“We’ll fight him, when the time comes.”
“And meantime you boost him.”
“You’ll never understand the newspaper game, Martin. That was news; therefore worth printing.”
“I understand this, my boy; that you can’t afford to mix up with Laurens and his gang.”
“Oh, cheer up, Martin! I don’t intend to. But I can’t take your point of view in everything, much as I appreciate what you’ve done for the paper.”
Indeed, Jeremy had always given ungrudging acknowledgment of Embree’s services to The Guardian. That first boost in circulation through Embree’s efforts in the Northern Tier had been invaluable. And now, through his strength in local labor circles, Embree was being of assistance to Jeremy, in preventing strikes, and allaying trouble in the press-room. The center of disturbance there was the white-haired, sharp-tongued Socialist, Nick Milliken.
Most correct in his attitude toward his employer in work hours, Milliken asserted his independence outside the “shop” by invariably addressing him as “young feller” and usually reproaching him for “hanging onto a half-mile-post, like Mart Embree,” instead of coming out fair and square for Socialism and the millennium. As against him Embree played the big, stolid German-American foreman Girdner, who had influence among the men, and who was a political adherent of the Northern Tier Senator’s. On the whole the internal affairs of the office were satisfactory. Another connection between Embree and The Guardian office was maintained through Max Verrall, the Senator’s protégé, who, having made good as circulation manager, was now handling the paper’s advertising, as sub-head of that department under the general supervision of Andrew Galpin.
For all favors The Guardian repaid Martin Embree by its loyal and effectual political support. If the Senator’s friends were not always acceptable to Jeremy’s somewhat squeamish political standards, at least his enemies were The Guardian’s enemies. No “conspiracy of silence” on the part of the press opposed him now. The Guardian paid so much heed to his utterances that The Record was forced to take them up as a matter of news. Without this aid, Embree could not have been certain of the nomination for Governor at that time. Now it was practically assured to him. The account between him and Jeremy Robson stood fairly balanced to date.
Jeremy wondered how hard he would take the projected editorial campaign against the Germanizing of the public schools.