It was Arthur Krock, who also worked on The World, who finally let Cain know what was happening. One day, the two men were having lunch in the World dining room. Krock greeted Cain amiably and asked how things were going, to which Cain mumbled some evasive reply. Krock asked what was wrong, and Cain said: “Oh, I guess things are all right, but I don’t know who I’m kidding. For Christ sake, I can’t write editorials.”
“Nonsense,” Krock said. “You’re doing fine. Lippmann is pleased. But you have to stop getting serious. Keep on writing those funny pieces you started with.” Then Krock cited Maxwell Anderson’s experience. “He’d been doing the light editorials for Walter,” Krock explained, “but instead of sticking to what he did well — the human, sentimental kind of pieces — he was getting serious, and Lippmann was relieved when Anderson quit. Now you’re doing the same thing.” Krock pointed out that Lippmann had Allan Nevins on history, Charles Merz on politics, W. O. Scroggs on economics, John Heaton on state politics, and Lippmann himself on international affairs. “But pleasant, light pieces, with enough intellect in them to spike up the letter column and be worth publishing, are tough to get. That’s what he wants from you.”
“You mean this nonsense I write is worth something?” Cain asked. “They pay you for stuff like that? They actually pay you?”
Cain still could not believe that his lighthearted japes were what Lippmann wanted. But he was getting the message. He went back to his office and wrote that a man convicted of the unlawful practice of medicine handed out cards on which were printed “B.T.H.M.P.S.D.C.” Asked by the judge what the initials meant, the man replied, “Baptist, Truth, Heaven, Master of Political Science, and Doctor of Chiropractic.” Cain thought this was a fine idea and suggested similar sheepskins for bootleggers, brokers, and bandits, with the credentials for the last one reading: “B.S.U.Y.H.Q.O.I.B.Y.O. — Bandit, Stick Up Your Hands Quick Or I’ll Bump You Off.”
Lippmann was happy again, and Cain was given a three-year contract for $125 a week. Now he could go down to Baltimore and tell his mother, “You’ve been proclaiming for years that I don’t have good sense, and events have proved you’re right — but in New York they pay you for it.”
For the next six years Cain wrote editorials, and one amusing example is reprinted below to record the flavor of the writing which Lippmann admired so much.
The American Eagle
Some time ago we ventured the opinion that much of the hostility to evolution would be allayed if it were discovered that man is descended not from the ape but from the American eagle. “Breathes there the man with soul so dead,” we ask, “that he would not be proud to be descended from the American eagle?” And for this brilliant patriotic fight, we are taken to task by H. B. Bowdish, Secretary-Treasurer of the Audubon Society of New Jersey. In a letter which we published a day or two ago he informs us that the American eagle (although classed as a bird of prey) “seldom kills his quarry, but resorts to robbing the fish-hawk.” Again, he often eats dead fish. Again, Alaska has placed a bounty on his head. Thus, our correspondent concludes, “it is entirely possible that the man’s soul will not have to be so dead that he shall not covet the honor of having descended from such an unfortunate bird.”
We accept this statement of the case. Having accepted it, we cry once more. “Hurrah for the American eagle!” Does he eat dead fish? Then so do all patriotic Americans! Does he live under a cloud in Alaska? Then shame on Alaska! Does he rob the fish-hawk? Then all honor to him! This shows that he has the real American spirit. When he sees this marauder, this predatory devourer of the minnows, the salmon, the speckled trout, and all the other lovely fish which swim in our streams; when he sees this outlaw winging homeward at sundown, helpless prey wriggling in cruel talons — when he sees this outrage, does he shrug his shoulders, like Pilata, and say “This is none of my affair.” He does not. With one great swoop he descends from the blue; with one great swipe he annihilates the foe; with one graceful sweep he gathers up the fish as it falls through the air and bears it to his own proud aerie. And then: Well, as aerie is not an aquarium, you know; it is hardly his fault if the fish dies. And after the fish is dead there is really nothing to do but to eat him. We reiterate our previous stand: the American eagle is a noble fowl, one of which we can all be proud. If this be treason, make the most of it!
Cain’s career as an editorial writer was indeed a significant education for the writing that lay ahead. He learned not only that he liked primarily to write about such things as sex, crime, passion, food, music, and animals, but that these were the subjects the average person preferred to read about.
At the same time, he was revealing not only in The World but also in The Mercury that he could be a deadly satirist and had a keen ear for dialogue. The satire and burlesque in the iconoclastic profiles of American types that he was writing for The Mercury were obvious. But then, in 1925, he suggested to Mencken that he also try his satire in the form of dialogues or one-act plays. Mencken agreed, and immediately Cain demonstrated not only that he had a gift for dialogue but that the kind of people he liked to satirize were, as he put it, “characters off the top of the pile, plain, average people scarcely worth describing in detail, people everyone knows.”
The success of Cain’s dialogues in The Mercury led to another development in Cain’s career. In 1928, he started writing a byline column for the Sunday “Metropolitan” section of The World, and for the first year or so, it was devoted almost exclusively to sketches and dialogues similar to the ones he was writing for Mencken in The Mercury. However, there was a significant difference. For The World he could not write about “niggers” and burning “stiffs” in a country almshouse, as he was free to do in The Mercury. He had to write about more conventional family life. So he developed a conventional cast of characters who lived on the fictional Bender Street in New York, and for the first year most of his sketches were devoted to these people. Cain was never completely satisfied with this effort and knew instinctively that his sketches and dialogues about New Yorkers did not have the same ring as the words and actions he gave his rural characters.
Nevertheless, his fictional Bender Street gang acquired a significant following; years later, after Postman was published, many readers would recall that the first place they saw the name of James M. Cain was in that “wonderful raucous column for The New York World,” as James McBride recalled in his review of Cain’s 1948 novel, The Moth.
After a year or so, Cain abandoned his Allen’s Alley of Bender Street characters and shifted to other locales. Now he would begin many of his sketches “Down in the Country” and go on to recount some incident or story he recalled about growing up on the Eastern Shore. His World byline columns were not much more than good, commercial journalism. But they were always beautifully crafted and usually revealed the satiric, comic side of Cain.
However, by far the most significant development that took place during Cain’s New York journalism years was the short story he wrote for The Mercury in 1928. It was Cain’s first attempt at conventional fiction since he had tried to write his novel in 1922, and it was significant not only for the impact it had on American literature in 1928 but also as the first glimpse of the James M. Cain who would burst onto the literary scene in 1934. “Pastorale” was without any doubt the clear forerunner of Postman, not only because of its grisly doings centering around Cain’s favorite theme — that two people may get away with a crime, but they can’t live with it — but because it was built on essentially a comic situation.