“From the tobacco people?”
“Exactly. Mr. Banneker, don’t you regard tobacco as a legitimate article of use?”
“Oh, entirely. Couldn’t do without it, myself.”
“Why attack it, then, in your column?”
“Because my column,” answered Banneker with perceptible emphasis on the possessive, “doesn’t believe that cigarettes are good for boys.”
“Nobody does. But the effect of your editorial is to play into the hands of the anti-tobacco people. It’s an indiscriminate onslaught on all tobacco. That’s the effect of it.”
“Possibly.”
“And the result is that the tobacco people are threatening to cut us off from their new advertising appropriation.”
“Out of my department,” said Banneker calmly.
Marrineal was a patient man. He pursued. “You have offended the medical advertisers by your support of the so-called Honest Label Bill.”