In the days of which I have hitherto written there was a dignity, reserve, contentment—call it what you will—in the conduct of newspapers of established reputation. There was rivalry among them in their endeavors to publish the earliest news of public events, but it was a dignified rivalry involving comparatively little of that self-glorification which has since come to be a double-leaded feature in the conduct of many newspapers. The era of illustration and exploitation by the use of pictures had not yet been born of cheapened reproductive processes. Newspapers were usually printed directly from type because stereotyping was then a costly process and a slow one. As a consequence, newspapers were printed in regular columns consecutively arranged, and articles begun in one column were carried forward in the next. There were no such legends as "continued on page five," and the like.
Headlines were confined to the column that began the article. The art of stretching them halfway or all the way across the page and involving half a dozen of them in gymnastic wrestlings with each other for supremacyin conspicuity had not then been invented, and in its absence the use of circus poster type and circus poster exaggeration of phrase was undreamed of.
Now and then an advertiser anxious for conspicuity would pay a heavy price to have column rules cut so that his announcement might stretch over two or more columns, but the cost of that was so great that indulgence in it was rare even among ambitious advertisers, while in the reading columns the practice was wholly unknown.
The Price of Newspapers
Another thing. It was then thought that when a copy of a newspaper was sold, the price paid for it ought to be sufficient at least to pay the cost of its manufacture, plus some small margin of profit. All the great morning newspapers except theSunwere sold at four cents a copy; theSun, by virtue of extraordinary literary condensation, used only about half the amount of paper consumed by the others, and was sold at two cents. The afternoon newspapers were sold at three cents.
The publishers of newspapers had not then grasped the idea that is now dominant, that if a great circulation can be achieved by selling newspapers for less than the mere paper in them costs, the increase in the volume and price of advertising will make of them enormously valuable properties.
That idea was not born suddenly. Even after the revolution was established, the cost of the white paper used in making a newspaper helped to determine the price of it to the public. It was not until the phenomenal success of cheap newspapers years afterwards tempted even more reckless adventurers into the field that publishers generally threw the entire burden of profit-making upon the advertising columns and thus established the business office in the seat before occupied by the editor and made business considerations altogether dominant over utterance, attitude, and conduct.
There were in the meantime many attempts made to establish a cheaper form of journalism, but they were inadequately supported by working capital; they were usually conducted by men of small capacity; they had no traditions of good will behind them, and above all, they could not get Associated Press franchises. For the benefit of readers who are not familiar with the facts, I explain that the Associated Press is an organization for news-gathering, formed by the great newspapers by way of securing news that no newspaper could afford to secure for itself. It maintains bureaus in all the great news centers of the world, and these collect and distribute to the newspapers concerned a great mass of routine news that would be otherwise inaccessible to them. If a president's message, or an inaugural address, or any other public document of voluminous character is to be given out, it is obvious that the newspapers concerned cannot wait for telegraphic reports of its contents. By way of saving time and telegraphic expense, the document is delivered to the Associated Press, and copies of it are sent to all the newspapers concerned, with a strict limitation upon the hour of its publication. Until that hour comes no newspaper in the association is privileged to print it or in any way, by reference or otherwise, to reveal any part of its contents. But in the meanwhile they can put it into type, and with it their editorial comments upon it, so that when the hour of release comes, they can print the whole thing—text and comment—without loss of time. The newspaper not endowed with an Associated Press franchise must wait for twenty-four hours or more for its copy of the document.
Hardly less important is the fact that in every city, town, and village in the country, the Associated Press has its agent—the local editor or the telegraph operator, or some one else—who is commissioned to report to itevery news happening that may arise within his bailiwick. Often these reports are interesting; sometimes they are of importance, and in either case the newspaper not allied with a press association must miss them.
At the time of which I am writing, the Associated Press was the only organization in the country that could render such service, and every newspaper venture lacking its franchise was foredoomed to failure.
The Pulitzer Revolution
But a newspaper revolution was impending and presently it broke upon us.
In 1883 Mr. Joseph Pulitzer bought theWorldand instituted a totally new system of newspaper conduct.
His advent into New York journalism was called an "irruption," and it was resented not only by the other newspapers, but even more by a large proportion of the conservative public.
In its fundamental principle, Mr. Pulitzer's revolutionary method was based upon an idea identical with that suggested by Mr. John Bigelow when he told me there were too many newspapers for the educated class. Mr. Pulitzer undertook to make a newspaper, not for the educated class, but for all sorts and conditions of men. He did not intend to overlook the educated class, but he saw clearly how small a part of the community it was, and he refused to make his appeal to it exclusively or even chiefly.
The results were instantaneous and startling. TheWorld, which had never been able to achieve a paying circulation or a paying constituency of advertisers, suddenly began selling in phenomenal numbers, while its advertising business became what Mr. Pulitzer once called a "bewildering chaos of success, yielding a revenue that the business office was imperfectly equipped to handle."
It is an interesting fact, that theWorld'sgain in circulation was not made at the expense of any other newspaper.The books of account show clearly that while theWorldwas gaining circulation by scores and hundreds of thousands, no other morning newspaper was losing. The simple fact was that by appealing to a larger class, theWorldhad created a great company of newspaper readers who had not before been newspaper readers at all. Reluctantly, and only by degrees, the other morning newspapers adopted theWorld'smethods, and won to themselves a larger constituency than they had ever enjoyed before.
All this had little effect upon the afternoon newspapers. They had their constituencies. Their province was quite apart from that of the morning papers. A circulation of ten or twenty thousand copies seemed to them satisfactory; any greater circulation was deemed extraordinary, and if at a time of popular excitement their sales exceeded twenty thousand they regarded it not only as phenomenal but as a strain upon their printing and distributing machinery which it would be undesirable to repeat very often.
But the revolution was destined to reach them presently. At that time none of the morning newspapers thought of issuing afternoon editions. The game seemed not worth the candle. But presently the sagacity of Mr. William M. Laffan—then a subordinate on theSun'sstaff, later the proprietor and editor of that newspaper—saw and seized an opportunity. The morning papers had learned their lesson and were making their appeal to the multitude instead of the select few. The afternoon newspapers were still addressing themselves solely to "the educated class." Mr. Laffan decided to make an afternoon appeal to the more multitudinous audience. Under his inspiration theEvening Sunwas established on the seventeenth day of March, 1887, and it instantly achieved a circulation of forty thousand—from twice to four times that of its more conservative competitors.
The Lure of the World
A little later an evening edition of theWorldwas established. Its success at first was small, but Mr. Pulitzer quickly saw the reason for that. The paper was too closely modeled upon the conservative and dignified pattern of the established afternoon newspapers. To his subordinates Mr. Pulitzer said:
"You are making a three-cent newspaper for a one-cent constituency. I want you to make it a one-cent newspaper."
What further instructions he gave to that end, I have never heard, but whatever they were they were carried out with a success that seemed to me to threaten the very existence of such newspapers as the one I was editing. I was satisfied that if the newspaper under my control was to survive it must adopt the new methods of journalism, broaden its appeal to the people, and reduce its price to the "penny" which alone the people could be expected to pay when theEvening Sunand theEvening Worldcould be had for that price.
The board of directors of the newspaper could not be induced to take this view, and just then one of the editors of theWorld, acting for Mr. Pulitzer, asked me to take luncheon with him. He explained to me that Mr. Pulitzer wanted an editorial writer and that he—my host—had been commissioned to engage me in that capacity, if I was open to engagement. In the end he made me a proposal which I could not put aside in justice to myself and my family. My relations with Mr. Godwin and his associates were so cordial, and their treatment of me had been always so generous, that I could not think of leaving them without their hearty consent and approval. The summer was approaching, when the members of the board of directors would go away to their summer homes or to Europe. The last regular meeting of the board for the season had been held, and nothing had been done to meetthe new conditions of competition. I was discouraged by the prospect of addressing a steadily diminishing audience throughout the summer, with the possibility of having no audience at all to address when the fall should come.
I hastily called the board together in a special meeting. I told them of the proposal made to me by theWorldand of my desire to accept it unless they could be induced to let me adopt the new methods at an expense much greater than any of the established afternoon newspapers had ever contemplated, and much greater than my board of directors was willing to contemplate. I said frankly that without their cordial consent, I could not quit their service, but that if we were to go on as before, I earnestly wished to be released from a responsibility that threatened my health with disaster.
They decided to release me, after passing some very flattering resolutions, and in early June, 1889, I went to theWorldas an editorial writer free from all responsibility for the news management of the paper, free from all problems of newspaper finance, and free from the crushing weight of the thought that other men's property interests to the extent of many hundreds of thousands of dollars were in hourly danger of destruction by some fault or failure of judgment on my part. As I rejoiced in this sense of release, I recalled what James R. Osgood, one of the princes among publishers, had once said to me, and for the first time I fully grasped his meaning. At some public banquet or other he and I were seated side by side and we fell into conversation regarding certain books he had published. They were altogether worthy books, but their appeal seemed to me to be to so small a constituency that I could not understand what had induced him to publish them at all. I said to him:
"I sometimes wonder at your courage in putting your money into the publication of such books."
He answered:
"That's the smallest part of the matter. Think of my courage in puttingother people's moneyinto their publication!"
It was not long after that that Osgood's enterprises failed, and he retired from business as a publisher to the sorrow of every American who in any way cared for literature.
The Little Dinner to Osgood
When Osgood went to London as an agent of the Harpers, some of us gave him a farewell dinner, for which Thomas Nast designed the menu cards. When these were passed around for souvenir autographs, Edwin A. Abbey drew upon each, in connection with his signature, a caricature of himself which revealed new possibilities in his genius—possibilities that have come to nothing simply because Mr. Abbey has found a better use for his gifts than any that the caricaturist can hope for. But those of us who were present at that little Osgood dinner still cherish our copies of the dinner card on which, with a few strokes of his pencil, Abbey revealed an unsuspected aspect of his genius. In view of the greatness of his more serious work, we rejoice that he went no further than an after-dinner jest, in the exercise of his gift of caricature. Had he given comic direction to his work, he might have become a Hogarth, perhaps; as it is, he is something far better worth while—he is Abbey.
I shall write comparatively little here of the eleven years I remained in the service of theWorld. The experience is too recent to constitute a proper subject of freehandreminiscence. My relations with Mr. Pulitzer were too closely personal, too intimate, and in many ways too confidential to serve a purpose of that kind.
But of the men with whom my work on theWorldbrought me into contact, I am free to write. So, too, I am at liberty, I think, to relate certain dramatic happenings that serve to illustrate the Napoleonic methods of modern journalism and certain other things, not of a confidential nature, which throw light upon the character, impulses, and methods of the man whose genius first discovered the possibilities of journalism and whose courage, energy, and extraordinary sagacity have made of those possibilities accomplished facts.
It has been more than ten years since my term of service on theWorldcame to an end, but it seems recent to me, except when I begin counting up the men now dead who were my fellow-workmen there.
I did not personally know Mr. Pulitzer when I began my duties on theWorld. He was living in Europe then, and about to start on a long yachting cruise. John A. Cockerill was managing editor and in control of the paper, subject, of course, to daily and sometimes hourly instructions from Paris by cable. For, during my eleven years of service on theWorld, I never knew the time when Mr. Pulitzer did not himself actively direct the conduct of his paper wherever he might be. Even when he made a yachting voyage as far as the East Indies, his hand remained always on the helm in New York.
John A. Cockerill
Colonel Cockerill was one of the kindliest, gentlest of men, and at the same time one of the most irascible. His irascibility was like the froth that rises to the top of the glass and quickly disappears, when a Seidlitz powder is dissolved—not at all like the "head" on a glass of champagne which goes on threateningly rising long after the first effervescence is gone. When anything irritated himthe impulse to break out into intemperate speech seemed wholly irresistible, but in the very midst of such utterance the irritation would pass away as suddenly as it had come and he would become again the kindly comrade he had meant to be all the while. This was due to the saving grace of his sense of humor. I think I never knew a man so capable as he of intense seriousness, who was at the same time so alertly and irresistibly impelled to see the humorous aspects of things. He would rail violently at an interfering circumstance, but in the midst of his vituperation he would suddenly see something ridiculous about it or in his own ill-temper concerning it. He would laugh at the suggestion in his mind, laugh at himself, and tell some brief anecdote—of which his quiver was always full—by way of turning his own irritation and indignation into fun and thus making an end of them.
He was an entire stranger to me when I joined the staff of theWorld, but we soon became comrades and friends. There was so much of robust manhood in his nature, so much of courage, kindliness, and generous good will that in spite of the radical differences between his conceptions of life and mine, we soon learned to find pleasure in each other's company, to like each other, and above all, to trust each other. I think each of us recognized in the other a man incapable of lying, deceit, treachery, or any other form of cowardice. That he was such a man I perfectly knew. That he regarded me as such I have every reason to believe.
After our friendship was perfectly established he said to me one day:
"You know I did all I could to prevent your engagement on theWorld. I'm glad now I didn't succeed."
"What was your special objection to me?" I asked.
"Misconception, pure and simple, together with ill-informed prejudice. That's tautological, of course, forprejudice is always ill-informed, isn't it? At any rate, I had an impression that you were a man as utterly different from what I now know you to be as one can easily imagine."
"And yet," I said, "you generously helped me out of my first difficulty here."
"No, did I? How was that?"
"Why, when the news went out that I had been engaged as an editorial writer on theWorld, a good many newspapers over the country were curious to know why. The prejudice against theWorldunder its new management was still rampant, and my appointment seemed to many newspapers a mystery, for the reason that my work before that time had always been done on newspapers of a very different kind. Even here on theWorldthere was curiosity on the subject, for Ballard Smith sent a reporter to me, before I left theCommercial Advertiser, to ask me about it. The reporter, under instructions, even asked me, flatly, whose place I was to take on theWorld, as if theWorldhad not been able to employ a new man without discharging an old one."
"Yes—I know all about that," said Cockerill. "You see, you were editor-in-chief of a newspaper, and some of the folks on theWorldhad a hope born into their minds that you were coming here to replace me as managing editor. Some others feared you were coming to oust them from snug berths. Go on. You didn't finish."
"Well, among the speculative comments made about my transfer, there was one in a Springfield paper, suggesting that perhaps I had been employed 'to give theWorlda conscience.' All these things troubled me greatly, for the reason that I didn't know Mr. Pulitzer then, nor he me, and I feared he would suspect me of having inspired the utterances in question—particularly the one last mentioned. I went to you with my trouble,and I shall never forget what you said to me. 'My dear Mr. Eggleston, you can trust Joseph Pulitzer to get to windward of things without any help from me or anybody else.'"
"You've found it so since, haven't you?" he asked.
"Yes, but I didn't know it then, and it was a kindly act on your part to reassure me."
An Extraordinary Executive
Cockerill's abilities as a newspaper editor were very great, but they were mainly executive. He had no great creative imagination. He could never have originated the Napoleonic revolution in journalism which Mr. Pulitzer's extraordinary genius wrought. But Mr. Pulitzer was fortunate in having such a man as Cockerill to carry out his plans. His alert readiness in grasping an idea and translating it into achievement amounted to genius in its way. But during all the years of my intimate association with him, I never knew Cockerill to originate a great idea. With a great idea intrusted to him for execution, his brain was fertile of suggestions and expedients for its carrying out, and his industry in translating the ideas of his chief into action was ceaseless, tireless, sleepless. He would think of a thousand devices for accomplishing the purpose intended. He would hit upon scores of ways in which a campaign projected by another mind could be carried out effectively.
There was at one time a good deal of speculation as to whose brain had made the phenomenal success of the all-daringWorldexperiment in journalism. I think I know all about that, and my judgment is unhesitating. Mr. Pulitzer was often and even generally fortunate in his multitudinous lieutenants, and that good fortune was chiefly due to his sagacity in the selection of the men appointed to carry out his plans. But the plans were his, just as the choice of lieutenants was, and the creative genius that revolutionized journalism and achieved resultsunmatched and even unapproached, was exclusively that of Joseph Pulitzer.
I do not mean that every valuable idea or suggestion which contributed to the result was originally his, though on broad lines that was true. But it was part and parcel of his genius to induce ideas and call forth suggestions at the hands of others, to make them his own, and to embody them in the policy of theWorld. So readily did he himself appreciate this necessity of getting ideas from whatever source they might come, that he often offered premiums and rewards for helpful suggestions. And when any member of his staff voluntarily offered suggestions that appealed to him, he was always ready and very generous in acknowledging and rewarding them.
But it was Joseph Pulitzer's genius that conceived the new journalism; it was his brain that gave birth to it all; it was his gift of interpreting, utilizing, and carrying out the ideas of others that made them fruitful.
I emphasize this judgment here because there has been much misapprehension regarding it, and because I knew the facts more intimately and more definitely perhaps than any other person now living does. I feel myself free to write of the subject for the reason that it has been more than a decade of years since my connection with theWorldceased, and the personal friendship I once enjoyed with Mr. Pulitzer became a matter of mere reminiscence to both of us.
My relations with Cockerill were not embarrassed by any question of control or authority. Cockerill had general charge of the newspaper, but the editorial page was segregated from the other sheets, and so far as that was concerned, William H. Merrill was in supreme authority. Whenever he was absent his authority devolved upon me, and for results I was answerable only to Mr. Pulitzer.
I shall never forget my introduction to my new duties.It was arranged between Merrill and me, that I should take a week off, between the severance of my connection with theCommercial Advertiserand the beginning of my work on theWorld, in order that I might visit my family and rest myself at my little place on Lake George. I was to report for duty on theWorldon a Sunday morning, when Merrill would induct me into the methods of the newspaper, preparatory to his vacation, beginning two or three days later.
An Editorial Perplexity
Unfortunately, Merrill had greater confidence in my newspaper skill and experience than I had, and so when I reported for duty on Sunday, Merrill was already gone on his vacation and I was left responsible for next day's editorial page.
I knew nothing of theWorld'sstaff or organization or methods. There were no other editorial writers present in the office and upon inquiry of the office boys I learned that no others were expected to present themselves on that day.
I sent to the foreman of the composing room for the "overproofs"—that is to say, proofs of editorial matter left over from the day before. He reported that there were none, for the reason that Merrill, before leaving on the preceding day, had "killed" every editorial galley in the office.
Cockerill was not expected at the office until nine or ten o'clock that night, and there was nobody else there who could tell me anything about the matter.
Obviously, there was only one thing to do. I sat down and wrote an entire editorial page, for a newspaper whose methods and policy I knew only from the outside. When I had done that, and had got my matter into type, and had read my revised proofs, messengers arrived bearing the manuscripts of what the other editorial writers—men unknown to me—had written at their homes during theday, after the Sunday custom that then prevailed but which I abolished a little later when Merrill went to Europe upon Mr. Pulitzer's invitation and I was left in control of the editorial page.
I have related this experience thinking that it may interest readers unfamiliar with newspaper work, as an exemplification of the emergency problems with which newspaper men have often to deal. These are of frequent occurrence and of every conceivable variety. I remember that once some great utterance seemed necessary, and Mr. Pulitzer telegraphed it from Bar Harbor. It filled the entire available editorial space, so that I provided no other editorial articles whatever. I had "made up" the page and was only waiting for time before going home, when news despatches came that so completely changed the situation treated in the editorial as to compel its withdrawal.
It was after midnight, and I hadn't a line of editorial matter on the galleys with which to fill the void. The editorial page must go to the stereotypers at half-past one, and I had no soul to help me even by writing twaddle with which to fill space. The situation was imperative and the case was clear. The case was that I must write two or three columns of editorial matter and get it into type, proof-read, and corrected, before one-thirty of the clock—or one-forty-five, as the foreman of the composing room, a royal good fellow, Mr. Jackson, volunteered to stretch the time limit by some ingenious device of his own.
I wish to say here, lest no other opportunity offer, that in the thirty years of my newspaper service, I have found no better or more loyal friends than the men of the composing room, whether in high place or low; that I have never known them to hesitate, in an emergency, to help out by specially strenuous endeavor and by enduring greatinconvenience on their own part. So great is my gratitude for their comradely good-fellowship that even now—ten years after a final end came to my newspaper work—one of the first parts of the establishment I visit when I have occasion to go to theWorldoffice is the composing room, where old friends greet me cordially on every hand. Great—very great—are the printers. They do their work under a stress of hurry, noise, and confusion that would drive less well-made men frantic, and they do it mightily well. To one who knows, as I do, what the conditions are, every printed newspaper page is a miracle of human achievement under well-nigh inconceivable difficulties.
Donn Piatt
It was soon after my service on theWorldbegan that I became acquainted with a man of brilliant gifts, often erratically employed, and of singularly interesting personality—Donn Piatt. From that time until his death I saw much of him in a quiet club-corner way, and listened with interest while he set forth his views and conclusions, always with a suggestion of humor in them and often in perverse, paradoxical ways.
One day some question arose between us as to the failure of a certain book to achieve the success we both thought it deserved. Donn Piatt's explanation was ready:
"It is because we have altogether too much education in this country," he said. "You see, our schools are turning out about a million graduates every year, under the mistaken belief that they are educated. All these boys and girls have been taught how to read, but they haven't the smallest notion of what to read, or why to read. They regard reading as you and I might regard a game of solitaire—as a convenient means of relaxing the mind, diverting the attention from more serious things—in brief, they read for amusement only, and have no notion of any other possible purpose in reading. That's why every sublimated idiot who makes a mountebank of himself asa 'humorist' wins his public instantly and easily. The great majority of readers are that way minded, and of course the publishers must cater to the taste of the multitude. They'd be worse idiots than their customers if they didn't. It's the same way with plays. The people who go to the theater want to be amused without the necessity of doing even a little thinking. Why, a few years ago when Wallack was running such things as 'She Stoops to Conquer,' 'School for Scandal,' 'London Assurance,' and the like, in his old Thirteenth Street theater, with Dion Boucicault, John Brougham, Harry Montague, John Gilbert, Harry Beckett, and a lot of other really great actors in the casts, he played to slender houses, while just around the corner there wasn't standing room when 'Pink Dominoes' was on."
My acquaintance with Donn Piatt began in a rather curious way. Some time before, there had appeared in one of the magazines a series of letters signed "Arthur Richmond." They were political philippics, inspired chiefly by a reckless, undiscriminating spirit of attack. They were as mysterious in their origin as the letters of Junius, but otherwise they bore little if any of the assumed and intended resemblance to that celebrated series. There was little of judgment, discretion, or discrimination in them, and still less of conscience. But they attracted widespread attention and the secret of their authorship was a matter of a good deal of popular curiosity. A number of very distinguished men were mentioned as conjectural possibilities in that connection.
Even after the letters themselves had ceased to be of consequence, a certain measure of curiosity as to their authorship survived, so that any newspaper revelation of the secret was exceedingly desirable. One day somebody told me that Donn Piatt had written them. Personally I did not know him, but in the freemasonry of literatureand journalism every man in the profession knows every other man in it well enough at least for purposes of correspondence. So I wrote a half playful letter to Donn Piatt, saying that somebody had charged him with the authorship of that "iniquitous trash"—for so I called it—and asking him if I might affirm or deny the statement in theWorld. He replied in a characteristic letter, in which he said:
"A Syndicate of Blackguards"
"I was one of a syndicate of blackguards engaged to write the 'Arthur Richmond' letters and I did write some of them. You and I ought to know each other personally and we don't. Why won't you come up to the —— Club to-night and help me get rid of one of the infamous table d-hôte dinners they sell there for seventy-five cents? Then I'll tell you all about the 'Arthur Richmond' letters and about any other crimes of my commission that may interest you. Meanwhile, I'm sending you a letter for publication in answer to your inquiry about that particular atrocity."
As we talked that night and on succeeding occasions, Donn Piatt told me many interesting anecdotes of his career as a newspaper correspondent much given to getting into difficulty with men in high place by reason of his freedom in criticism and his vitriolic way of saying what he had to say in the most effective words he could find.
"You see the dictionary was my ruin," he said after relating one of his anecdotes. "I studied it not wisely but too well in my youth, and it taught me a lot of words that have always seemed to me peculiarly effective in the expression of thought, but to which generals and statesmen and the other small fry of what is called public life, seem to have a rooted objection. By the way, did you ever hear that I once committed arson?"
I pleaded ignorance of that incident in his career, and added:
"I shall be interested to hear of that crime if you're sure it is protected by the statute of limitations. I shouldn't like to be a witness to a confession that might send you to the penitentiary."
"Oh, I don't know that that would be so bad," he interrupted. "I'm living with my publisher now, you know, and a change might not prove undesirable. However, the crime is outlawed by time now. And besides, I didn't myself set fire to the building. I'm guilty only under the legal maxim 'Qui facit per alium facit per se.' The way of it was this: When I was a young man trying to get into a law practice out in Ohio, and eager to advertise myself by appearing in court, a fellow was indicted for arson. He came to me, explaining that he had no money with which to pay a lawyer, but that he thought I might like to appear in a case so important, and that if I would do the best I could for him, he stood ready to do anything for me that he could, by way of recompense. I took the case, of course. It was a complex one and it offered opportunities for browbeating and 'balling up' witnesses—a process that specially impresses the public with the sagacity of a lawyer who does it successfully. Then, if by any chance I should succeed in acquitting my client, my place at the bar would be assured as that of 'a sharp young feller, who had beaten the prosecuting attorney himself.'
"But in telling my client I would take his case the demon of humor betrayed me. Just across the street from my lodging was a negro church, and there was a 'revival' going on at the time. They 'revived' till two o'clock or later every night with shoutings that interfered with my sleep. With playful impulse I said to the accused man:
"'You seem to be an expert in the arts of arson. If you'll burn that negro church I'll feel that you have paid me full price for my service in defending you.'
"I defended him and, as the witnesses against him were all of shady character, I succeeded in securing his acquittal. About four o'clock the next morning a fire broke out under all four corners of that negro church, and before the local fire department got a quart of water into action, it was a heap of smouldering ashes—hymn-books and all. A week or so later I received a letter from my ex-client. He wrote from St. Louis, 'on his way west,' he said. He expressed the hope that I was 'satisfied with results,' and begged me to believe that he was 'a man of honor who never failed to repay an obligation or reward a service.'"
With Donn Piatt's permission I told that story several times. Presently I read it in brief form in a newspaper where the hero of it was set down as "Tom Platt." I suppose the reporter in that case confused the closely similar sounds of "Donn Piatt" and "Tom Platt." At any rate, it seems proper to say that the venerable ex-Senator from New York never practiced law in Ohio and never even unintentionally induced the burning of a church. The story was Donn Piatt's and the experience was his.
First Acquaintance with Mr. Pulitzer
I first made Mr. Pulitzer's personal acquaintance in Paris, where he was living at that time. I had been at work on theWorldfor a comparatively brief while, when he asked me to visit him there—an invitation which he several times afterwards repeated, each time with increased pleasure to me.
On the occasion of my first visit to him, he said to me one evening at dinner:
"I have invited you here with the primary purpose that you shall have a good time. But secondly, I want to see you as often as I can. We have luncheon at one o'clock,and dinner at seven-thirty. I wish you'd take luncheon and dinner with me as often as you can, consistently with my primary purpose that you shall have a good time. If you've anything else on hand that interests you more, you are not to come to luncheon or dinner, and I will understand. But if you haven't anything else on hand, I sincerely wish you'd come."
In all my experience—even in Virginia during the old, limitlessly hospitable plantation days—I think I never knew a hospitality superior to this—one that left the guest so free to come on the one hand and so entirely free to stay away without question if he preferred that. I, who have celebrated hospitality of the most gracious kind in romances of Virginia, where hospitality bore its most gorgeous blossoms and its richest fruitage, bear witness that I have known no such exemplar of that virtue in its perfect manifestation as Joseph Pulitzer.
Years afterwards, at Bar Harbor, I had been working with him night and day over editorial problems of consequence, and, as I sat looking on at a game of chess in which he was engaged one evening, he suddenly ordered me to bed.
"You've been overworking," he said. "You are to go to bed now, and you are not to get up till you feel like getting up—even if it is two days hence. Go, I tell you, and pay no heed to hours or anything else. You shall not be interrupted in your sleep."
I was very weary and I went to bed. The next morning—or I supposed it to be so—I waked, and looked at my watch. It told me it was six o'clock. I tried to woo sleep again, but the effort was a failure. I knew that breakfast would not be served for some hours to come, but I simply could not remain in bed longer. I knew where a certain dear little lad of the family kept his fishing tackle and his bait. I decided that I would get up, takea cold plunge, pilfer the tackle, and spend an hour or two down on the rocks fishing.
Mr. Pulitzer's Kindly Courtesy
With this intent I slipped out of my room, making no noise lest I should wake some one from his morning slumber. The first person I met was Mr. Pulitzer. He gleefully greeted me with congratulations upon the prolonged sleep I had had, and after a brief confusion of mind, I found that it was two o'clock in the afternoon, and that my unwound watch had misled me. In his anxiety that I should have my sleep out, Mr. Pulitzer had shut off the entire half of the building in which my bedroom lay, and had stationed a servant as sentinel to prohibit intrusion upon that part of the premises and to forbid everything in the nature of noise.
Mr. Pulitzer himself never rested, in the days of my association with him. His mind knew no surcease of its activity. He slept little, and with difficulty. His waking hours, whether up or in bed, were given to a ceaseless wrestling with the problems that belong to a great newspaper's conduct. I have known him to make an earnest endeavor to dismiss these for a time. To that end he would peremptorily forbid all reference to them in the conversation of those about him. But within the space of a few minutes he would be in the midst of them again, and completely absorbed. But he recognized the necessity of rest for brains other than his own, and in all kindly ways sought to secure and even to compel it. I remember once at Bar Harbor, when for two or three days and nights in succession I had been at work on something he greatly wanted done, he said to me at breakfast:
"You're tired, and that task is finished. I want you to rest, and, of course, so long as you and I remain together you can't rest. Your brain is active and so is mine. If we stay in each other's company we shall talk, and with us talk means work. In five minutes we'll beplanning some editorial crusade, and you'll get to work again. So I want you to go away from me. Let Eugene drive you to the village, and there secure an open carriage and a pair of good horses—the best you can get—and drive all over this interesting island. Get yourself rested. And when you come back, don't let me talk newspaper with you, till you've had a night's sleep."
It was in that kindly spirit that Mr. Pulitzer always treated his lieutenants when he invited them to pass a time with him. So long as he and they were together, he could not help working them almost to death. But, when he realized their weariness, he sent them off to rest, on carriage drives or yachting voyages or what not, with generous consideration of their inability to carry weight as he did night and day and every day and every night.
Sometimes his eagerness in work led him to forget his own kindly purpose. I remember once when I had been writing all day and throughout most of the night in execution of his prolific inspiration, he suddenly became aware of the fact that I must be weary. Instantly he said:
"You must rest. You must take a carriage or a boat and go off somewhere. Think out where it shall be, for yourself. But you sha'n't do another thing till you've had a good rest."
Then, as we strolled out into the porch and thence to the sea wall against which the breakers were recklessly dashing themselves to pieces, he suddenly thought of something. In a minute we were engaged in discussing that something, and half an hour later I was busy in my room, with books of reference all about me, working out that something, and it was three o'clock next morning before I finished the writing of what he wanted written on that theme. At breakfast next morning I was late, and the fact reminded him of the plans he had formed twenty-fourhours before for a rest for me. He refused even to light a cigar until I should be gone.
"If we smoke together," he said, "we shall talk. If we talk we shall become interested and you'll be set to work again. Get you hence. Let me see no more of you till dinner to-night. In the meantime, do what you will to rest yourself. That's my only concern now. Drive, sail, row, loaf, play billiards—do whatever will best rest you."
I relate these things by way of showing forth one side of the character of a man who has wrought a revolution in the world. I have other things to relate that show forth another side of that interestingly complex nature.
The Maynard Case
In his anxiety to secure terseness of editorial utterance he at one time limited all editorials to fifty lines each. As I had final charge of the editorial page on four nights of the week, I found myself obliged, by the rule, to spoil many compact articles written by other men, by cutting out a line or two from things already compacted "to the limit."
I said this to Mr. Pulitzer one day, and he replied:
"Well, just to show you that I have no regard for cast-iron rules, I am going to ask you now to write four columns on a subject of public importance."
The subject was the nomination of Judge Maynard for Justice of the Court of Appeals. Judge Maynard stood accused of—let us say questionable—conduct in judicial office in relation to certain election proceedings. The details have no place here. Judge Maynard had never been impeached, and his friends indignantly repudiated every suggestion that his judicial conduct had been in any wise influenced by partisan considerations. His enemies—and they were many, including men of high repute in his own party—contended that his judicial course in thatelection matter unfitted him for election to the higher office.
I have every reason to believe—every reason that eleven years of editorial association can give—that in every case involving the public welfare, or public morality, or official fitness, Mr. Pulitzer sincerely desires to ascertain the facts and to govern his editorial course accordingly. I have never been able to regard him as a Democrat or a Republican in politics. He has impressed me always as an opportunist, caring far more for practical results than for doctrinaire dogmas.
In this Maynard case the contentions were conflicting, the assertions contradictory, and the facts uncertain so far at least as theWorldknew them.
"I want you to go into the Maynard case," said Mr. Pulitzer to me, "with an absolutely unprejudiced mind. We hold no brief for or against him, as you know. I want you to get together all the documents in the case. I want you to take them home and study them as minutely as if you were preparing yourself for an examination. I want you to regard yourself as a judicial officer, oath-bound to justice, and when you shall have mastered the facts and the law in the case, I want you to set them forth in a four-column editorial that every reader of theWorldcan easily understand."
This was only one of many cases in which he set me or some other lieutenant to find out facts and determine what justice demanded, in order that justice might be done.
In 1896, when the Democratic party made its surrender to populism and wild-eyed socialism by nominating Bryan, I was at the convention in Chicago, telegraphing editorial articles. I foreshadowed the nomination as inevitable, contrary to the predictions of theWorld'snewsgatherers in the convention. Instantly, and before the nomination was made, Mr. Pulitzer telegraphed me from Bar Harbor, tocome to him at once. By the time I got there the nomination was a fact accomplished.
Mr. Pulitzer said to me:
"I'm not going to tell you what my own views of the situation are, or what I think ought to be the course of theWorld, as a foremost Democratic newspaper, under the circumstances. No"—seeing that I was about to speak—"don't say a word about your own views. They are necessarily hasty and ill-considered as yet, just as my own are. I want you to take a full twenty-four hours for careful thought. At the end of that time I want you to write out your views of the policy theWorldought to adopt, giving your reasons for every conclusion reached."
Mr. Pulitzer did not adopt precisely the policy I recommended on that occasion. But theWorldrefused to support the Bryan candidacy with its fundamental idea of debasing the currency by the free coinage of silver dollars intrinsically worth only fifty cents apiece or less.
Bryan's Message and the Reply
While I was still his guest on that mission, there came to Bar Harbor an emissary from Mr. Bryan, who asked for an interview with Mr. Pulitzer in Mr. Bryan's behalf. As I happened to know the young man, Mr. Pulitzer asked me to see him in his stead and to receive his message. Armed with full credentials as Mr. Pulitzer's accredited representative, I visited the young ambassador, and made careful notes of the message he had to deliver. It was to this effect:
Mr. Bryan was unselfishly anxious to save the reputation of the newspaper press as a power in public affairs. His election by an overwhelming majority, he said, was certain beyond all possibility of doubt or question. But if it should be accomplished without the support of theWorldor any other of the supposedly influential Democratic newspapers, there must be an end to the traditionof press power and newspaper influence in politics. For the sake of the press, and especially of so great a newspaper as theWorld, therefore, Mr. Bryan asked Mr. Pulitzer's attention to this danger to prestige.
When I delivered this message to Mr. Pulitzer, he laughed. Then he gave me a truly remarkable exhibition of his masterful knowledge of American political conditions, and of his sagacious prescience. He asked me to jot down some figures as he should give them to me. He named the states that would vote for Bryan with the number of electoral votes belonging to each. Then he gave me the list of states that would go against Bryan, with their electoral strength. When I had put it all down, he said:
"I don't often predict—never unless I know. But you may embody that table in an editorial, predicting that the result of the election four months hence will be very nearly, if not exactly, what those lists foreshadow. Let that be our answer to Mr. Bryan's audacious message."
The campaign had not yet opened. Mr. Bryan had just been nominated with positively wild enthusiasm. The movement which afterwards put Palmer in the field as an opposing Democratic candidate had not yet been thought of. All conditions suggested uncertainty, and yet, as we sat there in his little private porch at Bar Harbor, Mr. Pulitzer correctly named every state that would give its electoral vote to each candidate, and the returns of the election—four months later—varied from his prediction of results by only two electoral votes out of four hundred and forty-seven. And that infinitesimal variation resulted solely from the fact that by some confusion of ballots in California and Kentucky each of those states gave one vote to Bryan and the rest to his opponent.
I have known nothing in the way of exact politicalprescience, long in advance of the event, that equaled this or approached it. I record it as phenomenal.