Pulitzer_ A Life in Politics, Print, and Power - James McGrath Morris [66]
The law, Pulitzer claimed, needed no alteration, and newspapers required no additional constitutional protections. “The power of the press, Mr. President, is sufficiently large,” Pulitzer said. “They have prospered and grown powerful under the very laws which the gentleman from Boone now charges with being dangerous and working great injustice.”
Then, in a singular moment, Pulitzer turned to confession. He told his fellow delegates that he had been part of three or four libel suits while at the Westliche Post. “I do not know of a single instance where injustice was done to the press and I could mention several instances to the contrary. Perhaps, if I have at this moment impressed any of my friends who have no occasion to become familiar with the practical workings of the newspaper fraternity, I shall consider it in the nature of an atonement for many acts heretofore committed for which I am sorry.” Years later, when his enemies sought to rein in Pulitzer’s power as a newspaper publisher, no one thought to consult the convention transcript.
In July the convention ended, its work complete. Pulitzer returned to a St. Louis that seemed increasingly empty. He was unwelcome at the Westliche Post and in the homes of Schurz and Preetorius. Equally discouraging, many of his best friends were moving east to Washington and New York. Pulitzer was once again at a crossroads. Professionally, it was a stretch for him to consider himself a lawyer, as he had no established practice. Nor could he call himself a journalist, as he had no permanent affiliation to any newspaper. His small political revival as a member of the constitutional convention was at an end and there were no other such opportunities on the horizon. Financially, he had a comfortable place in his adopted country, but he remained socially adrift and professionally rudderless.
In the fall of 1875, Pulitzer retreated to a quiet life in St. Louis. He handled a few minor legal chores and took on some occasional newspaper work for Hutchins at the St. Louis Times. After years that had promised success in journalism and politics, Pulitzer entered a barren stretch, compounding his aimlessness. He was twenty-eight years old. He had no definite profession, and not even a home other than a room at the Southern Hotel.
A sense of failure hung over him. Even his characteristic combativeness was subdued. He declined, for instance, to enter a squabble involving Schurz, instead writing to his friend Hermann Raster, editor of the Illinois Staats-Zeitung in Chicago, “I naturally would prefer not to be pulled into the controversy, since I do not have a newspaper at my disposal.”
The only good news on the horizon was that Pulitzer and his Liberal Republican friends had been the cause of the newest scandal facing the Grant administration. It was sweet revenge. The public was learning that during the Missouri Republican insurgency, Grant had dispatched his supervisor general of internal revenue to St. Louis to fight the rebellion. To fund his counterinsurgency efforts, the supervisor and others recruited distillers, storekeepers, and revenue agents and others into a conspiracy to sell more whiskey than was reported, thereby defrauding the government of thousands of dollars of taxes. The money of the “Whiskey Ring” then was redirected to newspapers that favored their cause and also served to create financial incentives for those newspapers that still remained on the fence.
In May, when Pulitzer had been in Jefferson City working on the new constitution, federal agents apprehended the swindlers. The five ringleaders included William McKee, formerly of the Democrat but now the proprietor of the St. Louis Globe. Suddenly, it became clear to Pulitzer and others why McKee had fired Grosvenor during the 1872 election and returned to the ranks of Grant’s supporters.
In December a grand jury in St. Louis indicted