Pulitzer

by James McGrath Morris

  A few days later, Clarke reported that the purchase of the bonds would bring a profit of $50,000. After having attacked Morgan for making money from bond transactions, Pulitzer panicked at this potentially embarrassing gain. The World’s managers and editors were all called together for a meeting. After two hours of debate, the paper’s business manager asked, “Why not keep it?” Pulitzer accepted the advice.

  Roosevelt, who had gotten neither war nor a criminal prosecution of Pulitzer, sought his own revenge for the paper’s ill-treatment of his police commissionership. He found a vehicle when the World compiled a catalog of crimes under his watch, implying that time spent on the saloon issue had left citizens less protected. Roosevelt persuaded the New York Times, which was losing $2,500 a week and facing bankruptcy, to publish the city’s official report showing the World’s list to be a gross exaggeration.

  Roosevelt, in this small triumph, summed up a decision that all of Pulitzer’s political enemies had to make. “It is always a question how far it is necessary to go in answering a man who is a convicted liar,” Roosevelt said. “For the same reason it is a little difficult to decide whether it is necessary to take notice of any statement whatever appearing in Mr. Pulitzer’s paper, the New York World.”

  Pulitzer, tucked away in his cottage at Jekyll once again, chose to ignore Roosevelt. A new and more dangerous opponent than a carping politician faced him. A young upstart newspaper publisher was preparing to do to him what Pulitzer had done to the giants of Park Row in 1883.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  TROUBLE FROM THE WEST

  In February 1895 an office boy at the Morning Journal spotted a corpulent man, probably nearing 300 pounds, trying to unlock the door to Albert Pulitzer’s office.

  “Hey, there!” said the boy, “You can’t go in there. That’s a private room.”

  “I want to get in there, right away,” replied the man, smiling.

  The boy rushed to the newsroom to tell the city editor that someone was trying to get into the publisher’s office. As he tried to give his report, the desk bell from Pulitzer’s office began to ring. The boy ran back to see who was ringing it and found the mysterious intruder in the office seated behind the desk. Only then did he realize that it was Albert Pulitzer, who had not been at the paper in a year or two.

  “I fooled you, didn’t I,” said Pulitzer.

  “I-I-I, er, beg your pardon, sir, but I didn’t know you,” replied the boy.

  “Oh, that’s all right, you are not the only one. I passed the Sunday editor as I was coming through the hall and he actually gave me a stony, British stare.”

  Albert’s immense weight gain made him hard to recognize, but in any case his mere presence in the office was a shock. In the years since the Morning Journal had become established, Albert had become an absentee publisher like his brother Joseph at the World. He had no health concerns to drive him from New York. Rather, he was more like James Bennett of the New York Herald. He simply preferred life in the elegant social circles of London, Paris, and other European capitals. The Morning Journal’s purpose had been to make money and it had done that.

  At the beginning, Albert had brought the same dedication to running the Morning Journal that Joseph had lavished on the World. Every morning between three and four o’clock, a messenger brought a copy of the Morning Journal, other papers, reports on daily circulation, and the daily ledger. If the man was late, he would find the publisher pacing impatiently on the sidewalk. During breakfast, Pulitzer scrutinized his paper. “When he finished with it,” recalled his son, “the thing would look like a pyrotechnical display, for he used both blue and red pencils without stint, and frequently the comments were punctuated with several exclamation points.” With remarks such as “Awful!! Don’t let this occur again” or “Too Evening-Postish!” plastered over the pages, the paper was sent back to the editors for their review.

  From its origin as a scandal sheet, the Morning Journal had grown into an immensely successful one-cent paper. It took no interest in politics. “I think one politician in the family is enough,” said Albert. “My brother Joseph is welcome to that part of fame which time may allot to the name Pulitzer. Two Worlds would be more than New York could hold.”

  The Journal’s circulation hovered between 175,000 and 200,000. Its success rested on a daily array of human interest stories, spiced with risqué items, humor, and, above all, a slavish devotion to society news. “If the Vanderbilts and Astors were absent from its columns,” a rewrite man said, “proprietor Albert, in Vienna or Paris, would want to know the reasons why.” Although the profit paled in comparison with that of Joseph’s World, the $100,000 a year Albert drew supported his leisurely life in Europe. Having divorced Fannie in 1882, after nine years of marriage, he left her to raise their son Walter on her own with a small stipend.

  But his years in European capitals, with their more refined journals, had lessened Albert’s appetite for prurient news. Upon his return in 1895 he informed his staff that the Morning Journal would now become “the least sensational paper published” and would move into the arena of the two-cent papers such as the World. He shared the news with his readers in a front-page editorial. “As it once brought New York the gospel of brightness, so the Journal will now strive to set an example of a higher, better tone in the treatment of news,” he said. “To please, to amuse, to instruct in a fascinating way, to brighten the home circle, and never to offend with an objectionable word, will be our unceasing endeavor.”

  The readers weren’t impressed, and circulation dropped precipitously. Fortunately, John McLean, the successful publisher of the Cincinnati Enquirer, rescued Albert from the consequences of his folly. McLean paid close to $1 million for the Morning Journal and its companion German edition, the Morgen Journal. He was convinced that he could make money in New York as he had done in Cincinnati. It didn’t happen. Rather, the Morning Journal continued its decline. McLean dropped the price to a penny again, but to no avail. By the fall of 1895, he had to sell. He found a willing customer in William Randolph Hearst.

  After making a success of the San Francisco Examiner, Hearst had hungered for a newspaper in New York. His mother, who now held the family fortune, consented to back him. In September 1895, Hearst took the dying Journal off of McLean’s hands for $150,000, less than 20 percent of what McLean had paid for it the year before.

  At long last Hearst had a toehold in New York, and he had gotten it for far less than his model, Joseph Pulitzer, had paid. But in the twelve years since Pulitzer arrived on Park Row, the fabled block had vastly changed. The city had eight other morning newspapers including the dominant World; the venerable Herald, Sun, and Tribune; and the struggling New York Times. The once gossipy, now declining sheet that Hearst bought held little promise of competing. “He may come but he can’t get a reputable newspaperman in New York to work on his paper,” said one editor.

  Hearst imported his best talent from San Francisco and, with his checkbook, persuaded several well-known journalists such as Julius Chambers and Julian Ralph to join his staff. He even lured Richard Harding Davis into covering the Harvard-Yale football game for a then unheard-of fee: $500. In November the first issue of the new, redesigned New York Journal was out. Advertisements for the paper appeared everywhere in the city and hired bands played on street corners.

  The Journal displayed many of the same traits that had made the World a success. The front page bristled with large bold headlines atop engrossing urban tales. Most striking were the spectacular illustrations of criminals and beautiful girls. Except for the frequency of females in the illustrations—a Hearst touch—the challenger was simply improving on Pulitzer’s recipe by using splashier headlines, larger drawings, and more dramatic and compelling copy.

  The new kid on the block made the World look middle-aged and stodgy. In fact, in Pulitzer’s absence, his paper had grown fat on its success, and stale. But no one had dared challenge its supremacy until now. Most threatening to the World was
that Hearst had the luxury of being able to sacrifice revenue for circulation. He could afford to put out the most expensive newspaper in town and sell it as the cheapest for as long as he wished. Readers didn’t care if Hearst was making money. What appealed to them was a newspaper that offered twice the excitement for half the price.

  Pulitzer’s men at the World remained unconcerned. “The new venture at once began to grow, not at the expense of the high-priced but of the low-cost papers,” said Don Seitz, who was now one of Pulitzer’s top men. Their cockiness did not last long. From the San Francisco Examiner’s New York office, on the eleventh floor of the Pulitzer Building, Hearst secretly negotiated with the editor of the Sunday World, whose circulation of nearly 500,000 copies made it the most profitable part of the paper. By January 1896, Hearst had persuaded not only the Sunday editor but the entire Sunday staff to join the Journal.

  Pulitzer found out about this theft when he alighted on Jekyll Island. He telegraphed Solomon Carvalho to get the staff back at any cost. Then, ordering his aides to pack, Pulitzer left the island for New York. When the club tender carrying him reached the mainland, the party ran into James Creelman, a noted World reporter, who was waiting for a launch to take him to a promised meeting with the publisher. The weary Creelman had no choice but to reboard the train that had brought him south and have his meeting in Pulitzer’s private coach.

  After two years as one of the World’s most widely traveled and colorful foreign correspondents, Creelman wanted out. He told his boss that he cared little about the World but a lot for their friendship. Pulitzer accepted the news with unusual calmness, considering the personnel problems awaiting him in New York. But he recognized traits in Creelman, similar to his own, that made it hard to work in a subordinate position.

  While the party traveled northward, Carvalho, in New York, managed to lure the Sunday staff back. But this reprieve lasted only twenty-four hours. Hearst’s checkbook was too appealing. “The most extraordinary dollar-matching contest in the history of American journalism had begun,” said Seitz, whose own pay would begin a long ascent in return for his loyalty to Pulitzer.

  Pulitzer’s first action on reaching New York was to terminate the Examiner’s lease in his building. He put Arthur Brisbane in charge of the Sunday edition and convened a war council at his residence in Lakewood. The news was grim. The Journal, in less than three months, had come within 35,000 of the World’s daily circulation. Something had to be done. The business manager, John Norris, who had worked for a penny newspaper, recommended that Pulitzer cut the price of the two-cent morning World in half; the Evening World already sold for a penny. Carvalho agreed. Only Seitz held out.

  Pulitzer couldn’t decide. A dozen years earlier he had been the one to force other publishers to cut their prices. Not being able to call the shots was a new and uncomfortable position for him. As Pulitzer prepared to head back to Jekyll Island, he had still not made up his mind, so Carvalho and Norris boarded the train with him. By the time they reached Philadelphia, Pulitzer told them his decision. He would cut the price. The pair left the train and returned to New York.

  “The news of the World’s reduction came like a thunder clap to the great newspaper offices in Park Row,” reported the Chicago Tribune. An editorial in the World announced the change.

  “The reason for this reduction is a secret that we are ready to share with all the people. We prefer power to profits.”

  “The immediate effect was electric, but not as its owner had anticipated,” Seitz said. Circulation did go up, by 88,000, but only the smaller competing papers suffered circulation losses. The Journal continued to gain. By stooping to compete with Hearst, Pulitzer had brought more attention to the Journal and had actually encouraged his rival. “The World in reducing to one cent must have recognized the fact that the Journal has come to stay,” Adolph Ochs, a publisher in Chattanooga, Tennessee, with hopes of someday joining the Park Row fraternity, told Pulitzer.

  Both newspapers gained in circulation, but lost money with every copy. “Mr. Hearst felt that he had his antagonist staggering and began a furious assault,” said Seitz. “He spent money as it had never been spent before on newspapers in any field.” Pulitzer had the resources to match Hearst, but he no longer had the daring of a young man, especially one with inherited wealth.

  Hearst’s entry into New York gave editors and reporters who could no longer tolerate Pulitzer’s eccentric management style a practical exit, even a lucrative one. To Carvalho, who had acted as the publisher of the World in all but name, the option looked attractive. He felt as if he were at the end of a yo-yo jerked by Pulitzer’s constant changing of orders and reshuffling of authority. In late March 1896, he telephoned Pulitzer on Jekyll Island, a daring act in and of itself, and said that unless his powers were restored by the end of the day—five o’clock in the afternoon, to be precise—he would quit. At five-thirty, Carvalho called Seitz into his office and said he was done, after nine years of managing the World. A few days later, he was on the Journal’s payroll, where he would remain as Hearst’s right-hand man for thirty years. Pulitzer’s detractors watched the desertions with glee. The anti-Semitic gossip sheet Town Topics asked, “How is Mr. Pulitzer going to get unleavened bread when the young Egyptian from San Francisco is getting all the dough?”

  With his newspaper’s supremacy threatened and managerial trouble afoot, Pulitzer found Jekyll Island insufferable. To make matters worse, a government-contracted dredge entered the waters near his cottage, its steam engine clanging as it hoisted buckets of muck to the surface. Pulitzer sent his secretary out to pay the foreman $100 a day to hold off on the work until his stay on the island was over.

  On Jekyll Island, word reached Pulitzer that John Cockerill, the editor who served him loyally during his rise at the Post-Dispatch and followed him to the World, had died in Cairo, Egypt. Since the two had parted company in 1891, Cockerill had run his own newspaper and then become a foreign correspondent for the New York Herald. He was on assignment for the Herald in Egypt when he succumbed to a brain hemorrhage while in a hotel barber’s chair. The World made only modest note of his passing. Pulitzer was heading north and could have attended the funeral service when Cockerill’s body reached New York in May, but he chose not to. Instead he left it to Chauncey Depew, who had presided with Cockerill at the laying of the cornerstone for the Pulitzer Building, to represent the missing half of the partnership that had transformed New York journalism. A few days later, Cockerill’s will was probated. “I name as my executor Joseph Pulitzer,” Cockerill had written, “who has been a faithful and sincere friend to me, and to whom I am indebted for much that I enjoy.”

  Pulitzer found tranquillity at Moray Lodge, the princely manor in Kensington, England. The peacocks were done with their mating and the place was quiet. “No discordant echoes of the city’s ceaseless human hum disturb the restful quiet of the place,” noted one caller who found Pulitzer in the elegant study, which was lined with the landlord’s books. He was in better health than he had been in several years. His worries in New York rested in an untended pile of telegrams and letters strewn over a desk. London was like a tonic.

  Its pleasures were made all the greater when, in June 1896, a delegation of British peace societies came to pay homage to Pulitzer and the World for helping defuse the Venezuelan crisis. They brought a proclamation, engrossed on vellum, deeming the effort a “beneficent exemplification of the marvelous facilities of modern journalism in the dark days of last December.” A decade after Pulitzer had brought an American tribute to Gladstone, his own statesmanship was the subject of British praise.

  “I’m deeply touched,” Pulitzer told the gathered religious, social, and political leaders, “but am unfortunately an invalid and under a doctor’s orders and I ask permission that my response be read by a young American friend—my son.”

  It thus fell to sixteen-year-old Ralph to read his father’s long speech on the value of international arbitration. Pulitzer earnestly belie
ved that war could almost always be avoided. He hated the saber rattling endemic in American political culture and had little taste for the bellicose rhetoric exemplified by men like Theodore Roosevelt. “Civilization is no more possible without peace than permanent peace is possible without arbitration,” Ralph said, as he made his way through the thousands of words.

  Yet an American war loomed as Ralph read his father’s speech. In Cuba, an independence movement had gained such strength that the Spanish government dispatched 150,000 troops to put it down. The Cubans who resisted were being turned into heroes by the World, the Journal, and other newspapers.

  Before returning to the United States, Pulitzer detoured to Wiesbaden, Germany, for a short stay at the Hotel Kaiserhof, adjacent to the Augusta Victoria baths. There, between Turkish baths and mud and hot sand treatments, Pulitzer gave more thought to his problems back in New York. “We must recognize the extraordinary competition, no doubt, but we must also recognize extraordinary foolishness, not imitate it,” he wrote to Norris. Publishing a penny newspaper constrained the size of the paper but not its quality. “I regard it as more important to have the best paper than the biggest in size.”

  Unable to let his staff do their jobs without his constant interference, Pulitzer sent a stream of telegrams through the underwater Atlantic cable bearing instructions on topics ranging from the rate for help-wanted classifieds to changing the grade of paper used in certain editions. He instructed Brisbane to make the Sunday edition of interest to intelligent readers (“Make real popular magazine not a magazine of horrors”); reviewed the World’s printing capacity (“Shall we order six new color presses in order that we may meet the Journal?”); and pushed him to compete with the Journal for out-of-town readers (“if you are sure of your grounds and more particularly of the ground the Journal occupies”).