For reply I had a prompt letter from Mr. Godwin asking me to see him at his home. There he asked and urged me to become managing editor of the paper from that hour forth. He told me he was losing money in large sums upon its conduct, and appealed to me to come to his rescue, urging that he was "too old and too indolent" himself to put life into the enterprise.
The question of salary was not mentioned between us. He appealed to me to help him and I stood ready to do so at any sacrifice of personal interest or convenience. But when the board of directors of the corporation met a month later, he moved an adequate salary for me and suggested that it should be dated back to the day on which I had taken control. A certain excessively small economist on the board objected to the dating back on the ground that no bargain had been made to that effect and that he was "constitutionally opposed to the unnecessary squandering of money."
"The salary arranged for our managing editor is the just reward of the service he is rendering. He has been giving us that service from the hour of his entrance upon office. He is as justly entitled to compensation for that time as for the future. Either the board must pay it or I will pay it out of my own pocket. We are neither beggars nor robbers, and we take nothing that we do not pay for." There spoke the great, honest-minded man that Parke Godwin always was.
It was a difficult task I had undertaken. There were many obstacles in the way. The chief of these was pointed out by Mr. John Bigelow when he said to me:
"You're going to make yours a newspaper for the educated classes. It is my opinion that there are already too many newspapers for the educated classes."
I am disposed to think the old journalist and statesman had a prophetic vision of the early coming time when success in newspaper editing would be measured by the skill of newspaper proprietors in making their appeal to the uneducated classes--to the million instead of the few thousands.
A more perplexing difficulty beset me, however. I had a definitely fixed and wholly inadequate sum of money to expend weekly in making the paper, and when I came to look over my payroll I found that the greater part of the sum allowed me went to pay the salaries of some very worthy men, whose capacity to render effective service to a "live" modern newspaper was exceedingly small. I had sore need of the money these men drew every week, with which to employ reporters who could get news and editors who knew how to write. The men in question held their places by virtue of Mr. Godwin's over-generous desire to provide a living for them.