Pulitzer_ A Life in Politics, Print, and Power - James McGrath Morris [105]
Following the party leaders’ meeting, Pulitzer took to the road again. He first went to Boston and then quickly headed back to Indiana and Ohio, predicting victory to all he met. “If Ohio were to elect tomorrow it would go Democratic,” Pulitzer told one reporter. But the election would turn on Indiana, he predicted. “It is agreed on all sides that as Indiana goes this year, so goes the Union.”
Pulitzer had one major speech scheduled before the Buckeyes and Hoosiers voted. On October 7, he was the main event at a large Democratic, and very German, rally at Memorial Park in Cleveland, Ohio. Pulitzer dug right into his class-based attack on the Republicans. He asked the Germans in the audience if they had not left their native land to escape a government controlled by one class. The ruling class would turn the United States into the same system they had escaped unless their participation in the election turned the tide. Allied against them, he warned, were an army of patronage and a coalition of corporations, banks, and railroads. “The Blaines, Conklings, Shermans and others traveling on special trains, unlike common people; hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars raised by Wall Street and capitalists in Boston, New England, and Philadelphia. Raised for what? To corrupt the elections and prevent a change.”
Despite the size and enthusiasm of the crowd, Pulitzer sensed that the tide in these two crucial state elections was not in the Democrats’ favor. He was right. Several days later, the Republicans scored an easy victory in Ohio and squeaked by in Indiana. The prospects for the White House looked dim once again. Nonetheless Pulitzer continued his campaign, making speeches in the crucial state of New York. Speaking in Chickering Hall on Fifth Avenue, he clung tenaciously to his populist themes. “The country is in danger, not from below, but from above; not from segregation, but from centralization and imperialism—from organized corporations, organized privileges, and from the army of 100,000 office holders.”
Pulitzer the journalist dropped any pretense of confidence. He telegraphed a signed article back to the Post-Dispatch with a gloomy estimation of Hancock’s chances in the election. In fact, Pulitzer went as far as to forecast a victory for Garfield, earning the wrath of other partisan papers. Such a prediction was the political equivalent of violating baseball’s prohibition against using the term “no-hitter” before the last batter is out.
When Election Day came, it looked for a brief time as if Pulitzer would be proved wrong. The popular vote turned out to be a virtual tie: each major candidate had 48.3 percent of the vote, with the remainder going to third-party candidates. But the electoral votes gave Garfield the election. With Indiana and Ohio voting Republican, New York turned out to be the key state. A shift of a few thousand votes in the Empire State—5,517, to be precise—would have made Hancock president. The lesson was not lost on Pulitzer, who studied election maps with a mania. If the Democrats were to end their drought, those votes would need to be found in New York.
His dream of owning a New York paper took on new urgency.
Chapter Fifteen
ST. LOUIS GROWS SMALL
On many nights in early 1881, Pulitzer lay awake in his bed listening to the bells of the St. Louis Pilgrim Congressional Church peal out the passing hours. The third- or fourth-largest set of bells in the United States, they could be easily heard across the city. Pulitzer liked the ringing because it let him know how much time remained until dawn. The long, taxing days and the never-ending demands at the paper had taken a toll. Even though success was near, Pulitzer found it harder to sleep. But his insomnia did not stem from business worries. It was as if he could not shut down.
Neither the Post-Dispatch nor Pulitzer had financial woes. The paper’s net income was growing