Pulitzer_ A Life in Politics, Print, and Power - James McGrath Morris [204]
By September, Seitz and Carvalho had completed a draft of an agreement for their bosses.
Pulitzer pledged to sign a deal, although he remained doubtful that the negotiations could produce a suitable one. “It is difficult to direct a game by telegraph, from a distance, without seeing the gamesters’ faces, or hearing their voices,” he complained. The proposed contract that both newspapers raise their price to two cents, and only the evening editions would remain at a penny, that the papers would limit their size; and their advertising rates would be uniform. The publishers also would promise not to raid each other’s staffs and not to engage in editorial warfare; and the Evening Journal would be permitted to have a membership in AP.
When Norris reviewed the proposed treaty, he told Pulitzer it was a dangerous and foolish plan. Bradford Merrill had an even worse interpretation. He believed the contract would benefit only Hearst. The struggle between the papers was not about making money, Merrill said. It was a battle for supremacy. “Now the fight can never be settled finally except by one or the other tacitly, at least, yielding the primacy. It cannot be settled by any contract or trust agreement to charge the same advertising rates or to advance the price to two cents. That would not settle the war. It would prolong it. It would give the enemy fresh sinews and fresh confidence. It would simply tie the two duelists together in an embrace so close that one could not for a long time tell the victor from the vanquished.”
Pulitzer ignored both Norris’s and Merrill’s advice, and also that of Seitz, who, when asked, said he too opposed the plan. When the proposal was read to him, Pulitzer worked on strengthening the all-important enforcement clause. The draft suggested that if either side broke the terms, it would pay the other a sum of money. Pulitzer wanted to increase the size of the penalty to a minimum of $1 million. He told Seitz he would not sign any agreement unless it was “ironclad fireproof.”
If the two publishers were to create a secret, illegal combination, Pulitzer was correct that the penalty clause would be the most important part of the deal. Without a private remedy, the contract would be worthless, since it could not be enforced in court. Pulitzer, who had steadily railed against monopolies and trusts for almost thirty years and whose World had championed the passage of the Sherman act, voiced no qualms. He was tired and beleaguered by the trouble besetting the World since Hearst had come to town. He was willing to make a pact with the devil if he had to.
As with crushing the newsies’ strike, social and economic justice had become an abstract notion for Pulitzer, suitable for others but not for him. All he wanted, Pulitzer confessed to Seitz, was a truce. “That arrangement which will enable me to make the best possible paper in point of reputation and character, indulge my own inherent editorial and political tastes, and have no bother with business or other distractions. That is, peace.”
The negotiations dragged on into the fall, stopping and starting as each publisher altered the work of his negotiators. Hearst frankly told Seitz, “In short, we are willing to adopt Mr. Pulitzer’s phrase and substitute ‘Combination for Competition.’” But in the end, neither side could figure out how to do it.
While the two sides negotiated, Pulitzer dispatched Phillips on a special assignment. The journalist put aside his novel and set off on a cross-country tour of numerous cities to assess