Pulitzer_ A Life in Politics, Print, and Power - James McGrath Morris [305]
The “Journal’s war”: Morris, Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, 615, 629.
By the war’s end: JN to JP, 9/11/1899, WP-CU. At least the Post-Dispatch was making money. Its 1898 profits were better than all but two previous years.
Also coming to Narragansett: KP to CP, 1989, JP-CU. Box 8; NYT, 7/23/1898; AtCo, 7/23/1898, 1.
The trip through the South: Cashin, First Lady, 290.
On September 21, 1898: NYT, 9/22/1898, 4.
The World was desperate: WaPo, 10/10/1898, 6, and 10/14/1898, 6; John Norris, “Journal and World Revenues Compared,” 11/14/1898, WP-CU.
Norris, along with Seitz: Memo, 1898, JP-CU, Box 8; DCS to JP, 11/18/1898, WP-CU.
The typewriters were still: Memo, 11/28/1898, JP-CU.
Pulitzer assigned the business manager: JP to JN, 1/31/1899, JP-CU; Noted in February 8–14, 1900 Folder, JP-CU, Box 10. A year later, Norris hinted that he thought the reason the deal to sell the Post-Dispatch failed was Pulitzer’s inability to understand the financing arrangements. (JN to JP, 3/13/1900, JP-CU.)
Kate was also: JN to JP, 2/17/1899, WP-CU; AB to KP, 3/14/1899, JP-CU.
Pulitzer told his staff: JP to DCS, 5/4/1899, JP-LC; JP to KP, 5/31/1899, JP-CU.
In Britain: Walter Leyman to JP, 10/9/1899, JP-CU, quoted in WES, 298–299.
Pulitzer headed back: LAT, 5/3/1899, 5.
That summer Pulitzer: NYT, 5/27/1899, 2. The builder eventually sued to get his payment.
His house in New York: NYT, 1/10/1900, 2; personal ledger for April 1899 shows expenses and descriptions of items, JP-CU.
Kate joined Joseph: JAS to KP, 8/1/1899, JP-CU.
CHAPTER 25: THE GREAT GOD SUCCESS
One icy night: NYT, 2/15/1891, 5. Jacob Riis reported the story in his Children of the Poor but gave the children different names.
Newsies, as boys: Charles Dickens’s fictional Martin Chuzzlewit encountered them when he disembarked in New York. ‘“Here’s this morning’s New York Sewer!’ cried one. ‘Here’s this morning’s New York Stabber! Here’s the New York Family Spy!…Here’s full particulars of the patriotic locofoco movement yesterday, in which the whigs was so chawed up; and the last Alabama gouging case; and the interesting Arkansas dooel with Bowie knives; and all the Political, Commercial, and Fashionable News. Here they are! Here they are! Here’s the papers, here’s the papers!’” (Dickens, Martin Chuzzlewit, 267.)
Since most copies: The headline, though it may be apocryphal, is said to have been written by Charles Chapin and appears twice in works by Irwin Cobb. See Exit Laughing, 140, and his novel Alias Ben Alibi, 126.
The newsies became: There is no existing record as to which of the two newspapers raised its wholesale price first. However, only the World’s managers were under orders to cut costs. Hearst was still spending money in hopes of beating the World and establishing his own paper. It makes sense that he would have matched the World’s price increase but not instigated it.
The newsies demanded: David Nasaw, “On Strike with the Newsboy Legion, 1899,” Big Town, Big Time: A New York Epic: 1898–1998 (New York: Sports Publishing, 1998), 1839; DCS, “Memo for Mr. Pulitzer on the Newsboys’ Strike,” July 27, 1899, WP-CU; NYT, 7/22/1899, 4.
The strike exacted: Pulitzer had left England on the Majestic on July 12, 1899, and a special train car had brought him and the family to Bar Harbor on July 20, 1899. See Lowell Sun, 7/10/1899, 19, and Daily Kennebec Journal, 7/21/1899; DCS to JP, 7/22/1899, WP-CU; John M. Quinn, Anaconda Standard, 8/6/1899, 3.
But enemies with: DCS, “Memo for Mr. Pulitzer on the Newsboys’ Strike. 7/22/1899, WP-CU. As Seitz left the Journal’s office he spotted Hearst with four leaders of the newsboys. They had come from his office and had promised to call off the strike against the Journal if Hearst agreed to lower the price to 50 cents per 100. The meeting set off a rumor that he would give in. “I cannot believe he will be so foolish,” Merrill wired to Pulitzer. “The boys cannot last many days—in spite of encouragement the other papers are giving.”
Advertisers abandoned the papers: DCS, “Memorandum on the Newsboys