Pulitzer_ A Life in Politics, Print, and Power - James McGrath Morris [203]
Combination instead of competition. In short, Pulitzer was proposing a conspiracy to restrain trade, not unlike the trusts and monopolies that his paper attacked almost daily. “All trusts are not monstrous,” Pulitzer later told Phillips. But even under the loosest interpretations of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, passed nine years ago with his support, what Pulitzer sought was illegal. The idea was a betrayal of his avowed principles.
Remaining in Bar Harbor, Pulitzer dictated a memo summing up his discussions with Seitz. “Please don’t mention my desire for peace any more than as a personal feeling,” he said. “It is of supreme importance to show no anxiety whatever.” Pulitzer was worried his competitors might use his infirmity to their advantage. “They would quickly seize upon either anxiety or personal weakness and physical difficulties—on which they have already banked.” He wanted Seitz to bargain from a position of power, not of necessity. “I will never negotiate under threats.”
Pulitzer placed high hopes on the negotiations. As Seitz and Carvalho prepared to meet, he warned Seitz not to let the other side know that the Post-Dispatch was making money and that the penalty clause they devised for the treaty needed to be strong. “The point is simply to secure confidence in the scrupulous enforcement of the agreement, which is worthless unless both parties have confidence in it,” Pulitzer said. “Probably both are afraid of each other.”
Like a nervous suitor, Pulitzer became increasingly anxious as the two sides approached each other. He received a friendly personal message from Hearst and told Seitz to acknowledge it and to let Hearst know that while it might seem impolite not to reply personally, he wanted the negotiators to focus on potential penalties for breaking any final agreement. “Please deliver this in person to Hearst himself, but verbally—not giving it in writing but in Carvalho’s presence if he desires,” Pulitzer said. Hours later, he changed his mind. “Don’t deliver Hearst message mailed yesterday till further notice,” he urgently wired Seitz.
Upon finally sitting down with Carvalho once again, Seitz announced that Pulitzer was willing to consider any proposition, however radical, but had none in mind himself. “The burden of the negotiations, therefore,” Seitz told Carvalho, “gets back to us, and, primarily, it seems to me that the first step is to devise some method of dividing the field.”
“How would you do it?” asked Carvalho.
From the start, both agreed that any combination would have to include raising the price of both papers to two cents. “As I said at Bar Harbor,” Seitz reminded Pulitzer, “I believe that we would get right up against the two cent proposition in very short order. I believe now that WE ARE THERE.” But vexing details remained. They had to find a way to collude on advertising rates and develop business practices that kept the cooperation secret.
While the men negotiated, John Norris lunched with Adolph Ochs, who three years earlier had bought the money-losing New York Times. The paper was making large gains in circulation since it had dropped its price and adopted Ochs’s style of objective reporting, expressed by the paper’s new motto “All the News