Pulitzer_ A Life in Politics, Print, and Power - James McGrath Morris [25]
Preetorius and Pulitzer rushed their own accounts of the triumph into print. Preetorius’s was in the refined classical German most commonly found in the paper. Pulitzer’s was sprinkled with rollicking humor, biting sarcasm, and double entendres, including one that alluded to menstruation with regard to Schurz’s opponent. He invoked his favorite theme as a reporter: the press illuminates the dark recesses of government to which politicians retreat at decision-making time. “A great step forward was taken with yesterday’s open caucus in the Hall of Representatives,” Pulitzer wrote. “The battle for the Senate has been lifted from the basement of secret intrigues to the public forum. Initially revealed to the people by the press, now it will be sorted out verbally in front of everyone in the halls of the Capitol.” It was sorted out. A few days later the legislature followed the caucus’s lead and gave Schurz the job.
Schurz’s election altered life at the Westliche Post. Soon he had gone to Washington and was overwhelmed with political work. “I have hardly time to read the newspaper, let alone to write for it,” Schurz wrote back from the capital. Normally Preetorius would have picked up more of the editorial responsibilities, but he was ill. So the management of the paper fell on the shoulders of its ill-equipped city editor, Louis Willich, a twenty-seven-year-old who had been in St. Louis for less time than Pulitzer and was hardly an expert on the city or its political topology.
The vacuum at the top of the staff became an opportunity at the bottom for Pulitzer. His work soon became the mainstay of the paper. He wandered around St. Louis at all hours, visiting schools and public institutions, attending public meetings and ward meetings, knocking on doors of lawyers and politicians, and opening those doors that didn’t yield to a knock. “His thirst for news was unquenchable,” recalled a stenographer at the St. Louis Police Commission. The commissioners often met behind closed doors. “Not infrequently on those occasions the door would softly open, and a pale, spectacled face would intrude itself on the privacy of the session, with the inquiry ‘any news?’ followed by the roughest but good natured cry ‘Get out of here!’ and a hearty laugh at the persistency of the inquisitor.”
Pulitzer even took his door-opening to the state capital. One night a group of Democratic legislators were caucusing, and only reporters from Democratic newspapers had been permitted in the room. Suddenly the doors were thrown open, recalled another reporter, and “through the open casement calmly walked the correspondent of the Westliche Post. He stepped to the reporters’ table without a word, placed a pad of paper before him, and took his seat without question or objection from the members.”
It wasn’t long before just about every politician and reporter had caught a glimpse of this peripatetic member of the press. Pulitzer’s appearance alone was conversation-worthy and was a source of much merriment among reporters. He wore buff-colored pants too short for his long legs, a coarse hickory shirt without a tie, and a soiled jacket. To complete his singular apparel with the required head covering, he made do with a chip hat of plaited split palm leaves, probably bought for 15 cents and held together with an ordinary piece of grocer’s string.
Reporters poked fun at him. “They laughed at his ungainly form, his primitive attire; they made sport of his nose, coupling it with his peculiar cognomen ‘pull-it-sir’ in a way that was calculated to drive a supersensitive person to distraction,” recalled the police stenographer. Some called him “Joey the Jew.