“Who? The mill people? Howled!”
“But it didn’t get them anything?”
“Didn’t it! You know how difficult it is to get anything for publication out of old Rockface Enderby. Well, I had a brilliant idea that this was something he’d talk about. Law Enforcement stuff, you know. And he did. Gave me a hummer of an interview. Tore the guts out of the mill-owners for violating all sorts of laws, and put it up that the mill-guards were themselves a lawless organization. There’s nothing timid about Enderby. Why, we’d have started a controversy that would be going yet.”
“Well, why didn’t you?”
“Interview was killed,” replied Edmonds, grinning ruefully. “For the best interests of the paper. That’s what the Vanney crowd’s kick got them.”
“Pop, what do you make of Willis Enderby?”
“Oh, he’s plodding along only a couple of decades behind his time.”
“A reactionary?”
“Didn’t I say he was plodding along? A reactionary is immovable except in the wrong direction. Enderby’s a conservative.”
“As a socialist you’re against any one who isn’t as radical as you are.”