Pulitzer_ A Life in Politics, Print, and Power - James McGrath Morris [136]
Another member rose quickly to point out that Pulitzer was not present to defend himself. “I cannot help that. He ought to be here,” Gibson said.
When a committee was finally convened in March 1886 to examine the charges, Pulitzer was almost as much a target of the investigation as the accused. The committee members suspected that the World had published the allegations in order to profit from manipulating the stock prices of Pan-Electric. Who had made the decision to publish the story, they asked.
“I, and I alone, solely am responsible and no one else is,” Pulitzer said. “No human being has tried to influence me in any manner whatever.” He explained that he had held the story in one of the pigeonholes of his desk. “I had waited three months in the hopes that a certain gentleman—particularly one gentleman—might rid himself of the possession of Pan-Electric stock.”
The gentleman in question was Grover Cleveland’s attorney general, Augustus Garland. Several months earlier, Garland had secretly offered to dispose of his stock by turning it over to the World. Pulitzer declined the offer, wiring to his Washington correspondent, “Garland’s offer to transfer the stock to the World is against my inflexible rule never to touch any speculative stock whatever. I must adhere to that principle but if he positively wants to transfer the unclean thing to you not as a representative of the World but as a trustee for the sole purpose of getting rid of the embarrassment and publicly disposing of the stock for some charity that might be considered.” Nothing came of the idea.
The committee members continued with their questioning, but as they couldn’t obtain any useful information from Pulitzer, he was dismissed to catch his train back to New York. Even excluding the experience of being grilled by his colleagues, Pulitzer found Capitol Hill a disappointment and reneged on his responsibilities. He was absent most of the time, never gave a speech on the floor, introduced just two bills, and completed his overdue committee work only after being reprimanded.
When Pulitzer was nominated for Congress two years earlier, he and Conkling had made ambitious political plans during leisurely carriage rides through Central Park. Only his St. Louisan friend Gibson had pointedly asked him, “How can one man attend to two great newspapers and act a great part on the national stage?” Pulitzer had learned the answer the hard way. On April 10, his thirty-ninth birthday, he sat at his desk and pulled out a sheet of stationery. “Unwilling to hold the honors of a seat in Congress without fully observing all the expectations attached to it,” he wrote in a letter to his constituents, “I hereby return to you the trust which you so generously confided to me.”
The World’s Washington correspondent promised to clean out Pulitzer’s desk in the Capitol. “I’m glad you have resigned your seat in Congress,” he wrote. “I am sure you have a much better position as editor of the World than any official in Washington.”
Pulitzer’s congressional career lasted a mere four months, unless one counts the eleven months he spent waiting for the opening of Congress. He donated his salary to help endow a bed in a New York hospital for use by a newspaperman; he donated his stationery allowance to an industrial school for newsboys; and, after much work, he found a recipient for the several quarts of wheat given to members of Congress by the Department of Agriculture to distribute to their constituents. The only thing he had not thought through was the consequences of his resignation. The vacancy he created could not be filled until the next election. In his hurry to dump the job, he left his district with no vote in the House