best now to stem the tide. There will be one paper less. Perhaps some of the others will follow our example. Perhaps the Record will. I met a woman in the train yesterday (between Hammersmith and Turnham Green it was), and I passed her my copy of Unity to read. I thought she would like to read my Dramatic Criticism, so it was folded back at that, but she turned over the pages till she came to something about the Roman Catholic Church, by some Monsignor; then she handed it back to me and said she always took the Record. She obviously supposed Unity to be a Popish organ. I hunted through it for some Dissenting sentiments, and found an article by a Welsh Calvinistic Methodist on Disestablishment, but it was too late; she had got out. But there it is, you see; she always took the Record. They all always take something. There are too many.... Well, anyhow, can’t we all ask each other to dinner one night, to wind ourselves up? A sort of funeral feast. Or ought the editors to ask the rest of us? Perhaps I shouldn’t have spoken.”