Pulitzer_ A Life in Politics, Print, and Power - James McGrath Morris [122]
On August 28, Villard’s private trains began leaving New York. The engines pulled Wagner sleeping cars, beautifully appointed with curtains, leather seats, carpeting, and china spittoons, and configured like long drawing rooms with tables. By the time the two trains reached Chicago, the excursion party had grown to four trains with more than 300 guests including the former president Ulysses Grant. The caravan made stops for parades and banquets. In Bismarck, the delegation laid the cornerstone of the state capitol and listened to a speech by Sitting Bull, who had been released from captivity for the event. On September 8, the trains joined up with ones coming from the West in the valley of Little Blackfoot Creek, about sixty miles from Helena, Montana.
Pulitzer was surprised to find that Villard had built a pavilion, a bandstand, and promenades in this abandoned stretch. Finding a seat, Pulitzer watched as the men rapidly laid the last 1,000 feet of track. The man who had driven in the first spike on the opening of the road came forward to nail the last as the sun began to set behind the mountains. Villard spent $300,000 for the affair but he couldn’t have bought better press coverage. Newspapers across the country and in Europe played up the event—that was, all except the World, which churlishly said the event was “a comparatively unimportant incident in railroad history.”
During Pulitzer’s absence from New York, his detractors took the opportunity to spread a rumor that the World was still owned by Gould, even though Pulitzer had run a front-page two-column interview with Gould to publicize the change of ownership. The rumor had sufficient credibility, supported by Pulitzer’s willingness to float around New York waters with Gould in the latter’s yacht, that Cockerill was forced to issue a public statement. Neither Gould nor his son, said Cockerill, “nor any other human being connected with any monopoly or corporation own directly or indirectly one dollar’s worth of interest in the World or have any more to do with its management than the Emperor of China.” Despite his best efforts the rumors persisted. The Brooklyn Eagle, for instance, remarked, Pulitzer “claims that Mr. Gould has nothing to do with the paper, but the claim is simply the rankest sort of nonsense, Mr. Gould still owns the paper.”
The rumors were only a nuisance. When he returned from the West, Pulitzer was greeted by proof positive of his success. His competitors had flinched and were cutting their price. The Tribune went from four to three cents, the Times from four to two, and the Herald from three to two. Gloating, Pulitzer proclaimed, “Another victory for the World.”
As the World’s circulation rose each week, Pulitzer sought to use his newfound political leverage to help bring Democrats back to power. From the start he made no pretenses about his plans. “I want to talk to a nation, not to a select committee,” he said. Within days of buying the paper, Pulitzer had made his political aims clear and so specific that they formed a ten-point list consisting of only thirty-five words. The first five goals were to tax luxuries, inheritances, large incomes, monopolies, and corporations. The remaining goals were to eliminate protective tariffs, reform the civil service, and punish corrupt government officials and those who bought votes, as well as employers who coerced their employees during elections.
When he returned from his western junket, Pulitzer worked to unite New York’s Democrats. In 1880, the party had failed to win the White House when it lost