Pulitzer

by James McGrath Morris

  Towering 345 feet above the sidewalk, the building had two miles of wrought-iron columns, sixteen miles of steel beams, enough iron and steel to lay twenty-nine miles of railway, and sufficient bricks to build 250 ordinary houses. It stood on a foundation thirty feet below street level, supported by twelve-foot brick footings. The cavernous basement held Hoe’s newest and fastest presses, which when running at full tilt made their rhythmic beat felt throughout the building.

  The gigantic high-speed presses were not mere workhorses. They were one of the technological marvels of the age, capable of churning out enough newspapers in a few hours to supply every New Yorker with a copy, and inspiring awe among the hundreds of visitors who came to watch each day. For members of the fourth estate the smell of ink was intoxicating. Few thrills compared with hearing the sound of the bell announcing the first turns of a press and the ensuing locomotive-like thumping cadence building to a deafening roar as the procession of cut, folded, and gathered pages poured forth with increasing speed. In the minds of reporters, the power of the press was both a figurative and a literal idea.

  To enter the Pulitzer Building, one walked through a churchlike three-story vault made of Corsehill stone from Scotland, above which stood a quartet of bronze female torchbearers, representing art, literature, science, and invention. Fast-moving elevators ferried passengers up and down fifteen stories. The first ten floors, coupled vertically with tall, Palladian windows, and banded horizontally by a stone ledge, contained offices leased to insurance salesmen, stockbrokers, and lawyers. The remaining floors, stacked above this hive of commerce, were distinguished by concave corners and four sculptured black copper figures representing the four races—Caucasian, Indian, Mongolian, Negro—and standing as if supporting a large pediment.

  The World itself began here, on the twelfth floor. A room with a ceiling eighteen feet high housed 210 compositors, who set the morning and evening editions entirely by hand. It was the largest operation of its kind anywhere and required thirty-two tons of lead. The men stood at forty long, raised tables with bins with lead type. Moving with lightning speed, the compositors pulled and dropped each letter of each word into composing sticks that were locked into a form the size of a newspaper page. On a raised platform at the center of the hall, thirty proofreaders worked reviewing printed samples of the composed stories and advertisements.

  Above it all, positioned like a throne room, Pulitzer’s editorial command post occupied a tower. The largest office, facing east on the second floor of the domed structure, was reserved for Pulitzer. With frescoed ceilings, walls wainscoted with leather, and three floor-to-ceiling windows, the room looked out over the city, the Statue of Liberty in the harbor, and the Watchung Mountains in New Jersey—a privileged view lost on an almost blind publisher. Next door to Pulitzer’s office three interconnected offices housed his staff of editorial writers.

  Capped with an 850,000-pound gilded dome, the four-story editorial enclave perched on top of the Pulitzer Building reached higher into the sky than even the Statue of Liberty’s raised torch. When the sun struck the dome, it reflected a shimmering light that could be seen forty miles out at sea. The first sight of the New World for immigrants entering New York was not a building of commerce, banking, or industry. Rather, it was a temple of America’s new mass media.

  Kate and Hosmer persuaded Dr. S. Weir Mitchell, the nation’s leading neurologist, to see Joseph. Mitchell’s medical reputation stemmed from his work with soldiers in the Civil War who suffered injuries to their nerves. His book Injuries of Nerves and Their Consequence, based on his experiences, was the most widely used reference for physicians in the United States and Europe. He had also pioneered research examining the relationship between eyestrain and headaches. He seemed the perfect physician for Joseph.

  Unfortunately, Mitchell turned out to be yet another in a long series of disappointments. The “Weir Mitchell treatment” consisting of prolonged bed rest with optimum feeding and massages had been prescribed for Pulitzer so often that he was let down when the inventor himself prescribed it. On the other hand, hearing this advice from Mitchell was like reaching the end of a long road. If Mitchell could offer no other solution, there was no recourse.

  As he struggled with his near-blindness, Pulitzer entered a kind of netherworld. He did not fit into the sighted world, but neither was he blind—at least not yet. Although he clung to a hope that he could regain his vision, there was little doubt of his fate. To become blind during his era was like being sentenced to a dark internal exile. There were no blind politicians, business leaders, or generals. Helen Keller was still only eight years old. It was assumed that the loss of vision meant the end of a productive life. In fact, newspapers were filled with stories of men who could not face the prospect: “DEATH PREFERRED TO TOTAL BLINDNESS” “PREFERRING DEATH TO BLINDNESS” “SHOOTS HIMSELF WHEN EYES FAIL.” The Talmud, which Pulitzer had studied as a child, offered a somber interpretation: the blind were thought of as the living dead; and when encountering a blind person, believers were to offer the same benediction as was customary upon the death of a close relative.

  On October 16, 1890, a startling announcement greeted readers of the World. “Yielding to the advice of his physicians, Mr. Joseph Pulitzer has withdrawn entirely from the editorship of the World.” Control of the newspaper would be turned over to an executive board comprised of editors who had long been in his service.

  News of Pulitzer’s abdication spread rapidly. From Bangor, Maine, to Chillicothe, Missouri, and Galveston, Texas, small-town editors who aspired to be the Pulitzers of their communities marked the moment. But it was a neighboring newspaper on Park Row that gave Pulitzer his most gratifying acknowledgment. As if a champion boxer had withdrawn from the ring, the competing New York Herald found words of praise. “We droop our colors to him,” said Bennett’s editorial. “We have not always agreed with the spirit which had made his ideas a journalistic success, and we cannot refrain from regretting that he did not encourage us in the new departure which he made, instead of merely astonishing us, frightening us, and, we may add—now that it is past—perhaps a little bit disgusting us.”

  “But,” Bennett concluded, “le Roi est mort, vive the Roi! The New York World is dead, long live the World!”

  Barely two months later, on December 10, the tallest building on earth was ready for its grand opening. Its owner, however, was not. Pulitzer could not bring himself to attend a public event at which he would be led around like the invalid he was getting to be. It would be too humiliating. Instead, he and Kate, along with Hosmer and Ponsonby, reboarded the Teutonic, which sailed out of sight of the gold-domed Pulitzer Building only hours before thousands congregated for the ceremonies.

  On Park Row, the power and prestige of the World were on display. Nine governors and three governors-elect, as well as countless mayors, congressmen, judges, editors, and publishers vied for a chance to have their words mark the occasion. The huge crowd pressed up against the entrance of the building. The sea of visitors inside was so thick that movement from room to room or floor to floor was almost impossible. Even the dignitaries could not get a ride in the F.T. Ellithorpe Improved Air-Cushion with Self-Closing Elevator Door lift.

  The final price tag of the building topped $2 million, and not a cent had been borrowed. A PEOPLE’S PALACE WITHOUT A CENT OF DEBT OR MORTGAGE, proclaimed the World, which printed a copy of a certificate from the county recorder showing Pulitzer’s unencumbered ownership. As a tribute to their publisher, the employees of the World commissioned and paid for a twenty-one-inch bas-relief of the building, made of silver melted from the coins of customers who bought copies of the paper.

  After reaching England on December 16, Pulitzer and his party made their way to Paris, where they remained until arrangements to charter a British yacht with crew for a Mediterranean cruise were concluded. In early January 1891, the group went south to Menton and boarded the 200-foot, two-year-old steamship Semiramis. At the last minute, Kate decid
ed that she could not endure a long sea voyage and begged off.

  For almost four months, Pulitzer and his companions lazily circled the Mediterranean. He adhered rigidly to Dr. Mitchell’s instructions and avoided all irritation, even remaining out of touch with his editors. “All those days on the yacht, conversation was an abundant resource to lighten the steps of time,” said Hosmer. So were books. Ponsonby and Hosmer took turns reading aloud from George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss and William Thackeray’s Vanity Fair, as well as works by the Victorian novelist Hall Caine.

  When the men left the yacht at Nice and returned to Paris, Pulitzer felt better but still suffered from anxiety and insomnia. Consulting with Dr. Mitchell, who was in Rome, Pulitzer complained that being separated from his staff and work was creating as much anxiety in him as any work-related woes had done in the past. The doctor was unconvinced and refused to alter his prescription of isolation and rest.

  Pulitzer defied Mitchell. He began to catch up on the conduct of the paper in his absence. He was horrified by what he found. Cockerill had taken a twelve-week vacation. He and Turner were acting like owners, and worse, they had let the paper’s circulation fall by 16 percent. Pulitzer fired off cables giving Turner, his loyal business manager, a pink slip and punishing Cockerill by ordering his return to St. Louis, an impossible mission considering the fatal episode that had driven him from that city. Turner immediately landed a job as editor of a rival paper. Cockerill went to his watering hole at the Astor House and in three hours rounded up enough investors to start his own newspaper.

  Pulitzer’s cure for the World was worse than the disease. Now his paper was devoid of leadership. He had no option but to return to New York.

  Leaving Kate in Paris, Joseph, Ponsonby, and Hosmer rushed to England and booked passage on the Majestic. J. P. Morgan was also on board. Despite their membership in the exclusive Jekyll Island club, as a frequent target of the World’s acerbic editorials Morgan avoided socializing with Pulitzer. Arriving in New York ahead of schedule on the morning of June 10, the group went straight to Park Row, startling editors and reporters who had not expected Pulitzer this soon. The shock of Pulitzer’s presence in the building accentuated the seriousness of the situation. His first visit to the building constructed to the glory of the paper was a rescue mission.

  Ballard Smith, the paper’s highest-ranking editor now that Cockerill was gone, had not yet come in for the day. Luckily, Davis, Pulitzer’s brother-in-law and the only remaining member of the triumvirate that had ruled the paper, was on hand—as was John Dillon, Pulitzer’s former partner in St. Louis, who had been running the Post-Dispatch. He had rushed to New York after receiving a telegraphed plea from Pulitzer. While Hosmer tended to his boss’s luggage, the men conferred, summoning other editors and managers.

  Pulitzer’s solution to the disarray at the top was to have Smith, who had come into the office at last, officially assume most of Cockerill’s duties as editor in chief. Dillon would take over for Turner. For new blood, Pulitzer turned to George B. M. Harvey. Though only twenty-seven years old, Harvey had distinguished himself as a reporter for the World and then as editor of the New Jersey and Connecticut editions. Pulitzer made Harvey the managing editor, with a salary higher than he had ever earned, and promised Harvey that he would report only to him and would be exempt from most night work.

  With the new structure established, Pulitzer left the World and took some time to look over his newest purchase, a $100,000 yacht that had once belonged to the duke of Sutherland. The vessel, rechristened Romola, after one of Pulitzer’s favorite novels by George Eliot, was ready for his inspection at a Hudson River pier. The test cruise and dinner on board were a disaster.

  A heat wave blanketed New York City (the thermometer reached 97 degrees at Hudnut’s Pharmacy downtown) and the inside of the yacht was like an oven. Frustrated, Pulitzer ordered the captain to sail to Europe without him. Instead, he secured rooms for the return voyage of the Majestic and, along with Hosmer and Ponsonby, said good-bye to New York after only seven days.

  A few weeks after Pulitzer’s departure, William Randolph Hearst arrived in New York. In the four years since he had taken over his father’s bankrupt daily, the San Francisco Examiner, Hearst had made a success of it, using all the techniques he had learned by carefully studying Pulitzer. But, just as his role model had felt running the Post-Dispatch in St. Louis, Hearst wanted a New York newspaper. “Between you and me,” he wrote to his mother during one of many stays in the east, “I am getting so I do hate San Francisco.”

  Because of his father’s death earlier in the year, Hearst anticipated having the capital to pursue his dream. To his shock, however, he discovered that he had inherited none of his father’s vast fortune. Instead, it went entirely to his mother. If he wanted to buy another paper, he would need to persuade his mother to write the check. It would have to be a large one. In the seven years since Pulitzer had bought the World, buying a New York newspaper had grown costly.

  When Hearst reached New York in July, he sought out Cockerill, Pulitzer’s former editor. Cockerill offered Hearst a chance to buy into his new Morning Advertiser, which sold for a penny on the streets. But Hearst didn’t want to acquire a one-cent paper like Cockerill’s, or even Albert Pulitzer’s Morning Journal, which had continued to prosper in the shadow of the World. “I think there is another way to get into New York perhaps even better than through Mr. Cockerill,” Hearst wrote his mother, with whom he was now campaigning to buy a newspaper.

  “I dined with Ballard Smith the other night and we talked newspapers till we were black in the face,” he explained. Smith—Pulitzer’s managing editor—told Hearst that he believed his boss was going to give him a share of ownership in the World. It was an unrealistic expectation. Although Pulitzer paid high salaries, gave huge bonuses, and lavished presents on his editors, he had yet to relinquish any portion of ownership in either newspaper. Nonetheless, Smith’s story raised Hearst’s hopes. Maybe, given Pulitzer’s ill health, the World itself could be bought.

  Pulitzer’s emergency trip to New York had exacted a toll. The heat and his fretting over the paper’s management had been toxic for everything that ailed him. “There was a partial loss of even the little eyesight that he possessed,” noted an anxious Hosmer. Kate met the returning party in England and they retreated to Paris together. Suffering from what doctors decided was asthma and still unable to sleep through the night, Joseph was packed off to Wiesbaden for another cure. Kate, once again, remained in Paris, attending social events and displaying, as at the British embassy ball, her famous necklace of seven rows of closely set diamonds.

  Ponsonby and Hosmer stayed in Wiesbaden with their boss while he underwent a monotonous regimen of baths, massages, walks, and carriage rides. “Many of these days were lightened by literature—reading was the main resource to exclude the devil of worry,” Hosmer said. In the company of Trollope and Scott, the three men whiled away the summer.

  In the fall, when Pulitzer finally returned to New York, no unpleasant surprises awaited him. During this exile, he had kept up with the affairs of the World. The paper was healthy, and the council had proved itself capable of replacing Cockerill and Turner—at least temporarily. When Pulitzer gathered his editors, the 1892 presidential election was on his mind. Governor David Hill of New York, elected and reelected in great part thanks to the World, was being touted as a candidate. But he was overshadowed by Grover Cleveland, who had decided to try to regain the White House and was currying favor with Pulitzer. The former president knew firsthand, having experienced Pulitzer’s rejection in 1888, that it was better to run for office with the World on your side.

  Pulitzer feared that the Democrats were growing weak in their resolve to support the gold standard, under which paper money could be redeemed for gold. Along with the Republicans, they had long held that giving paper money real value helped keep the economy stable. But in the House elections of 1890, the Democrats had watched members of the Popul
ist Party win nine Congressional seats at their expense on a “free silver” platform, essentially proposing that the U.S. mint produce an unlimited amount of silver coins.

  At first glance, monetary policy would seem to be an arcane subject unlikely to stir up the political cauldron. But monetary policy was widely and contentiously debated because the nation’s economic life was regularly punctuated by severe depressions. Many citizens believed that the federal government controlled the value of money and that bad times were largely due to poor exercise of this power. A growing number of Americans became persuaded that the government ought to decrease the value of money to combat a deflation that was wreaking havoc in farm states. Falling prices struck farmers with a one-two punch by simultaneously reducing their income and driving up the costs of their mortgages.

  The debate over free silver and the gold standard grew to be more than an economic argument. The banner of free silver united the nation’s disaffected citizens, farmers, and some elements of labor. They saw silver as the salvation for all the ills they faced and considered the gold standard to be an exploitive tool of banks. It was a prairie fire that soon alarmed the eastern establishment.

  Pulitzer shared most goals of the populists and progressives, but he could not bring himself to advocate abandoning the gold standard. Earlier in his life, he had run the Post-Dispatch on a shoestring, and as the owner of the World had been in debt to one of the most notorious barons of the Gilded Age; but now he was among the fifty richest Americans. In the last couple of years, the annual profit from the World alone had exceeded $1 million. To oversee his money, Pulitzer had engaged Dumont Clarke, a fifty-year-old investment manager who descended from a line of six bank presidents. Unlike the ever-changing guard at the paper, Clarke won Pulitzer’s lasting trust by protecting his growing wealth with railroad stocks, one of the few investment options available then aside from bonds. If industrialists and financiers considered the gold standard as the bulwark protecting their fortunes, Pulitzer now had a fortune of his own to safeguard.