Pulitzer

by James McGrath Morris

  Most of the New York City press—the Herald, Post, and Times—joined in supporting Cleveland. But not Charles Dana at the Sun. A couple of years earlier, Cleveland had offended Dana by not granting a patronage job to a friend. Despite having worked hard for Democratic unity with Pulitzer, Dana broke ranks and supported a third-party candidate in hopes of denying Cleveland a victory in the crucial New York returns. Once again, as with Schurz years earlier, Pulitzer found himself at political odds with a man whom he had greatly admired and who had once been his mentor.

  On July 29, Pulitzer joined other leading Democrats in Albany to officially convey the nomination to Cleveland and to mark the formal opening of the campaign. Pulitzer was the lone newspaper publisher among the judges, elected officials, and party leaders who rode to the governor’s mansion in a parade of twenty-five carriages led by the Albany city band. The deputation made its presentation, and the governor mingled with its members until the doors were opened to the dining room, where a feast had been set out. Later, full of food and optimism, the party broke up to tend to the work ahead. In the drizzling rain and dark, the delegation paraded back into the city along a route lit by torches and fireworks, to large crowds of Democrats awaiting them in the music hall and opera house. Among the few chosen by the party to speak that night was Pulitzer.

  Rather than boost Cleveland’s candidacy, Pulitzer decided to sink Blaine’s. If he could defeat Blaine in New York, the election would be won. As when he tore into Grant in 1872, Hayes in 1876, and Garfield in 1880, Pulitzer filled the pages of the World with hyperbolic attacks on Blaine. Readers learned that Blaine favored prohibition, belonged to the Know-Nothing movement that opposed Irish Catholic immigration, and took money from railroads; that his marriage was on the rocks; and that he was depressed. The charges were, at best, based on Blaine’s earliest days in politics or in many cases were nothing more than a recycling of well-worn unflattering tales.

  Cleveland also carried some unseemly baggage. He was a bachelor, and during the campaign it was revealed that he had fathered an illegitimate child. Cleveland decided to deal with the matter by issuing a simple directive to party officials desperate for instructions on what to say. “Tell the truth,” he said. Pulitzer was less circumspect. Calling the accusation slander spread by the Republicans, he publicly blackmailed Blaine by threatening to release salacious information about him.

  Pulitzer was only warming up. His stump-speaking style, seasoned by years of campaigning, filled the editorial pages of the World. “Is such an offense unpardonable?” Pulitzer asked. “If Grover Cleveland had a whole family of illegitimate children…he would be more worthy of the office than Blaine, the beggar at the feet of railroad jobbers, the prostitute in the Speaker’s chair, the lawmaking broker in land grabs, the representative and agent of the corruptionists, monopolists, and enemies of the Republic.”

  A candidate who was the devil’s companion and a challenger with clay feet made for great copy. The growing interest in the election increased readership for all newspapers, and particularly for the World. The World’s office was like a campaign headquarters. Electing Cleveland and boosting circulation were completely intertwined, the latter increasing the chance of the former. Pulitzer and Cockerill were open to any ideas that would push the World forward. One fell into their lap.

  The artist Walt McDougall of Newark had been peddling comic sketches, with some success, to Puck, Harper’s Weekly, and other magazines. In June, he came into the city to see a baseball game. On his way he stopped by Puck’s office, where he learned that the editors had turned down his cartoon of Blaine. He didn’t want to trudge off to the game carrying a large rolled-up drawing, so he impetuously decided to see if he could sell it to Dana. Cartoons were, at best, a novelty in daily newspapers. It was difficult to reproduce illustrations on the high-speed presses required by newspapers, because the engraving plates regularly became clogged with ink. The presses would then have to be stopped to clean the plates, wasting precious time in a business where every lost minute could diminish circulation.

  As McDougall walked toward the Sun, he came to the World and decided to try his luck there first. When he entered the dim front office he lost his courage and hurriedly handed the cardboard tube to the elevator boy. “Give that to the editor and tell him he can have it if he wants it,” said McDougall, who then beat a retreat and headed off to the baseball game.

  The next day brought a telegram from Pulitzer asking McDougall to come quickly to the World. On his way, McDougall spotted a copy of the World at a newsstand. His cartoon ran across five columns of the front page of the paper. After McDougall was ushered into Pulitzer’s office, the publisher immediately took him to Cockerill’s office across the hall. The editor was as excited as Pulitzer about McDougall’s drawing; its style averted the ink-clogging problem, and the sample had survived an entire press run. “We have found the fellow who can make pictures for newspapers!” Pulitzer excitedly told Cockerill. McDougall was hired, given a studio, and paid $50 a week, more than twice the salary of most reporters.

  Pulitzer had wanted illustrations in the World since he bought the paper. On newsstands and in the arms of newsboys, the gray, unbroken front pages of the city’s newspapers were indistinguishable from each other. Both he and Albert, at the Morning Journal, found every excuse possible to add illustrations to make their papers stand out. Within his first two weeks with the World, Joseph had begun printing drawings of criminals to aid in their apprehension and, of course, to bring credit to the World. Just before McDougall dropped off his drawing at the World, the newspaper had been celebrating the capture of a fugitive stockbroker by Canadian authorities who recognized him from the sketch that had appeared in the World. “This is a decided triumph for our artist,” Pulitzer crowed. “Some of our jealous contemporaries have affected great contempt for our efforts in the line of cut-work. The Montreal incident attests to the value of our illustrations, and demonstrates that while we are educating the masses with our pictures we are at the same time lending a helping hand to Justice.”

  Not all the reading public was ready for illustrations. Complaints were numerous when the World included drawings in an article on ladies of Brooklyn. “The World made an error of no small magnitude when it published its series of Brooklyn Belles in last Sunday’s issue,” commented The Journalist. “Brooklyn is not used to these wild western methods of journalism.” The fuss pleased Pulitzer. None of the ladies who had been portrayed complained, and circulation in Brooklyn soared. “A great many people in the world require to be educated through the eyes, as it were,” Pulitzer said, mindful that many of the readers he pursued were struggling to learn English.

  Pulitzer enlisted McDougall’s talent in going after Blaine. Now a barrage of cartoons accompanied the reams of unflattering news copy and acidic editorials that the World published about Blaine. Between August and November’s Election Day, McDougall’s cartoons appeared twice a week on the front page. All but one of them attacked Blaine or Ben Butler, the third-party candidate supported by Dana. Readers in New York had seen nothing like this before. It was as if a rabid dog had gotten loose at a society dog show.

  Pulitzer had no interest in muzzling the sharp bite of the World. “It should make enemies constantly, the more the better, for only by making enemies can it expose roguery and serve the public,” he said. “The most valuable and most successful paper will generally be that which has the most enemies.” The style also continued to win over readers. By the end of September, the World’s daily circulation passed the 100,000 mark. “This,” Pulitzer exclaimed, “we hold to be our first 100,000.”

  The maliciousness of the World perplexed some of Pulitzer’s friends. “I have always believed, and do believe, that you are a generous-hearted man,” wrote AP’s William Henry Smith, complaining that the paper was mercilessly pursuing one official who had already lost his job. “This is not like the Joseph Pulitzer I once knew; and if he is to be forever lost, I shall never cease to regret
the share I had in bringing him into this wicked New York World.”

  Pulitzer beat on, pushing his staff like a coxswain who was never satisfied with his shell’s lead.

  Pulitzer interrupted his frenetic editorial and campaign work on the afternoon of September 3 to take a leisurely cruise on the Hudson. The idea of owning a yacht was beginning to appeal to him, and he had begun looking into buying one. But, as with everything else this year, this cruise was a political rather than a pleasure trip. Samuel Tilden had sent his vessel, the Viking, to the Twenty-Third Street pier to bring a delegation of Democrats upstream to his riverfront mansion in Yonkers. The journey was a well-timed public reminder of Republican dastardliness. The men were delivering an official resolution from the Democratic convention thanking Tilden for his service in the disputed 1876 election. Pulitzer was the only member of the press on board. Sitting at the lunch table near his friend William Whitney, he offered to make himself useful by distributing copies of the prepared remarks to newspapermen when they disembarked.

  As the campaign approached its final month, New York Democrats enlisted Pulitzer to speak at a rally aimed at winning the German vote. The resplendent Academy of Music, on Irving Place between Fourteenth and Fifteenth streets, was decorated with German and American flags. A dozen bands as well as fireworks and explosives greeted the huge crowd that entered the hall on the night of September 29. Inside, the publisher of the New York Staats-Zeitung, well-known German leaders, and Pulitzer gathered on the stage between two imposing portraits of Cleveland and his running mate, Thomas Hendricks.

  When his turn came to speak, Pulitzer continued the evening’s portrayal of Blaine as the representative of a bankrupt and corrupt party that had overstayed its turn in power. “He stands for the unholy alliance between prohibition and corruption,” Pulitzer said, “while Cleveland is the representative of honesty and honor in politics, and with clean hands will bring us back to purity in official life, which Mr. Blaine could not possibly do.”

  As he spoke, some of the organizers spied Carl Schurz sitting in one of the boxes. One of them approached Pulitzer and whispered into his ear that the eminent German-American politician was present. Eight years earlier, on a similar New York stage, Pulitzer had attacked and lampooned Schurz. Now that they were once again on the same side, Pulitzer put aside his prepared remarks. “I have a brilliant finale with which I intended to close my remarks, but what can I say that would be more brilliant than to introduce the man whom you must and will hear—Carl Schurz?”

  The crowd roared. A decade of bad blood between the two men came to an end as Pulitzer and Schurz stood before the cheering people. Their old friend from the 1872 rebellion, Murat Halstead, said a photographer could have earned a fortune capturing the moment. “It was a spectacle to see Pulitzer and Schurz meet at last as reformers on the Democratic platform,” Halstead said, “and pouring forth their libations of eloquence for Cleveland, each telling of his goodness, and rising to the sublime height of telling us that beloved Europe itself, should be very much exercised about Blaine.”

  The fall campaign held yet another surprise for Pulitzer. In early October, Tammany Hall nominated him for the Ninth District’s congressional seat without even consulting him. It took some coaxing to persuade him to accept the nomination. The district leaders finally succeeded after making a pilgrimage to Pulitzer’s office and flattering him by saying that his candidacy would help the ticket. Tammany’s designation was bound to be ratified by a later convention and, as the district was overwhelmingly Democratic, it was tantamount to giving Pulitzer a seat in Congress. What he had sought and had been denied in St. Louis was brought to him on a platter in New York.

  The nomination was met by cheers at the Journal. Despite how Joseph had treated his younger brother, Albert applauded the news. With his special inside knowledge, Albert recounted Joseph’s work in Missouri politics and said he would “make a faithful and devoted representative of the people.” An editor at The Journalist couldn’t resist adding, “This is very nice and brotherly, but I very much doubt that Mr. J. Pulitzer would have done as much for Mr. A. Pulitzer under the same circumstances.” The editor was right. Joseph viewed his brother’s newspaper no differently from any other competitor. When the Morning Journal broke the news of Lillie Langtry’s pending divorce, Joseph waited until the story was printed in the Chicago Tribune so as to be able to use it in the World without crediting the Journal.

  On October 16, Pulitzer was among half a dozen men selected to greet Cleveland at Grand Central Terminal. Then, with a crowd of almost 1,000 in tow, the party made its way to the Fifth Avenue Hotel, where the governor met with selected well-wishers. Once their hands were shaken and their concerns and advice listened to, Cleveland retired to a private lunch with Pulitzer, William Whitney, and a dozen leading Democrats. As always in the campaign, Pulitzer was the only newspaper publisher among the politicians and fund-raisers. Money was becoming an issue. The campaign’s coffers were emptying fast, and it looked to Whitney for help. He contributed $20,000 and pressed others to do the same. Pulitzer, however, remained a small player when it came to political money, contributing only $1,000. His real value lay in his work at the World.

  Pulitzer soon proved his worth. Blaine, exhausted from a speaking tour—something candidates rarely undertook at that time—arrived in New York hoping to hold the state in the closing days of the campaign. On October 29, he committed two mistakes. In Pulitzer’s hands, they became politically fatal.

  Blaine began his day with a speech before a group of Protestant clergymen at the Fifth Avenue Hotel. The pastor who introduced Blaine called the Democrats the party of “Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion.” Too tired or too distracted to notice the dangers posed by this comment, which could turn Irish voters against him, Blaine said nothing. The Democrats, who had a stenographer following Blaine, rushed a copy of the remark to newspapers. Meanwhile, Blaine moved on to a fund-raising dinner at Delmonico’s, where he was toasted by nearly 200 of the richest and most powerful men in America.

  Pulitzer was the only editor who understood the significance of Blaine’s two gaffes. The other pro-Cleveland papers in New York ran their campaign stories on the inside pages. The Tribune, which favored Blaine, reported only on the dinner, calling it a triumph. That night, Pulitzer sought out Walt McDougall and Valerian Gribayedoff, the World’s other staff artist. He said he needed a large cartoon by morning.

  The two retreated to the studio and sketched an unusually wide cartoon. Across it were caricatures of nineteen of the most notorious and hated financial lords who had attended the dinner, seated as in a depiction of the Last Supper. Blaine sat beatifically at the center, with Jay Gould at this right and William H. Vanderbilt at his left. On the table before the men were dishes of food with such labels as “Gould Pie,” “Monopoly Soup,” and “Lobby Pudding.” As a final touch, the artists added an impoverished, bedraggled couple, with a child, approaching the feast in hopes of a handout.

  Pulitzer broke open the design of the front page, eliminating the traditional seven columns to accommodate the damning art. Nothing like this had appeared in a New York publication since Thomas Nast dethroned Boss Tweed. Pulitzer topped the dramatic cartoon with the headline THE ROYAL FEAST OF BELSHAZZAR BLAINE AND THE MONEY KINGS.

  Pulitzer was not done yet. The World revealed every aspect of the dinner, even though the organizers had done their best to bar the press. From the Timbales à la Reine and Soufflés aux Marrons upon which the men feasted to the thousands of dollars pledged to buy votes, no detail was left out. Even more damning, the main story began with a one-paragraph account of men who had been thrown out of work at a mill in Blaine’s home state and were now applying for assistance or emigrating to Canada. Other stories highlighted Blaine’s silence at the slur against the Irish and his friendship with Jay Gould, and led the way to the editorial page, where Pulitzer let loose. “Read the list of Blaine’s banqueters who are to fill his pockets with money to corrupt the ballot
box,” he wrote; railroad kings, greedy monopolists, lobbyists, all of them. They had grown rich on public money and special privilege. “Shall Jay Gould rule this country? Shall he own the President?”

  The “Royal Feast of Belshazzar” was reprinted by the thousands. Democrats gleefully replaced their election propaganda with copies of the World. Republicans gnashed their teeth. In a reversal of politics as usual, Pulitzer’s words became more important than those of the Democratic candidate in the closing days of the campaign. It was almost as if the World were on the ballot. Only once before, in 1876, had a newspaper played such a prominent role in a presidential election, and in that case its publisher, Horace Greeley, had been a candidate. Here Pulitzer was using the power of the new independent press, whose reporting had far more credibility than that of the old partisan journals, to mobilize voters. “There has been,” Pulitzer wrote, “a revolution in journalism in New York.”

  November 4, 1884, Election Day, brought a deluge of voters in New York City and rain upstate, cheering Democrats who believed the inclement weather would dampen Republican turnout in rural areas. The day, however, ended with no clear decision. The electoral votes were evenly divided between Blaine and Cleveland—except in New York, which held the balance. Whoever won the state would win the White House. Pulitzer ordered press runs of nearly 250,000 copies, 45,000 more than the Sun and 40,000 more than the Herald. No matter who won the battle for the White House, Pulitzer had won the newspaper war.

  The World began reporting a Democratic triumph with its first edition at two o’clock in the morning, but the race was still too close to call. Nor could victory be firmly declared the following day as the voting tabulations continued. “Watch the count,” Pulitzer warned his readers. “Guard carefully against any frauds on the part of the Republican inspectors and supervisors.”