Pulitzer_ A Life in Politics, Print, and Power - James McGrath Morris [111]
If the railroad was the corporate evil of the era, the railroad and industrial magnate Jay Gould was its personification. Easily one of the most hated men of the era, he served as a ready target for the editorial pen of the reformist-minded Pulitzer. Two years earlier, for instance, Pulitzer heard a rumor in New York that Gould had purchased the Democratic New York World. “The Democratic party, despite its great vitality, cannot afford to have its press contaminated by such a vampire,” wrote Pulitzer on his return to St. Louis. The rumor was true. Gould had unintentionally acquired the paper when he purchased the assets of another corporation.
Gould became Pulitzer’s particular devil. Pulitzer began a campaign to warn Missourians of the financier’s Mephistophelian intentions. From New York, in March 1882, Pulitzer filed an article claiming that Gould intended to make Missouri “his ‘pocket borough,’ controlling the Missouri legislature, running all the railroads, steamships, iron mills, and everything else he can gobble up, including one or two of the newspapers.” The Post-Dispatch took to calling Gould “Missouri’s boss.”
Broadhead aroused the enmity of the Post-Dispatch for two reasons. Not only was he the hand-chosen candidate of Pulitzer’s archenemies in St. Louis, but he was also Gould’s representative. Still, when Broadhead won the party’s nomination, most people assumed the Post-Dispatch would support him, as it had done when Allen beat Pulitzer two years earlier. But Cockerill relished a fight. He did not back down. On the contrary, he went after Broadhead with a vengeance, laying out an array of charges of corruption. When the candidate remained silent, Cockerill wrote, “Perhaps the charges are unanswerable.”
The attacks greatly upset Broadhead’s law partner Alonzo W. Slayback, not a man one would want to anger. Slayback had been a friend of Cockerill’s boss since they met during Pulitzer’s first political campaign as a Democrat. Slayback had tolerated the Post-Dispatch’s excited political pronouncements, and in return Pulitzer had kept Slayback out of the paper’s crosshairs. For example, about a year earlier an opponent of Slayback’s had published a card* in the Post-Dispatch accusing the lawyer of being a coward; at great expense, Pulitzer had the card removed in the middle of a press run.
Now, with Pulitzer out of town and Cockerill in charge, Slayback began to berate the paper to anyone who would listen. One night at the end of September, Slayback went on a verbal rampage against Cockerill and the paper in the reception room of the Elks club, of which Cockerill was the president. Slayback accused Cockerill of being a blackmailer, a term then considered provocation for a duel. Cockerill gently persuaded Slayback to retire to the library, where the two held an extended conversation. When it was concluded, they headed off to drink in the bar, apparently having put their differences aside.
But a dozen days later, Slayback resumed sniping at Cockerill and referred to the paper as a “blackmailing sheet.” The renewed attack prompted Cockerill to dig out and print the old insulting card, whose publication Pulitzer had prevented. Only an hour after the edition hit the street, the Post-Dispatch’s city editor looked up from his desk to see Slayback charging through the newsroom toward Cockerill’s office in the company of William Clopton, another lawyer.
In his office, Cockerill was meeting with the business manager and the composing room foreman. His pistol lay on the desk, where he had placed it in anticipation of putting it into his coat when he left for home in a few minutes. Slayback threw open the door and stepped in, leaving Clopton in the hall. Then, as the men watched, Slayback