Pulitzer_ A Life in Politics, Print, and Power - James McGrath Morris [180]
Pulitzer’s intervention could not have come at a worse moment for the Cleveland administration. Its gold reserves had fallen to critically low levels again. Since the panic of 1893, the government had dealt with close calls by borrowing and buying gold in Europe. Now that Cleveland faced a new borrowing crisis, Pulitzer’s peace campaign had made matters worse by eliciting a proclamation from the Rothschild banking family that Europeans should not buy American bonds.
With the free-silver forces gaining strength, the economy still in the doldrums, and Pulitzer causing trouble, Cleveland met secretly with J. P. Morgan. A year earlier, when two U.S. public bond offerings had failed, Morgan had persuaded the president to permit his private syndicate to handle a bond sale like the one the president again had in mind. The first one had saved the government from defaulting on its obligations, but Morgan’s alleged profits had further fueled the free-silver movement. Pulitzer had bitterly denounced the deal. He wanted to protect the gold standard, but not at the cost of enriching Morgan. He was also convinced that Morgan’s plan could give the “silverites” the White House in 1896. He was dead set on preventing another such deal.
Under such headlines as SMASH THE RING, the World claimed that the administration was once again entering into a secret compact with financiers. As Pulitzer had done in the ongoing crisis over Venezuela, he ordered his staff to use the telegraph wires. More than 10,000 telegrams were sent to banks and investment houses asking if they would support a public bond offering, and more than half replied, setting a one-day record for Western Union. Pulitzer then called several of his editors to Lakewood. They took the last New Jersey–bound train out of the city.
“When I got there night had already fallen, and as I was without even so much as a handbag, I anticipated a night of makeshift at the hotel,” said George Eggleston, one of the summoned editors.
“Come in quickly. We must talk rapidly and to the point. You think you’re to stay here all night, but you’re mistaken,” Pulitzer told the men as they entered his house. “I’ve ordered a special train to take you back. It will start at eight o’clock and run through in eighty minutes. Meanwhile, we have much to arrange, so we must get to work.
“What we demand is that these bonds shall be sold to the public at something like their actual value and not to a Wall Street syndicate for many millions less,” he said. “You are to write a double-leaded article to occupy the whole editorial page tomorrow morning. You are not to print a line of editorial on any other subject.”
Eggleston was to assail the idea of using Morgan as a middleman and argue that the government should sell the bonds directly to the people. “Then,” Pulitzer added, “as a guarantee of the sincerity of our convictions you are to say that the World offers in advance to take one million dollars of the new bonds at the highest market price, if they are offered to the public in open markets.”
Pulitzer dismissed his men. The following morning, the World reported that hundreds of banks and bankers had replied to its telegraphed inquiries with pledges to buy the bonds. “To you, Mr. Cleveland, the World appeals,” read Eggleston’s editorial. It pleaded with the president to turn Morgan down and to turn instead to the people. “If you make your appeal to the people they will quickly respond. So sure are we of this that the World now offers to head the list with a subscription of one million dollars on its own account.”
Pulitzer won. Both Morgan and Cleveland realized that another private sale was now out of the question. On January 6, 1896, the administration announced a public sale of bonds. Cleveland, facing the end of his second term, had grown tired of Pulitzer’s outbursts. His secretary of state dug up an old federal statute that made it