Pulitzer_ A Life in Politics, Print, and Power - James McGrath Morris [16]
He found work and accommodations on the south side of downtown in a ward that was two-thirds German. One could wander from one end to the other without hearing any language but German. Not only were the words familiar and comfortable to Pulitzer, but so were the street noises, smells, and tastes. During the day, when the sound of a beer keg being tapped at Tony Niederwiester’s Valhalla or George Wolbrecht’s Tivoli rang out, work would stop so that the workers could get a fresh glass. Between ten and noon, tavern keepers would offer workers lunches of rye bread, blood or summer sausage, salted dried herring, dill pickles, and gallons of lager beer, a new, lighter style of beer. Lager had grown so popular that commercial brewers had just achieved a national production record of 1 million barrels in a year.
For the first several months after reaching St. Louis, Pulitzer worked at a variety of jobs. He tended mules for a short time at the Benton military barracks, which had served as an encampment for Union troops during the war. “Never in my life did I have a more trying task,” said Pulitzer. “The man who has not cared for sixteen mules does not know what work and trouble are.” Next, he landed work as a coachman for a well-to-do family. The family members were apparently impressed by their French- and German-speaking driver and referred to Pulitzer as their “educated coachy.”
In 1866 Pulitzer labored as a deck hand on a riverboat. During his evening breaks, he would sit behind a stove on board and read one of the city’s many German newspapers. The boat’s captain spoke to his wife in French, hoping to keep his communications from the ears of his deck hand. Pulitzer let him know he would have to use a language other than French or German if he did not want to be understood. Ironically, that could still include English.
Despite Pulitzer’s inability to speak much English, he continued to pick up jobs. He worked as a stevedore unloading bales and barrels from river steamers and as a day laborer in construction. He even tried working as a waiter at Tony Faust’s Oyster House on Carlonet Avenue close to his rooms. “The trial period for proprietor, guests, and, last but not least, the novice waiter was very brief,” one close friend remembered. “It came to a conclusion at the end of the second meal when a beefsteak, having been rejected in a rather impolite manner, found itself, after an exchange of words that quickly developed into personal affronts, dropped onto the head of the guest rather than onto his plate, thereby bringing an end as abrupt as it was drastic to the serving glory of the presenter.”
One time Pulitzer, along with about forty other men, responded to an advertisement promising high-paid jobs on a sugar plantation in Louisiana. The employment agent informed the men they would need to pay $5 each as a fee for transportation down the river. That night they boarded a steamer and headed downstream. At three in the morning, they were rousted and disembarked at a deserted spot some forty miles south of the city. Realizing they had been had, the men marched back to St. Louis together, with murderous intentions. Fortunately for the agent, he was nowhere to be found.
The various jobs allowed Pulitzer to improve his English and get a toehold in St. Louis. As soon as he had set aside a little money, he paid his room and board for weeks ahead. “Thus I was secure,” he said. “I did not have to worry and could look about for something better.” Late in 1866, Pulitzer did find something better. The Deutsche Gesellschaft, the German Immigrant Aid Society in St. Louis, recommended him for an opening as a clerk. Many immigrants owed their first employment to this aid society. It had been created seven years earlier to provide job placement and other assistance to new German-speaking residents and was funded by established members of the German community who had not forgotten their own early struggles.
In Pulitzer’s case the German aid society had located an assistant clerk’s job at Theo Strauss’s lumberyard on