THE GREAT NEWSPAPER WAR - The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns

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The struggle trailed on through the weeks.

Then Denry had one of his ideas. An advertisement was printed in the _Daily_ for two hundred able-bodied men to earn two shillings for working six hours a day. An address different from the address of the _Daily_ was given. By a ruse Denry procured the insertion of the advertisement in the _Signal_ also.

"We must expend our capital on getting the paper on to the streets," said Denry. "That's evident. We'll have it sold by men. We'll soon see if the _Signal_ ragamuffins will attack _them_. And we won't pay 'em by results; we'll pay 'em a fixed wage; that'll fetch 'em. And a commission on sales into the bargain. Why! I wouldn't mind engaging _five_ hundred men. Swamp the streets! That's it! Hang expense. And when we've done the trick, then we can go back to the boys; they'll have learnt their lesson."

And Mr Myson agreed and was pleased that Denry was living up to his reputation.

The state of the earthenware trade was supposed that summer to be worse than it had been since 1869, and the grumblings of the unemployed were prodigious, even seditious. Mr Myson therefore, as a measure of precaution, engaged a couple of policemen to ensure order at the address, and during the hours, named in the advertisement as a rendezvous for respectable men in search of a well-paid job. Having regard to the thousands of perishing families in the Five Towns, he foresaw a rush and a crush of eager breadwinners. Indeed, the arrangements were elaborate.

Forty minutes after the advertised time for the opening of the reception of respectable men in search of money, four men had arrived. Mr Myson, mystified, thought that there had been a mistake in the advertisement, but there was no mistake in the advertisement. A little later two more men came. Of the six, three were tipsy, and the other three absolutely declined to be seen selling papers in the streets. Two were abusive, one facetious. Mr Myson did not know his Five Towns; nor did Denry. A Five Towns' man, when he can get neither bread nor beer, will keep himself and his family on pride and water. The policemen went off to more serious duties.

III

Then came the announcement of the thirty-fifth anniversary of the _Signal_, and of the processional _fete_ by which the _Signal_ was at once to give itself a splendid spectacular advertisement and to reward and enhearten its boys. The _Signal_ meant to liven up the streets of the Five Towns on that great day by means of a display of all the gilt chariots of Snape's Circus in the main thoroughfare. Many of the boys would be in the gilt chariots. Copies of the anniversary number of the _Signal_ would be sold from the gilt chariots. The idea was excellent, and it showed that after all the _Signal_ was getting just a little more afraid of its young rival than it had pretended to be.

For, strange to say, after a trying period of hesitation, the _Five Towns Daily_ was slightly on the upward curve--thanks to Denry. Denry did not mean to be beaten by the puzzle which the _Daily_ offered to his intelligence. There the _Daily_ was, full of news, and with quite an encouraging show of advertisements, printed on real paper with real ink--and yet it would not "go." Notoriously the _Signal_ earned a net profit of at the very least five thousand a year, whereas the _Daily_ earned a net loss of at the very least sixty pounds a week--and of that sixty quite a third was Denry's money. He could not explain it. Mr Myson tried to rouse the public by passionately stirring up extremely urgent matters--such as the smoke nuisance, the increase of the rates, the park question, German competition, technical education for apprentices; but the public obstinately would not be roused concerning its highest welfare to the point of insisting on a regular supply of the _Daily_. If a mere five thousand souls had positively demanded daily a copy of the _Daily_ and not slept till boys or agents had responded to their wish, the troubles of the _Daily_ would soon have vanished. But this ridiculous public did not seem to care which paper was put into its hand in exchange for its halfpenny, so long as the sporting news was put there. It simply was indifferent. It failed to see the importance to such an immense district of having two flourishing and mutually-opposing daily organs. The fundamental boy difficulty remained ever present.

		"There are a million ways to lose a work day, but not even a single way to get one back. " Tom De Marco