Pulitzer

by James McGrath Morris

  The immediate danger was fire. Pulitzer explored the overturned wagons and found their stoves, filled with glowing ambers, hanging from what was now the ceiling. As rescuers removed the more seriously injured passengers through the windows, several small fires broke out but were quickly extinguished. Most of the injuries were lacerations and broken bones, but one woman had a broken spine and later died.

  The passengers stayed the night at the scene of the accident while the wounded were tended to and the serviceable wagons were put back on the track. With the break of day, what remained of the train made its way to Jefferson City, arriving late Monday morning. The legislators who were on the train along with Pulitzer were all uninjured and joined their colleagues on the floor, where their ordeal soon become the topic of conversation.

  The new week marked the opening of the lobbying season. Railroad men, lawyers, county politicians, and businessmen flocked to the capital. These lobbyists were so numerous and so powerful they were called the “third house.” One reporter from Kansas City, sitting at his desk on the floor, looked over the men who took the seats in the rear of the chamber. “These are the strange commingling,” he wrote, “the Augean stables of legislation—the seething cesspool of legislative faith; men, good, bad, corrupt and designing schemers—dupes, plotters, diminutive Richelieus and Mazarins, and petty Woolseys, all after self.”

  Pulitzer still regarded corruption in St. Louis County as the paramount issue. His tenure as a city and county reporter had made him a legislator on a mission. In assuming his new post, Pulitzer did not give up his old one as a reporter. In his singular position as both a legislator and a journalist, he used his reporting to advance his political work. In Pulitzer’s eyes the lobbyists descending on the capital were an army of darkness. Calling them “courthouse corruption aristocrats,” he wrote, “The train that arrived yesterday evening seems to have transported half of St. Louis here. One encounters faces everywhere that usually lurk about the Courthouse and Fourth Street.”

  Among the arriving men, Pulitzer singled out Edward Augustine, a notorious contractor from St. Louis County. Pulitzer had first encountered Augustine, at least by reputation, during his first summer in St. Louis. The city was preparing for a predicted return of cholera, which had killed nearly one in ten of its residents seventeen years earlier. Most of the city’s ponds had been drained as a precaution, but in Pulitzer’s neighborhood many residents were concerned about a quarry filled with dirty, stagnant water. It was owned by Augustine and situated on the path Pulitzer took each day to work. City officials were at first unwilling to confront Augustine, who had deep political connections, but a public demonstration changed their minds. In the years since, Augustine had risen to become an important contractor in St. Louis, participating in building the county’s scandalously expensive insane asylum. In fact, it was he who held the contract to dig the unproductive well that Pulitzer had named the “well of fools.”

  Before boarding the train for Jefferson City, Augustine had stopped in at the office of the lime merchant Theodore Welge, who rented kilns from him. Augustine asked if Welge would accompany him to take a glass of beer at Lemps, one of the largest of thirty breweries in St. Louis. Augustine was fuming. As they downed their beers, he deplored Pulitzer’s activities. He told his drinking companion that he was heading for Jefferson City “to insult and publicly spit in the face of Mr. Joseph Pulitzer, to force him to stop advocating a bill that takes away from him his valuable contract with the county.”

  On the morning of January 26, as the courthouse crowd from St. Louis settled in at Schmidt’s Hotel, Pulitzer dropped a legislative bombshell. He introduced a bill to abolish the existing St. Louis county court government. In the past, county pols had considered it a nuisance when the Westliche Post advocated the abolition of the county court, but now that its representative in Jefferson City was moving to convert editorial policy into public policy, it became a threat.

  The city-county relationship had long been contentious. As seven-eighths of the county’s population resided in the city, its residents chafed at being under the rule of county politicians. After the Civil War, the struggle between the city and county was acerbated by a new revelation of corruption in the county government. Only two months before the legislature met, it had become public knowledge that six county officers were making $120,000 a year each from fee collections while, in comparison, the mayor of St. Louis was paid only $4,000.

  Specifically, Pulitzer’s bill would require the county court to draw up new election districts and increase the number of judges elected from within the city. This would effectively put the city in charge of all county business. The new judges would be elected in early April, less than three months away; would be paid $1,000 a year; and would be barred from participating in any county contracts or selling anything to the county. All proceedings of the new county court as well as all its expenses and revenues would be published in the largest-circulation English and German newspapers. This last provision raised criticism that Pulitzer was seeking only to enrich his own paper with government advertising.

  Although Pulitzer’s bill was offered as a program to “reorganize the County Court of St. Louis County,” its true intent—killing the court’s power—was clear to all observers. Pulitzer admitted as much. The bill, he said, “does not propose to allow the present court to exercise their functions up to the general election in November next, but will decapitate them beyond a remedy on the first Tuesday of April.” His actions were front-page news in St. Louis. An hour after introducing his bill, Pulitzer was accosted by Augustine and a companion. They were furious. “They spoke of the bill in a highly agitated manner and began making highly insulting comments,” said Pulitzer, who excused himself and took refuge in a closed-door meeting.

  The next morning, Pulitzer resumed his print warfare on the lobbyists by publishing their names. For some, like his friend Johnson, who was then district attorney and had official business in the capital, this was not a problem. But for those who were mounting a stealth campaign to preserve the county court and its privileges, the mere listing of their names was an accusation. Pulitzer’s list also suggested guilt by association. For instance, he sandwiched Augustine’s name between those of two notorious lobbyists. At the end of his list, Pulitzer displayed his characteristic cheekiness. “I would like to pose the question,” he wrote, changing from German to English, “who pays the expenses? But since this could be misinterpreted by some of these gentlemen, who are genteel types, I prefer to leave this be and turn to a more interesting topic”—and here he abruptly ended his sentence, prompting the readers to look down to the title of the next section of his dispatch from the state capital: “Abolition of the County Court.”

  That evening the St. Louis delegation met in the parlor of Schmidt’s Hotel, a large room, about sixty by fifty feet. Around seven, a dozen or so men gathered, and then their ranks swelled as others came in from supper. Several German legislators were talking with Augustine about Pulitzer’s article when the author himself arrived. Pulitzer asked what they were discussing. “You,” they replied. Augustine then asked Pulitzer why he had published such charges, especially as he didn’t know the facts. Not so, replied Pulitzer, claiming that he knew the “facts” very well.

  “Nothing but a pup could make such a statement, not knowing them to be facts,” Augustine said. That phrase crossed the line. In the nineteenth-century code of honor, a reference to a “liar” or a “pup” could provoke a duel. In 1817, Senator Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri used the term “puppy” in reference to the attorney Charles Lucas, and the latter died in the ensuing duel. Pulitzer warned Augustine to be more cautious with his language, and Augustine responded by calling him a “damned liar.”

  Pulitzer moved away and joined several friends. “Pulitzer, why didn’t you knock that man down when he called you a damned liar?” asked one of them, who had overheard the exchange. “You must keep up the esprit du corps, man.”

  “Oh
, it’s all about the County Court,” replied Pulitzer, who then left.

  Back at the boardinghouse, Pulitzer flung open the door to his room and stormed in, startling Anthony Ittner, who had just returned from some late-afternoon bowling. Making straight for the lounge chair, Pulitzer removed his pistol from his suitcase and pocketed it, hiding his actions from his roommate. Ittner said he was heading back to the bowling lanes to retrieve a coat he had forgotten. “Hold on, Tony,” Pulitzer said, “and I’ll go with you.”

  “That damned Augustine insulted me,” Pulitzer told Ittner when they reached the street. “I am going back there to call him every bad name there is in the dictionary, I am going to call him a ‘son-of-a-bitch.’” Ittner admonished him not to, reminding Pulitzer that he revered his own mother by carrying her likeness in his pocket watch.

  “Well, Tony,” Pulitzer replied, “I think you are right and I will be governed by your advice, but I assure you I will call him every other bad name I can think of.” The two then walked east. At the corner, Ittner took a right turn toward the bowling alley and Pulitzer went left toward the hotel.

  Heading down the hill to the hotel, Pulitzer encountered two newspapermen on their way to the telegraph office. Pulitzer told them that if they headed back to the hotel they would get a good item. “Thinking he was alluding to the meeting of the delegation,” one of them said, “I told him we would be back in a few minutes.”

  When Pulitzer reached the parlor of Schmidt’s Hotel, Augustine was still there, talking with a county judge and another man. Pulitzer walked directly across the room, and angry words once again passed between the two men. “Mr. Augustine, just one word, and I hope that it will be the last word that I speak to you,” Pulitzer said. “I would like to explain to you that I am no longer inclined to associate with you, and I also do not wish that you speak to me again. Should you, however, persist in insulting me, you will, despite your great physical advantage, find that you have come to the wrong man.”

  “I want to tell you in clear and understandable English that you are a damned liar and a puppy,” replied Augustine in a loud booming voice that all could hear.

  “You are a God-damned liar,” Pulitzer snapped back.

  Words ceased. Augustine moved toward Pulitzer. Bulky and strong, with fists twice the size of an ordinary man’s, Augustine had the edge in combat with his beanpole, bespectacled opponent. Pulitzer retreated. “Everyone who knows Augustine knows that one would be hard-pressed to find one man in 100,000 who is built like him,” Pulitzer said. “As far as his physical strength is considered, he was ten times my better.”

  When Pulitzer had completed about ten to twelve paces of his retreat, Augustine raised his fist. In his assailant’s hands, Pulitzer thought he saw “a heavy, gleaming yellow instrument,” that he presumed to be brass knuckles. Pulitzer withdrew his pistol and fired. Incredibly, the veteran cavalryman missed his massive target. As they struggled across the parlor, Pulitzer pulled the trigger again, but the barrel of the gun was deflected downward and the bullet only grazed Augustine in the right calf.

  Nevertheless, the wound in his leg enraged Augustine, who, like a speared bull, charged and pinned Pulitzer in the corner of the room. There he flung Pulitzer down. “I mashed his head against the case-board of the room, and tried to get the pistol out of his hand,” Augustine said. Two men rushed over to separate them. When one tried to take the pistol away from Pulitzer, he would not loosen his grip. But when the other friend asked, Pulitzer surrendered the weapon.

  Having retrieved his coat from the bowling alley, Ittner was strolling slowly back to his room when he heard a small boy running and yelling that a man had shot another at the hotel. “The thought instantly struck me that this was the result of Pulitzer’s controversy with Edward Augustine and that it was a pistol he had taken from his valise on entering our room so abruptly a short while ago,” Ittner said. He rushed to the hotel, where he found his roommate surrounded by a crowd, nursing his head wound.

  As he drew near, Pulitzer looked up at him with a broad grin on his face and said, “Hello, Tony.”

  “You’ve been playing the ‘Devil,’ Joe, haven’t you?” Ittner asked.

  Ittner, who was also a friend of Augustine’s, left Pulitzer’s side and went to see the wounded man in his room upstairs. Augustine was surrounded by many friends and was being tended by a doctor, who was also a fellow legislator. “I found him sitting on the edge of his bed with his wounded leg resting on same, complacently smoking a cigar; the wound being in the calf of leg and not at all dangerous,” Ittner said. The crowd in the hotel room was agitated. One legislator “went so far as to suggest taking the law in their own hands,” he said, “as it seems that the officers of the law in this town are not disposed to protect citizens of the State from deadly assault with intent to kill.”

  By the time Ittner returned to the parlor, Pulitzer had left and gone back to the boardinghouse. Ittner rushed to their room. When he arrived, a police officer was knocking on the door. The man asked Pulitzer to accompany him to the station. Ittner followed and posted a bail bond for his roommate. In the morning, Pulitzer appeared in city court, where he acted as his own attorney. He was fined for “breach of peace,” a violation of the city’s ordinances. Though Pulitzer was only a student of law, he knew he could later face more serious criminal charges, not to mention political consequences.

  When the House convened, an angry representative from St. Louis waited impatiently for the conclusion of the chaplain’s prayer before rising and asking the Speaker to be recognized. “The disgraceful scenes which transpired at one of the principal hotels of this city last night,” he said, “demand an impartial investigation into the causes and circumstances attending that lamentable occurrence.” To accomplish this, he offered a resolution to create a three-member committee to investigate the shooting and report back to the House with a recommendation of action “to maintain the dignity of the House.” As soon as he concluded reading his resolution, the floor of House erupted in yelling as defenders of Pulitzer and supporters of the county court demanded to be recognized.

  Another representative from St. Louis protested that an investigation was unnecessary. If members didn’t think that existing criminal laws were sufficient for the safety of citizens, they should amend the laws, he said. An inquiry like the one proposed “was beneath the dignity of the House, and ought not be entertained for a moment.” But if Pulitzer was guilty, argued another member, it would affect the dignity of the House. “I do not want to sit with a man who would go to his room and get his pistol and put it to my breast for a trivial offense.”

  Luckily for Pulitzer, a sympathetic representative stemmed the pressure for an inquiry by raising the specter of the precedent such a step would set. “Should members by their actions here do this it would lead to the investigation of every member’s behavior that takes place outside of the House,” he said. “If it undertook such a course as this, the next thing would be that when a member goes to a wine party and does something that displeases somebody, the House will investigate that. Some member might happen to kiss a pretty girl, must the House investigate that?”

  Seizing the moment, Pulitzer’s defenders immediately moved to table the resolution. A sufficient number agreed to forestall the creation of the committee and thus killed the plan. The subject of the debate, meanwhile, was nowhere to be seen. Pulitzer was off settling the $11.50 fine for disturbing the peace. The St. Louis Times called it the “Cost of Prince Pulitzer’s Pugnacity.”

  The House probe may have been thwarted, but the interest of Pulitzer’s colleagues in the press was undiminished. The correspondent for the Missouri Democrat called Pulitzer’s act an “insane folly” and reported that “the feeling against Pulitzer was intense, and I remarked a universal indignation at the outrage from every German fellow-citizen, both in and out of the Legislature.” The Kansas City Journal said, “The town has been all afire with a shooting affair” and “the St. Louis Delegation ran
around and condemned Pulitzer in strong terms, except for Ittner and [William] Phelan.” Accounts of the shooting even appeared in papers in major cities such as Chicago and New York.

  The clamor impelled Pulitzer, who was lying low, to use the Westliche Post to rebut his opponents, who were hoping this would end his nascent political career. “To the people!” he wrote. “It is with the same reluctance that I felt during the events of the very nearly tragic scene in the state capital, that I now reach for the quill, not to defend the role that I was forced to play in this affair, but only to offer a faithful description of the affair.”

  He called Augustine “a man of honor,” but added that he “had a tendency toward violence, knew that he often carried a revolver, but always carried so-called ‘dumb knuckles’ on him, which are at least an equally dangerous weapon.” Pulitzer then offered an account of the fight that matched that of other witnesses except for his claim that he saw what he believed to be brass knuckles in Augustine’s raised hand. Pulitzer offered “the holes that it left in my head” as his proof.

  “Thus, the people are presented with the facts of a case that is surely regretted by no one more than myself,” Pulitzer concluded. “All I ask is that before a judgment is pronounced in this matter, that the opposing view be examined and considered. I call for each man to imagine himself for a moment thrust into a similar situation, and then ask himself if he will not cast the first stone.”*