Recollections of a Varied Life Part 37

[Sidenote: 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 that election matter unfitted him for election to the higher office.

I have every reason to believe--every reason that eleven years of editorial a.s.sociation 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 a.s.sertions contradictory, and the facts uncertain so far at least as the _World_ knew 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 doc.u.ments 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 the _World_ can 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 the _World's_ newsgatherers in the convention. Instantly, and before the nomination was made, Mr.

Pulitzer telegraphed me from Bar Harbor, to come 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 the _World_, as a foremost Democratic newspaper, under the circ.u.mstances. 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 the _World_ ought to adopt, giving your reasons for every conclusion reached."

Mr. Pulitzer did not adopt precisely the policy I recommended on that occasion. But the _World_ refused 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.

[Sidenote: 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 amba.s.sador, 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 the _World_ or any other of the supposedly influential Democratic newspapers, there must be an end to the tradition of press power and newspaper influence in politics. For the sake of the press, and especially of so great a newspaper as the _World_, 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 political prescience, long in advance of the event, that equaled this or approached it. I record it as phenomenal.

LXVII

[Sidenote: A Napoleonic Conception]

Ever since the time when he bought two St. Louis newspapers, both of which were losing money, combined them, and made of them one of the most profitable newspaper properties in the country, Mr. Pulitzer's methods have been Napoleonic both in the brilliancy of their conception and in the daring of their execution. I may here record as a personal recollection the story of one of his newspaper achievements. The fact of it is well enough known; the details of its dramatic execution have never been told, I think.

In February, 1895, the government of the United States found it necessary to issue $62,300,000 in four per cent., thirty-year bonds, to make good the depletion of the gold reserve in the treasury. The bonds were sold to a syndicate at the rate of 104-3/4. Once on the market, they quickly advanced in price until they were sold by the end of that year at 118, and, if any bank or investor wanted them in considerable quant.i.ties, the price paid was 122 or more.

At the beginning of the next year it was announced that the treasury would sell $200,000,000 more of precisely the same bonds, printed from the same plates, payable at the same time, and in all respects undistinguishable from those of the year before--at that time in eager popular demand at 118 to 122. It was also announced that the treasury had arranged to sell these bonds--worth 118 or more in the open market--to the same old Morgan syndicate "at about the same price"

(104-3/4), at which the preceding issue had been sold.

Mr. Pulitzer justly regarded this as a scandalous proposal to give the syndicate more than twenty-six millions of dollars of the people's money in return for no service whatever. The banks and the people of the country wanted these bonds at 118 or more, and banks and bankers in other countries were equally eager to get them at the same rate. It seemed to him, as it seemed to every other well-informed person, that this was a reckless waste of the people's money, the scandalous favoring of a syndicate of speculators, and a damaging blow to the national credit. But, unlike most other well-informed persons, Mr. Pulitzer refused to regard the situation as one beyond saving, although it was given out from Washington that the bargain with the syndicate was already irrevocably made.

Mr. Pulitzer set his editorial writers at work to make the facts of the case clear to every intelligent mind; to show forth the needlessness of the proposed squandering; to emphasize the scandal of this dealing in the dark with a gang of Wall Street bettors upon a certainty; and to demonstrate the people's readiness and even eagerness to subscribe for the bonds at a much higher rate than the discrediting one at which the Treasury had secretly agreed to sell them to the syndicate.

When all this had been done, to no purpose so far as I could see, inasmuch as the response from Washington was insistent to the effect that the sale was already agreed upon, Mr. Pulitzer one afternoon summoned me to go at once to Lakewood, where he was staying at the time.

The train by which alone I could go was to arrive at Lakewood after the departure of the last train thence for New York that evening, and I mentioned that fact over the telephone. For reply I was asked to come anyhow.

When I got there night had already fallen, and as I was without even so much as a handbag, I antic.i.p.ated a night of makeshift at the hotel.

But as I entered Mr. Pulitzer's quarters he greeted me and said:

"Come in quickly. We must talk rapidly and to the point. You think you're to stay here all night, but you're mistaken. As this is your night to be in charge of the editorial page, you must be in the office of the _World_ at ten o'clock. I've ordered a special train to take you back. It will start at eight o'clock and run through in eighty minutes.

Meanwhile, we have much to arrange, so we must get to work."

[Sidenote: A Challenge to the Government]

E. O. Chamberlin, the managing editor of the news department of the _World_, was there and had already received his instructions. To me Mr.

Pulitzer said:

"We have made our case in this matter of the bond issue. We have presented the facts clearly, convincingly, conclusively, but the Administration refuses to heed them. We are now going to compel it to heed them on pain of facing a scandal that no administration could survive.

"What we demand is that these bonds shall be sold to the public at something like their actual value and not to a Wall Street syndicate for many millions less. You understand all that. You are to write a double-leaded article to occupy the whole editorial s.p.a.ce to-morrow morning. You are not to print a line of editorial on any other subject.

You are to set forth, in compact form and in the most effective way possible, the facts of the case and the considerations that demand a popular or at least a public loan instead of this deal with a syndicate, suggestive as it is of the patent falsehood that the United States Treasury's credit needs 'financing.' You are to declare, with all possible emphasis that the banks, bankers, and people of the United States stand ready and eager to lend their government all the money it wants at three per cent. interest, and to buy its four per cent. bonds at a premium that will amount to that."

He went on in this way, outlining the article he wanted me to write.

"Then, as a guarantee of the sincerity of our conviction you are to say that the _World_ offers in advance to take one million dollars of the new bonds at the highest market price, if they are offered to the public in open market.

"In the meanwhile, Chamberlin has a staff of men sending out despatches to every bank and banker in the land, setting forth our demand for a public loan instead of a syndicate d.i.c.ker, and asking each for what amount of the new bonds it or he will subscribe on a three per cent.

basis. To-morrow morning's paper will carry with your editorial its complete confirmation in their replies, and the proposed loan will be oversubscribed on a three per cent. basis. Even Mr. Cleveland's phenomenal self-confidence and Mr. Carlisle's purblind belief in Wall Street methods will not be able to withstand such a demonstration as that. It will _compel a public loan_. If it is true that the contract with the syndicate has already been made, _they must cancel it_. The voice of the country will be heard in the subscription list we shall print to-morrow morning, and the voice of the country has compelling power, even under this excessively self-confident administration. Now, you're faint with hunger. Hurry over to the hotel and get a bite to eat.

You have thirty minutes before your special train leaves."

I hurried to the hotel, but I spent that thirty minutes, not in eating but in making a written report, for my own future use, of Mr. Pulitzer's instructions. The memorandum thus made is the basis of what I have written above.

The climax of the great national drama thus put upon the stage was worthy of the genius that inspired it. The responses of the banks and bankers--sent in during the night--showed a tremendous oversubscription of the proposed loan at a price that would yield to the government many millions more than the syndicate sale offered, and there remained unheard from the thousands and tens of thousands of private persons who were eager to buy the bonds as investment securities. In the face of the facts thus demonstrated, it would have been political suicide for the men in control at Washington to refuse a public loan and to sell the bonds to the syndicate for millions less than the people were eager to pay for them. The administration yielded to moral force, but it did so grudgingly and with manifest reluctance. It cut down the proposed loan to the minimum that the Treasury must have, and it hedged it about with every annoying device that might embarra.s.s willing investors and prevent the subscriptions of others than banks and bankers. In spite of all such efforts to minimize the administration's defeat, the bond issue was promptly taken up at a price that saved many millions to the Treasury, and within a brief while the very bonds that Mr. Cleveland and Mr.

Carlisle had so insistently desired to sell to the syndicate at 104-3/4 were very hard to get in the open market at 133 or more.

[Sidenote: The Power of the Press]

I have related this incident with some fullness because I know of no other case in which the "power of the press"--which being interpreted means the power of public opinion--to control reluctant political and governmental forces, has been so dramatically ill.u.s.trated.

The only other case comparable with it was that in which not one newspaper but practically all the newspapers in the land with a united voice saved the country from chaos and civil war by compelling a wholly unwilling and very obstinate Congress to find a way out of the electoral controversy between Tilden and Hayes. No newspaper man who was in Washington at any time during that controversy doubts or can doubt that the two Houses of Congress would have adhered obstinately to their opposing views until the end, with civil war as a necessary consequence, but for the ceaseless insistence of all the newspapers of both parties that they should devise and agree upon some peaceful plan by which the controversy might be adjusted.