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had killed nearly one in ten of its residents seventeen years earlier. Most of the city’s ponds had been drained as a precaution, but in Pulitzer’s neighborhood many residents were concerned about a quarry filled with dirty, stagnant water. It was owned by Augustine and situated on the path Pulitzer took each day to work. City officials were at first unwilling to confront Augustine, who had deep political connections, but a public demonstration changed their minds. In the years since, Augustine had risen to become an important contractor in St. Louis, participating in building the county’s scandalously expensive insane asylum. In fact, it was he who held the contract to dig the unproductive well that Pulitzer had named the “well of fools.”

Before boarding the train for Jefferson City, Augustine had stopped in at the office of the lime merchant Theodore Welge, who rented kilns from him. Augustine asked if Welge would accompany him to take a glass of beer at Lemps, one of the largest of thirty breweries in St. Louis. Augustine was fuming. As they downed their beers, he deplored Pulitzer’s activities. He told his drinking companion that he was heading for Jefferson City “to insult and publicly spit in the face of Mr. Joseph Pulitzer, to force him to stop advocating a bill that takes away from him his valuable contract with the county.”

On the morning of January 26, as the courthouse crowd from St. Louis settled in at Schmidt’s Hotel, Pulitzer dropped a legislative bombshell. He introduced a bill to abolish the existing St. Louis county court government. In the past, county pols had considered it a nuisance when the Westliche Post advocated the abolition of the county court, but now that its representative in Jefferson City was moving to convert editorial policy into public policy, it became a threat.

The city-county relationship had long been contentious. As seven-eighths of the county’s population resided in the city, its residents chafed at being under the rule of county politicians. After the Civil War, the struggle between the city and county was acerbated by a new revelation of corruption in the county government. Only two months before the legislature met, it had become public knowledge that six county officers were making $120,000 a year each from fee collections while, in comparison, the mayor of St. Louis was paid only $4,000.

Specifically, Pulitzer’s bill would require the county court to draw up new election districts and increase the number of judges elected from within the city. This would effectively put the city in charge of all county business. The new judges would be elected in early April, less than three months away; would be paid $1,000 a year; and would be barred from participating in any county contracts or selling anything to the county. All proceedings of the new county court as well as all its expenses and revenues would be published in the largest-circulation English and German newspapers. This last provision raised criticism that Pulitzer was seeking only to enrich his own paper with government advertising.

Although Pulitzer’s bill was offered as a program to “reorganize the County Court of St. Louis County,” its true intent—killing the court’s power—was clear to all observers. Pulitzer admitted as much. The bill, he said, “does not propose to allow the present court to exercise their functions up to the general election in November next, but will decapitate them beyond a remedy on the first Tuesday of April.” His actions were front-page news in St. Louis. An hour after introducing his bill, Pulitzer was accosted by Augustine and a companion. They were furious. “They spoke of the bill in a highly agitated manner and began making highly insulting comments,” said Pulitzer, who excused himself and took refuge in a closed-door meeting.

The next morning, Pulitzer resumed his print warfare on the lobbyists by publishing their names. For some, like his friend Johnson, who was then district attorney and had official business in the capital, this was not a problem. But for those who were mounting a