Pulitzer_ A Life in Politics, Print, and Power - James McGrath Morris [181]
Pulitzer mounted his own defense. The World urged that the government use the “aged, obsolete, moldy, moth-eaten, dust-covered” law to prosecute the paper. “It is really time to make an example of the presumptuous editors who dare to interfere to break the force and repair the damage of an imitation jingo policy with its disturbing threat of war.”
Tempers cooled. The dispute between England and Venezuela moved to the back pages as the two nations agreed to arbitration. The public bond sale proceeded and was a success. Pulitzer’s banker Dumont Clarke placed a bid for $1 million of bonds, as the World had promised. When the bid was received at the auction, the secretary of the treasury moved uncomfortably in his seat, and a shadow fell over Morgan’s face, reported the World, which devoted an entire page to the opening of the bids. “The name of the World was not a pleasant sound and it was a bitter thing to be reminded of the past.”
A few days later, Clarke reported that the purchase of the bonds would bring a profit of $50,000. After having attacked Morgan for making money from bond transactions, Pulitzer panicked at this potentially embarrassing gain. The World’s managers and editors were all called together for a meeting. After two hours of debate, the paper’s business manager asked, “Why not keep it?” Pulitzer accepted the advice.
Roosevelt, who had gotten neither war nor a criminal prosecution of Pulitzer, sought his own revenge for the paper’s ill-treatment of his police commissionership. He found a vehicle when the World compiled a catalog of crimes under his watch, implying that time spent on the saloon issue had left citizens less protected. Roosevelt persuaded the New York Times, which was losing $2,500 a week and facing bankruptcy, to publish the city’s official report showing the World’s list to be a gross exaggeration.
Roosevelt, in this small triumph, summed up a decision that all of Pulitzer’s political enemies had to make. “It is always a question how far it is necessary to go in answering a man who is a convicted liar,” Roosevelt said. “For the same reason it is a little difficult to decide whether it is necessary to take notice of any statement whatever appearing in Mr. Pulitzer’s paper, the New York World.”
Pulitzer, tucked away in his cottage at Jekyll once again, chose to ignore Roosevelt. A new and more dangerous opponent than a carping politician faced him. A young upstart newspaper publisher was preparing to do to him what Pulitzer had done to the giants of Park Row in 1883.
Chapter Twenty-Three
TROUBLE FROM THE WEST
In February 1895 an office boy at the Morning Journal spotted a corpulent man, probably nearing 300 pounds, trying to unlock the door to Albert Pulitzer’s office.
“Hey, there!” said the boy, “You can’t go in there. That’s a private room.”
“I want to get in there, right away,” replied the man, smiling.
The boy rushed to the newsroom to tell the city editor that someone was trying to get into the publisher’s office. As he tried to give his report, the desk bell from Pulitzer’s office began to ring. The boy ran back to see who was ringing it and found the mysterious intruder in the office seated behind the desk. Only then did he realize that it was Albert Pulitzer, who had not been at the paper in a year or two.
“I fooled you, didn’t I,” said Pulitzer.
“I-I-I, er, beg your pardon, sir, but I didn’t know you,” replied the boy.
“Oh, that’s all right, you are not the only one. I passed the