Pulitzer_ A Life in Politics, Print, and Power - James McGrath Morris [113]
As part of this restoration, Pulitzer invited his actor friend John McCullough to put on a benefit performance of Julius Caesar at the Mercantile Library for the Slayback family. Boxes for the show were auctioned off. Kate bought one for $1,000, although most sold for less than $100. Notably absent were Pulitzer’s critics at the Republican, who had so ferociously attacked him. In their anger, none of Pulitzer’s enemies recognized that the victim had been a friend of his also. Years later, long after Pulitzer was no longer in St. Louis, he provided a job on the paper for Slayback’s daughter.
In the end, the grand jury declined to indict Cokerill, convinced that Slayback had provoked the shooting by entering the office with a weapon. Pulitzer and the Post-Dispatch had survived the crisis but St. Louis had become even less hospitable to him and his family. Once again, Pulitzer left for New York.
In the early morning hours of November 16, 1882, a few days after Joseph reached New York City, Albert and his newly assembled staff left their offices to get the first copies of The Morning Journal as it came off the New York Tribune’s presses. The men all returned to their desks to study their first effort and, as all journalists do, mark typos.
One of the men suggested “something wet” to mark the occasion, and Albert sent the office boy out to procure some bottles. Upon his return, the editors and reporters quaffed beer and toasted the paper’s birth. Albert, however, chose Apollinaris water instead. There was no food, not even “beef an,” the famous ten-cent plate of corned beef and beans from nearby Hitchcock’s. “So,” noted one of the editors, “the Journal was baptized with Apollinaris and beer.”
A few hours later, New Yorkers sampled The Morning Journal. Readers who couldn’t find the time to wade through the daily papers, oversize canvases of dull unbroken type, found the Journal a relief. For only a penny—a third or a fourth of the cost of other papers—readers could have their fill of short news items written in a light, breezy style. Women in particular were offered, at last, a newspaper that clearly had their interests in mind. The paper had detailed reports of weddings and balls, romantic news such as the first loves of famous men, and lots of gossipy notices. Albert, one Park Row veteran recalled, “was the first New York editor to realize the fact that shop-girls and poor clerks are interested in the daily lives of the millionaire class. He turned to their ‘doings’ and paved the way for the new journalism that followed.” The paper was soon nicknamed the “chambermaid’s delight.” From the very first appearance of the Journal, Albert found readers. It was the talk of the town.
From his Manhattan hotel room Joseph enviously witnessed his brother’s success.
Chapter Sixteen
THE GREAT THEATER
On April 7, 1883, Jay Gould took his family and friends by private railcar to Philadelphia for the launching of his new yacht, Atalanta, named after the huntress of Greek mythology. Built at a cost of $140,000, the yacht was a floating palace with gold-edged curtains, oriental rugs, and a built-in piano. But as Gould participated in the festivities of the day, he was beset with worries. The country was in the midst of a business downturn, his nerves were frayed, and the constant public attacks on him had begun to hit home. For the first time, he was considering retirement. At the very least, it was time to lighten his load.
He decided to rid himself of the burdensome New York World. It was a Democratic paper and he was a Republican. But perhaps an even greater sin in the eyes of a railroad and industrial baron was that it had never made a dime since he acquired it four years earlier. “I never cared anything about the World,