MY connection with the _Globe-Democrat_ had many aspects, chief among
which was my rapidly developing consciousness of the significance of
journalism and its relation to the life of the nation and the state. My
journalistic career had begun only five months before and preceding that
I had had no newspaper experience of any kind. The most casual reader of
a newspaper would have been as good as I in many respects.
But here I rather sensed the significance of it all, the power of a man
like McCullagh, for instance, for good or evil, the significance of a
man like Butler in this community. I still had a lot to learn: the
extent of graft in connection with politics in a city, the power of a
newspaper to make sentiment in a State and so help to carry it for a
Governor or a President. The political talk I heard on the part of one
newspaper man and another “doing politics,” as well as the leading
editorials in this and other papers, which just at this time were
concerned with a coming mayoralty fight and a feud in the State between
rival leaders of the Republican party, completely cleared up the
situation for me. I listened to all the gossip, read the papers
carefully, wondered over the personalities and oddities of State
governments in connection with our national government. Just over the
river in Illinois everybody was concerned with the administration of
John P. Altgeld, governor of the State, and whether he would pardon the
Chicago anarchists whose death sentences, recorded a few years before,
had been commuted to life imprisonment. On this side of the river
everybody was interested in the administration of William Joel Stone,
who was the governor. A man by the name of Cyrus H. Walbridge was
certain to be the next mayor if the Republicans won, and according to
the _Globe_, they ought to win because the city needed to be reformed.
The local Democratic board of aldermen was supposed to be the most
corrupt in all America (how many cities have yearly thought that, each
of its governing body, since the nation began!), and Edward Noonan, the
mayor, was supposed to be the lowest and vilest creature that ever stood
up in shoes. The chief editorials of the _Globe_ were frequently
concerned with blazing denunciations of him. As far as I could make out,
he had joined with various corporations and certain members of council
to steal from the city, sell its valuable franchises for a song and the
like. He had also joined with the police in helping bleed the saloons,
gambling dens and houses of prostitution. Gambling and prostitution were
never so rampant as now, so our good paper stated. The good people of
the city should join and help save the city from destruction.
How familiar it all sounds, doesn’t it? Well, this was 1892, and I have
heard the same song every year since, in every American city in which I
have ever been. Gambling, prostitution, graft, _et cetera_, must be
among our national weaknesses, not?
Just the same, in so far as this particular office and the country about
St. Louis were concerned, Joseph McCullagh was of immense significance
to his staff and the natives. Plainly he was like a god to many of them,
the farmers and residents in small towns in States like Texas, Iowa,
Missouri, Arkansas and in Southern Illinois, where his paper chiefly
circulated, for they came to the office whenever they were in the city
merely to get a glimpse of him. He was held in high esteem by his staff,
and was one of the few editors of his day who really deserved to be.
Within his office he had an adoring group of followers, which included
everyone from the managing editor down. “The chief says——,” “The chief
thinks——,” “The old man looks a little grouchy this morning—what do you
think?” “Gee, wait’ll the old man hears about that! He’ll be hopping!”
“That ought to please the old man, don’t you think? He likes a bit of
good writing.” Yet for all this chatter, “the old man” never seemed to
notice much of anything or have much to say to any one, except possibly
to one or two of his leading editorial writers and his telegraph editor.
If he ever conferred with his stout city editor for more than one moment
at a time I never saw or heard of it. And if anything seen or heard by
anybody in connection with him was not whispered about the reporters’
room before nightfall or daybreak it was a marvel of concealment.
Occasionally he might be seen ambling down the hall to the lavatory or
to the room of his telegraph chief, but most always it was merely to
take his carriage or walk to the Southern Hotel at one o’clock for his
luncheon or at six for his dinner, his derby hat pulled over his eyes,
his white socks gleaming, a cane in his hand, a cigar between his lips.
If he ever had a crony it was not known in the reporters’ room. He was a
solitary or eccentric, and a few years later, as I have said, he leaped
to his death from the second story window of his home, where he had
lived in as much privacy and singularity as a Catholic priest.
There were silent figures slipping about—Captain King, a chief editorial
writer; Casper S. Yost, a secretary of the corporation, assistant editor
and what not; several minor editors, artists, reporters, the city
editor, the business manager—but no one or all of them collectively
seemed to amount to a hill of beans. Only “the old man” or J. B., as he
was occasionally referred to, counted. Under him the paper had
character, succinctness and point, not only in its news but in its
editorial columns. Although it was among the conventional of the
conventional of its day (what American newspaper of that period could
have been otherwise?), still it had an awareness which made one feel
that “the old man” knew much more than he ever wrote. He seemed to like
to have it referred to as “the great religious daily” and often quoted
that phrase, but with the saving grace of humor behind it.
And he seemed to understand just how to supply that region with all it
desired in the shape of news. Though in the main the paper published
mere gossip, oddities about storms, accidents, eccentricities, still
there was something about the way the thing was done, the crisp and
brief manner in which the material was edited, which made it
palatable—very much so, I should say, to the small-town store-lounger or
owner—and nearly all had humor, naïveté or pathos. The drift of things
politically was always presented in leaders in such a way that even I, a
mere stripling, began to get a sense of things national and
international. States, the adjacent ones in particular, which supplied
the bulk of the _Globe’s_ circulation, were given special attention and
yet in such a way as not to irritate the general reader, leaving it
optional with him whether he should read or not. The editorials,
sometimes informing, sometimes threatening and directive, sometimes mere
fol-de-rol and foolery, and intended as such, had a delicious whimsy in
them. Occasionally “the old man” himself wrote one and then everybody
sat up and took notice. One could easily single it out even if it had
not been passed around, as it nearly always was. “The old man wrote
that.” “Have you read the old man’s editorial in this morning’s paper?
Gee! Read it!” Then you expected brilliant, biting words, a luminous
phraseology, sentences that cracked like a whip, and you were rarely
disappointed. The paragraphs exploded at times, burst like a torpedo; at
others the whole thing ended like music, the deep, sonorous bass of an
organ. “The old man” could write, there was no doubt of that. He also
seemed to believe what he wrote, for the time being anyhow. That was why
his staff, to a man, revered him. He was a real editor, as contrasted
with your namby-pamby “business man” masquerading as editor. He had been
a great reporter and war correspondent in his day, one of the men who
were with Farragut on the Mississippi and with Sherman and others
elsewhere during the great Civil War.
Wandering about this building at this time was an old red-faced,
red-nosed German, with a protuberant stomach, very genial, dull and
apparently unimportant. He was, as I later learned, the real owner of
the paper, the major portion of the stock being in his name; and yet, as
every one seemed to understand, he never dared pose as such but must
slip about, as much overawed as the rest of us. I was a mere underling
and new to the place, and yet I could see it. A more apologetic mien and
a more obliging manner was never worn by any mortal, especially when he
was in the vicinity of McCullagh’s office. His name was Daniel M.
Hauser. For the most part he wandered about the building like a ghost,
seeming to wish to be somebody or to say something but absolutely
without meaning. The short, stout Napoleonic editor ruled supreme.
* * * * *
By degrees I made friends with a number of those that worked here: Bob
Hazard; Jock Bellairs, son of the Captain Bellairs who presided over the
city zoo; Charlie Benson, and a long list of others whose names escape
me now. Of all those on the city staff I was inclined to like Hazard
most, for he was a personage, a character, quick, gay, intellectual,
literary, forceful. Why he never came to greater literary fame I do not
know, for he seemed to have all the flair and feeling necessary for the
task. He was an only son of some man who had long been a resident of St.
Louis and was himself well known about town. He lived with a mother and
sister in southwest St. Louis in a small cottage which always pleased me
because of its hominess, and supported that mother and sister in loyal
son-like fashion. I had not been long on the paper before I was invited
there to dinner, and this in spite of a rivalry which was almost
immediately and unconsciously set up between us the moment I arrived and
which endured in a mild way even after our more or less allied literary
interests had drawn us socially together. At his home I met his sister,
a mere slip of a tow-headed girl, whom later on I saw in vaudeville as a
headliner. Hazard I encountered years later as a blasé correspondent in
Washington, representing a league of papers. He had then but newly
completed a wild-West thriller, done in cold blood and with an eye to a
quick sale. Assuming that I had influence with publishers and editors,
he invoked my aid. I gave him such advice and such letters as I could.
But only a few months later I read that Robert Hazard, well-known
newspaper correspondent, living with his wife and child in some
Washington residence section, had placed a revolver to his temple and
ended it all. Why, I have often wondered. He was seemingly so well
fitted mentally and physically to enjoy life.... Or is it mental fitness
that really kills the taste for life?
I would not dwell on him at such length save for some other things which
I propose later to narrate. For the moment I wish to turn to another
individual, “Jock” Bellairs, who impressed me as a most curious compound
of indifference, wisdom, literary and political sense and a hard social
cunning. He had a capacity for (as some one in the office once phrased
it) a “lewd and profane life.” He was the chief police reporter at a
building known as the “Four Courts,” an institution which housed, among
other things, four judicial chambers of differing jurisdiction, as well
as the county jail, the city detention wards, the office of the district
attorney, the chief of police, chief of detectives, the city attorney,
and a “reporters’ room” where all the local reporters were permitted to
gather and were furnished paper, ink, tables.
A more dismal atmosphere than that which prevailed in this building, and
in similar institutions in all the cities in which I ever worked, would
be hard to find. In Chicago it was the city hall and county courthouse,
with its police attachment; in Pittsburgh the county jail; in New York
the Tombs and Criminal Courts Building, with police headquarters as a
part of its grim attachment. I know of nothing worse. These places,
essential as they are, are always low in tone, vile, and defile nearly
all they touch. They have a corrupting effect upon those with whom they
come in contact and upon those who are employed to administer law or
“justice.” Harlots, criminals, murderers, buzzard lawyers, political
judges, detectives, police agents, and court officials generally—what a
company! I have never had anything to do with one of these institutions
in any city as reporter, plaintiff or assisting friend, without sensing
anew the brutality and horror of legal administration. The petty
tyrannies that are practiced by underlings and minor officials! The
“grafting” of low, swinish brains! The tawdry pomp of ignorant
officials! The cruelty and cunning of agents of justice! “Set a thief to
catch a thief.” Clothe these officials as you will, in whatsoever
uniforms of whatsoever splendor or sobriety; give them desks of rosewood
and walls of flowered damask; entitle them as you choose, High and
Mightiness This and That—still they remain the degraded things they have
always been, equals of the criminals and the crimes they are supposed to
do away with. It cannot be helped; it is a law of chemistry, of
creation. Offal breeds maggots to take care of it, to nullify its
stench; carrion has its buzzards, carrion crows and condors. So with
criminals and those petty officials of the lower courts and jails who
are set to catch them.
But this is a wandering paragraph and has little to do with “Jock”
Bellairs, except that he was of and yet not of this particular
atmosphere. The first time I saw him I felt compelled to study him, for
he seemed somehow to suggest this atmosphere to which he was appointed
as reporter. He was in a way, and yet with pleasing reservations, the
man for this task. He had a sense of humor and a devil-may-care approach
to all this. Whenever anything of real import broke loose he was always
the one to be called upon for information or aid, because he was in
close touch with the police and detectives, who were his cronies and
ready to aid him. And whenever anything happened that was beyond his
power to manage he called up the office for aid. On more than one
occasion, some “mystery” coming up, I was the one delegated to help him,
the supposition being that it was likely to yield a “big” story, bigger
than he had time for, being a court fixture. I then sought him out at
the Four Courts and was given what he knew, whereupon I began
investigations on my own account. Nearly always I found him lolling
about with other reporters and detectives, a chair tilted back, possibly
a game of cards going on between him and the reporters of other papers,
a bottle of whisky in his pocket—“to save time,” as he once amusingly
remarked—and a girl or two present, friends of one or other of these
newspaper men, their “dollies.” He would rise and explain to me just
what was going on, whisper confidentially in my ear the name of some
other newspaper man who had been put on the case by one of the other
papers, perhaps ask me to mention the name of some shabby policeman or
detective who had been assigned to the case, one who was “a good fellow”
and who could be depended upon to help us in the future.
I often had to smile, he was so naïve and yet so wise in his position,
so matter-of-fact and commonplace about it all. Sometimes he would give
me the most befuddling information as to how the news got out: he and
John Somebody or Other were down at Maggie Sanders’s place in Chestnut
Street the other night, where he heard from a detective, who was telling
somebody else, who told somebody else, and so on. Then, if there was a
prisoner in the case, he would take me to him, or tell me where some
individual or the body was to be found if there was a body. Then, after
I had gone about my labors, he would return to his card-game, his girl
and his bottle. There were stories afloat of outings with these girls,
or the using of some empty room in this building for immoral purposes,
with the consent of complaisant officials. And all about, of course, was
this atmosphere of detained criminals, cases at trial, hurrying parents
and members of families, weeping mothers and sisters—a mess.
On an average of twice a month during my stay in St. Louis I was called
to this building on one errand and another, and always I went with a
sicky and sinking sensation, and always I came away from it breathing a
sigh of relief. To me it was a horrible place, a pest-hole of suffering
and error and trickery, and yet necessary enough, I know.
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