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Pulitzer_ A Life in Politics, Print, and Power - James McGrath Morris [172]

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to Chatwold, and the editor came and stayed for a week.

No one on the staff in New York knew anything about Pulitzer’s intentions until one day in July when Jones walked into the Pulitzer Building and presented himself to Carvalho and Don Carlos Seitz, a rising business manager. The well-dressed man with oversize sideburns and a portentous manner handed them a blue envelope of the kind that usually held Pulitzer’s correspondence. When Carvalho and Seitz opened it, they were incredulous. Jones was to have complete dominion over the paper.

“The astonishment of the shop was not at the colonel,” Seitz said, “but at the wide scope seemingly given a man with no knowledge of the field, and Mr. Pulitzer’s disregard of those who had done much to hold the paper together successfully.” Carvalho, in particular, was bewildered. Until this moment he had considered himself Pulitzer’s top lieutenant. He learned, as Cockerill and Turner had before him, that while Pulitzer’s personal loyalty ran deep, it counted for little in his business affairs.

“It was soon manifest that the new man would not do,” Seitz said. The disempowered Carvalho wanted to leave but did not want to go to a lesser paper than the World, which still had no equal in New York. Harvey, who had recovered from his pneumonia, went to Bar Harbor and submitted his resignation. Pulitzer was puzzled. He could not understand why anyone would want to leave the World. “It seems to me strange, indeed, considering all that I have tried to do, that you should not be on the paper; and most strange that you should have no feelings of regret at the termination of relations, which to me at least, were extremely sympathetic and interesting,” he wrote to Harvey.

Amid the managerial confusion under the dome in New York, Pulitzer’s promise that Phillips’s articles would carry a byline had not been kept. The London correspondent was annoyed that his hard work, including a major scoop in which he had beaten British newspapers, was unnoticed. Without a byline, he complained to Pulitzer, a correspondent’s work is lost in the pages of varied and confusing foreign items. “He may have had an excellent reputation as a newspaper man before he left New York but he is soon forgotten.”

Pulitzer was unconvinced. He sent Phillips a polite note suggesting that his work might not yet be up to a standard that merited a byline. “The management of the Sun and the Herald have formed a rather more favorable opinion,” Phillips snapped back. “And you will permit me the hope that perhaps you would have shared that better opinion had you had the time to spare to read it.” Phillips then grabbed another sheet of paper, wrote out his resignation, and posted it to Jones in New York.

Phillips consented to remain in London until his replacement arrived. Ballard Smith, who thought he was no longer working for the World and was idly vacationing, suddenly received orders from Pulitzer to head for London as the World’s new correspondent. “Well, I suppose it’s the same old story,” said Smith to Phillips upon disembarking.

“What story?” asked Phillips

“Bad faith and broken promises.”

But when he returned to the United States, Phillips accepted Pulitzer’s offer to stay on the World. This proved a wise decision on his part. In New York, he won his long-sought byline and gained considerable attention for his work, as well as praise from Pulitzer. He also gathered material for a novel that he was writing at night. The World, and especially Pulitzer, provided an abundance of raw material.

Leaving the paper under Jones’s shaky rule, Pulitzer returned to Europe. His travels had become a permanent feature of his life. He could easily afford the best accommodations. He was now listed as the twenty-fourth-richest American alive. But hotels, even the best, no longer sufficed. His sensitivity to noise had grown so severe that his wrath would descend on any staffer who made the mistake of taking lodging on a cobblestone street. “The entourage came at times to be skeptical about Mr. Pulitzer’s sensitiveness to noise but rarely dared

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