Foreign advertising, such as the nationally exploited automobiles, soaps, razors, breakfast foods, and the like was now coming in in good volume, a most encouraging development, for these big advertisers exercise a keen discrimination in the matter of newspaper space, and their general support not only makes a paper “look good” to the technical eye, but also gives it a certain cachet among lesser concerns. To the high-grade national businesses The Guardian had made special appeal by expelling from its columns the fake financial, oil, gold, rubber, and real-estate dollar-traps, and the quack cure-alls, whose neighborhood in print the reputable concerns resent.
To offset this, the paper had lost in volume of local advertising. Several of the large stores had cut down their space, in token of resentment over the raise in rates, and had restored it only gradually and not to the full. Barclay & Bull had stayed out for more than six months. But this helped more than it hurt The Guardian, for their business showed a marked falling-off and their being obliged to come back in, rather shamefacedly, was testimony to the paper’s value. Turnbull Brothers, of The Emporium, the largest of the department stores, had, however, cut off The Guardian wholly, in consequence of its reporting a fire in the local freight yard, with the detail that a large consignment to The Emporium of the bankrupt stock of Putz & Lewin, of Chicago, was included in the losses. As the arrival of this consignment was coincident with the announcement of The Emporium’s annual “Grand Clearance Sale,” the effect was, as their advertising manager passionately stated to Jeremy, “derogatory as hell.” He demanded a retraction. The editor politely regretted that facts were both untractable and unretractable matter to deal with. The Turnbulls threatened libel. Jeremy told them to go ahead and promised to print daily accounts of the proceedings. The Turnbulls resorted to violent names and called off their contract for advertising. Jeremy dismissed them with his blessing, and told them not to come back until they had learned the distinction between advertising and news. Thereupon Verrall bewailed the sad fate of the advertising manager of a paper whose chief was an irreconcilable stiff-neck, and appealed to Andrew Galpin, but got nothing by that step other than unsympathetic advice to confine his troubles to his own department lest a worse thing befall him.