Pulitzer_ A Life in Politics, Print, and Power - James McGrath Morris [175]
The following morning McClellan presented himself at Chatwold. He told Ponsonby he had come with a message from Senator Hill. A few minutes elapsed and Pulitzer entered the room, leaning on Ponsonby’s arm. Though McClellan had once worked at the World, this was the first time he had ever seen Pulitzer. “In appearance he was very like the newspaper caricatures of him,” he thought.
Pulitzer asked Ponsonby to get some cigars and cursed him when he returned with the wrong ones—a treatment which Ponsonby had become used to. At last, McClellan was given a chance to deliver Hill’s message as instructed. Even if he lost the election, McClellan continued, Hill would make sure the new governor would carry out his pledge to fire Brockway.
“I am surprised that Hill should make me such a proposition,” said Pulitzer. “He knows that I am not for sale, nor is the World for sale.” McClellan protested that Hill had nothing like that in mind. Rather, it was only suggested as a “friendly little arrangement.” Pulitzer admitted he was eager to be rid of Brockway and conceded that he had always liked Hill. “You can tell him that I never make a political bargain. At the same time, if he agrees that Brockway shall go, I agree to support the Democratic ticket,” said Pulitzer, adding with a grin, “Understand this is not a bargain, just a friendly little arrangement.”
Auspiciously, that summer, a horse named Pulitzer was paying off handsomely at racetracks in New York. But in the 1894 political races, the publisher Pulitzer was not as fortunate. Another financial downturn spurring foreclosures, the embarrassment of begging New York bankers for loans to maintain the government’s gold reserves, and the growing free-silver movement sapped the Democrats’ strength. In November, the Democratic Party went down to defeat nationally as well as in New York, despite the World’s efforts. Brockway kept his job.
As the weather turned cold in Maine, the Pulitzers decamped and moved into a mansion on Bellevue Avenue in Newport, Rhode Island, for a month, before returning to New York City.
The election over, Pulitzer finally turned to the problem of Jones at the paper. It would not be easy to fix. Normally, Pulitzer moved his editors around like pieces on a chessboard and considered them as expendable as pawns. But in his desperate quest for managerial peace, he had foolishly given Jones an ironclad contract specifying both his remuneration and his powers. The cure had proved worse than the ailment.
On his return, Pulitzer met with Jones at the house on Fifty-Fifth Street. Jones may have been ill-suited to run the World, but he was no fool. He knew he had the upper hand. He told Pulitzer he would quit the paper on two conditions: he must be given absolute control of the Post-Dispatch, and must be allowed to purchase a majority stake in it. Seeing no other way to be rid of Jones in New York, Pulitzer agreed and ordered that a contract be drawn up and sent to Jekyll Island, where he was heading. Fourteen servants worked feverishly to ready a two-story stone “cottage” on Jekyll Island. In an act of kindness, Kate consented to accompany him despite her dislike of the island’s isolation, heat, and sand flies. By New Year’s Day 1895, the couple, several of their children, and a carload of guns, fishing rods, and traps reached the island.
Jones’s contract followed Pulitzer to Jekyll Island. The first draft was absurd. Under its terms, Pulitzer would pay for Jones’s shares of the Post-Dispatch. Pulitzer was desperate but not mad. For several weeks, the contract traveled back and forth between Jekyll Island and New York until it was finally agreed that Jones would be president, editor, and manager and could own as much stock as he could afford. With a signed contract in his pocket, Jones headed to St. Louis, and Pulitzer, as well as the World’s staff, thought he was rid of a nightmare.
For Pulitzer, Jekyll Island’s main attraction was complete privacy. When a reporter from