Pulitzer_ A Life in Politics, Print, and Power - James McGrath Morris [15]
THE PROMISED LAND
When Pulitzer got off from the train at the end of its journey, he found that too much water and too little money kept him from his destination. Though railroad construction had resumed with a vengeance since the end of the war, there was still no bridge spanning the Mississippi River when Pulitzer reached its eastern bank in the fall of 1865. The only way across to St. Louis was to pay the Wiggins Ferry Company, which held a monopoly on the busy cross-river traffic. But Pulitzer had not a cent left. “I was hungry, and I was shivering with cold,” he said. “I had no dinner, no overcoat. The lights of St. Louis looked like a promised land to me.”
Through the darkness, Pulitzer spotted a ferry pulling into a slip on his side of the river. He edged his way to the gate and, as he neared it, he overheard a pair of deck hands conversing. Surprisingly, they were speaking in German. He called out to them. One walked over and struck up a conversation with him. Finally, Pulitzer asked if there was a way he could get across. The deck hand told him that a fireman had quit and offered to go and find out if the ferry company needed to hire a replacement.
The deck hand returned in the company of the engineer, who asked Pulitzer if he could fire a boiler. “I said I could,” Pulitzer recalled. “In my condition I was willing to say anything and do anything.” They opened the gate and led Pulitzer to the boiler, which sat exposed on an open deck, gave him a shovel, and told him to start feeding coal to the fire. “I opened the fire box door and a blast of fiery hot air struck me in the face. At the same time a blast of cold driven rain struck me in the back. I was roasting in the front and freezing in the back.” Long into the night, Pulitzer fed coal to the boiler. “I don’t remember how many trips back and forth across the river I made that night, but the next day I went ashore and walked the streets of St. Louis.”
It was like coming home. The boats along the riverbank were tied up in the same fashion as the barges that clung to the Danube’s shore a few blocks from his boyhood home. Walking past the throngs of steamboat hands, stevedores, levee rats, and river men in gaiters, Pulitzer reached Second Street, where signs directed traffic to eateries and inns such as the Brod- und Kuchenbäcker, the Eichenkranz, the Basel, and the Pfälzer Hof. Men and women greeted each other with “Guten Tag,” and boys hawked newspapers published in German. “One who passed through this street could imagine himself transplanted to Germany,” recalled one immigrant.
St. Louis was already one of the most important and most rapidly growing cities of the West. Despite recurring floods, visitations of cholera, and a fire that destroyed much of the downtown, the fourteen-square-mile city had risen to become the eighth most populated city in the United States. The war was over; local leaders predicted a golden age for their river city. But rather than the promise of St. Louis, it was the pollution from the soft Illinois coal burned in homes and businesses that visitors first noticed.
“The smoke,” wrote Mark Twain, “used to bank itself in a dense billowy black canopy over the town, and hide the sky from view.” Nor did visitors forget their first sip of St. Louis water. Drawn from the Mississippi River, the water served in restaurants and homes was thick and muddy. “My first impression at the table d’hôte was that everyone was drinking coffee in tumblers, and from its rich color I concluded that it must be very good,” said one British traveler. “How great was my dismay, therefore, when I touched the glass, and found it icy cold. ‘Iced coffee,’ I thought; then I sipped a little, and in great disgust set it down. It was simply muddy water!”
Despite its foul air and dirty water, St. Louis was a vibrant place, drawing hundreds of newcomers every week. Its streets teamed with a multitude of nationalities and races. The original French-flavored atmosphere had become a distant memory. Germans were in the ascendant. For Pulitzer, who spoke no English, the