Pulitzer_ A Life in Politics, Print, and Power - James McGrath Morris [114]
In January, Gould had come close to disposing of the paper to John McLean, the publisher of the Cincinnati Enquirer, but McLean had been unwilling to meet the $385,000 price. There was only one man trolling for a New York paper for whom price did not seem to be a consideration. “As Joseph has more stamps than the rest of us, I might say the only one with stamps,” said McLean when his bid failed, “I suspect he will get it ultimately.”
On the day Gould watched his new yacht slip into the water, Pulitzer was riding a train to New York. The Pulitzer family had just concluded the stay of several months in the South, undertaken out of concern for Ralph’s asthma. Joseph and Kate had given up on St. Louis and were looking for a place to buy or rent in New York City. The Post-Dispatch practically ran itself. But to be sure that it remained on track, Pulitzer received daily preprinted one-page reports that showed him at a glance all the essential information, such as circulation, advertising, expenses, and the times when the presses started and ended their runs. He was forever asking the men who managed the business side of his operations to be brief in responding to his ceaseless queries. In his words, he wanted the information in “a nutshell.”
On the way north, Joseph dropped Kate and the children off in Washington for a stay with her family. He pushed on to New York. If the intelligence he had learned from his friend William H. Smith, director of the Associated Press, was sound and if he played his hand deftly, the World could be his. The press was reporting that Gould would leave any day for the West in the company of tycoon Russell Sage. Pulitzer would have to work fast.
He obtained a meeting with Gould at his Western Union office, a few blocks from Park Row. As the two sat facing each other, it was clear there wasn’t much to negotiate. For Gould, who had once stacked $53 million in stock certificates on his desk and who lived in a forty-room Gothic mansion, selling the World was a Lilliputian deal. True, owning the paper had become an irritation, and Pulitzer was a willing purchaser. But Gould could have easily closed the World without making a dent in his petty cash. He wasn’t going to grant any favors to a man who made a sport of pillorying him. From a negotiating perspective, Gould’s uninterest trumped Pulitzer’s desire.
This purchase, unlike that of the Staats-Zeitung or the Dispatch, was no fire sale. The negotiations dragged on for a couple of weeks over two issues. Gould wanted to retain a small ownership share for his son and wanted the current editor to keep his job. In the end, Gould conceded on both points and Pulitzer met his price of $346,000. The sum, according to Gould, represented the amount he had paid for the paper and the losses incurred during his four years of ownership.
Pulitzer did not have that much cash. If he sold the Post-Dispatch, he would be trading a moneymaker for, in his own words, a “mummified corpse of the once bright and lively New York World.” His craving for the World was so intense that he would take a loan from Gould, a man whom he deemed “one of the most sinister figures that have ever flitted bat-like across the vision of the American people.”
On April 28, Pulitzer drew up the sales contract in his own hand, with the advice and counsel of the former U.S. senator Roscoe Conkling, whom Pulitzer had befriended since Conkling had fallen out of favor with the Republican Party and opened a law practice. To take possession of the World, Pulitzer would give Gould a down payment of $34,600, and Gould would finance the remainder at a 5 percent interest rate. Under the terms of the loan, Pulitzer would pay $79,200 in 1884; $121,100 in 1885; and $121,100 in 1886, as well as the interest on the outstanding balance, which could amount to $33,730. In addition, Pulitzer promised to rent for a decade the Park Row building housing the World, for $13,560 a year. Signing the contract put Pulitzer nearly $500,000