IN due course of time, I having performed my portion of the contract, it
became the duty of the two editors to fulfill their agreement with me.
Every day for ten days I had been turning in the cash for from five to
fifteen books, thereby establishing my reputation for industry and
sobriety. Mr. Gissel was very anxious to know at the end of each day
whom I had seen and how the mention of his name was received. Instead of
telling him of the many who laughed or sniffed or bought to get rid of
me gracefully, I gave him flattering reports. Lately, by way of reward I
presume, he had taken to reading to me the cleverest passages in his
editorials. Mr. Sullivan, the city editor, confided to me one day that
he was from a small town in central Illinois not unlike the Warsaw from
which I hailed, and which I then roughly and jestingly sketched to him,
and from then on we were on fairly good terms. He dug up a number of
poems and granted me the favor of reading them. Some of them were almost
as good as similar ones by Whittier and Bryant, after whom they were
obviously modeled. Today I know them to be bad, or mediocre; then I
thought they were excellent and grieved to think that any one should be
going to make a reputation as a great poet, while I, the only real poet
extant (although I had done nothing as yet to prove it), remained
unrecognized.
I did not know until later that I might not have secured a place even
now, so numerous were the applications of clever and experienced
newspaper men, had it not been for the influence of my friend Maxwell.
For one reason or another, my errant youth perhaps, my crazy persistence
and general ignorance of things journalistic, he had become interested
in me and seemed fairly anxious to see me get a start. Out of the tail
of his eye he had been watching. When I arrived of an evening and there
was no one present he sometimes inquired what I was doing, and by
degrees, although I had been cautioned not to tell, he extracted the
whole story of Gissel’s book. I even loaned him a copy of the book,
which he read and pronounced rot, adding: “They ought to be ashamed of
themselves, sending you out on a job of this kind. You’re better than
that.”
As the end of my task drew near and I was dreading another uncertain
wait, he put in a good word for me. But even then I doubt if I should
have had a trial had it not been for the convention which was rapidly
drawing near. On the day the newspapers were beginning to chronicle the
advance arrival of various leaders from all parts of the country, I was
taken on at fifteen dollars a week, for a week or two anyhow, and
assigned to watch the committee rooms in the hotels Palmer, Grand
Pacific, Auditorium and Richelieu. There was another youth who was set
to work with me on this, and he gave me some slight instruction. Over us
was the political man, who commanded other men in different hotels and
whose presence I had only noted when the convention was nearly over.
If ever a youth was cast adrift and made to realize that he knew nothing
at all about the thing he was so eager to do, that youth was I. “Cover
the hotels for political news,” were my complete instructions, but what
the devil was political news? What did they want me to do, say, write?
At once I was thoroughly terrified by this opportunity which I had so
eagerly sought, for now that I had it I did not know how to make
anything clear.
For the first day or two or three therefore I wandered like a lost soul
about the corridors and parlor floors and “committee rooms” of these
hotels which I was supposed to cover, trying to find out where the
committee rooms were, who and what were the men in them, what they were
trying to do. No one seemed to want to tell me anything, and, as dull as
it may seem, I really could not guess. I had no clear idea of what was
meant by the word “politics” as locally used. Various country
congressmen and politicians brushed past me in a most secretive manner;
when I hailed them with the information that I was from the _Globe_ they
waved me off with: “I am only a delegate; you can’t get anything out of
me. See the chairman.” Well, what was a chairman? I didn’t know. I did
not even know that there had been lists published in all the papers, my
own included, giving the information which I was so anxiously seeking!
I had no real understanding of politics or party doings or organization.
I doubt if I knew how men came to be nominated, let alone elected. I did
not know who were the various State leaders, who the prospective
candidates, why one candidate might be preferred to another. The
machinations of such an institution as Tammany Hall, or the things
called property interests, were as yet beyond me. My mind was too much
concerned with the poetry of life to busy itself with such minor things
as politics. However, I did know that there was a bitter feud on between
David Bennett Hill, governor of New York, and Grover Cleveland,
ex-President of the United States, both candidates for nomination on the
Democratic ticket, and that the Tammany organization of New York City
was for Hill and bitterly opposed to Cleveland. I also knew that the
South was for any good Southerner as opposed to Cleveland or Hill, and
that a new element in the party was for Richard Bland, better known as
“Silver Dick,” of Missouri. I also knew by reputation many of the men
who had been in the first Cleveland administration.
Imagine a raw youth with no knowledge of the political subtleties of
America trying to gather even an inkling of what was going on! The
nation and the city were full of dark political trafficking, but of it
all I was as innocent as a baby. The bars and lobbies were full of
inconsequential spouting delegates, who drank, swore, sang and orated at
the top of their lungs. Swinging Southerners and Westerners in their
long frockcoats and wide-brimmed hats amused me. They were forever
pulling their whiskers or mustachios, drinking, smoking, talking or
looking solemn or desperate. In many cases they knew no more of what was
going on than I did. I was told to watch the movements of Benjamin Ryan
Tillman, senator from South Carolina, and report any conclusions or
rumors of conclusions as to how his delegation would vote. I had a hard
time finding where his committee was located, and where and when if ever
it deliberated, but once I identified my man I never left him. I dogged
his steps so persistently that he turned on me one afternoon as he was
going out of the Palmer House, fixed me with his one fiery eye and said:
“Young man, what do you want of me anyhow?”
“Well, you’re Senator Tillman, aren’t you?”
“Yes, sir. I’m Senator Tillman.”
“Well, I’m a reporter from the _Globe_. I’ve been told to learn what
conclusions your delegation has reached as to how it will vote.”
“You and your editor of the _Globe_ be damned!” he replied irritably.
“And I want you to quit following me wherever I go. Just now I’m going
for my laundry, and I have some rights to privacy. The committee will
decide when it’s good and ready, and it won’t tell the _Globe_ or any
other paper. Now you let me alone. Follow somebody else.”
I went back to the office the first evening at five-thirty and sat down
to write, with the wild impression in my mind that I must describe the
whole political situation not only in Chicago but in the nation. I had
no notion that there was a supervising political man who, in conjunction
with the managing editor and editor-in-chief, understood all about
current political conditions.
“The political pot,” I began exuberantly, “was already beginning to
seethe yesterday. About the lobbies and corridors of the various hotels
hundreds upon hundreds of the vanguard of American Democracy—etc, etc.”
I had not scrawled more than eight or nine pages of this mush before the
city editor, curious as to what I had discovered and wondering why I had
not reported it to him, came over and picked up the many sheets which I
had turned face down.
“No, no, no!” he exclaimed. “You mustn’t write on both sides of the
paper! Don’t you know that? For heaven’s sake. And all this stuff about
the political pot boiling is as old as the hills. Why, every country
jake paper for thousands of miles East and West has used it for years
and years. You’re not to write the general stuff. Here, Maxwell, see if
you can’t find out what Dreiser has discovered and show him what to do
with it. I haven’t got time.” And he turned me over to my
gold-spectacled mentor, who eyed me very severely. He sat down and
examined my copy with knitted brows. He had a round, meaty, cherubic
face which seemed all the more ominous because he could scowl fiercely,
and his eyes could blaze with a cold, examining, mandatory glance.
“This is awful stuff!” he said as he read the first page. “He’s quite
right. You want to try and remember that you’re not the editor of this
paper and just consider yourself a plain reporter sent out to cover some
hotels. Now where’d you go today?”
I told him.
“What’d you see?”
I described as best I could the whirling world in which I had been.
“No, no! I don’t mean that! That might be good for a book or something
but it’s not news. Did you see any particular man? Did you find out
anything in connection with any particular committee?”
I confessed that I had tried and failed.
“Very good!” he said. “You haven’t anything to write,” and he tore up my
precious nine pages and threw them into the waste basket. “You’d better
sit around here now until the city editor calls you,” he added. “He may
have something special he wants you to do. If not, watch the hotels for
celebrities—Democratic celebrities—or committee meetings, and if you
find any try to find out what’s going on. The great thing is to discover
beforehand who’s going to be nominated—see? You can’t tell from talking
to four or five people, but what you find out may help some one else to
piece out what is to happen. When you come back, see me. And unless you
get other orders, come back by eleven. And call up two or three times
between the time you go and eleven.”
Because of these specific instructions I felt somewhat encouraged,
although my first attempt at writing had been thrown into the waste
basket. I sat about until nearly seven, when I was given an address and
told to find John G. Carlisle, ex-Secretary of the Treasury, and see if
I could get an interview with him. Failing this, I was to “cover” the
Grand Pacific, Palmer House and Auditorium, and report all important
arrivals and delegations.
Even if I had secured the desired interview I am sure I should have made
an awful botch of it, but fortunately I could not get it. Only one thing
of importance developed for me during the evening, and that was the
presence of a Democratic United States Supreme Court Justice at the
Grand Pacific who, upon being intercepted by me as he was going to his
room for the night and told that I was from the _Globe_, eyed me
genially and whimsically.
“My boy,” he said, “you’re just a young new reporter, I can see that.
Otherwise you wouldn’t waste your time on me. But I like reporters: I
was one myself years ago. Now this hotel and every other is full of
leaders and statesmen discussing this question of who’s to be President.
I’m not discussing it, first of all because it wouldn’t become a Justice
of the United States Supreme Court to do so, and in the next place
because I don’t have to: my position is for life. I’m just stopping here
for one day on my way to Denver. You’d better go around to these
committee rooms and see if they can’t tell you something,” and, smiling
and laying one hand on my shoulder in a fatherly way, he dismissed me.
“My!” I thought. “What a fine thing it is to be a reporter! All I have
to do is to say I’m from the _Globe_ and even a Justice of the United
States Supreme Court is smiling and agreeable to me!”
I hurried to a phone to tell Maxwell, and he said: “He don’t count.
Write a stick of it if you want to, and I’ll look it over.”
“How much is a stick?” I asked eagerly and curiously.
“About a hundred and fifty words.”
So much for a United States Supreme Court Justice in election days.
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