“The Ledger doesn’t ask its men to eat dirt, Edmonds,” put in Mallory sharply.
“Chop, fried potatoes, coffee, and a stein of Nicklas-brau,” Banneker specified across the table to the waiter. He studied the mimeographed bill-of-fare with selective attention. “And a slice of apple pie,” he decided. Without change of tone, he looked up over the top of the menu at Edmonds slowly puffing his insignificant pipe and said: “I don’t like your assumption, Mr. Edmonds.”
“It’s ugly,” admitted the other, “but you have to answer it. Oh, not to me!” he added, smiling. “To yourself.”
“It hasn’t come my way yet.”
“It will. Ask any of these fellows. We’ve all had to meet it. Yes; you, too, Mallory. We’ve all had to eat our peck of dirt in the sacred name of news. Some are too squeamish. They quit.”
“If they’re too squeamish, they’d never make real newspaper men,” pronounced McHale. “You can’t be too good for your business.”
“Just so,” said Tommy Burt acidly, “but your business can be too bad for you.”
“There’s got to be news. And if there’s got to be news there have got to be men willing to do hard, unpleasant work, to get it,” argued Mallory.
“Hard? All right,” retorted Edmonds. “Unpleasant? Who cares! I’m talking about the dirty work. Wait a minute, Mallory. Didn’t you ever have an assignment that was an outrage on some decent man’s privacy? Or, maybe woman’s? Something that made you sick at your stomach to have to do? Did you ever have to take a couple of drinks to give you nerve to ask some question that ought to have got you kicked downstairs for asking?”
Mallory, flushing angrily, was silent. But McHale spoke up. “Hell! Every business has its stinks, I guess. What about being a lawyer and serving papers? Or a manufacturer and having to bootlick the buyers? I tell you, if the public wants a certain kind of news, it’s the newspaper’s business to serve it to ’em; and it’s the newspaper man’s business to get it for his paper. I say it’s up to the public.”