Pulitzer

by James McGrath Morris

  For days, the Post and Dispatch crowed about its scoop. It reprinted commentary from other papers, published articles about how its coverage had stunned the senators, and made sure no one forgot. “The piece of work,” Pulitzer said, “was complete on—so complete, so surprising, so overwhelming, that it commanded recognition and acknowledgment.”

  After weeks of delay, workers finally completed the renovations to the paper’s new offices on North Fifth Street. A good-size crowd was on hand the afternoon of March 10, 1879, when Pulitzer, Dillon, and their staff moved in. For a paper with a modest, though growing, circulation, the plant was impressive. The first floor contained the counting room for the business side of the paper. An open stairway led to the newsroom on the second floor, where Pulitzer had a curtained alcove overlooking the street. The new press, and a boiler to produce the steam to run it, was in a two-story wing off the back, with the composing room on the floor above. Soon after two-thirty that afternoon, the press was started. Slowly, it began printing and folding an eight-page edition of 20,000 copies, carrying the name the paper would use from then on, the Post-Dispatch. Pulitzer boasted that this was the largest run of an evening paper in St. Louis’s history. Printing the edition, however, turned into an embarrassing challenge. After only a few minutes at full speed, the roar of the press was silenced as the paper tore and jammed the rollers. It was nightfall before copies reached subscribers.

  Despite the paper’s progress toward financial stability, Pulitzer did not relax or let up. He practically lived in the North Fifth Street office, staying late into the night working by the light of a single gas jet. “I would pass by on my way home between eleven and twelve o’clock and he was always there,” recalled one nocturnal St. Louisan. No matter how late he worked, Pulitzer always arrived at the office in the early morning to examine the paper’s vital signs. He demanded precise information. Exactly how many copies were printed the day before? Sold? Returned? How were street sales of the paper? How many lines of advertising had run in the last issue? During the last week? Since the beginning of the year? How much money was spent on the staff? For paper? For telegraphs? How much money was taken in? His thirst for details was insatiable.

  In these first days of running the Post-Dispatch, feeling the sharp anxiety of potential failure, Pulitzer learned to ask questions that provided him with the most realistic take on the financial health of his paper. He measured the number of column inches of classified advertisements, scrutinized sales figures to see if a particular news scoop increased street sales, and analyzed every aspect of the competition. He honed his questioning down to a precise mix of queries yielding a statistical portrait that revealed in a single glance where things stood. Until the end of his life, and no matter how far he wandered from the office or how much he delegated to others, he would never give up this habit. He feigned to be interested only in politics and in writing editorials, but the truth was that Pulitzer knew any power he could accumulate from an Olympian perch could not be kept by Olympian detachment. His success, after all, rested on the pennies readers spent for his paper.

  After concluding his business duties, which usually took an hour, Pulitzer would turn to the editorial work. He worked side by side with the reporters and editors, “just as if he was one of them,” recalled a reporter. “If he wrote something he particularly fancied, he would read it aloud for the benefit of his staff. If a new reporter wrote a good story, Pulitzer, in his intensely enthusiastic way, would compliment the young fellow.” Pulitzer didn’t consider it beneath his position to contribute news copy. One day, on his way to work, he witnessed a runaway carriage. Upon reaching the paper, he burst into the newsroom with the enthusiasm of a cub reporter and filed his own account of the accident.

  Pulitzer thrived on the hubbub of the newsroom. He simultaneously wrote, edited, and conferred with his staff. “He seemed equally at ease when writing and talking at the same time,” said the reporter. Interruptions were continuous. Pulitzer would get started on an editorial, and then the politicos would begin to arrive. He greeted each one with “My dear fellow,” followed by an inquiry as to the person’s well-being, recalled a reporter. “He would continue to dash off editorials and pungent paragraphs while discussing politics with his visitors. He seemed to be as much immersed in politics as he was in building up his newspaper.” To Pulitzer, of course, these were one and the same thing.

  After lunch at eateries such as Faust’s, where he had once made an inglorious attempt at being a waiter, Pulitzer would return to the office to review the final page proofs, often bringing them to the composition room to explain his changes. At three o’clock, when the first edition of the paper came off the press, Pulitzer would leave his desk and go to the counting room. There he would join other men in distributing bundles of the paper to the boys who would walk the delivery routes or hawk the paper on the street.

  The street urchins were critical to a paper’s success. They could also be its Achilles’ heel. Several times during his early months of managing the paper, Pulitzer clashed with them. In May, for instance, the newsboys went on strike, demanding a 50 percent share of the paper’s selling price. The arrangement had been that they purchased copies of the paper at three cents and sold the copies for five cents. “It is hard to fight women, but still harder to argue with boys, especially newsboys,” wrote Pulitzer. “However kindly we are disposed toward the little brigades who sell our paper, it is an absurdity which we are fully determined and able to stop—no matter how long the strike may last.”

  He won.

  On April 21, 1879, the St. Louis contractor Edward Augustine returned to his house at dinnertime looking haggard. In the nine years since Pulitzer had shot him at the hotel in Jefferson City, Augustine had fallen from political power, and without county government contracts, his business ventures had failed. When he entered his house, Augustine found his family at the dinner table. His wife asked him to join them. He refused and instead asked her to come into the front parlor. She demurred—understandably. Only a few days earlier, Augustine had brought home a rifle after telling friends it was for the purpose of murdering his family. He turned and went into the parlor alone. “Then, I’ll finish it,” he said. A few minutes later, a shot rang out.

  Pulitzer resisted the temptation to use his new position to even the score with his old antagonist. In fact, the Post-Dispatch’s coverage of Augustine’s suicide was muted in comparison with that of the other newspapers, though it included the required graphic description of Augustine’s brain “scattered all about the room.” Pulitzer may have possessed a volcanic temper and held grudges for long periods, but he could be magnanimous.

  Pulitzer didn’t have time to worry about old history. The paper needed constant tending. Although it was becoming profitable, the financial foundation of the enterprise was a house of cards. As a precaution, Pulitzer took $300 from his reserve funds and put them in a trunk at home to make sure he could cover the coming expenses of the birth of his first child.

  Neither Dillon nor Pulitzer had the capital necessary to continue the paper’s growth. The promise of profits would not pay for the new presses or the paper’s rising expenses. Pulitzer turned to Louis Gottschalk, a prominent lawyer and Democrat in St. Louis whom he had known since Gratz Brown’s election as governor in 1870. In 1875, Pulitzer and Gottschalk had both served as delegates from St. Louis to the state’s constitutional convention. Gottschalk, like a number of other Democrats, believed the Post-Dispatch under Pulitzer’s editorship could benefit the party. He agreed to lend $13,000 so that Pulitzer, in turn, could lend money to the Post-Dispatch as promised in the merger agreement.

  In addition to the infusion of capital, Pulitzer had a lucky break with the $15,000 mortgage taken out by the Dispatch’s former owners and thought to have been conveyed when Pulitzer bought the paper at auction. In fact, Pulitzer had been making interest payments on the mortgage. He had also taken the unusual step of making weekly payments to the Associated Press in the name
of the mortgage holder. He worried that the Post-Dispatch could lose access to AP because the original embossed membership certificate had been used as collateral and was still in the hands of the mortgage holder.

  Lawyers who researched the mortgage discovered that the debt had been contracted personally by one of the former owners, and they reported to Pulitzer that it “was a debt never incurred by him and for which he is not in any respect responsible.” As far as he was concerned, the debt was off the books, but he still fretted about the missing official AP membership document.

  With his new Hoe presses, Pulitzer was able to increase the space in the Post-Dispatch for both news and advertising. To persuade a hesitant readership that an afternoon paper could also carry classifieds, like the established morning papers, Pulitzer gave out classifieds free of charge for several months. The idea was to increase circulation as well as to boost advertising revenue. Pulitzer recognized that many people read the advertisements the way others read the articles. “It is our object to make the advertising columns of the Post-Dispatch not less varied and interesting than the news columns,” he wrote.

  Indeed, the news columns were filled with the kind of stories Pulitzer craved, the kind that made people talk. The Post-Dispatch continued its relentless assault on the municipal monopolies, exposed questionable banking practices, detailed shady insurance schemes, and revealed anything else that victimized the middle class. It was scathing in its treatment of the city’s upper-class families, many of whom were Pulitzer’s neighbors. Editorials dripping with sarcasm poked fun at upper-class rituals and social events. These customs also served as topics for some of the paper’s best stories.

  Nothing was too private for the circulation-hungry Pulitzer. There was a rumor that Dolly Liggett, the daughter of one of the city’s wealthiest tobacco merchants, had defied her parents and married a livery stable’s bookkeeper. The family refused the entreaties of two Post-Dispatch reporters seeking confirmation. Pulitzer sent off a third reporter, Florence D. White, whose unusual first name had given him the nickname “Flory.” White was, at age sixteen, the youngest member of Pulitzer’s staff. His passion for journalism had lured him away from Christian Brothers College, an opulent high school whose graduates often pursued more education. Pulitzer saw in White a drive that mirrored his own, and he rewarded his young reporter with increasing trust. His instinct did not let him down. White persuaded the Liggetts’ maid to admit him. He returned with an exclusive interview with the mother, a mix of outburst and tears.

  Watching with dismay as the Post-Dispatch’s circulation rose each week, the owners of the Star decided to throw in the towel. It was now their turn on the auction block. On May 14, 1879, the usual crowd gathered on the courthouse steps. Pulitzer joined in the bidding, which started at only $100 but rapidly devolved into a three-way match. When the bids reached the $700 range, Pulitzer dropped out, and one of the remaining two men prevailed with a bid of $790. As when he had bought the Dispatch at auction, Pulitzer had fooled the crowd. The man who placed the winning bid was working for him. The afternoon field now belonged solely to the Post-Dispatch.

  “We have passed the point,” Pulitzer wrote, “where the Post-Dispatch was an experiment.”

  Joseph settled the pregnant Kate into a house at 2920 Washington Avenue. It was of brick and had three stories, a mansard roof, a bay window in the front, and stables in the rear. The neighborhood was one of gracious dwellings, crisscrossed by private streets. By choosing this spot, Joseph placed Kate in an enclave of the city’s aristocrats, who were objects of his paper’s continual attacks. That mattered little to Joseph, for whom confrontation was almost a pleasure. But for Kate it was the beginning of what would be many uncomfortable experiences of being ostracized because of her husband’s public conduct.

  On June 11, 1879, Kate gave birth to their first son. They named him Ralph. With a child at home and with the paper becoming more successful, Pulitzer carved out more time for his family. He spent Sundays with Kate and baby. All summer he came home early enough to sit on the front stoop with Kate and visit with neighbors, at least those who did not hold the conduct of his paper against him. Those who did referred to the couple as “beauty and the beast.”

  Usually Kate, with Ralph in her arms, fetched her husband from work by carriage. Joseph would greet her and Ralph with joyous enthusiasm, as if they had been separated by a long journey. “In such an atmosphere, those were happy days for everyone,” one of Joseph’s reporters recalled. Indeed, even his old friend Johnson noted Joseph’s happiness in his diary. Joseph had resumed horseback riding, often taking rides in Forest Park with a friend. On evenings when he did not return to the paper for late work, Joseph gathered friends for cards in his home.

  As the summer of 1879 drew to a close, Joseph had found all the things that he had been lacking when he confessed to Kate, on the eve of their wedding a year earlier, his need for a new life. He was now married to an enviably attractive woman, he was the father of a son, and he was no longer fretting about an impending return to poverty. The only thing that was not yet fully in his domain was the paper, which he still had to share with a partner.

  In the fall, it became increasingly clear to Dillon and Pulitzer that their partnership would not work. McCullagh, who predicted that the partnership would not last, attributed the breakup to “incompatibility of temper, superinduced, perhaps, by an excess of talent.” The truth of the matter was that one did not work with Pulitzer. For him, surely. Against him, often. But not with him. Carl Schurz and Preetorius had learned this in 1872. Now, it was Dillon’s turn.

  Dillon agreed to sell Pulitzer his half of the enterprise. It had been only a year since Pulitzer had sat late into the night with his friend Houser, counting how many months of operating expenses his few thousand dollars in savings would buy him. Now he could meet Dillon’s asking price solely from his share of the paper’s first-year profits. On November 29, 1879, the Post-Dispatch announced Dillon’s departure. Pulitzer was the paper’s sole proprietor.

  Joseph reorganized the paper’s corporate structure. He made Kate vice president, putting one share in her name, and filled the rest of the board with loyal friends such as William Patrick. Next, with his hands unfettered, Pulitzer made wholesale changes to the editorial staff. He didn’t want another partner, but he needed someone who could act as one. Within days of Dillon’s departure, Pulitzer sent a wire to John Cockerill, whom he had first met at the Liberal Republican convention, offering him the post of managing editor.

  That night, Cockerill found the telegram waiting for him when he picked up his room key at Barnum’s Hotel in Baltimore. Since his successful run with Hutchins at the Washington Post, he had moved on to become editor of the Baltimore Gazette. Hutchins still sang his praises. “The really notable newspaper men in the United States can be numbered upon the fingers of one’s hands, and Mr. Cockerill’s name would be called before the second hand was reached,” he wrote. Pulitzer’s offer was irresistible. The two men had similar political views, and their enthusiasm for the new journalism of the era was so great that they were like apostles of a faith.

  The challenge that came with the job was daunting. Although Cockerill knew of Pulitzer’s early successes, the Post-Dispatch was still more a promise than an accomplishment. It was nowhere close to challenging the behemoth of St. Louis edited by Cockerill’s early boss and friend McCullagh. The city belonged to the Globe Democrat. Only the Boston Herald, the New York Herald, and the Philadelphia Ledger had higher circulations. But Cockerill had confidence in Pulitzer. He took the job.

  Chapter Fourteen

  DARK LANTERN

  In January 1880, St. Louisans were astonished to read that the Post-Dispatch would soon be on the auction block. Advertisements in the St. Louis Times proclaimed that the rival newspaper, its machinery, type, press, furniture, and all components of business would be sold to the highest bidder at the east front of the courthouse. The advertisements were the devious work of Times publ
isher B. M. Chambers, an avowed enemy of Pulitzer who was frequently ill treated in the Post-Dispatch.

  Chambers was convinced he had found a means to put Pulitzer out of business or, at the least, make his life miserable. Before Pulitzer had bought the Dispatch, its former owners kept the paper alive using a loan from the ill-famed attorney Frank Bowman. In return for this last-ditch loan, the owners surrendered to Bowman the original, embossed certificate of the Dispatch’s membership in the Associated Press. Chambers had since acquired the note and certificate. With the AP document in his hands, Chambers demanded that Pulitzer pay off the loan to get it back. But Pulitzer’s lawyers had rightly concluded that he was not liable for the loan, so Pulitzer refused.

  Chambers put his plan for an auction into action. Pulitzer was not worried about the stunt. It would be impossible to sell the paper without a legal determination that it was liable for the old loan. “IS THIS MAN INSANE?” Pulitzer asked in a headline in the Post-Dispatch. But the Post-Dispatch’s AP membership certificate was another matter, one far more serious. If Chambers somehow caused Pulitzer to lose access to the AP, it might ruin the paper.

  Pulitzer sought help from AP president Murat Halstead, whom he had known since the Liberal Republican days, and other members of the news service. But Pulitzer knew that in the high-stakes game of a news monopoly, business interests could trump friendship. So, as insurance, he filed suit to compel the association to issue him a new certificate to replace the one Chambers held and proposed to sell at the auction.