“The advertising is increasing.”
“Not in proportion to circulation. Nothing like.”
“If the proper ratio isn’t maintained, that is the concern of the advertising department, isn’t it?”
“Very much the concern. Will you talk with Mr. Haring about it?”
“No.”
Early in Banneker’s editorship it had been agreed that he should keep free of any business or advertising complications. Experience and the warnings of Russell Edmonds had told him that the only course of editorial independence lay in totally ignoring the effect of what he might write upon the profits and prejudices of the advertisers, who were, of course, the principal support of the paper. Furthermore, Banneker heartily despised about half of the advertising which the paper carried; dubious financial proffers, flamboyant mercantile copy of diamond dealers, cheap tailors, installment furniture profiteers, the lure of loan sharks and race-track tipsters, and the specious and deadly fallacies of the medical quacks. Appealing as it did to an ignorant and “easy” class of the public (“Banneker’s First-Readers,” Russell Edmonds was wont to call them), The Patriot offered a profitable field for all the pitfall-setters of print. The less that Banneker knew about them the more comfortable would he be. So he turned his face away from those columns.
The negative which he returned to Marrineal’s question was no more or less than that astute gentleman expected.
“We carried an editorial last week on cigarettes, ‘There’s a Yellow Stain on Your Boy’s Fingers—Is There Another on his Character?’”
“Yes. It is still bringing in letters.”
“It is. Letters of protest.”