“How much purchasing power per year in the local stores would you suppose they represent?” asked Dana. “A big lot. Quarter of a million, maybe.”
“Nearer twice that. Now, we’ve got a little committee called the Committee on Selective Reading. I happen to be chairman of it. Our committee chooses what advertisements—you get that, Jem?—what advertisements shall be read each day. That’s our White List. Our members deal only with merchants whose loyalty is above suspicion. What would you think of the loyalty of an advertiser who quit The Guardian to go into The Fair Dealer?”
“Don’t ask me. I’m prejudiced.”
“So is the War Reading Club. It’s my committee’s business to keep ’em prejudiced—against any merchant who advertises in the wrong place. Now, our theory is that our members read no advertisements, themselves, and don’t intend to; certainly not after The Fair Dealer appears. Therefore they know of the local advertising only as the Committee on Selective Reading chooses it for them. That’s the theory.”
“What’s the fact?”
“The fact is that ninety-nine per cent of those women will see any merchant in town doubly damned before they spend a cent in his shop unless he sticks by The Guardian as long as The Guardian sticks by the country. Do you get it now?”
“Boycott!”
“And blackmail. You should have seen the weak-kneed among the store-people when we let our programme leak out! You heard part of it from Galpin.”
“Dana,” said the editor, “if you’d told me this before, you’d have saved me some mighty tough days.”
“Couldn’t risk it. Can’t you see that we’ve been skirting the ragged edge of the law? If you’d been in on it, The Fair Dealer could have charged conspiracy.”