With a pluck which nothing could daunt, Wayland opened out in Girard, Kansas, and modestly commenced another paper. This time he called it the “Appeal to Reason,” but in spirit and purpose it was “The Coming Nation” risen from its grave. Patiently, persistently, fearlessly, Wayland hammered away at Girard until he built up a monster circulation, and again was the owner of an extremely valuable property—the product of him, the said Wayland. No other man could have made that paper. No other man could any more be Wayland, and do what Wayland does, than any other man could be Edison, and do what Edison does.
By every sane and just rule, the Appeal to Reason was Wayland’s property. He had gone into a desert, with a handful of type and a bottle of ink, and by the force of his genius had brought forth a finished product—a successful newspaper.
What happened to him then is only a matter of rumor. Conjectures can also be made from some indignant, sorrowful sentences which he published over his own signature.
But it seems clear that his Ruskin experience was repeated. His angel-brothers made him take his own medicine in heroic doses. The men who had not created the paper, claimed an equal share in it—or something of that sort; and there were the usual points made against Wayland which the small would-be leaders make against the leader.
Rumor had it that Wayland went through a Gethsemane of peculiar bitterness, but just how it all was, the outside world was not given to know. The great soldier in the cause of humanity covered the wounds his own men had made, and was too proud to complain.
But Wayland is now making a mistake.
He is offering land prizes for the largest number of subscribers. He proposes that, as a premium, in a certain competition on subscriptions, he will convey, by deed, a farm in Florida to the fortunate Socialist who gets the greatest number of subscribers to the Appeal to Reason! I can hardly believe what I see in Wayland’s own paper.
What! Is it possible that Wayland has wickedly gone and bought a quantity of land?
Is it possible that he has “robbed” some honest citizen of his real estate?