Pulitzer_ A Life in Politics, Print, and Power - James McGrath Morris [142]
Although he greatly admired the World and imitated it, Hearst disdained its owner. He felt he had more in common with Pulitzer’s adversary Bennett, who like Hearst was heir to a family fortune and who had been given his New York Herald without spending a cent. “It is an honest and brave paper one can respect,” Hearst said. “It is the kind of paper I should like the Examiner to be, while the World is, because of the Jew that owns it, a nasty, unscrupulous damned sheet that I despise but which is too powerful to insult.” But as a copycat, his spite was like that of a man who enjoyed the company of a mistress, which Hearst did, and felt sullied by the experience the morning after.
Despite the imitation there was a vast difference between the men. Pulitzer had started with nothing, and his newspapers were sustained and expanded by their financial success. Hearst, on the other hand, was backed by an endless reserve of family money. For any competitor, this made Hearst dangerous. He was soon boasting of the Examiner’s success in full-page advertisements calling it “The Monarch of dailies. The largest, brightest and best newspaper on the Pacific Coast.”
But conquering the Atlantic coast would have to wait for another day.
In late March 1887 the kind of criminal case Pulitzer loved to feature in the World opened in a New York City courtroom. Assistant District Attorney De Lancey Nicoll, whom Pulitzer admired, was prosecuting several aldermen on charges of corruption. One of the boodlers was defended by Ira Shafer, a colorful lawyer who made for good copy. The World illustrated its front-page coverage of the trial with comic drawings of Shafer, and the reporter had fun referring to Shafer’s shoes as toboggans and to his mouth as a cave of winds. All this got to be too much for the lawyer. “That dirty, filthy sheet yesterday reviled and insulted me by the publication of a lot of vile caricatures,” Shafer informed the jury, whose members were quite surprised, as they had not been permitted to read any newspapers. “A friend said to me this morning: ‘Shafer, why don’t you shoot that Hungarian Jew? Why don’t you horsewhip him?’”
Despite the judge’s attempts to rein him in, Shafer continued. “Gentlemen, wait. The day will come when I will meet that Jew face to face, and when I do meet him let him beware,” he told the jury, which included three Jewish members. When court adjourned, Shafer went on a similar rampage before reporters in the courthouse hall. “The first time I shall meet Mr. Pulitzer after this trial is over,” he said, “I shall kill him.”
Lawyers who knew Shafer doubted that his threat was serious, and rather attributed it to his quick-to-anger disposition. The fiery-tempered Pulitzer figured as much. He continued to ride the elevated train to work unescorted, and he dismissed any talk of danger. “If I could have been killed by threats I should have been buried long ago,” he said. “If I could be influenced by the hostility of rascals I should have conducted a very different newspaper from the World and I should have adopted a different policy when I entered journalism years ago—which was to expose fraud and crime and pursue rascals.”
Pulitzer was soon out of Shafer’s reach anyway. Leaving Smith, Cockerill, and Merrill to run the shop, he departed with Kate on the most extensive trip they had taken since he bought the paper four years earlier. There had been scarlet fever in their house and they were eager to leave. The children were left in the care of Kate’s brother, who greatly pleased seven-year-old Lucille with the purchase of a pony. Pulitzer’s friend Childs came up from Philadelphia to see them off. “I have been very anxious about you all,” Childs told him. “What with the illness at home and the immense pressure of your great business you had too much to bear.”