Pulitzer_ A Life in Politics, Print, and Power - James McGrath Morris [165]
Pulitzer defied Mitchell. He began to catch up on the conduct of the paper in his absence. He was horrified by what he found. Cockerill had taken a twelve-week vacation. He and Turner were acting like owners, and worse, they had let the paper’s circulation fall by 16 percent. Pulitzer fired off cables giving Turner, his loyal business manager, a pink slip and punishing Cockerill by ordering his return to St. Louis, an impossible mission considering the fatal episode that had driven him from that city. Turner immediately landed a job as editor of a rival paper. Cockerill went to his watering hole at the Astor House and in three hours rounded up enough investors to start his own newspaper.
Pulitzer’s cure for the World was worse than the disease. Now his paper was devoid of leadership. He had no option but to return to New York.
Leaving Kate in Paris, Joseph, Ponsonby, and Hosmer rushed to England and booked passage on the Majestic. J. P. Morgan was also on board. Despite their membership in the exclusive Jekyll Island club, as a frequent target of the World’s acerbic editorials Morgan avoided socializing with Pulitzer. Arriving in New York ahead of schedule on the morning of June 10, the group went straight to Park Row, startling editors and reporters who had not expected Pulitzer this soon. The shock of Pulitzer’s presence in the building accentuated the seriousness of the situation. His first visit to the building constructed to the glory of the paper was a rescue mission.
Ballard Smith, the paper’s highest-ranking editor now that Cockerill was gone, had not yet come in for the day. Luckily, Davis, Pulitzer’s brother-in-law and the only remaining member of the triumvirate that had ruled the paper, was on hand—as was John Dillon, Pulitzer’s former partner in St. Louis, who had been running the Post-Dispatch. He had rushed to New York after receiving a telegraphed plea from Pulitzer. While Hosmer tended to his boss’s luggage, the men conferred, summoning other editors and managers.
Pulitzer’s solution to the disarray at the top was to have Smith, who had come into the office at last, officially assume most of Cockerill’s duties as editor in chief. Dillon would take over for Turner. For new blood, Pulitzer turned to George B. M. Harvey. Though only twenty-seven years old, Harvey had distinguished himself as a reporter for the World and then as editor of the New Jersey and Connecticut editions. Pulitzer made Harvey the managing editor, with a salary higher than he had ever earned, and promised Harvey that he would report only to him and would be exempt from most night work.
With the new structure established, Pulitzer left the World and took some time to look over his newest purchase, a $100,000 yacht that had once belonged to the duke of Sutherland. The vessel, rechristened Romola, after one of Pulitzer’s favorite novels by George Eliot, was ready for his inspection at a Hudson River pier. The test cruise and dinner on board were a disaster.
A heat wave blanketed New York City (the thermometer reached 97 degrees at Hudnut’s Pharmacy downtown) and the inside of the yacht was like an oven. Frustrated, Pulitzer ordered the captain to sail to Europe without him. Instead, he secured rooms for the return voyage of the Majestic and, along with Hosmer and Ponsonby, said good-bye to New York after only seven days.
A few weeks after Pulitzer’s departure, William Randolph Hearst arrived in New York. In the four years since he had taken over his father’s bankrupt daily, the San Francisco Examiner, Hearst had made a success of it, using all the techniques he had learned by carefully studying Pulitzer. But, just as his role model had felt running the Post-Dispatch in St. Louis, Hearst wanted a New York