The Fountainhead (59 page)

He was twenty-one when his career on the
Gazette
was threatened, for the first and only time. Politics and corruption had never disturbed him; he knew all about it; his gang had been paid to help stage beatings at the polls on election days. But when Pat Mulligan, police captain of his precinct, was framed, Wynand could not take it; because Pat Mulligan was the only honest man he had ever met in his life.

The
Gazette
was controlled by the powers that had framed Mulligan. Wynand said nothing. He merely put in order in his mind such items of information he possessed as would blow the
Gazette
into hell. His job would be blown with it, but that did not matter. His decision contradicted every rule he had laid down for his career. But he did not think. It was one of the rare explosions that hit him at times, throwing him beyond caution, making of him a creature possessed by the single impulse to have his way, because the rightness of his way was so blindingly total. But he knew that the destruction of the
Gazette
would be only a first step. It was not enough to save Mulligan.

For three years Wynand had kept one small clipping, an editorial on corruption, by the famous editor of a great newspaper. He had kept it, because it was the most beautiful tribute to integrity he had ever read. He took the clipping and went to see the great editor. He would tell him about Mulligan and together they would beat the machine.

He walked far across town, to the building of the famous paper. He had to walk. It helped to control the fury within him. He was admitted into the office of the editor—he had a way of getting admitted into places against all rules. He saw a fat man at a desk, with thin slits of eyes set close together. He did not introduce himself, but laid the clipping down on the desk and asked: “Do you remember this?” The editor glanced at the clipping, then at Wynand. It was a glance Wynand had seen before: in the eyes of the saloonkeeper who had slammed the door. “How do you expect me to remember every piece of swill I write?” asked the editor.

After a moment, Wynand said : “Thanks.” It was the only time in his life that he 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 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-mouth 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 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 exposé 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 of himself was hard to believe. He drove them like an army; he drove himself like a slave. He paid them well; he 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.