It was during this period, this summer time and fall, that I came in contact with some of the most interesting characters, newspaper men especially, flotsam and jetsam who drifted in here from other newspaper centers and then drifted out again, newspaper men so intelligent and definite in some respects that they seemed worthy of any position or station in life and yet so indifferent and errant or so poorly placed in spite of their efforts and capacities as to cause me to despair for the reward of merit anywhere—intellectual merit, I mean. For some of these men while fascinating were the rankest kind of failures, drunkards, drug fiends, hypochondriacs. Many of them had stayed too long in the profession, which is a young man’s game at best, and others had wasted their opportunities dreaming of a chance fortune no doubt and then had taken to drink or drugs. Still others, young men like myself, drifters and uncertain as to their future, were just finding out how unprofitable the newspaper game was and in consequence were cynical, waspish and moody.
I am not familiar with many professions and so cannot say whether any of the others abound in this same wealth of eccentric capacity and understanding, or offer as little reward. Certainly all the newspaper offices I have ever known sparkled with these exceptional men, few of whom ever seemed to do very well, and no paper I ever worked on paid wages anywhere near equal to the services rendered or the hours exacted. It was always a hard, driving game, with the ash-heap as the reward for the least weakening of energy or ability; and at the same time these newspapers were constantly spouting editorially about kindness, justice, charity, a full reward for labor, and were getting up fresh-air funds and so on for those not half as deserving as their employees, but—and this is the point—likely to bring them increased circulation. In the short while I was in the newspaper profession I met many men who seemed to be thoroughly sound intellectually, quite free, for the most part, from the narrow, cramping conventions of their day, and yet they never seemed to get on very well.
I remember one man in particular, Clark I think his name was, who arrived on the scene just about this time and who fascinated me. He was so able and sure of touch mentally and from an editorial point of view, and yet financially and in every material way he was such a failure. He came from Kansas City or Omaha while I was on the Republic and had worked in many, many places before that. He was a stocky, dark, clerkly figure, with something of the manager or owner or leader about him, a most shrewd and capable-looking person. And when he first came to the Republic he seemed destined to rise rapidly and never to want for anything, so much self-control and force did he appear to have. He was a hard worker, quiet, unostentatious, and once I had gained his confidence, he gradually revealed a tale of past position and comfort which, verified as it was by Wandell and Williams, was startling when contrasted with his present position. Although he was not much over forty he had been editor or managing editor of several important papers in the West but had lost them through some primary disaster which had caused him to take to drink—his wife’s unfaithfulness, I believe—and his inability in recent years to stay sober for more than three months at a stretch. In some other city he had been an important factor in politics. Here he was, still clean and spruce apparently (when I first saw him, at any rate), going about his work with a great deal of energy, writing the most satisfactory newspaper stories; and then, once two or three months of such labor had gone by, disappearing. When I inquired of Williams and Wandell as to his whereabouts the former stared at me with his one eye and smiled, then lifted his fingers in the shape of a glass to his mouth. Wandell merely remarked: “Drink, I think. He may show up and he may not. He had a few weeks’ wages when he left.”
I did not hear anything more of him for some weeks, when suddenly one day, in that wretched section of St. Louis beloved of Dick and Peter as a source of literary material, I was halted by a figure which I assumed to be one of the lowest of the low. A short, matted, dirty black beard concealed a face that bore no resemblance to Clark. A hat that looked as though it might have been lifted out of an ash-barrel was pulled slouchily and defiantly over long uncombed black hair. His face was filthy, as were his clothes and shoes, slimy even. An old brown coat (how come by, I wonder?) was marked by a greenish slime across the back and shoulders, slime that could only have come from a gutter.
“Don’t you know me, Dreiser?” he queried in a deep, rasping voice, a voice so rusty that it sounded as though it had not been used for years “—Clark, Clark of the Republic. You know me——” and then when I stared in amazement he added shrewdly: “I’ve been sick and in a hospital. You haven’t a dollar about you, have you? I have to rest a little and get myself in shape again before I can go to work.”
“Well, of all things!” I exclaimed in amazement, and then: “I’ll be damned!” I could not help laughing: he looked so queer, impossible almost. A stage tramp could scarcely have done better. I gave him the dollar. “What in the world are you doing—drinking?” and then, overawed by the memory of his past efficiency and force I could not go on. It was too astonishing.
“Yes, I’ve been drinking,” he admitted, a little defiantly, I thought, “but I’ve been sick too, just getting out now. I got pneumonia there in the summer and couldn’t work. I’ll be all right after a while. What’s news at the Republic?”
“Nothing.”
He mumbled something about having played in bad luck, that he would soon be all right again, then ambled up the wretched rickety street and disappeared.
I hustled out of that vicinity as fast as I could. I was so startled and upset by this that I hurried back to the lobby of the Southern Hotel (my favorite cure for all despondent days), where all was brisk, comfortable, gay. Here I purchased a newspaper and sat down in a rocking-chair. Here at least was no sign of poverty or want. In order to be rid of that sense of failure and degradation which had crept over me I took a drink or two myself. That any one as capable as Clark could fall so low in so short a time was quite beyond me. The still strongly puritan and moralistic streak in me was shocked beyond measure, and for days I could do little but contrast the figure of the man I had seen about the Republic office with that I had met in that street of degraded gin-mills and tumbledown tenements. Could people really vary so greatly and in so short a time? What must be the nature of their minds if they could do that? Was mine like that? Would it become so? For days thereafter I was wandering about in spirit with this man from gin-mill to gin-mill and lodging-house to lodging-house, seeing him drink at scummy bars and lying down at night on a straw pallet in some wretched hole.