Pulitzer_ A Life in Politics, Print, and Power - James McGrath Morris [174]
In New York, the World continued to suffer under Jones’s incompetent rule. Not only were long-serving editors chafing under him, but he was sacrilegiously seeking to use the paper to support free silver, in contradiction to Pulitzer’s well-established opposition. Distracted by his own problems, Pulitzer did nothing. Only when his friend Chauncey Depew was ill-treated in the paper did he interfere. “I have knocked the perpetrators down with a little cable club,” Pulitzer wrote to Depew, “and hope there will be no further lunacies in this line.”
But there were to be others.
Jones’s ineptitude at the World had consequences beyond the bruised feelings of some staffers. He had begun ruining the editorial page, Pulitzer’s prized domain, with incoherent and, worse, populist screeds on the financial panic of 1893. Pulitzer’s mistake in selecting Jones grew into a public embarrassment noted as far away as Atlanta. “The World was published before Mr. Pulitzer lifted Jones out of the hole into which the St. Louis Republic dropped him,” said the Atlanta Constitution. “It was not only published, but had an editorial page—and a much better one than Jones has been able to give it…. Soon there will be nothing left of the World’s editorial page but an effulgent circulation statement and Jones’s whiskers.”
With the problem of Jones weighing heavily on his mind, Pulitzer returned to New York at the beginning of the summer in 1894 in the company of Arthur Brisbane, the son of a wealthy, noted reformer, socialist, and advocate of communal living. The younger Brisbane had turned to newspaper work when he was eighteen, landing a job on Dana’s Sun. In 1890, at the age of twenty-six, he came to work at the World. Erudite and accomplished—he had already been a London correspondent—Brisbane possessed maturity and sophistication beyond his years. As he had done with other men of promise, Pulitzer sought to personally groom Brisbane and had brought him to Europe for the past winter.
Unlike the coterie of pliant secretaries who surrounded Pulitzer, Brisbane stood up to him and even teased him. Staying with Pulitzer in Paris, Brisbane had persuaded him to remove the mattresses that blocked the bedroom window, to take longer drives, to resume horseback riding, and to alter some of his eating habits. The two rode horses, read, and played chess and—sometimes for money—cards. Pulitzer had little interest in gambling, but he enjoyed cards and the accompanying conversation. Because of his almost complete lack of sight, the men played with specially designed cards twice the size of those in an ordinary deck. One time, this gave Brisbane an opportunity to get a leg up on his boss. Pulitzer required that many lamps be placed behind him so that he could make out the cards, and Brisbane found that he could see through the cards in Pulitzer’s hand. He then pretended that he had discerned the strength of Pulitzer’s hand through the tone of his voice, completely confounding him.
Upon arriving in New York, Brisbane returned to the paper, and Pulitzer immediately repaired to Chatwold, which he had recently purchased after renting it for two years. Kate and the children arrived soon afterward. The family remained in Bar Harbor until early fall. It was an election year, so a continuous stream of editors came to confer with Pulitzer, and politicians arrived in hopes of having his blessings conferred upon them.
Senator David Hill of New York, who had been nominated to run for governor again, wanted the World’s backing despite having allied himself with Dana’s Sun in the presidential contest two years earlier. He summoned George McClellan, who was the son of the controversial General Brinton McClellan and who would later become mayor of New York. “George, I want you to take the first train to Bar Harbor,” said Hill. “When you get there, see Pulitzer and tell him that if he will agree to support me, I will agree to remove Brockway as soon as I am inaugurated.” The prize Hill was offering, Zebulon Reed Brockway, managed the state reformatory in