Pulitzer_ A Life in Politics, Print, and Power - James McGrath Morris [133]
He called on readers to send money to the paper and promised he would deliver it to the project. “Give something, however little,” Pulitzer asked. In return, he pledged that every donor’s name would be published in the World. For as little as a penny, the poorest New Yorker could have his name in print in the same newspaper whose columns were populated with the names of the Vanderbilts, Whitneys, Rhinelanders, Roosevelts, and Astors.
It was an audacious move. Pulitzer was, after all, asking people to send cash and checks to a corporation just like those which ran the railroads or operated the steel mills. It was only Pulitzer’s word that stood as a guarantee that every dime of the money would be accounted for and would be used for the statue. If no one responded, Pulitzer would look like a fool.
By the next morning, contributions began to pour in. “I am a poor man,” wrote one reader, “but I will give something and I’ll try to get everybody else to give something.” Another wrote, “We have read what you say about the Bartholdi statue this morning and send you at once a small collection ($3.31) taken up in our office and expect to send you more very shortly.”
Rather than start a fund-raising campaign, Pulitzer could have expediently used his own checkbook to make up the deficit. Instead, he chose to finish the project as it had been intended, by turning to the public for support. In one stroke, Pulitzer set into motion a mammoth public effort and demonstrated the growing power and civic role of the independent press. In the past, only churches and governments had been able to marshal such financial support. Now the fourth estate held an equal power to excite and direct mass public support.
The public service also turned out to be good for business. The World’s circulation soared. By June, it would boast that its Sunday edition was the largest in size and in circulation of any newspaper published in the United States. It was consuming 834 miles of newsprint per edition. “No newspaper on the habitable globe consumed so much paper as the World yesterday.”
The long hours of work and the sleepless nights finally prompted Pulitzer to seek rest. On May 9, he and Kate left New York on the Etruria, bound for Europe. Ralph, Lucille, and the baby—Joseph Jr., born on March 21, 1885—were sent off to New Hampshire with nannies and a doctor under the watch of William H. Davis, Kate’s younger brother, whom Joseph Sr. had recently hired as a much-needed personal assistant.
While Kate shopped in London and Paris, Joseph talked shop with newspaper publishers who were curious about this American sensation. Not one to be outmatched, Joseph also did his fair share of consuming, with visits to wine merchants and art galleries. He engaged the help of a Parisian art dealer to search for paintings while he and Kate went off to Aix-les-Bains. “I don’t think I told you that Vanderbilt has a Pahnaroli in his fine collection and although I do not know it, it will not be a better one than yours,” the dealer wrote, deftly mentioning the other art collector.
The Pulitzers took baths at Aix-les-Bains and at Bad Kissingen, in Germany, but they had little effect on Joseph. Instead of finding rest in his isolation and distance from New York, Pulitzer continued to meddle in every part of the World’s operation. He paid to have his editors come to Europe to meet with him, he read and criticized each issue of the paper sent to him by mail, and he kept telegraph operators busy transmitting instructions back to New York.
Usually Pulitzer’s transatlantic chatter consisted of complaints, but he also found cause to praise the work of his staff. By July, readers had sent $75,000 to the World for the Statue of Liberty. On August 11, the paper exceeded its goal of $100,000. In less than four months, more than