1900-Jan. 31, 1903) between the eighteen years of Godkin, and the
equally long editorship of Rollo Ogden. Its outstanding feature was the
campaign of 1900, during which the _Evening Post_ faced the two major
parties in a plague-on-both-your-houses spirit. It was impossible for
it to support either McKinley or Bryan. But it did applaud Bryan’s
anti-imperialist speeches, and from them and the Democratic platform
plank on the Philippines it expected the greatest good. “They will put
one-half the people of the United States in a high school to learn the
principles of free government,” wrote Horace White, “as a class learns
a lesson by repetition and observation.” In other words, believing
that the Democratic Party had possessed no definite ideas regarding
the Philippines previous to the Kansas City Convention, the _Post_
hoped that the campaign would imbue it with a lasting set of principles
on the subject. That hope has been justified. After Bryan defined
imperialism as the paramount issue, the paper--which knew his opponent
would win--more and more implied that a vote for him would be a healthy
vote of protest.
The decisiveness of McKinley’s victory showed that the people were
quite unconvinced of the views of Bryan and the _Evening Post_
regarding our Philippine policy. It happened that Carl Schurz had
made a tour of the West shortly before the election, speaking against
imperialism, and on his return had visited the _Evening Post_ confident
that Bryan would carry a long list of States there. The day after
election Joseph Bucklin Bishop argued in the editorial conference that
the _Post_ should treat the result frankly, and abstain from any
pretense that the anti-imperialist cause had not been hard hit. The
editorial which he wrote harmonized with this view. About noon Schurz
came in, eager to learn what the editors thought of the election, and
was shocked when he read Bishop’s editorial. Towering over the younger
man, and shaking his finger in Bishop’s face, he declared in his
severest tones: “You admit too much--you admit too much!” “Too much
what?” demanded the irritated Bishop. “Too much truth?”
But the _Evening Post_ of course no more surrendered its position
upon the Philippine question than upon the tariff. It took the view
that the islands should be freed as soon as a stable government could
be erected, and it believed then, as it believes still, that the
Republican idea of a stable government is altogether too exacting. That
American troops should be sent to the other side of the world to impose
American rule upon an unwilling people seemed to it horrible. Horace
White warmly approved of President McKinley’s and John Hay’s liberal
attitude toward China in the Boxer troubles, and their insistence
upon the open door and Chinese integrity. The same liberal principles
seemed to him to condemn the employment of a hundred thousand men and a
hundred million dollars a year to subjugate the Filipinos; give them a
definite promise of independence, he held, and the fighting might stop.
When Mr. White resigned, in accordance with his original intention of
remaining editor but a short period, it was a foregone conclusion that
his successor would be Mr. Ogden. A power in the _Evening Post_ office
since he entered it in 1891, Mr. Ogden had come to take a leading share
in the guidance of policy and the writing of the important editorials.
Of his long, exceedingly able, and fruitful editorship, one comparable
only with Godkin’s and Bryant’s in the history of the paper, it is too
soon to write in detail. But its main outlines may be roughly indicated.
In national politics the _Evening Post_ continued independent, with
the leaning towards the Democratic Party which its low-tariff and
anti-imperialist tenets naturally gave it. The only occasions since
1884 when it has not supported the Democratic ticket are the three
occasions on which Bryan ran. In 1904 it was with Parker against
Roosevelt, and in 1912 and 1916 it was with Wilson. In international
affairs it remained the champion of peace and of fair play for the
weaker nations, with that special regard for friendship with England
which has animated it since 1801. It was always to be found arrayed
against the Platt and Barnes machines in State politics, and against
Tammany in the city. Upon some large domestic questions its policy
changed--it early became an advocate of woman’s suffrage, and in due
time a supporter of national prohibition; while upon other domestic
questions, as the negro question, it grew much more aggressive and
insistent.
Much of the energy with which the _Evening Post_ opposed Roosevelt
in 1904 was due to its hot indignation over the steps by which, the
previous fall, he had gained a right of way for the Panama Canal by
hastening to confirm the separation of Panama from Colombia. Mr.
Ogden’s attacks upon that high-handed act were stinging. Whether or
not American agents had intrigued to bring about Panama’s secession,
the _Evening Post_ thought it shameful, in view of our protests in the
Civil War against European recognition of the Confederacy, to be so
precipitate in recognizing Panama. “Our policy is now the humiliating
one of treating a pitifully feeble nation as we should never dream of
dealing with even a second-class Power,” wrote Mr. Ogden; “of giving
a friendly republic a blow in the face without waiting for either
explanation or protest; of going far beyond the diplomatic requirements
of the situation, and that with indecent haste--and all for what? To
aid a struggling people?... No, but just for a handful of silver,
just for a commercial advantage....” On one occasion he published as
an editorial, without comment, the Bible passage relating to Naboth’s
vineyard.
[Illustration:
(Back):
CHRISTOPHER MORLEY
C. C. LANE
DONALD SCOTT
(Middle):
HENRY SEIDEL CANBY
SIMEON STRUNSKY
ARTHUR POUND
ALLAN NEVINS
CHARLES MCD. PUCKETTE
(Front):
FRANZ SCHNEIDER
ROYAL J. DAVIS
W. O. SCROGGS
EDWIN F. GAY
EDITORIAL COUNCIL, 1922.]
Toward the seven years of Roosevelt’s Presidency the attitude of the
_Evening Post_ had to be a constant alternation of hostility and
friendliness. It disliked his love of excitement and sensation, but
liked his energy. It attacked his demands for a big army and navy, but
admired his brilliant conclusion of peace between Russia and Japan.
It believed him indifferent to constitutional and legal methods,
censuring his tendency to ride rough-shod over Congress and curse the
courts; but it valued his ability to get things done, and recognized
the immense constructive achievement of his administration--his work
for conservation and irrigation, his railway rate legislation, his
pursuit of land thieves, postal thieves, and rebate-granting railways,
his successful fight in the Northern Securities case. Above all, it
recognized in him an awakener of the national conscience:
A great upheaval of moral sentiment took place during his
administration. He was not the sole cause of it, but he utilized
it and furthered it mightily. An account of stewardship of the
rich was vigorously demanded. Business dishonesty was held up to
abhorrence. Corporation rottenness was probed. All this, in spite
of excesses of denunciation and legislation, was highly salutary.
It was full time that people who had been mismanaging corporations
and exploiting the public were called sharply to book.... The
quickening of the national conscience, the rousing of a people
long dead in trespasses and sins, with such concrete results as
the reform of the insurance companies and the restrictions upon
predatory public service corporations, is a service the value of
which can scarcely be overlooked. (March, 1909.)
Having been outraged by the McKinley tariff and done its best to
further the political revolt which that measure produced, having been
equally denunciatory of the Dingley tariff, the _Evening Post_ hoped in
1909 for a genuine revision downward. Throughout the campaign of 1908
it had regretted the lukewarmness of Taft’s utterances on this subject.
The day after his election Mr. Ogden gave him a grave warning, which
now appears as a prophecy justified:
To Mr. Taft we look for the fulfillment of those solemn
promises--particularly for reform of the tariff--to which he and
his party are committed. Notwithstanding the returns from the
polls, there is widespread dissatisfaction with the recklessness
and extravagance which have been encouraged by twelve years of
unbroken Republican ascendency.... More menacing yet has been
the open alliance between the protected manufacturers and the
Republican politicians for the exploitation of the farmers and the
vast mass of consumers. It is not conceivable that this sinister
partnership can continue as in the past. The new and radical
element which is gaining control of the Republican organization
in the west will fight the stolid stand-patters like Aldrich and
Cannon, and it may be set down as a certainty that if Mr. Taft does
not join with them in the task of setting the Republican house in
order and in casting the money-changers out of the temple, some
man of foresight and power will come forward to wage the battle in
behalf of the people. The great cause will produce the champion, as
it produced Lincoln, and later Cleveland.
The Taft administration was but a month old when the _Evening Post_
warned it again that the Payne-Aldrich bill contained provisions that
would drive it from power unless the President intervened vigorously to
remove them. When Dolliver led the attack of the West upon the tricks
and robberies of the bill, charging that hoggish manufacturers had
obtained permission from Aldrich to write their own tariff clauses,
the editors rejoiced that never before had the public been so awake to
greed and dishonesty of protection. When it found that its appeals to
Taft to take action were in vain, it was totally disgusted with the
President. His Winona speech it thought indefensible. Like the rest of
the country, it soon discovered that he had marked deficiencies for
his great office. In its view, Taft was wrong in the Ballinger affair,
and in his initial advocacy of the remission of Panama tolls. He was
not merely a poor politician, in the sense that he could not keep an
effective party following, but he lacked foresight and energy. “He
has shown himself devoid of the higher imagination in public affairs,
too little prescient, without the touch of quick sympathy and popular
quality which would have enabled him to take arms against a sea of
troubles,” wrote Mr. Ogden as the administration ended.
Yet the _Evening Post_ did not believe that Taft’s administration
was the black betrayal and wretched failure which many said in 1912
it was. The country had many services to thank him for, it said,
and his reputation would certainly benefit by the lapse of time. As
between Taft and Roosevelt in 1912, it decidedly preferred Taft. In
an editorial as the year 1911 closed, “A Square Deal for Taft,” it
accused the former President of hitting below the belt. “Roosevelt is
deliberately allowing himself to be used against the President, and
allowing it ambiguously, equivocally, and not in the honorable and
manly fashion which he has been forever advocating.... Why does he not
frankly state the grounds of his opposition to Taft?” When Roosevelt
did throw his hat into the ring, the editors deemed his cause in many
respects weak. They felt that his denunciation of Taft was malignantly
overdone. Recognizing many fine qualities in the Progressive movement,
they believed that no new party could come into being without some one
compelling moral or economic issue; that a program of all the virtues
might be attractive, but did not afford a sound political basis, at
least when coupled with the fortunes of an ambitious self-seeker.
Parts of the Roosevelt program, notably his proposal for the recall
of judicial decisions, and his plan for regulating the trusts by
commission, struck the _Post_ as thoroughly unsound.
Supporting Woodrow Wilson throughout the 1912 campaign, the
_Evening Post_ also supported almost all the measures of his first
administration. The Federal Reserve Act and the Underwood tariff it
hailed as reforms of the first magnitude. The various acts for the
better use and protection of our national domain met its approval.
While several influential New York newspapers attacked Wilson’s policy
of “watchful waiting” in Mexican affairs, the _Post_ held it both
wise and courageous, and regretted only the temporary interruption of
it by our attack upon Vera Cruz. The editors welcomed the Jones Act
for a larger measure of Philippine autonomy, thought well of Bryan’s
“cooling-off treaties,” and were grateful for the President’s veto
of the literacy test bill. Indeed, the paper’s support would have
been unhesitatingly given to President Wilson at the beginning of the
campaign of 1916 had his opponent been a less able man than Hughes, and
had it not been deeply offended that midsummer by the surrender of the
President and Congress to the threat of a great railway strike, and
their enactment of the eight-hour day law. As it was, shortly before
November 1 the _Evening Post_ came out for Wilson’s reëlection.
The opening of the Great War was a stunning surprise to the _Evening
Post_, as to all America. But it was less completely taken unawares
than were some papers which had failed to watch minutely the drift
of affairs in Europe. On July 27, in an editorial analyzing the
bellicose contents of a number of German and Austrian papers--the
Hamburg _Fremdenblatt_, the _Deutsches Volksblatt_, the _Neues Wiener
Tageblatt_, the _Reichspost_, and the _Neue Freie Presse_ of Vienna--it
gave a remarkably accurate view, under the title “War Madness,” of what
was going on under the surface in Europe. When Germany entered Belgium
its condemnation was instant. “By this action Germany has shown herself
ready to lift an outlaw hand against the whole of Western Europe.” The
paper did not know whether Germany directly caused and desired the war;
but it believed that she indirectly caused it, and that she failed to
prevent it when she might easily have done so. Before fighting had
fairly commenced it ventured upon a prophecy which the fate of three
thrones has fully justified:
The human mind cannot yet begin to grasp the consequences. One of
them, however, seems plainly written in the book of the future.
It is that, after this most awful and most wicked of all wars is
over, the power of life and death over millions of men, the right
to decree the ruin of industry and commerce and finance, with
untold human misery stalking through the land like a plague, will
be taken away from three men. No safe prediction of actual results
of battle can be made. Dynasties may crumble before all is done,
empires change their form of government. But whatever happens,
Europe--humanity--will not settle back into a position enabling
three Emperors to give, on their individual choice or whim, the
signal for destruction and massacre.
The whole course of the war only confirmed the _Evening Post’s_
original view that the side of right and justice was the Allied side.
When the _Lusitania_ was sunk, Mr. Ogden’s indictment of “The Outlaw
German Government” was one of the most stirring editorials that ever
appeared in the _Evening Post_ or _Nation_; an editorial which asked
the American people to show themselves “too firmly planted on right to
be hysterical, and too determined on obtaining justice to bluster,”
but which expressed confidence that the true and righteous judgments
of the Lord would yet be visited upon the German war leaders. When
President Wilson asked the American people to be neutral in thought
and word, the _Evening Post_ declared that our moral sentiment could
not be neutral--that it must be with England and France. The Allied
infringements upon our rights in the enforcement of the blockade
it attacked, but it constantly emphasized the fact that Germany’s
violations of international law were far graver, in that they affected
life and liberty, not merely property.
Long hoping that American participation in the war could be honorably
avoided, the _Evening Post_ did not want peace at any price. It
regarded war as a lesser calamity than the defeat of the Allies, or
than supine submission to Germany’s unrestricted submarine activity.
When that activity was announced it was plain that we should soon be
involved in the conflict, and the editors followed Mr. Wilson’s course
with general, if not perfect, approval, in the difficult days of the
crisis. The President’s address to Congress asking for a declaration of
war was warmly praised by the _Evening Post_, as placing our national
motives and objects upon the most elevated plane. “All told,” it said
on April 3, “Americans may take satisfaction in the fact that they
enter the war only after the display of the greatest patience by the
government, only after grievous and repeated wrongs, and upon the
highest possible grounds. There can be no doubt that the country will
respond instantly to the President’s leadership.” The _Evening Post_
was not for restricted, but complete participation in the conflict.
It early took issue with the administration and with dominant public
sentiment in opposing the raising of the army by draft, holding
that any appearance of forced military service was un-American,
that a volunteer army would show a superior spirit, and that while
conscription might become necessary later, it should be postponed until
our traditional method of recruiting failed to bring enough men. But
the _Evening Post_ accepted the draft loyally, and gave its workings
the cordial praise they deserved. From the beginning of the war it
looked forward eagerly to the establishment of a world organization to
preserve international peace everywhere; and in 1919 and 1920 it was
among the staunchest advocates of the League of Nations.
Mr. Ogden had the assistance throughout his editorship of a staff as
able as that which Mr. Godkin had gathered about him. Frank Jewett
Mather, jr., served as an editorial writer from 1900 to the close of
1906, and as he says, gradually specialized in writing upon European
politics and art criticism. Oswald Garrison Villard, son of Henry
Villard, was called into the office from the _Philadelphia Press_ in
1897, and remained one of the most active of the editorial writers
until 1917. A brilliant young man from Wisconsin, Philip L. Allen,
whose premature death was a loss to journalism, advanced rung by
rung, and was an editorial writer from 1904 to 1908. Simeon Strunsky
joined the staff in 1906. Three years later Dr. Fabian Franklin, long
professor of mathematics at Johns Hopkins, and from 1895 to 1906
editor of the Baltimore _Sun_, became associate editor; and Royal J.
Davis entered the circle in 1910. Paul Elmer More, who was literary
editor of the _Evening Post_ after 1903, and became editor of the
_Nation_ in 1909, contributed to the editorial page; and there was a
considerable list of men who served for short periods, especially in
summers--Stuart P. Sherman, Hutchins Hapgood, Walter B. Pitkin, H.
Parker Willis, and others.
As the editorial staff existed when the European War began, its members
constituted a group of comprehensive tastes and abilities. Mr. Ogden
decided all questions of policy, wrote almost all the leading political
editorials, and in addition ranged over a wide field of social and
literary comment, treating everything with an incisive, pungent style
peculiarly his own. Dr. Franklin wrote upon economic subjects with
unfailing sureness, treated educational and scientific topics with
the authority of a scholar, and was masterly in exploding any fallacy
which for the moment had assumed importance, and the detection of
which required the combination of strong common sense and logical
subtlety. Mr. Villard was interested in a wide range of humanitarian
subjects, having made the _Post_, for example, an outstanding champion
of the negro race, while he paid special attention to military and
naval affairs. International politics was left very largely to Simeon
Strunsky, whose pen was also indispensable in the humorous or satiric
treatment of current subjects, and whose knowledge was encyclopædic.
Mr. Noyes continued to write regularly upon financial topics, while
Mr. Davis--who was also literary editor, 1914–1920--had given special
attention to certain phases of politics.
In its news department the _Evening Post_ had suffered a heavy blow
in 1897, when the city editor, H. J. Wright, became editor of the
_Commercial Advertiser_, and took with him Norman Hapgood and Lincoln
Steffens. But it quickly recovered, and under a series of managing
editors--O. G. Villard, Hammond Lamont, H. J. Learoyd, E. G. Lowry,
J. P. Gavit, and the present head, Charles McD. Puckette--has continued
steadily to improve. The list of reporters since the beginning of
the century contains many names known outside the newspaper world.
Among them are Burton J. Hendrick, Norman Duncan, Freeman Tilden,
and Lawrence Perry as authors; A. E. Thomas and Bayard Veiller as
playwrights; George Henry Payne, Ralph Graves, and Arthur Warner
as editors; and Rheta Childe Dorr, Walter Arndt, and Robert E.
MacAlarney. The Washington correspondence has always maintained a high
degree of excellence. The Washington bureau was in charge of Francis
E. Leupp from 1889 to 1904, when he was appointed Commissioner of
Indian Affairs; he was succeeded by E. G. Lowry, J. P. Gavit, and
then by David Lawrence, two of whose exploits--his “scoop” on Bryan’s
resignation, and his remarkable prediction of the States which would
give Wilson the Presidency in 1916--made a considerable noise in their
time. The present correspondents are Mark Sullivan and Harold Phelps
Stokes.
The war brought a series of rapid changes in the ownership and
management of the _Evening Post_. The financial control of the paper
had long been in the hands of Mr. Villard, who for more than fifteen
years was president of the company, and had given unremitting attention
to the maintenance of its high business standards, as well as to
the improvement of its news and other features. At the end of July,
1917, Mr. Villard gave an option for the purchase of his share of the
paper to his associates, and a few days later it was announced that
Mr. Thomas W. Lamont had bought it; thus terminating the long and
public-spirited proprietorship by the Villard family. Friends of the
paper must ever be grateful to Mr. Lamont for carrying it through the
next few years of excessive wartime costs. He placed Mr. Edwin F. Gay,
widely known as the dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Business
Administration (1908–19), in charge in January, 1920, as president of
the Evening Post Company; and two years later, in the first days of
1922, the ownership of the _Post_ passed into the hands of a syndicate
organized by Mr. Gay. Meanwhile, early in 1920 Mr. Ogden had resigned
the editorship, and Mr. Strunsky took charge of the editorial page.
With the marked broadening of the newspaper in the last two years, and
the innovations in its form, its readers are as familiar as they are
with the fact that its essential spirit is unaltered. The connection
with the _Nation_ having ceased in 1917, its editorial page has
abandoned the narrow columns and long series of uncaptioned editorial
paragraphs which had marked it since 1881. The literary pages passed in
1920 into the hands of Mr. Henry S. Canby, who has made the _Evening
Post Literary Review_ esteemed from the Atlantic to the Pacific as
easily the foremost publication of its kind in America. The volume of
news has been greatly increased, fresh departments have been added,
illustrations given their proper place, and the appeal of the paper
broadened without lowering its standards. In a period not favorable to
increase of circulation, that of the _Evening Post_ has risen, under
Mr. Gay, to the highest point in its history.