Pulitzer_ A Life in Politics, Print, and Power - James McGrath Morris [126]
Cleveland also carried some unseemly baggage. He was a bachelor, and during the campaign it was revealed that he had fathered an illegitimate child. Cleveland decided to deal with the matter by issuing a simple directive to party officials desperate for instructions on what to say. “Tell the truth,” he said. Pulitzer was less circumspect. Calling the accusation slander spread by the Republicans, he publicly blackmailed Blaine by threatening to release salacious information about him.
Pulitzer was only warming up. His stump-speaking style, seasoned by years of campaigning, filled the editorial pages of the World. “Is such an offense unpardonable?” Pulitzer asked. “If Grover Cleveland had a whole family of illegitimate children…he would be more worthy of the office than Blaine, the beggar at the feet of railroad jobbers, the prostitute in the Speaker’s chair, the lawmaking broker in land grabs, the representative and agent of the corruptionists, monopolists, and enemies of the Republic.”
A candidate who was the devil’s companion and a challenger with clay feet made for great copy. The growing interest in the election increased readership for all newspapers, and particularly for the World. The World’s office was like a campaign headquarters. Electing Cleveland and boosting circulation were completely intertwined, the latter increasing the chance of the former. Pulitzer and Cockerill were open to any ideas that would push the World forward. One fell into their lap.
The artist Walt McDougall of Newark had been peddling comic sketches, with some success, to Puck, Harper’s Weekly, and other magazines. In June, he came into the city to see a baseball game. On his way he stopped by Puck’s office, where he learned that the editors had turned down his cartoon of Blaine. He didn’t want to trudge off to the game carrying a large rolled-up drawing, so he impetuously decided to see if he could sell it to Dana. Cartoons were, at best, a novelty in daily newspapers. It was difficult to reproduce illustrations on the high-speed presses required by newspapers, because the engraving plates regularly became clogged with ink. The presses would then have to be stopped to clean the plates, wasting precious time in a business where every lost minute could diminish circulation.
As McDougall walked toward the Sun, he came to the World and decided to try his luck there first. When he entered the dim front office he lost his courage and hurriedly handed the cardboard tube to the elevator boy. “Give that to the editor and tell him he can have it if he wants it,” said McDougall, who then beat a retreat and headed off to the baseball game.
The next day brought a telegram from Pulitzer asking McDougall to come quickly to the World. On his way, McDougall spotted a copy of the World at a newsstand. His cartoon ran across five columns of the front page of the paper. After McDougall was ushered into Pulitzer’s office, the publisher immediately took him to Cockerill’s office across the hall. The editor was as excited as Pulitzer about McDougall’s drawing; its style averted the ink-clogging problem, and the sample had survived an entire press run. “We have found the fellow who can make pictures for newspapers!” Pulitzer excitedly told Cockerill. McDougall was hired, given a studio, and paid $50 a week, more than twice the salary of most reporters.
Pulitzer had wanted illustrations in the World since he bought the paper. On newsstands and in the arms of newsboys, the gray, unbroken front pages of the city’s newspapers were indistinguishable from each other. Both he and Albert, at the Morning Journal, found every excuse possible