AN UNSOUGHT-FOR COMBAT 327 



the fight once more. It was recommenced by our printer 

 suddenly announcing one Tuesday afternoon that he would 

 not print the paper any more. We had to go to press on 

 Wednesday and they had control of most of the printing 

 trade. The position was one of much difficulty, and Mr 

 Bottomley has written in a book of his that the paper 

 did not come out that week. In this, however, he is 

 mistaken, for we managed to find a printer all right, but 

 only for cash, and with the other we had always done 

 business on the basis of monthly accounts, and then he 

 drew on us at three months. 



Thus for four months to come there would be the 

 cheerless prospect of paying cash to one printer and 

 meeting the bills of the other. In fact it was a double 

 outlay for that period. 



The most deadly move of all was when the enemy 

 sent round a circular letter to the publishing trade 

 threatening them with libel actions if they distributed 

 52 Stephen's Review. This did not affect firms like Messrs 

 Smith & Sons, but the smaller publishers were easily 

 alarmed, and the circulation was reduced by over 2000 

 copies within a fortnight. 



Meanwhile, however, the Hansard Publishing Union 

 had not come off scathless, and was getting badly on the 

 rocks, though it is far from my purpose to go into that 

 story. The grievous thing was that The Parson and the 

 Painter was coming out every week to an artificially 

 reduced circulation, and I knew so well what was its real 

 value, if people could only see it. 



But we were engaged in a contest with opponents who 

 were for the time being full of money, and for the first 

 time in the strenuous eight years of the paper I saw the 

 shadows really darken. Amid the turmoil of the conflict 

 Radclyffe recovered from his illness and came back. We 

 did all possible in the way of guaranteeing publishers 

 against any conceivable action of the Hansard Union, 

 but the small ones who sold only a quire or half-a-quire 

 of the paper were not sufficiently interested to take any 



