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-four hours
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.
[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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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
quantities, 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 anticipated 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 space 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 dicker, 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 embarrass 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 illustrated.
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.
At the time when the prospect seemed darkest I asked Carl Schurz for his
opinion of the outcome. He replied, with that intense earnestness in his
voice and words which his patriotism always gave to them in times of
public danger:
"If left to the two Houses of Congress to decide--and that is where
the Constitution leaves it--the question will not be decided; on the
contrary, the more they discuss it, the more intense and unyielding
their obstinate determination not to agree will become. If it isn't
settled before the fourth of March, God only knows what the result will
be--civil war and chaos are the only things to be foreseen. But if left
alone, as I say, the two Houses of Congress will to the end refuse to
agree upon any plan of adjustment. The outlook is very gloomy, very
discouraging, very black. Only a tremendous pressure of public opinion
can save us from results more calamitous than any that the human mind
can conceive. If the newspapers can be induced to see the danger and
realize its extent--if they can persuade themselves to put aside their
partisanship and unite in an insistent demand that Congress shall find a
way out, a peaceful result may be compelled. Fortunately, the Southern
men in both houses are eager for the accomplishment of that. They and
their constituents have had enough and to spare of civil war. They may
be easily won to the support of any plan that promises to bring about
a peaceful solution of the controversy. But public opinion, as reflected
in the newspapers, must compel Congress, or nothing will be done."
LXVIII
[Sidenote: Recollections of Carl Schurz]
This mention of Mr. Schurz reminds me of some other occasions on which
I had intercourse with him. He and I many times served together on
committees that had to do with matters of public interest. We were
members of the same clubs, and we saw much of each other at private
dinners and in other social ways, so that I came to know him well and
to appreciate at its full value that absolute honesty of mind which I
regard as his distinguishing characteristic. Without that quality of
sincerity, and with a conscience less exigent and less resolute than
his, Carl Schurz's political career might have compassed any end that
ambition set before him. That is perhaps a reflection on public life
and the men engaged in it. If so, I cannot help it. As it was, he never
hesitated for a moment to "quarrel with his bread and butter" if his
antagonism to wrong, and especially to everything that militated against
human liberty, called for such quarreling. He was above all things
a patriot in whose estimation considerations of the public welfare
outweighed, overrode, and trampled to earth all other considerations of
what kind soever. Party was to him no more than an implement, a tool for
the accomplishment of patriotic ends, and he gave to party no allegiance
whatever beyond the point at which it ceased to serve such ends. He
was always ready to quarrel with his own party and quit it for cause,
even when it offered him high preferment as the reward of continued
allegiance.
In the same way, he held the scales true in all his judgments of men.
Mr. Lincoln once wrote him a letter--often quoted by his enemies--which
any "statesman" of the accepted type would have regarded as an
unforgivable affront. Yet in due time Mr. Schurz wrote an appreciative
estimate of Lincoln which has no fit fellow in the whole body of Lincoln
literature. His judgments of men and measures were always the honest
conclusions of an honest mind that held in reverence no other creed than
that of truth and preached no other gospel than that of human liberty.
One evening I sat with him at a little dinner given by Mr. James Ford
Rhodes, the historian. Paul Leicester Ford sat between him and me,
while on my right sat our hostess and some other gentlewomen. Our
hostess presently asked me what I thought of a certain distinguished
personage whose name was at that time in everybody's mouth, and whose
popularity--chiefly won by genial, humorous, after-dinner speaking--was
wholly unmatched throughout the country. I do not mention his name,
because he still lives and is under a cloud.
I answered that I thought him one of the worst and most dangerous of
popular public men, adding:
"He has done more than any other man living to corrupt legislatures and
pervert legislation to the service of iniquitous corporations."
Mr. Schurz, who was talking to some one at the other end of the table,
caught some hint of what I had said. He instantly turned upon me with
a demand that I should repeat it. I supposed that a controversy was
coming, and by way of challenging the worst, I repeated what I had said,
with added emphasis. Mr. Schurz replied:
"You are right so far as your criticism goes. The man has done all that
you charge in the way of corrupting legislatures and perverting
legislation. He has made a business of it. But that is the very smallest
part of his offense against morality, good government, and free
institutions. His far greater sin is that he has _made corruption
respectable_, in the eyes of the people. And those who invite him to
banquets and set him to speak there, and noisily applaud him, are all
of them partners in his criminality whether they know it or not."
[Sidenote: Mr. Schurz's Patriotism]
One other conversation with Mr. Schurz strongly impressed me with his
exalted character and the memory of it lingers in my mind. In the summer
of the year 1900, when Mr. Bryan was nominated for the second time for
President, on a platform strongly reaffirming his free silver policy and
everything else for which he had stood in 1896, it was given out that
Carl Schurz, who had bitterly and effectively opposed him in 1896,
intended now to support him. I had finally withdrawn from the _World's_
service, and from newspaper work of every kind, and was passing the
summer in literary work at my cottage on Lake George. But the _World_
telegraphed me asking me to see Mr. Schurz, who was also a Lake George
cottager, and get from him some statement of his reasons for now
supporting the man and the policies that he had so strenuously opposed
four years before.