George Kibbe Turner

“ In a paroxysm of anger she dashed the Morning Truth, the great paper of all the people of Chibosh, in tattered fragments to the floor. “So this is politics!” she cried. “What you have to go through in politics!”
The two others bowed their heads in silent confirmation.
“Well, what's next? What's in yours?” the questioner asked aggressively of the second reader, the young woman with the curly, closely cut black hair and the eager, critical, uncompromising eyes of youth, who was holding a smaller journal in her hand, the widely circulated Peoples Pictures. ”

“ Just at that moment the telephone rang. It was the mayor's office upon the wire.
“Say, what's going on,” they were asking, “in this Women Home Defenders thing?”
“What is?” asked Mr. Melody, his calm face unchanged.
“They're joining it.”
“Who are?” asked Mr. Melody, hitching his chair nearer the desk.
“Women!” said the voice in an intense surprise.
“What?”
“Women! Real women! By the hundreds—thousands!”
“By the thousands!” repeated Mr. Melody, a sharp intonation in his voice.
“You'd think so if you saw the morning's mail and heard the telephone going all yesterday afternoon and today!” ”

“ Reading continually, their minds and imaginations stimulated by the great natural human desire to see a dog with a million-dollar playground, the great reading public of Chibosh had so overwhelmed and besieged and jostled, and finally hooted and cat-called the Taxpayers' Pageant of the North Side Women Voters' Club that it had been found expedient and really necessary for the police department of the great city to close the hall and the exhibit. ”

“ And now, at length, on this last Tuesday in January, the time had come for putting out the new women voters' organization—the last of the phantoms to go forth from the Phantom Factory of Herman J. True, the unbought, uncontrolled, unmanaged mayor of the plain, honest, common people.
Mr. Melody, the manager of this agency, divested of his green hat and seal-collared coat, seated himself deliberately at the flat-topped desk and pressed without delay at a push button. ”

“ Another voice succeeded hers.
“Don't! Don't worry so. Please, Mrs. Spillinghast!” it urged. “This is just politics.” Its owner was a dark young woman with dark curly and rather more than bobbed hair. Her voice was clear and eager. The glint of youth was in her dark bright eyes—that fine, healthy interest of normal youth intent forever to try its hand at overturning the varied human institutions which were established before its time and without its advice. “Let's look it in the face,” she advised practically. “Let's read them aloud—the headlines, I mean—in order.” ”

“ That all normal and fair-minded citizens should feel this pride in their own city would seem, my dear chief, a self-evident fact. But there are certain great and powerful interests, as you and I well know, which will feel no hesitancy in any defamation of their own city, no matter how false or how foul, if by so doing they can smirch and discredit the present administration of its government for their own advantage. ”

“ These designing and dishonest interests, using the immense vested secret power of great wealth, will in fact, as we know, not neglect or overlook any instrument, however humble, for the defaming of this city and its government through the medium of the public press, which they too often, directly or indirectly, control. The loss and return of a pet dog may seem to the unthinking a trivial matter, but it is often the unconsidered trifle which to the thinking mind is most significant ”

“ A young college graduate, bound upon a thorough exploration of the new intellectual life of adventure for women, she was now, after her three years out of college, a seasoned veteran in women's politics.
“Precisely,” said her older fellow worker in the women voters' field as she gazed at the society leader in the lavender negligee, whose personality and new club they had been using to advertise and further the great and difficult work of properly introducing the women of Chibosh into public affairs. ”

“ Melody calmly but very positively.
“Yeah?” inquired the unemotional Mr. Nott.
“They're out looking for serious moral stuff—the women. We'll give them a real issue with a wallop.”
Mr. Nott merely looked at him, even the angle of his cigarette unchanged. It was, of course, the almost daily business of the Phantom Factory to turn out issues with a wallop—strong, gripping, moral enough to catch and hold the great, alert, sophisticated population of Chibosh for the new democracy through the printed word.
“And then we'll pull that new mayor's women voters thing,” continued his chief. ”

“ Spillinghast with bitter logic. “What's my dog—your dog—anybody's dog got to do with the mayor or the tax rate or the streets? What's my poor little Panky Lou got to do with the police?”
As if to answer her own question, her eye fell upon the headlines—the more modest single-column headlines of the third paper, the Chronicle, the most conservative paper of Chibosh, which lay in her own lap. It seemed in a way slightly to pacify her. “Of course,” she said, “it is true. If we'd had any decent police—if there'd been any police department in the city—things like this would never happen ”

“ Snatching the Peoples Pictures, she gazed intently at the various likenesses which ornamented the first page—her own in her sables and plumed hat, holding her lost dog—a portrait which she herself had often previously in happier moments furnished the press. Following this came another picture of her dog, a picture of the million-dollar playground, a picture of her husband, Mr. J. Snuydam Spillinghast, printed over a map of Chibosh, showing the various large real-estate holdings he had inherited from what had once been his Great-Great-Grandfather Snuydam's farm ”

“ I want to say that taking care of the real crooks in this town don't worry the police department any. We've got them buffaloed, and they know it. What's worrying us as a force—like the rest of the people of this burg—is the way we're up against it with the big secret financial criminals, the ones with money that get away with murder, with their clever lawyers, under the law. ”

“ All around them, restricting and clogging every individual judgment or action, they felt that great, new, invisible power—that great, new, unseen, sticky influence—upon which the nations stand helpless, trembling and afraid, like flies upon the surface of fly paper ”

“ Spiggott, is especially timely and true. It has always been my personal belief that the nature of woman is to cleanse rather than defile; to defend rather than defame the home or the home city that she lives in. ”

“ The very wealthy manager and sponsor of the so-called educational exhibit will now perhaps retire from public life and devote herself to the care of her pet. In the meanwhile, chief, if you will permit me, I wish to thank you for the way in which your methods have reduced this attempt to absurdity, and to add to my own thanks—as I feel I am justified in doing the thanks of the really representative women of the city, whose attention is occupied day by day in the care of their children, and not dogs, however valuable ”

“ Organizations of merchants, manufacturers, real-estate owners, taxpayers, mothers, neighborhoods, rent payers—all these and many more have written urging that something must be done about this crying evil, which is so endangering both the fair name and the financial interests of our great home city. ”

“ Melody—with the Herman J. True Merchants and Manufacturers' Association, without merchants or manufacturers; the Mayor's Taxpayers' and Real-Estate Guardians, without taxes or real estate; the True Mothers' League, without mothers, and all the other phantom organizations of the new politics, to be used, laid away, revived or disbanded as it served the purposes of Mr. Melody and the higher publicity.
It had been another successful and busy six days for Mr. Michael F. Melody, the most carefully concealed of all the press agents of Chibosh. ”

“ Taxpayers' Pageant Huge Success
Mayor's Prompt Publicity Over Dog Episode
It carried also, as did the others, the full letter of Mayor True in praise of Chief Spoofenberger and in defense of the city; and, together with the remainder of the press, an editorial comment.
The editorial in the Morning Truth, the organ and defender of the administration, carried the longest and plainest comment under the caption:
Is a Dog Worth a $5000 Reward to a Wealthy Woman's Heart While So Many Children Starve? ”

“ J. Snuydam Spillinghast, a snapshot taken against her will just after her resignation, with her sables and plumes, but without her dog. Beside or below this came the limousine in which the dog was thought by some to have been concealed, with a cross opposite the back seat; the immense throng of citizens before the entrance of Great American Hall; the turning in of the riot call for more police; the corps of ambulances for the bruised and injured; the appearance of Chief Charles Spoofenberger in the act of closing the exhibit in the interests of public safety ”

“ Bertha J. Spiggott of the responsibility of organizing the True Women Home Defenders to preserve the fair name of Chibosh was printed upon the opening pages still, though in a minor place, and quite evidently closing a front-page continued story.
The plain, honest, simple people had won. Their enemies had been repelled and put to shame. The phantom women had been formed and stored away with the other phantoms of Mr. ”

“ The next will appear in an early issue.
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1952, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 71 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works. ”

“ That Taxpayers' Pageant in Great American Hall?” he asked.
“All over the first page—in everything!” his assistant confirmed him.
“Let's take a look,” said Mr. Melody, extending his hand for the newspaper clippings which formed such a critical feature of the Phantom Factory's daily work. Laying them upon the desk, he stared down at the first headline with calm, round, prominent blue eyes:
SOCIETY WOMEN ENTER POLITICS
Mark Mayor as Mere Mountebank
“So the women think they'll enter politics, huh?” said Mr. Melody in a calm, emotionless voice. “In Chibosh?” ”

“ He placed his thumb upon a button, and a tall, dark, reedlike stenographer with jade earrings, an incandescent complexion and deep Oriental eyes appeared in the doorway.
“Take an ad, Miss Spielberg,” directed Mr. Melody
Miss Spielberg was already seated, with her notebook at attention, when he started his dictation
FIVE THOUSAND DOLLARS REWARD
Lost, a dog. Genuine toy Mongolian Wee Wah. Answers name of Panky Lou. No questions asked. Five thousand dollars reward if returned to
Mrs. J. Snuydam Spillinghast,
103 Godowny Park
“You're to get that to the morning papers only. ”