Pulitzer_ A Life in Politics, Print, and Power - James McGrath Morris [255]
His twenty-nine-year-old son, Ralph, who came to visit in January, limited most communications with his father to matters of business relating to the World, of which he was now ostensibly the president. Twenty-four-year-old Joe was trying to build a life for himself in St. Louis, working at the Post-Dispatch. He felt certain that nothing he did could measure up to his father’s expectations, and he understood his place among the sons. “I realize what a loss Mr. Clarke’s death had been for you and how necessary it is for you to see Ralph,” Joe wrote to his father while his older brother was in Cap Martin. “It has given me a good deal of pleasure to feel you attach at least enough importance to me and have enough confidence in me to want me here in New York when Ralph is away.”
Pulitzer’s two daughters—twenty-three-year-old Edith and the twenty-one-year-old Constance, saw more of New York high society than of their father. Kate spent almost as much time in Europe as Joseph, but only in the rarest of circumstances were they in the same place at the same time. Little Herbert was, at thirteen, still too young to have given offense.
Once again, Pulitzer revised his will. He had written his first one in 1892 and had altered it substantially in 1904 to provide instructions for the creation of the journalism school and prizes. As he cruised on the Liberty, he fretted over who would best carry out his wishes. He replaced Clarke with Governor Charles Hughes of New York as one of the trustees. The lugubrious voyage, complete with rough seas, gave Pollard cause to rename Pulitzer’s entourage the “sea-sickophants.”
In the United States, Roosevelt’s prosecutions were still working their way through the courts. In October, Pulitzer had his first victory. It came when his lawyers appeared before a federal judge in Indiana in whose courtroom the Indianapolis portion of the case had landed. Calling the case “political,” the judge questioned the U.S. attorney’s right to try it in Washington, suggesting that this venue would set a precedent subjecting newspapers to hundreds of libel trials. The following day he dismissed the case.
“I am of the opinion,” said the judge, “that the fact that certain persons were called ‘thieves’ and ‘swindlers’ does not constitute libel per se,” he said. Citing a newspaper’s duty to report the facts and draw inferences for its readers, the judge said the issue of the canal could use some public scrutiny. “The revolution in Panama, the circumstances concerning it, were unusual and peculiar.”
The ruling effectively killed the indictments in Washington. Pulitzer no longer faced any prospect of prison. But the pleasure of the victory was muted by the knowledge that the stronger legal case, the one in New York assembled by Stimson against the World before he left office, remained to be tried.
On January 25, 1910, Pulitzer’s attorney De Lancey Nicoll arrived at the U.S. district court in Manhattan. The day before that, a jury had been seated to hear, at long last, the criminal libel charges brought against the World and its editor Van Hamm. The case, built by Stimson, was the only remaining legal bullet from the chamber loaded by Roosevelt while he was still president.
Nicoll was fully prepared to present the evidence gathered by Pulitzer’s team of investigators and reporters to prove the truth of the corruption charges made against Cromwell and Roosevelt. But to go that route was to concede the federal government’s power to prosecute. Instead, Pulitzer wanted Roosevelt’s right to prosecute to be on trial. Thus, on the first day, Nicoll made a motion to quash the indictment on constitutional grounds. Judge Charles Hough, who owed his job to Roosevelt, surprised Nicoll by agreeing to hear him out the next day.
As Nicoll began his argument, it sounded like a lecture in law school. He traced the history of libel laws in English law and demonstrated that the