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felt gratitude to anyone. The gratitude was genuine--a payment for a lesson he

would never need again. But even the editor knew there was something very wrong

in that short "Thanks," and very frightening. He did not know that it had been

an obituary on Gail Wynand.

Wynand walked back to the Gazette, feeling no anger toward the editor or the

political machine. He felt only a furious contempt for himself, for Pat

Mulligan, for all integrity; he felt shame when he thought of those whose

victims he and Mulligan had been willing to become. He did not think

"victims"--he thought "suckers." He got back to the office and wrote a brilliant

editorial blasting Captain Mulligan. "Why, I thought you kinda felt sorry for

the poor bastard," said his editor, pleased. "I don’t feel sorry for anyone,"

said Wynand.

Grocers and deck hands had not appreciated Gail Wynand; politicians did. In his

years on the paper he had learned how to get along with people. His face had

assumed the expression it was to wear for the rest of his life: not quite a

smile, but a motionless look of irony directed at the whole world. People could

presume that his mockery was intended for the particular things they wished to

mock. Besides, it was pleasant to deal with a man untroubled by passion or

sanctity.

He was twenty-three when a rival political gang, intent on winning a municipal

election and needing a newspaper to plug a certain issue, bought the Gazette.

They bought it in the name of Gail Wynand, who was to serve as a respectable

front for the machine. Gail Wynand became editor-in-chief. He plugged the issue,

he won the election for his bosses. Two years later, he smashed the gang, sent

its leaders to the penitentiary, and remained as sole owner of the Gazette.

His first act was to tear down the sign over the door of the building and to

throw out the paper’s old masthead. The Gazette became the New York Banner. His

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friends objected. "Publishers don’t change the name of a paper," they told him.

"This one does," he said.

The first campaign of the Banner was an appeal for money for a charitable cause.

Displayed side by side, with an equal amount of space, the Banner ran two

stories: one about a struggling young scientist, starving in a garret, working

on a great invention; the other about a chambermaid, the sweetheart of an

executed murderer, awaiting the birth of her illegitimate child. One story was

illustrated with scientific diagrams; the other--with the picture of a

loose-mouthed girl wearing a tragic expression and disarranged clothes. The

Banner asked its readers to help both these unfortunates. It received nine

dollars and forty-five cents for the young scientist; it received one thousand

and seventy-seven dollars for the unwed mother. Gail Wynand called a meeting of

his staff. He put down on the table the paper carrying both stories and the

money collected for both funds. "Is there anyone here who doesn’t understand?"

he asked. No one answered. He said: "Now you all know the kind of paper the

Banner is to be."

The publishers of his time took pride in stamping their individual personalities

upon their newspapers. Gail Wynand delivered his paper, body and soul, to the

mob. The Banner assumed the appearance of a circus poster in body, of a circus

performance in soul. It accepted the same goal--to stun, to amuse and to collect

admission. It bore the imprint, not of one, but of a million men. "Men differ in

their virtues, if any," said Gail Wynand, explaining his policy, "but they are

alike in their vices." He added, looking straight into the questioner’s eyes: "I

am serving that which exists on this earth in greatest quantity. I am

representing the majority--surely an act of virtue?"

The public asked for crime, scandal and sentiment. Gail Wynand provided it. He

gave people what they wanted, plus a justification for indulging the tastes of

which they had been ashamed. The Banner presented murder, arson, rape,

corruption--with an appropriate moral against each. There were three columns of

details to one stick of moral. "If you make people perform a noble duty, it

bores them," said Wynand. "If you make them indulge themselves, it shames them.

But combine the two--and you’ve got them." He ran stories about fallen girls,

society divorces, foundling asylums, red-light districts, charity hospitals.

"Sex first," said Wynand. "Tears second. Make them itch and make them cry--and

you’ve got them."

The Banner led great, brave crusades--on issues that had no opposition. It

exposed politicians--one step ahead of the Grand Jury; it attacked

monopolies--in the name of the downtrodden; it mocked the rich and the

successful--in the manner of those who could never be either. It overstressed

the glamour of society--and presented society news with a subtle sneer. This

gave the man on the street two satisfactions: that of entering illustrious

drawing rooms and that of not wiping his feet on the threshold. The Banner was

permitted to strain truth, taste and credibility, but not its readers’ brain

power. Its enormous headlines, glaring pictures and oversimplified text hit the

senses and entered men’s consciousness without any necessity for an intermediary

process of reason, like food shot through the rectum, requiring no digestion.

"News," Gail Wynand told his staff, "is that which will create the greatest

excitement among the greatest number. The thing that will knock them silly. The

sillier the better, provided there’s enough of them."

One day he brought into the office a man he had picked off the street. It was an

ordinary man, neither well-dressed nor shabby, neither tall nor short, neither

dark nor quite blond; he had the kind of face one could not remember even while

looking at it. He was frightening by being so totally undifferentiated; he

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lacked even the positive distinction of a half-wit. Wynand took him through the

building, introduced him to every member of the staff and let him go. Then

Wynand called his staff together and told them: "When in doubt about your work,

remember that man’s face. You’re writing for him."

"But, Mr. Wynand," said a young editor, "one can’t remember his face."

"That’s the point," said Wynand.

When the name of Gail Wynand became a threat in the publishing world, a group of

newspaper owners took him aside--at a city charity affair which all had to

attend--and reproached him for what they called his debasement of the public

taste. "It is not my function," said Wynand, "to help people preserve a

self-respect they haven’t got. You give them what they profess to like in

public. I give them what they really like. Honesty is the best policy,

gentlemen, though not quite in the sense you were taught to believe."

It was impossible for Wynand not to do a job well. Whatever his aim, his means

were superlative. All the drive, the force, the will barred from the pages of

his paper went into its making. An exceptional talent was burned prodigally to

achieve perfection in the unexceptional. A new religious faith could have been

founded on the energy of spirit which he spent upon collecting lurid stories and

smearing them across sheets of paper.

The Banner was always first with the news. When an earthquake occurred in South

America and no communications came from the stricken area, Wynand chartered a

liner, sent a crew down to the scene and had extras on the streets of New York

days ahead of his competitors, extras with drawings that represented flames,

chasms and crushed bodies. When an S.O.S. was received from a ship sinking in a

storm off the Atlantic coast, Wynand himself sped to the scene with his crew,

ahead of the Coast Guard; Wynand directed the rescue and brought back an

exclusive story with photographs of himself climbing a ladder over raging waves,

a baby in his arms. When a Canadian village was cut off from the world by an

avalanche, it was the Banner that sent a balloon to drop food and Bibles to the

inhabitants. When a coal-mining community was paralyzed by a strike, the Banner

opened soup-kitchens and printed tragic stories on the perils confronting the

miners’ pretty daughters under the pressure of poverty. When a kitten got

trapped on the top of a pole, it was rescued by a Banner photographer.

"When there’s no news, make it," was Wynand’s order. A lunatic escaped from a

state institution for the insane. After days of terror for miles around--terror

fed by the Banner’s dire predictions and its indignation at the inefficiency of

the local police--he was captured by a reporter of the Banner. The lunatic

recovered miraculously two weeks after his capture, was released, and sold to

the Banner an expose of the ill-treatment he had suffered at the institution. It

led to sweeping reforms. Afterward, some people said that the lunatic had worked

on the Banner before his commitment. It could never be proved.

A fire broke out in a sweatshop employing thirty young girls. Two of them

perished in the disaster. Mary Watson, one of the survivors, gave the Banner an

exclusive story about the exploitation they had suffered. It led to a crusade

against sweatshops, headed by the best women of the city. The origin of the fire

was never discovered. It was whispered that Mary Watson had once been Evelyn

Drake who wrote for the Banner. It could not be proved.

In the first years of the Banner’s existence Gail Wynand spent more nights on

his office couch than in his bedroom. The effort he demanded of his employees

was hard to perform; the effort he demanded of himself was hard to believe. He

drove them like an army; he drove himself like a slave. He paid them well; he

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got nothing but his rent and meals. He lived in a furnished room at the time

when his best reporters lived in suites at expensive hotels. He spent money

faster than it came in--and he spent it all on the Banner. The paper was like a

luxurious mistress whose every need was satisfied without inquiry about the

price.

The Banner was first to get the newest typographical equipment. The Banner was

last to get the best newspapermen--last, because it kept them. Wynand raided his

competitors’ city rooms; nobody could meet the salaries he offered. His

procedure evolved into a simple formula. When a newspaperman received an

invitation to call on Wynand, he took it as an insult to his journalistic

integrity, but he came to the appointment. He came, prepared to deliver a set of

offensive conditions on which he would accept the job, if at all. Wynand began

the interview by stating the salary he would pay. Then he added: "You might

wish, of course, to discuss other conditions--" and seeing the swallowing

movement in the man’s throat, concluded: "No? Fine. Report to me on Monday."

When Wynand opened his second paper--in Philadelphia--the local publishers met

him like European chieftains united against the invasion of Attila. The war that

followed was as savage. Wynand laughed over it. No one could teach him anything

about hiring thugs to highjack a paper’s delivery wagons and beat up news

vendors. Two of his competitors perished in the battle. The Wynand Philadelphia

Star survived.

The rest was swift and simple like an epidemic. By the time he reached the age

of thirty-five there were Wynand papers in all the key cities of the United

States. By the time he was forty there were Wynand magazines, Wynand newsreels

and most of the Wynand Enterprises, Inc.

A great many activities, not publicized, helped to build his fortune. He had

forgotten nothing of his childhood. He remembered the things he had thought,

standing as a bootblack at the rail of a ferryboat--the chances offered by a

growing city. He bought real estate where no one expected it to become valuable,

he built against all advice--and he ran hundreds into thousands. He bought his

way into a great many enterprises of all kinds. Sometimes they crashed, ruining

everybody concerned, save Gail Wynand. He staged a crusade against a shady

streetcar monopoly and caused it to lose its franchise; the franchise was

granted to a shadier group, controlled by Gail Wynand. He exposed a vicious

attempt to corner the beef market in the Middle West--and left the field clear

for another gang, operating under his orders.

He was helped by a great many people who discovered that young Wynand was a

bright fellow, worth using. He exhibited a charming complaisance about being

used. In each case, the people found that they had been used instead--like the

men who bought the Gazette for Gail Wynand.

Sometimes he lost money on his investments, coldly and with full intention.

Through a series of untraceable steps he ruined many powerful men: the president

of a bank, the head of an insurance company, the owner of a steamship line, and

others. No one could discover his motives. The men were not his competitors and

he gained nothing from their destruction.

"Whatever that bastard Wynand is after," people said, "it’s not after money."

Those who denounced him too persistently were run out of their professions: some

in a few weeks, others many years later. There were occasions when he let

insults pass unnoticed; there were occasions when he broke a man for an

innocuous remark. One could never tell what he would avenge and what he would

forgive.

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One day he noticed the brilliant work of a young reporter on another paper and

sent for him. The boy came, but the salary Wynand mentioned had no effect on

him. "I can’t work for you, Mr. Wynand," he said with desperate earnestness,

"because you...you have no ideals." Wynand’s thin lips smiled. "You can’t escape

human depravity, kid," he said gently. "The boss you work for may have ideals,

but he has to beg money and take orders from many contemptible people. I have no