Pulitzer_ A Life in Politics, Print, and Power - James McGrath Morris [27]
From the pages of the Westliche Post, Pulitzer lashed out at the judges. Using what had become one of his favorite reportorial techniques, he filled his copy with questions for his readers: “Do the citizens want to let this infamous County Court pull the wool over their eyes? Do they want to concede, with quiet acceptance of what transpired and indifferent behavior, that the County Court can do what it wants with public money? Has the Insane Asylum not cost them enough already?” Then Pulitzer changed from questioner to instructor. “We want the citizens to answer these questions for themselves, and we want those answers in the form of energetic action. It is high time that they make their position clear to the County Court and explain to them that they were not elected to squander communal money, still damp with the people’s sweat, but rather to guard this with utmost providence!”
Under this withering attack, the full court voted to revoke the payment. It was a triumph for Pulitzer. He magnanimously shared the credit for the victory with Preetorius, Ittner, and several others who had promised to file suit to stop the payment if the court had not reversed itself. Pulitzer warned that the victory was limited to this one issue. There was more to be gained. “The eternal waffling on important issues, the revoltingly frivolous handling of public money, the revocation thereof only hours prior: All of this leads to only one conclusion, that the current county judges are either totally incapable of representing the interest of their constituents and the county, or that something is very rotten here.” Pulitzer demanded that the judges resign. It would be a miracle if this happened, he conceded. “How can the current situation best be changed? Hereupon we answer with the words that have appeared at the head of our local column numerous times in the past weeks: Down with the County Court!”
In battling the county court, Pulitzer elevated his own reputation. Even though newspapers carried no bylines, most readers and politicians knew who was the author of the attacks. He had earlier earned the respect of his colleagues in the press for his persistence and perspicacity, and now he was being noticed by people outside the ranks of the fourth estate. “Pulitzer was fighting the most powerful and corrupt ring in St. Louis with money and patronage to back it,” the lime merchant Theodore Welge said, “and could have had any amount of money in the shape of gifts or otherwise. He was without funds except for the small salary he drew as a reporter for the Westliche Post.”
In October 1869, Pulitzer became city editor when Willich left the paper. With control of the Westliche Post’s news pages, Pulitzer intensified his assault on the county government. During the fall, he reported on other exorbitant payments to contractors, on the county’s insistence on paying men to light the gas streetlights rather than using the new electric ignition systems, and on the shoddy brickwork at the jail.
The county court faced a new and effective enemy.
Despite the interminable hours at the paper and his work with the Republican organization in his ward, Pulitzer still found time to socialize and widen his circle of friends. “When first meeting JP one would find him to be rather distant and serious, bent only on his work,” recalled a friend at the police department. “But when one got to know him one found he was genial and social.” At the end of the day, Pulitzer could often be found at Fritz Roeslein’s bookstore, a popular gathering place for bookish Germans. The books, however, were beyond Pulitzer’s reach, with the little he earned. An errand