There was in Tatchester, an opposition paper to the Tatshire Times. The Tatshire Times was a good old weekly Church and State Tory paper, supporting the landed interest and all those commercial interests by which the landed interests keep going. It believed in “the strong hand” in India, Ireland and native questions generally; it felt and said that strikers in industrial disputes did not know which side their bread was buttered, even when it was plainly not buttered on either side. It had a good many subscribers, and was used by local tradesmen who advertised in it constantly. In the last two years, an opposition weekly paper known as “a rag,” or “a red rag,” by the supporters of the Tatshire Times, had been established in Tatchester. This was the Tatshire Change. It was run very ably in the Labour interest, and was making its way. It had already taken nearly a third of the subscribers and a fifth of the advertisements from the Tatshire Times, and many tradesmen, who had at first feared to advertise in it, lest they should lose custom, were beginning to pluck up heart and consider whether they should not make a change.
Frampton had no “Labour leanings,” as his neighbours supposed; he hated revolutionaries as much as he hated tories; his business was to make guns and sell them, in doing which Labour papers were as troublesome to him as Tory Colonels in high places. He disliked inefficiencies, found them in all ranks and was intolerant of them everywhere. The wandering Devil, who was never far from his elbow when there was a chance of gratifying one of his angers, now prompted him to rouse the troubled waters a little more.
“Since she believes in these red brick villas,” he thought, “we’ll see if we can’t make her squirm.”
Just at that moment the telephone rang; it was the Tatshire Change speaking, to ask if he had anything to say about his proposed scheme of building on the Mullples Hill.
He had a moment of much happiness. He asked, if anything had yet been written in the Tatshire Change. The editor replied:
“No, we have no information, beyond the letters in the Toast $ Tea” (The local nickname for their rival.)
“Very well, then,” he answered. “I don’t want to talk over the telephone, for over a telephone a man’s words may be all misreported. I’m going to my Works now. If you care to come with me and see the Works, I’ll be glad to talk about it.”
This was too good a chance for the editor to miss. He came with Frampton to London, saw the Works, and heard his views. In a few days, just as the Tatshire Times was culling the flowers from the crop of correspondence about “the spoliation of Mullples beauty spot,” as they meant to call it, the Tatshire Change came out with a long article, and placarded it all over the city.
HOPE OF HOMES FOR HEROESMR. MANSELL EXPLAINS HIS NOBLE SCHEMEThere was a run on the Tatshire Change; it sold three editions before midnight. The buyers read the following:
