ot tolerant was interference from without in
his department.

Before allowing his man to leave, Mr. Vanney read him a long and
well-meant homily, full of warning and wisdom, and was both annoyed and
disheartened when, at the end of it, Banneker remarked:

"I'll dare you to take a car and spend twenty-four hours going about
Sippiac with me. If you stand for your system after that, I'll pay for
the car."

To which the other replied sadly that Banneker had in some manner
acquired a false and distorted view of industrial relations.

Therein, for once in an existence guided almost exclusively by
prejudice, Horace Vanney was right. At the outset of a new career to
which he was attuning his mind, Banneker had been injected into a
situation typical of all that is worst in American industrial life, a
local manufacturing enterprise grown rich upon the labor of underpaid
foreigners, through the practice of all the vicious, lawless, and
insidious methods of an ingrown autocracy, and had believed it to be
fairly representative. Had not Horace Vanney, doubtless genuine in his
belief, told him as much?

"We're as fair and careful with our employees as any of our
competitors."

As a matter of fact there were, even then, scores of manufacturing
plants within easy distance of New York, representing broad and generous
policies and conducted on a progressive and humanistic labor system. Had
Banneker had his first insight into local industrial conditions through
one of these, he might readily have been prejudiced in favor of capital.
As it was, swallowing Vanney's statement as true, he mistook an evil
example as a fair indication of the general status. Then and there he
became a zealous protagonist of labor.

It had been Mr. Horace Vanney's shrewd design to show a budding
journalist of promise on which side his self-interest lay. The weak spot
in the plan was that Banneker did not seem to care!

CHAPTER V

Banneker's induction into journalism was unimpressive. They gave him a
desk, an outfit of writing materials, a mail-box with his name on it,
and eventually an assignment. Mr. Mallory presented him to several of
the other "cubs" and two or three of the older and more important
reporters. They were all quite amiable, obviously willing to be helpful,
and they impressed the observant neophyte with that quiet and solid
_esprit de corps_ which is based upon respect for work well performed in
a common cause. He apprehended th