Edmonds shot a swift glance at him. “What do you think?”
“I think,” he decided slowly, “it’s because there is a sort of stigma attached to reporting.”
“Damn you, you’re right!” snapped the veteran. “Though it’s the rankest heresy to admit it. There’s a taint about it. There’s a touch of the pariah. We try to fool ourselves into thinking there isn’t. But it’s there, and we admit it when we use a clumsy, misfit term like ‘newspaper man.’”
“Whose fault is it?”
“The public’s. The public is a snob. It likes to look down on brains. Particularly the business man. That’s why I’m a Socialist. I’m ag’in the bourgeoisie.”
“Aren’t the newspapers to blame, in the kind of stuff they print?”
“And why do they print it?” demanded the other fiercely. “Because the public wants all the filth and scandal and invasion of privacy that it can get and still feel respectable.”
“The Ledger doesn’t go in for that sort of thing.”
“Not as much as some of the others. But a little more each year. It follows the trend.” He got up, quenched his pipe, and reached for his hat. “Drop in here about seven-thirty when you feel like hearing the old man maunder,” he said with his slight, friendly smile.
Rising, Banneker leaned over to him. “Who’s the man at the next table?” he asked in a low voice, indicating a tall, broad, glossily dressed diner who was sipping his third demi-tasse, in apparent detachment from the outside world.