Pulitzer_ A Life in Politics, Print, and Power - James McGrath Morris [201]
Facing the resolute partnership of the Journal and the World, and weakened by the collapse of their leadership and by desertions among their ranks, the newsboys surrendered on the afternoon of July 26. “The leaders came in to me and threw up their hands,” Seitz said. He immediately wired Pulitzer. “Strike broken. Much work required to restore circulation and rehabilitate the paper with the public.” He then announced the strike’s end to the newspapers.
It had taken the two powerful newspapers only a week to dispense with this publicly awkward and economically powerless challenge. All through it, Pulitzer had remained silent. Twenty years earlier, during his first months of running the Post-Dispatch, he had been similarly confronted by newsboys who wanted a higher share of the paper’s sale price. He stood his ground then, without resorting to strike breakers or the police, and even expressing sympathy with the newsboys’ demands. At that time, however, as a struggling publisher trying to resurrect a bankrupt newspaper, he had limited financial options.
This was no longer an excuse. The World was the richest and most successful newspaper enterprise in the nation. At any time Pulitzer could have put an end to the strike by giving the boys a chance to sell the World at the same rate as they sold other papers. But he chose not to. Although he himself had once been a teenager living on the streets of New York, Pulitzer showed no mercy over a dime.
When David Graham Phillips completed his brief tour as the World’s London correspondent, Pulitzer brought him back. First, Phillips worked on the news side of the paper. Then, at the suggestion of Brisbane (before he left to join Hearst), Pulitzer moved his protégé to the editorial page. This was the rarest of benedictions. The editorial page was the most important part of the World for Pulitzer. “As Mary Stuart said about her heart being left in France as she sailed for Scotland,” he later confessed to Hosmer, my “heart was and still is in the editorial page and will be in spirit.”
Phillips was one of four men assigned to William Merrill in charge of “the Page,” as it was reverently called. The quartet included John Dillon, Pulitzer’s original partner on the Post-Dispatch; George Eggleston, who had worked with Pulitzer on fighting Bryan in 1896; and James W. Clarke, known for his interviews. Housed in the dome, they worked in small cubbyholes. Phillips turned his into such a mess that the cleaning woman complained about the crumbled balls of paper—from false starts on editorials—strewn over the floor.
The pressure was immense. Not only were the opinions of the World read in the seats of government and widely reproduced by other newspapers, but they never escaped the attention of the boss. Every editorial of importance was read aloud twice to Pulitzer. He pushed the men to produce their best possible work, often admonishing them to write less but better. He wanted the paper to speak with one voice. “Indeed, you might talk to Dillon and Phillips and request them ‘for the 400th time’ to write in a similar vein,” Pulitzer instructed Merrill.
One could never please Pulitzer. One moment he would ban comments on political subjects, only to complain later that the page was devoid of politics. In the summer of 1899, in the midst of the newsboys’ strike, he unloaded his complaints. He telegraphed Merrill and instructed that his words be read aloud to Phillips and Eggleston. “It is dictated, as you see, angrily but yet deliberately for telegraphing,” Pulitzer said. “Either the editors have opinions which they are afraid to express, or they have no opinions. In either case they do not do their duty. I am tired of being both a scapegoat and scarecrow; held responsible for the very things I dislike.”
Despite the outburst, which most of his writers knew would pass like a summer storm, Pulitzer continued to view Phillips as his potential journalistic heir. He