Pulitzer

by James McGrath Morris

  Grace sought $50,000 in damages. Seeing that the documents were in order, the judge dispatched a deputy sheriff to arrest Pulitzer, as was then the custom in lawsuits. The deputy reached the World building and after some delay was admitted into Pulitzer’s office. He explained the charges and said bail would be set at $5,000.

  “Do you want the money?” asked Pulitzer

  “I prefer two bondsmen,” replied the deputy.

  “All right, but it would be much more convenient to pay the money,” Pulitzer said wearily, well used to this legal dance. Since taking over the World, Pulitzer’s lawyer Roscoe Conkling had been called on to litigate twenty-one libel cases, more than one a month. He was able to successfully defend the paper on ten of them and, with his legal skills, put the eleven others into judicial limbo. Conkling would eventually manage to make Grace’s lawsuit disappear as well. But the battle cost tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees and incalculable frayed nerves. Pulitzer, recalled one staff member, “was so obsessed by the fear of libel suits that he nightly read almost every paragraph in the paper.” A few days later Pulitzer escaped New York and its legal harassments, though not the crush of work. The Congress elected in 1884 was finally convening, and he headed to Washington.

  Pulitzer and the House of Representatives were a bad match from the start. In New York he had power and could make his own decisions. Here he was one of 325 men and nothing happened without collaboration. Even worse, as a freshman he was on the bottom rung. He drew a lot that gave him an unwanted seat in the back of the House chamber, and his assignments to the civil service and commerce committees had so little seniority that they were of little value. He would be a committee chair, he quipped, if six Democrats on one committee and seven on the other didn’t show up.

  Pulitzer had no time for endless committee meetings, long floor debates, and late-night political socializing. As it was, his pace was already frenetic. He would hold a morning editorial meeting on Park Row, attend a Democratic caucus meeting in the evening in Washington, then breakfast with a Congressional leader the next morning before returning north for dinner with, say, the New York socialite Ward McAllister.

  To maintain this schedule was arduous. The tunnel under the Hudson River was still not complete, so Pulitzer had to take a ferry from Fourteenth or Twenty-Third Street to the New Jersey shore and then board a train south. Making this travel even more distasteful to Pulitzer was that he had no interest in the work of a congressman. Once, when he was supposed to be preparing a committee report, Pulitzer was instead attending an art auction in New York. “Day was turned into night and night into day,” observed a reporter. “He flew from Washington to New York and from New York to Washington like a cock pigeon with a mate and nest in both places.”

  Pulitzer found Washington politics clubby and its politicians unappreciative of his brand of journalism. One morning, he and his personal secretary were met at the Washington train station by the World’s Washington correspondent. To Pulitzer’s great pleasure, the reporter had discovered that the attorney general and several members of the House held stock in the Pan-Electric Telegraph Company, which stood to benefit from some forthcoming legal rulings. “The talk was all about the investigation, which was creating something of a sensation,” recalled Pulitzer’s personal secretary. The World trumpeted the charges, and Pulitzer used his new position as a member of the House to call for an investigation.

  Many of Pulitzer’s colleagues, who had deep and long-standing political alliances, were unhappy about his attacks on a member of the administration. Unlike his readers, they were not limited to writing angry letters to the editor. A fellow Democrat, Representative Eustace Gibson of West Virginia, rose on the floor and accused the publisher of cowardice. Pulitzer, he said, “did not see fit in his official capacity to attack these gentlemen in an open, honest, and manly way, which a Representative should have done, but undertook to retreat behind the irresponsible columns of his newspapers for the purpose of creating a scandal for what motives I am not here to state.”

  Another member rose quickly to point out that Pulitzer was not present to defend himself. “I cannot help that. He ought to be here,” Gibson said.

  When a committee was finally convened in March 1886 to examine the charges, Pulitzer was almost as much a target of the investigation as the accused. The committee members suspected that the World had published the allegations in order to profit from manipulating the stock prices of Pan-Electric. Who had made the decision to publish the story, they asked.

  “I, and I alone, solely am responsible and no one else is,” Pulitzer said. “No human being has tried to influence me in any manner whatever.” He explained that he had held the story in one of the pigeonholes of his desk. “I had waited three months in the hopes that a certain gentleman—particularly one gentleman—might rid himself of the possession of Pan-Electric stock.”

  The gentleman in question was Grover Cleveland’s attorney general, Augustus Garland. Several months earlier, Garland had secretly offered to dispose of his stock by turning it over to the World. Pulitzer declined the offer, wiring to his Washington correspondent, “Garland’s offer to transfer the stock to the World is against my inflexible rule never to touch any speculative stock whatever. I must adhere to that principle but if he positively wants to transfer the unclean thing to you not as a representative of the World but as a trustee for the sole purpose of getting rid of the embarrassment and publicly disposing of the stock for some charity that might be considered.” Nothing came of the idea.

  The committee members continued with their questioning, but as they couldn’t obtain any useful information from Pulitzer, he was dismissed to catch his train back to New York. Even excluding the experience of being grilled by his colleagues, Pulitzer found Capitol Hill a disappointment and reneged on his responsibilities. He was absent most of the time, never gave a speech on the floor, introduced just two bills, and completed his overdue committee work only after being reprimanded.

  When Pulitzer was nominated for Congress two years earlier, he and Conkling had made ambitious political plans during leisurely carriage rides through Central Park. Only his St. Louisan friend Gibson had pointedly asked him, “How can one man attend to two great newspapers and act a great part on the national stage?” Pulitzer had learned the answer the hard way. On April 10, his thirty-ninth birthday, he sat at his desk and pulled out a sheet of stationery. “Unwilling to hold the honors of a seat in Congress without fully observing all the expectations attached to it,” he wrote in a letter to his constituents, “I hereby return to you the trust which you so generously confided to me.”

  The World’s Washington correspondent promised to clean out Pulitzer’s desk in the Capitol. “I’m glad you have resigned your seat in Congress,” he wrote. “I am sure you have a much better position as editor of the World than any official in Washington.”

  Pulitzer’s congressional career lasted a mere four months, unless one counts the eleven months he spent waiting for the opening of Congress. He donated his salary to help endow a bed in a New York hospital for use by a newspaperman; he donated his stationery allowance to an industrial school for newsboys; and, after much work, he found a recipient for the several quarts of wheat given to members of Congress by the Department of Agriculture to distribute to their constituents. The only thing he had not thought through was the consequences of his resignation. The vacancy he created could not be filled until the next election. In his hurry to dump the job, he left his district with no vote in the House and no procurer of patronage, and young military academy candidates without a sponsor. His departure was as ill-considered as his candidacy had been in the first place.

  In late June 1886, when Kate neared her due date, Joseph made plans to travel. As when Lucille and Katherine were about to be born, Joseph did not let Kate’s pregnancy restrict his movements, though childbirth carried a considerable risk of mortality until it took place in hospitals, later in the century. Rather, Joseph remained
single-mindedly focused on his own health, which continued to bedevil him. He became convinced, for reasons unknown, that the water in the house they rented at 616 Fifth Avenue was unhealthy, even though the house was in one of the toniest sections of Manhattan. Pulitzer hired plumbers to cut off the water to several of the bathrooms.

  Since Kate could not travel, Pulitzer enlisted his old friend Thomas Davidson of St. Louis as a companion. In the midst of the election of the previous year, Pulitzer had paused for a reunion with Davidson. It was the first time in a decade the two had seen each other. In the intervening years, Davidson had wandered through Europe, living for a while as a hermit, and had founded a utopian fellowship that included George Bernard Shaw among its members. Pulitzer insisted that Davidson stay at the house and devised a dinner to which he invited Conkling and other well-known politicians in hopes of impressing his old teacher. It didn’t work. After the dinner, the skeptical philosopher wrote to a friend that he found the dinner guests lacking in character. But he was charmed by Kate, whom he had not met before, and found her to be entirely devoted to Joseph.

  Davidson and Pulitzer traveled through Europe for a month. Pulitzer kept the European telegraph operators busy and, as usual, was no more rested when he returned than when he had departed. At home, he met his new daughter, who was born on June 19, 1886, and was named Edith. Once again, Joseph did not want to remain in New York during the heat of the summer, so he left with the family for Lenox. But even in the relaxing Berkshires, with daily horse rides, the demands of his newspapers pressed on him. He refused to let his managers manage or his editors edit. Despite the continued success of the papers, he found fault in all they did.

  Pulitzer was most frustrated with the quality of the World’s editorial page. In his conception, this was the most important component of a newspaper. For him, reporting the news served primarily to build a readership that would turn to the editorial page for his own sage counsel on affairs of state and politics. So far, none of the editors he had hired could write an editorial to his liking. He hoped William H. Merrill, who worked at the Boston Herald, would solve his problem. At first Merrill agreed to come to the World, which he considered “the greatest opportunity now offered in the press of America,” but then he got cold feet. Pulitzer left Lenox and went to Boston to persuade Merrill in person. After some hesitation, Merrill was finally won over. The incredible $7,500 salary sufficiently assuaged his fears of working for a publisher with a demanding reputation.

  Next Pulitzer dashed out to St. Louis to look over plans for a new Post-Dispatch building. It was the first time he had been back since he left the city in 1883. Then he returned to New York in time to celebrate the dedication of the Statue of Liberty. Pulitzer did not want anyone to forget who had made the completion of the statue possible. In front of the World offices, he built a triumphal arch sixty feet tall spanning Park Row and festooned with French and American flags. On October 28, a great parade passed under the arch and the World’s employees and their families, as well as its advertisers, boarded two steamers. The two ships, led by another with Pulitzer and his family on board, joined a flotilla that made its way to Bedloe’s Island. There, President Cleveland and a huge retinue of dignitaries—few of whom had contributed to the pedestal—marked the moment with a long succession of speeches.

  Not being among the speakers, Pulitzer reserved his thoughts for the World’s editorial page. In his inimitable style, decorated with Old World flourishes, he wrote, “The statue represents, upon a standpoint at last firmly held, the results of centuries of struggle against oppression, ignorance, bigotry and might unsupported by right. It breathes a sense of relief that so much has been won.”

  Among those who did speak at the ceremonies was Chauncey Depew. He and Pulitzer had recently become friends, and theirs was the first of several friendships Pulitzer made among New York’s elite that could challenge his ability to run a newspaper championing the common man. Not only was Depew a Republican; he was president of the New York Central, the rail line controlled by Vanderbilt and the World’s most frequent target in its war against monopolies. But Depew had more savvy than most of the World’s targets. He recognized that the new medium Pulitzer commanded was, at its core, a business. He and Pulitzer were both captains of industry. The difference was just that Pulitzer made his money tearing apart the other.

  As one of the figures in the famous “Belshazzar” cartoon that had irreparably damaged Blaine’s presidential campaign, Depew had felt the World’s sting. But he believed more was to be gained by being friends with Pulitzer than by being his enemy. A year earlier, Depew had disarmed Pulitzer with a dinner toast in which he recounted their first meeting. Depew said that Pulitzer warned him that the paper would include him in its attacks on New York Central, monopolies, and Vanderbilt. But, Depew said, Pulitzer then added, “‘When Mr. Vanderbilt finds that you are attacked, he is a gentleman and broad-minded enough to compensate you and will grant to you both significant promotion and a large increase in salary.’

  “Well, gentlemen,” Depew told the dinner crowd, “I have only to say that Mr. Pulitzer’s experiment has been eminently successful. He has made his newspaper a recognized power and a notable organ of public opinion; its fortunes are made and so are his, and in regard to myself, all he predicted has come true, both in promotion and in enlargement of income.”

  With the Statue of Liberty now part of New York’s landscape, as he had promised, Pulitzer turned his attention to the mayoral election. Although he apparently had three choices—the Democrats’ Abram Hewitt, the United Labor Party’s Henry George, and the Republicans’ Theodore Roosevelt—in fact he had only two. He still considered the twenty-eight-year-old Roosevelt a traitor to the cause of reform. The World would have to choose between Hewitt and George.

  Hewitt was a competent, honest, experienced politician; George was only famous as the author of Progress and Poverty, a wildly popular book that advocated the abolition of most taxes, the abolition of monopolies, and the creation of numerous social programs. If it were up to Pulitzer’s working-class readers, the endorsement would have gone to George. But the World did not belong to them. Davidson pleaded with Pulitzer to support George. “He will be treated fairly,” Pulitzer replied, saying he would meet George. “But I can’t promise anything until all the candidates are known. Then I shall do whatever I think is best for the City.”

  In the end, Hewitt won the World’s editorial support, but in this election, unlike that of 1884, Pulitzer consented to restrain the news side from attacking Hewitt’s opponents. Though the World criticized George in its editorials, it gave him a fair break. “You are doing excellently well by George, better than if you openly supported him,” wrote Davidson. “His candidacy will, in any case, do much good in making people think and forcing the parties to put forward reputable candidates.”

  On Election Day, Pulitzer’s candidate carried the day. Roosevelt came in a distant third. It was a stinging defeat. “I do not disguise from myself that this is the end of my political career,” he told a close friend. Although Pulitzer was not to blame for the loss, he had again etched his name on Roosevelt’s enemies list.

  The double triumphs of 1886—the statue stood in the harbor, and Roosevelt had fallen in defeat—did not diminish the pressures on Pulitzer. The management of the World continued to consume his time and sap his energy. He had hired a personal secretary to cope with the flow of mail, but that put hardly a dent in the problem. “Hundreds of letters come into this office every day that I never see,” Pulitzer told one correspondent who complained of not getting a reply.

  Most vexing was Pulitzer’s spreading fame as a financial success. Masy le Doll, a widow in Martinsburg, West Virginia, read that Pulitzer “was up to his neck in money, had so much he did not know what to do with it.” She hoped for some to buy a bucket of coal, some flour, and maybe a turkey for Christmas. The New Yorker Walter Hammond appealed for a donation from Pulitzer because the organized charities denied him
relief, believing him to be promiscuous. During a medical exam it was determined that one of Hammond’s testicles was larger than the other, and the charity workers took this as proof that he had been sexually active. Hammond denied the charge, giving his word to Pulitzer that he had had sex only with his wife, who had burned to death in a fire six years earlier, and had been celibate since. Such was welfare in 1886.

  Work and tension continued to wear Pulitzer down. He began to turn down social invitations, preferring to steal what rest he could at home in the evenings. When he did get out, it was now more often to visit an out-of-town friend such as the newspaper publisher George Childs of Philadelphia, who had a country house. Sitting by a blazing wood fire, Childs (who was older than Pulitzer) often counseled Pulitzer to ease up on his workload. In fact, Childs took it upon himself to deliver the same message to Pulitzer’s wife. He wrote anxiously to Kate that Joseph was endangering his health. “He must be careful and remember that he has a wife and children who have a claim on him,” Childs wrote. “He must try to learn to take things more rationally, he is under too great a pressure, and is doing more than anyone can do and retain his health. We all think too much of him to let him go on without a word of caution.”

  When Kate shared Childs’s message with Joseph, he was in no mood to listen.