Pulitzer_ A Life in Politics, Print, and Power - James McGrath Morris [103]
Pulitzer crafted a speech to give in Indianapolis, where Schurz had delivered a long and widely noted address for the Republicans. In a sense, this would be a reprise of the 1876 election, when Pulitzer indirectly debated his former mentor. But in the four years that had passed since then, Pulitzer had become a newspaper publisher whose fame was equal to, if not greater than, Schurz’s. The Democratic press now described Pulitzer as the editor of “one of the most influential papers” Republicans called him “notorious.” In either case, he was no longer simply the “German orator.”
Pulitzer was pleased with this transformation. He told organizers in Indianapolis that he would make his speech in English. If they insisted, he could deliver a second address in German. “There is no difference to me whatever between the two languages,” he said. “I prefer to deliver the principal speech in English solely because I know that will make it more effective—even among Germans.”
On the evening of August 14, Pulitzer stood before a large crowd in the Indianapolis Wigwam, an auditorium often used for political functions. For almost an hour, he accused the Republicans of demagoguery and centralization. In an unusually personal moment, Pulitzer said he was better equipped than native-born men to recognize the danger, describing how he came to the United States “friendless, homeless, tongueless, guideless” and how he renounced his allegiance to an emperor to become a citizen. “I joyfully complied with that condition,” he said. “I have kept faith; I am only keeping faith now.”
Launching his most direct attack yet as a politician, publisher, or orator, Pulitzer challenged America’s upper class and the elected officials who did its bidding. In a succession of sentences that left both speaker and audience breathless, Pulitzer said, “Show me a land where one person controls 8,000 miles of railroad, mostly built by government subsidies; where another has forty-seven million of government bonds registered in his name, and where still another can appear at a White House reception with diamonds on her body worth over a million dollars; show me a land where the money power, the organized capital, privileges and monopolies of the country, the railroads, telegraphs, banks, protected manufacturers, etc. are favored and fostered by the government…and you have shown me imperialism. It is the issue of the hour and the duty of the Democracy is to meet it, battle it, overthrow it, and restore and re-establish the sane principle of true, popular, self-government.”
Pulitzer did not frame the election in terms of commonplace issues such as tariffs or civil service reform. Rather, he argued that the growing prosperity of the nation endangered its political freedoms. The wealthy, who benefited most from industrialization, were seeking to protect their interests by controlling the government. “Let us have prosperity, but never at the expense of liberty, never at the expense of real self-government, and let us never have a government in Washington owing its retention to the power of the millionaires rather than the will of the millions.”
In September, Pulitzer set aside his work for the national ticket in order to tend to his own race for Congress. Anyone else might have been simply content to enjoy success as a publisher. But Pulitzer was not yet ready to give up his pursuit of elective office. His ambition had taken root when, at a formative age, he had watched Carl Schurz win office, respect, success, and adulation through journalism. For one who had Pulitzer’s ego and need for control, politics was a siren—even more so when, after he had been rejected by voters, it offered redemption in the form of a comeback.
As the primary neared, the acrimony between Pulitzer and Hyde increased. Still stinging from his defeat in Moberly, Hyde was not going to let Pulitzer seize his mantle without a fight. He and his paper’s publisher, Charles Knapp, set