Pulitzer_ A Life in Politics, Print, and Power - James McGrath Morris [189]
Pulitzer knew nothing of the boycott. “It has been carefully kept from his knowledge by his family and secretaries,” recalled an employee at the World, “and upon his arrival in the golden dome he made many discoveries which should have revealed to him the weakness of his system of espionage and divided responsibilities, but it made him only more strenuous in keeping tabs on each one of his aides and stricter in requiring daily accounts of everything published in his paper.”
Pulitzer now realized to his horror that Hearst’s Journal threatened not only his financial success but the World’s reputation and political power, which he valued above all. He directed his editors to focus their energy less on competing with the Journal and more on improving the character of the World. Recovering the respect and confidence of the public, he told them, would destroy “the notion that we are in the same class with the Journal, in recklessness and unreliability.” He also instructed Seitz to dig deeper into Hearst’s operation. “Please find somebody in Journal office with whom you can connect to discover who furnished their ideas, who is dissatisfied and obtainable or available even in the second class of executive ranks. We are getting shorter and shorter and need recruiting.”
In a state of depression and panic, Pulitzer fled to Jekyll Island. His private Pullman train beat the one bearing J. P. Morgan to Brunswick, Georgia, by fifteen minutes. The Jekyll Club’s management, sensitive to the animosity between the two tycoons, sent separate steamships to ferry them from Brunswick to the island. On Jekyll Island, Pulitzer inspected his newest purchase, a magnificent three-story wood-shingled cottage with rounded corners and large second-story porch.
After a month’s rest, Pulitzer went to Washington, where he rented a mansion—Kate called it a mausoleum—from the widow of a Civil War general, who had preserved and kept on display all of her late husband’s swords, uniforms, and other relics. Joseph sent for Seitz and began to hold court for Democrats, now once again as far removed from power as they had been before Cleveland’s election in 1884.
Among those who came to see Pulitzer was the Democratic Party’s standard-bearer. Despite his defeat, Bryan remained the most important figure in the party. Pulitzer had given orders to his staff to treat him kindly. But together in the same room, the two argued vigorously. When Bryan prepared to leave, Pulitzer asked to run his hands over Bryan’s face. Bryan took Pulitzer’s hands, with their long delicate fingers, into his and passed them over his jaw. “You see, Mr. Pulitzer, I am a fighter,” said Bryan. In turn, Pulitzer took Bryan’s hands and ran them over his bearded jaw and chin. “You see I am one, too,” he said.
When Pulitzer reached Bar Harbor in early summer, he received good news. His long fight against Jones was over. In the two years since he had given Jones dominion over the Post-Dispatch in order to get him out of New York, the paper had became an embarrassing thorn in Pulitzer’s side. Here he was waging an editorial war in the World against the Bryan tide and Jones had turned the Post-Dispatch into a proponent of free silver. As a result, Pulitzer looked like an opportunist who supported free silver where it was strong and opposed it where it was weak.
Almost as soon as Jones had arrived in St. Louis, Pulitzer had launched an internecine corporate war to rectify his blunder of giving Jones control of the Post-Dispatch. It spilled over into the courts and went all the way to the Missouri supreme court, which ruled that Jones’s contract was ironclad.