“I’ve got that fixed,” replied Maynard Clyde, who had been acting as general factotum for the household in its various lines of endeavor. “Mrs. Ellery gave a party to our crowd Friday night,” he explained to Dr. Strong, “and Monday one of the Ellery girls came down with diphtheria.”
“What have you done about it?” asked the Health Master.
“Notified all the people who were there. That was easy. The trouble is that a lot of the fellows have gone back to college since: to Hamilton, Michigan, Wisconsin, Harvard, Columbia,—I suppose there were a dozen colleges represented.”
“And you think that’s too wide a field for the follow-up system?” asked his father.
“Why, no,” said the boy thoughtfully. “I figured that starting a new epidemic would be worse than adding to an old one. So I went to Mrs. Ellery and got a list of her guests, and I wrote to every college the fellows have gone back to, and wrote to the fellows themselves. They probably won’t thank me for it.”
“They ought to give you a life-saving medal each,” declared Dr. Strong. “As for the situation here”—his face darkened—“we’re not making any general headway. The public isn’t aroused, and it won’t be until we can get the newspapers to take up the fight. The thing that discourages me is that they won’t help. I don’t understand it.”
“Don’t you? I do,” said Clyde grimly. “Their advertisers won’t let ‘em print anything about it. As I told you in the matter of closing the schools, business is frightened. The department stores, theaters, and other big advertisers are afraid that the truth about the epidemic would scare away trade. So they are compelling the papers to keep quiet.”
“Idiots!” cried Dr. Strong. “Suppressing news is like suppressing gas. The longer you do it, the more violent the inevitable explosion. But when I called on the editors, they didn’t say anything to me about the advertising pressure. It was, ‘We should be glad to help in any way, Dr. Strong. But an alarmist policy is not for the best interests of Worthington; and the good of our community must always be the first consideration.’—Bah! The variations I’ve heard on that sickening theme today! The ‘Press,’ the ‘Clarion,’ the ‘Evening News,’ the ‘Telegram, the ‘Observer’—all of ‘em.”
“You didn’t mention the ‘Star,’” said Grandma Sharpless.
“That rag? It’s against everything decent and for everything rotten in this town,” said Clyde.