Pulitzer

by James McGrath Morris

  At the Sun, Pulitzer met with Dana. The aging editor still held Pulitzer in high regard and agreed to publish his reflections on politics in England, France, and Germany. The resulting six pieces, which ran in the Sun’s September and October editions, not only contained astute observations but also displayed the thinking of a writer who had now developed a mature political philosophy. In comparison with the rush-to-judgment style of Pulitzer’s articles in the Westliche Post, or even his recent dispatches for the Sun during the Hayes-Tilden electoral dispute, the articles—essays, really—were dispassionate analyses.

  After dissecting German, French, and British society and politics, Pulitzer reserved his last essay for an ode to his adopted land. He constructed an imaginary conversation between an American and a European in which the latter pointed out the many imperfections of democracy in the United States. Was not the selection of Hayes as president a violation of the nation’s constitutional practices? the European asked. True, replied the American, but Hayes, unlike a European monarch, will hold office for only four years. Not one to give up easily, the European continued his faultfinding and pointed to American women who sought to marry noblemen. Surely, he said, this proves that Americans look to Europe as a model. No, replied the American, it shows only the mercenary qualities of our women.

  The most singular moment in Pulitzer’s imaginary dialogue occurred when the European challenged the premise of universal male suffrage, one of Pulitzer’s most sacred beliefs since his entry into politics. Citing Alexis de Tocqueville, Pulitzer conceded that the extension of voting rights did indeed have a tendency to elevate mediocrity, perhaps a lesson taught by the sting of the elections of 1872 and 1876. But it was a fallacy to conclude that universal suffrage was the linchpin of democracy, said Pulitzer’s alter ego in the article. “The great advantages of our system certainly do not consist in giving every man a vote but in giving every man a better chance for life than other governments allow.”

  Although long-winded, a bit showy, and at times wandering off the track, the articles were the equal of any in this genre published in New York newspapers. Dana even granted Pulitzer a byline, reinforcing his success in English-language journalism. In fact, the articles marked Pulitzer’s complete transformation into an American. Never once mentioning his foreign birth, Pulitzer had opened his series of articles proclaiming, “The more I see of Europe, the more American I become.” He confessed his love for the opera houses, museums, castles, and new palaces of Europe. But he also wrote, “However great the treasures of art, I prefer the treasures of liberty.” Expressing a sentiment similar to that which brought his brother Albert to the United States, Joseph added, “I like still more our plain land without the glare of royalty or nobility.”

  The articles in the New York Sun, though glamorous, brought Pulitzer no closer to finding suitable employment, a more pressing problem now that he was married. But while languishing in New York, Pulitzer heard that the Dispatch, a struggling evening paper in St. Louis, was going to be auctioned off at a bankruptcy sale. He knew the paper well. Stilson Hutchins and Charles Johnson had taken turns owning the Dispatch, but neither had made a go of it. Pulitzer telegraphed Johnson as well as John Marmaduke, a former Confederate general who edited an agricultural magazine and had discovered a new lost cause as an agitator against the increasing power of railroads. Pulitzer told them that he and his bride were leaving for St. Louis and that they were to meet him at the Lindell Hotel.

  The St. Louis at the end of the train ride was greatly changed from the one that had greeted Pulitzer thirteen years earlier. It was now a thriving industrial and commercial city whose air was so thick with smoke that only a dome or two could be seen through the haze from the train as it crossed the Eads Bridge. When Johnson and Marmaduke met Pulitzer at the hotel, he revealed his plans. He told them he had returned to take a shot at buying the Dispatch. The men were enthusiastic—especially Johnson, who had long pressed Pulitzer to abandon his off-and-on legal career. “I zealously urged him to embark on the newspaper business,” said Johnson.

  Encouraged, Pulitzer next went to see Daniel Houser, the part owner of the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, to whom he had sold the AP membership four years earlier. For several evenings Houser and Pulitzer worked on the financial numbers. Houser guessed that Pulitzer might win the auction with a bid of $1,500 to $1,700. Pulitzer had $5,000 in savings, so at that price the paper would be within his reach. Operating the paper, however, was an unresolved question. If Pulitzer could not eliminate its daily deficit, his cash would last only seventeen weeks.

  In the early morning of December 9, 1878, the day of the auction, Pulitzer strolled from the Lindell Hotel to the nearby courthouse—a Greek Revival building with a cast-iron dome modeled after St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. By the time he reached the courthouse, a small crowd was already milling around the east side; its members were doing their best to stay warm in the frigid air—this December was one of the coldest months since the city had begun keeping records. Pulitzer knew just about everyone among the thirty or so men, and they, him. “The tall, graceful figure and pale Mephistophelean face of Mr. Joseph Pulitzer, with its expression of keen irony, was the object of marked attention,” wrote a reporter.

  There were actually two newspapers on the auction block that day. An eight-year-old failed newspaper, the St. Louis Journal, was expected to sell for less than the value of its presses, type, and furniture. The Dispatch, however, had greater potential. It had been founded as the St. Louis Union in 1862 by the late U.S. senator Frank P. Blair, to counter the Missouri Democrat’s support of John Frémont, who was running against President Lincoln. Two years later, Johnson and a group of investors had bought the failing St. Louis Union and converted it to an evening publication called the Dispatch. During the following years, the Dispatch continued to change hands as different publishers took turns failing to make it financially viable. By 1878, its most recent set of owners could find no one else on whom to unload it, and the sheriff ordered a bankruptcy sale.

  Despite its miserable track record, the Dispatch still appealed to newspapermen. Among those who came to watch the auction were Houser; the former governor Gratz Brown, now working as an attorney representing the party who held a $15,000 mortgage on the Dispatch; John and George Knapp, owners of the Missouri Republican, and their editor William Hyde; and John A. Dillon of the Evening Post. The assembled newspapermen, lawyers, bankers, and judges tried to guess what the Dispatch might fetch. Some thought it might sell for as much as $40,000. The auctioneer suggested that the AP membership alone would be worth at least $20,000, an estimate inspired by Pulitzer’s well-rememberd profit in buying and selling the Staats-Zeitung in 1874. This time, however, there was no paper in town so badly in need of the AP. The more reasonable men who were present had only modest expectations for the sale, and some had none. Asked what he would pay the paper, William Hyde replied, “I would not give a damn for it.”

  Within a few minutes of Pulitzer’s arrival at the courthouse, the auctioneer climbed onto a chair. “I propose to sell for cash two newspapers—two live papers,” he said, drawing laughter. Reviewing the lamentable histories of the two papers, he said that they had sometimes made money, but at other times they had not. Again, the audience guffawed. Those who held unpaid financial notes did not share in the merriment. Brown grabbed the auctioneer’s chair and warned potential buyers that anyone who purchased one of the two newspapers would be liable for the $15,000 mortgage.

  It took only a moment to dispense with the Journal. It fetched $600. “Gentlemen,” the auctioneer said, “I now propose to sell you the Evening Dispatch, a paper that will live when all the other evening papers are dead.” After more laughter, the bidding began. Simon J. Arnold, who worked for the city collector, Meyer Rosenblatt, went first, offering $1,000. Rosenblatt was an important figure in the city’s Republican politics, and it was presumed that Arnold was doing his bidding. He wasn’t. He was Pulitzer’s Trojan horse. Pulitzer knew if he
were to openly join the bidding, others would assume that he had seen in the paper something of value that had escaped their attention, and the price would soar. Arnold’s opening move was countered with a bid for $1,500. The gathered men were baffled. The other bidder, standing behind the crowd in a hallway, was a complete stranger. A reporter asked his name. “I’ll tell you after a while,” he replied.

  Arnold raised his bid to $2,000. The mysterious man topped it with a bid for $2,100. Pulitzer remained silent. His well-made plan seemed to be unraveling. At $3,000, Arnold gave up and walked away. The unidentified man had topped Pulitzer’s man by $100. The auctioneer declared the auction over. Pulitzer’s game was up. He would not be the new owner of the Dispatch. But a commotion arose when the anonymous figure did not come to the front to claim his prize. In fact, he had vanished. Arnold rushed back and announced that he would still be willing to pay $2,500. His offer was accepted, and Arnold and the auctioneer retired to offices across the street to complete the transaction. The identity of the other bidder never emerged.

  During the confusion at the end of the auction, Pulitzer slipped away unnoticed. But a reporter caught up with him as he stepped into the elevator at his hotel and pressed him for an interview. “I would grant your rather sudden request with the greatest of pleasure,” Pulitzer said, “if it were not for the unfortunate fact that I have been engaged all day, and now am going to see my wife for the first time since breakfast this morning, and I know you wouldn’t detain even a humble individual like myself from the bosom of his family for so long a period. Even if the imperious necessities of metropolitan journalism…”

  “But, Mr. Pulitzer, only a question,” broke in the reporter. “You have bought the Dispatch, I understand, and I would like you…”

  Now it was Pulitzer’s turn to interrupt. “My dear fellow, without presuming to criticize your intelligence or acumen, which I would hardly dare to question, are you not assuming too much? I own the Dispatch—I?”

  The cat-and-mouse game continued as Pulitzer feigned ignorance, pretended to be unacquainted with Arnold, and conceded only that it was “possible” though not “probable” that he had bought the Dispatch. The reporter gave up. “No one better understands the use of language for the purpose for which Talleyrand said it was given—to conceal one’s thoughts—than Mr. Pulitzer,” wrote the frustrated reporter. “He parries the question like a skillful fencer, and it is as hard to pin him to a point as it is an eel.”

  The following day, all the newspapers reported that Pulitzer was the new owner, but he had yet to confirm his purchase publicly. “The all-absorbing question this morning in newspaper circles was, had Mr. Joseph Pulitzer really bought the Evening Dispatch?” asked Dillon at the Evening Post. Gossip had it that Pulitzer intended to merge the Dispatch with another paper. “There are so many rumors afloat about evening journalism in St. Louis that we should not be surprised, as the result of all of them, to hear the newsboys crying out ‘the Dispatch-Journal-Post-Star,’” wrote Mack at the St. Louis Globe-Democrat. The rumor of a merger worried Dillon. A combination of the Dispatch and Star could destroy his Evening Post. He wanted to know Pulitzer’s plans without disclosing his own fears. He sent one of his reporters off to find Pulitzer and see what could be learned.

  Locating Pulitzer was not easy. At the Dispatch’s office, the reporter found two or three employees sitting around, idly passing the time with the paper’s attorney. Pulitzer was expected, they said. By nine-thirty he had not arrived. Impatient, the reporter left. He spotted his quarry on the street, across from the offices of the Westliche Post. That was, however, the extent of his good luck. Pulitzer was still uncooperative. “I do not know that I am the owner of the Dispatch,” he said. “I do not know that I have authorized anybody to say that I bought it or that I intend to buy it.”

  Frustrated, the reporter walked to the city collector’s office, where Arnold, who had placed the winning bid, was employed. He spoke with Rosenblatt, Arnold’s boss.

  “Did you buy the paper for Mr. Pulitzer?”

  “The Dispatch was purchased for Mr. Joseph Pulitzer,” replied Rosenblatt.

  “This, of course,” the reporter said, “looked like a positive thing, but why on earth was Mr. Pulitzer playing the sphinx?”

  The answer was not hard to fathom. His dodges were designed to fan public interest. He had been similarly dishonest with the St. Louis press corps when the sale of the Westliche Post was rumored, and he had also done this when he bought the Staats-Zeitung. In this present instance, his evasions served to increase the mystery surrounding his actions. The more he could get the St. Louis press to talk about the sale of the paper, the more papers he would sell.

  Finally, at noon, Pulitzer walked into the Dispatch’s office in the company of the lawyer William Patrick, who had once used Pulitzer as an errand boy. The auctioneer, who had been cooling his heels in the office, rose from his seat. “Mr. Pulitzer comes to take formal possession of the Evening Dispatch, and will henceforth be considered its proprietor,” he announced. “I only take possession temporarily and subject to future possibilities,” said Pulitzer, quickly retiring to an editorial room upstairs. The two reporters on duty, though bewildered by Pulitzer’s cryptic remark, went to work rushing out an edition of the Dispatch with what little they could gather in the way of news after having spent the day in idleness.

  Pulitzer’s antics gained him a second day of front-page coverage in the morning papers. At the Globe-Democrat, McCullagh greeted Pulitzer’s return to journalism in St. Louis with a warmhearted editorial. As a statesman, Pulitzer had not been very successful, he said. “What he failed to accomplish with an eloquent tongue, he may yet achieve with a brilliant pen. If the world was made no better by Mr. Pulitzer as an orator, it will, we trust, be made wiser by Mr. Pulitzer as an editor.”

  Buying the St. Louis Dispatch was easy compared with the next hurdle Pulitzer faced. His cash would last only a few weeks; and unlike the Staats-Zeitung, the Dispatch had no salable assets with which he could turn a quick profit. Rather, Pulitzer’s only option was to find new readers and do it quickly.

  St. Louisans already had two other English-language afternoon newspapers: the Evening Star and the Evening Post. Unlike the morning newspapers, neither of these was well established. The Star had started publishing only a few days earlier, but it had strong financial backing. It counted prominently among its investors Thomas Allen, a railroad magnate and aspiring politician, whose children Albert had tutored one summer. He was sinking money in it, in the hope of having a paper to support his planned bid for the U.S. Senate.

  The Evening Post, which had been launched eleven months earlier, had the lion’s share of readers. Its publisher, Dillon, who looked like a patrician and wore a handlebar mustache, was about Pulitzer’s age, was also an experienced journalist, and had similar political leanings. Otherwise the two men were very different. Dillon had been born into one of the leading families of St. Louis. His father was an Irish immigrant merchant who made a considerable sum in real estate. In 1861, the younger Dillon went to Harvard, rather than to war, and returned home an urbane and well-read gentleman. He won the hand of a daughter of one of the French families who founded St. Louis, and the couple spent a two-year honeymoon in Rome—the same years when Pulitzer was struggling to get a foothold in St. Louis.

  Their honeymoon ended when Dillon’s father died. The engineer James Eads had been appointed executor of the estate, and Dillon discovered that much of his inheritance was tied up in Eads’s chancy bridge project. To protect his investment, he became secretary-treasurer of the Illinois–St. Louis Bridge Company. Five years later, when the family’s financial affairs were secure, Dillon sought an escape from the dull work. McCullagh offered him a job on the Globe-Democrat. Under the guidance of the venerable editor, Dillon developed into an editorial writer of some distinction. His thoughtful writing was graceful and refined. He was soon a well-known figure in St. Louis journalism. In 1878, Dillon decided the
time had come to establish his own newspaper. His wife, Blanche, supplied the necessary funds.

  Dillon’s Evening Post was an odd amalgam of his own refined, lofty writing style and McCullagh’s muscular journalism. Its coverage of society news appealed to the city’s elite but did not lure the potentially large audience for an afternoon paper. This was of some comfort to Pulitzer as he took the helm of the dead-in-the-water Dispatch. On one flank he faced a new, untested afternoon paper, the Star; and on the other the more established paper, the Post, stalled in its search for readers. There was bound to be an opportunity for the Dispatch.

  Although the flagging fortunes of the three evening papers discouraged others from venturing into the business, Pulitzer was undeterred. He was convinced that evening papers had a great future. He was right. The advent of the telegraph and faster printing presses made it possible to publish an afternoon newspaper with news as fresh as that day, making morning papers look as if they were publishing yesterday’s news, which, in fact, they were. Urbanites, particularly workers and professionals heading home, had a voracious appetite for news and were primed to buy an evening paper. Gaslight, and then electric light, also made the newspaper an important evening pastime. In a few years, evening newspapers would outnumber morning ones.