Pulitzer_ A Life in Politics, Print, and Power - James McGrath Morris [32]
On a Sunday evening in late January, Pulitzer boarded a train for Jefferson City after spending the weekend in St. Louis. As the train neared Hermann, a German river town about halfway to the capital, the track, probably weakened by the winter cold, broke in three places. The locomotive remained on the railway, but the express car and the sleeping car in the rear came uncoupled and rolled down the steep embankment leading to the river. The remaining cars, including the one in which Pulitzer rode, left the track but remained upright, although teetering and appearing as if they would follow the others down the hill.
Pulitzer scrambled out with the other uninjured travelers and surveyed the scene. “Picture a large sleeping-car, in which at that moment was occupied by over 50 people (and for the most part undressed and sleeping),” Pulitzer said. “One must imagine this car, imagine it rolling down a 20-foot high railroad embankment with increasing momentum until a mighty tree obstructs its passage, the car’s interior smashed into a thousand pieces, and the car rests on the ground, but not in its typical position, but rather vice versa, i.e. on its head, and one will have a rough idea of how the scene of the catastrophe looked.”
The immediate danger was fire. Pulitzer explored the overturned wagons and found their stoves, filled with glowing ambers, hanging from what was now the ceiling. As rescuers removed the more seriously injured passengers through the windows, several small fires broke out but were quickly extinguished. Most of the injuries were lacerations and broken bones, but one woman had a broken spine and later died.
The passengers stayed the night at the scene of the accident while the wounded were tended to and the serviceable wagons were put back on the track. With the break of day, what remained of the train made its way to Jefferson City, arriving late Monday morning. The legislators who were on the train along with Pulitzer were all uninjured and joined their colleagues on the floor, where their ordeal soon become the topic of conversation.
The new week marked the opening of the lobbying season. Railroad men, lawyers, county politicians, and businessmen flocked to the capital. These lobbyists were so numerous and so powerful they were called the “third house.” One reporter from Kansas City, sitting at his desk on the floor, looked over the men who took the seats in the rear of the chamber. “These are the strange commingling,” he wrote, “the Augean stables of legislation—the seething cesspool of legislative faith; men, good, bad, corrupt and designing schemers—dupes, plotters, diminutive Richelieus and Mazarins, and petty Woolseys, all after self.”
Pulitzer still regarded corruption in St. Louis County as the paramount issue. His tenure as a city and county reporter had made him a legislator on a mission. In assuming his new post, Pulitzer did not give up his old one as a reporter. In his singular position as both a legislator and a journalist, he used his reporting to advance his political work. In Pulitzer’s eyes the lobbyists descending on the capital were an army of darkness. Calling them “courthouse corruption aristocrats,” he wrote, “The train that arrived yesterday evening seems to have transported half of St. Louis here. One encounters faces everywhere that usually lurk about the Courthouse and Fourth Street.”
Among the arriving men, Pulitzer singled out Edward Augustine, a notorious contractor from St. Louis County. Pulitzer had first encountered Augustine, at least by reputation, during his first summer in St. Louis. The city was preparing for a predicted return of cholera, which