Pulitzer_ A Life in Politics, Print, and Power - James McGrath Morris [240]
As soon as Whitley left, Van Hamm hurriedly dictated an account from his notes. When Whitley came back, Van Hamm showed him proofs of the story. The public relations man made some minor corrections, picked up a telephone, and read the story to Cromwell. A few hours later it appeared in the early edition of the World. The rumors—founded or unfounded—that Cromwell and his cohorts had profited from the canal deal were in print. Among the alleged profiteers were Douglas Robinson, the president’s brother-in-law; and Charles P. Taft, the brother of the presidential candidate.
“But for Mr. Cromwell it is probable that no Panama story of any kind would have been printed during the campaign,” said Speer’s boss, Frank Cobb, “and it is certain that the names of Charles P. Taft and Douglas Robinson would not have been published in connection with the affair.”
After years of dormancy, the story of corruption involving the canal was back on page one.
Over the next few weeks, as Taft successfully concluded his presidential campaign against Bryan, the World’s reporters did everything they could to keep this story alive. Pulitzer urged them on. “Examine the record, especially his [Cromwell’s] Panama record and his relations with corporations and trusts,” he wired from Wiesbaden. The paper ran a long profile of the lobbyist, reported the firing of the Canal Zone governor because he had uncovered evidence of the alleged fraud, published copyrighted reports from its Paris correspondent on his efforts to solve the mystery, and even hired a prominent British lawyer and member of Parliament to dig into the French records. Finally, the paper admitted defeat. “Every source of official information as to the identity of who got the $40,000,000 is not only closed, but wiped out, obliterated, as a result of an agreement between the United States Government and the new Panama Canal Company,” reported the World’s Paris correspondent.
The articles, while conceding that there was no evidence tying Cromwell to an illegal scheme, resurrected the public’s doubts about the murky means by which the United States had acquired the Canal Zone when Roosevelt, in his words, “took the isthmus.” The temerity of the World in raising these issues again at the close of his reign caught Roosevelt’s attention. He had expected the worst from Pulitzer’s paper, but his anger grew when other newspapers picked up on the World’s reporting as if the malfeasance had been proved. “Who got the money?” asked the Indianapolis News on the eve of the election. “For weeks this scandal has been before the people,” it continued. “The records are in Washington, and they are public records. But the people are not to see them—till after the election, if then.”
Pulitzer was sailing across the ocean in blissful ignorance of the tempest his newspaper was stirring up. He had been on course for Bermuda, but he changed his mind and arrived in New York a few days before the election. He went to bed in his house there by ten o’clock in the evening. “What is the use of sitting up for a foregone conclusion?” he told Seitz. Taft won handily, as the public endorsed Roosevelt’s selection of his successor.
With the election over and his man triumphant, Roosevelt vented his anger in a private letter to a friend in Indiana, where the World’s accusations had received prominent attention in the press. The president charged that the men behind the articles on the Panama Canal were liars for hire or were seeking to boost circulation. “The most corrupt financiers, the most corrupt politicians are no greater menace to this country than the newspaper men of the type I have above discussed,” he wrote. “Whether they belong to the yellow press or to the purchased press, whatever may be the stimulating cause of their slanderous mendacity, and whatever the cloak it may wear matters but little. In any event they represent one of the potent forces for evil in the community.