To avoid the coming storm, already
negro malefactors and white, were "streaming" as Travers phrased it, "in
dark clouds" out of town, for brief sojourns, beyond reach of the
compelling subpoena, in Kansas City, Missouri.
By five o'clock the edition, an extra large one, had been almost
exhausted, and people were lining up at the newspaper office, paying
five cents a copy....
"Senator" Blair rushed back, having heard of what he called our
"treachery" and abuse of his confidence, over telephone....
He looked sick and worried, as if he had run in all the way from the
little lake, five miles from town, where he had gone for his week-end of
idyllic, peaceful fishing....
"You've ruined me, you boys have!" he almost sobbed, collapsing fatly in
his chair, then he flamed, "by God, I'll have you each investigated
personally and clapped in jail," ... which threat, however, he did not
even try to carry through....
Instead, his paper, and the other two town papers, tried to turn off the
affair as a mere college joke, played on a whole community....
But we had expected just such action--rather the executive genius of
Jerome had expected it--for which reason we had confronted the readers
of the _Globe_ with damning facts and statistics, carefully gathered,
which presented an insurmountable barrier to evasion.
And as we also had expected, the Civic Betterment League was also dead
against us.
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