To his great delight the editor of “Macintyre’s Monthly” looked with favor upon the suggestion, and asked to see an article at once. So Thyrsis shut himself up in a hotel-room and wrote it over night. It proved to be so full of “ginger” that the editorial staff of Macintyre’s was delighted, and made suggestions as to another article; at which point Thyrsis made a desperate effort and summoned up his courage, and insinuated politely that his stuff was worth five cents a word. The editor-in-chief replied promptly that that seemed to him proper.
Two hundred dollars for an article! Here indeed was fame! The author went home, and thought out another one, and after a week came up to the city with it.
In this new article Thyrsis cited a presidential candidate before the bar of public opinion, and propounded troublesome questions to him. Here was the capital of the country, heaping itself up at compound interest, and demanding dividends; here were the people, scraping and struggling to furnish the necessary profits. Would they always be able to furnish enough; and what would happen when they could no longer furnish them? Here were franchises obtained by bribery, and capitalized for hundreds of millions of dollars; and these millions, too, were heaping up automatically. Were they to draw their interest and dividends forever? Here were the machines of production, increasing by leaps and bounds, and the product increasing still faster, and all counting upon foreign markets. What would happen when Japan had its own machines, and India had its own machines, and China had its own machines? Again, the processes of production were being perfected, and displacing men; here were panics and crises, displacing—yet more men. Already, in England, a good fourth of the population had been displaced; and what were these displaced populations to do? They had finished making over the earth for the capitalists; and now that the work was done, there seemed to be no longer any place on the earth for them!
Such were the problems of our time, according to Thyrsis; and why did the statesmen of the time have nothing to say about them? When this article had been read and discussed, young “Billy” Macintyre himself sent for Thyrsis. This was the “real thing”, said he, with his genial bonhomie; the five hundred thousand subscribers of Macintyre’s must surely have these mirth-provoking meditations. Also, the editors themselves needed badly to be stirred up by such live ideas; therefore would Thyrsis come to dinner next Friday evening, and, as “Billy” phrased it, “throw a little Socialism at them”?
Section 11. So Thyrsis moved one step higher yet up the ladder of success. The younger Macintyre occupied half a block of mansion up on Riverside Drive—just across the street from the town-house of Barry Creston’s father. Thyrsis found himself in an entrance-hall where wonderful pictures loomed vaguely in a dim, religious light; and a silent footman took his cap, and then escorted him by a soft, plush-covered stairway to the apartments of “Billy”, who was being helped into a dress-suit by his valet. Thyrsis, alas, had no dress-suit, and no valet to help him into it, but he sat on the edge of a big leather chair and proceeded to “throw a little Socialism” at his host. Then they went down stairs, and there were Morris and Hemingway, of the editorial staff, and “Buddie” Comings, most popular of novelists, and “Bob” Desmond, most famous of illustrators. And a little later on came Macintyre the elder, who had also been judged to stand in need of some Socialism.
Macintyre the elder was white-haired and rosy-cheeked. He had begun life as an emigrant-boy, running errands for a book-shop. In course of time he had become a partner, and then had started a cheap magazine for the printing of advertisements. From this had come the reprinting of cheap books for premiums; until now, after forty years, Macintyre’s was one of the leading publishing-concerns of the country. Recently the important discovery had been made that the printing of half-inch advertisements headed “FITS” and “OBESITY” prevented the securing of full-page advertisements about automobiles. The former kind was therefore being diverted to the religious papers of the country, whose subscribers were now getting the “blood of the lamb” diluted with twenty-five per cent. alcohol and one and three-fourths per cent. opium. But such facts were not allowed to interfere with the optimistic philosophy of “Macintyre’s Monthly”.
The elder Macintyre seemed to Thyrsis the most naïve and lovable old soul he had encountered in many a year. When he espied Thyrsis, he waited for no preliminaries, but went up to him as he stood by the fire-place, and put an arm about him, and led him off to a seat by the window. “I want to talk to you,” said he.
“My boy,” he went on, “I read that article of yours.”
“Which one?” asked Thyrsis.
“The last one. And you know, Billy’s got to stop putting things like that in the magazine!”