Pulitzer_ A Life in Politics, Print, and Power - James McGrath Morris [67]
No longer a teenage waif camping in Joseph’s room at the boardinghouse, Albert returned to St. Louis for the trial as a tall, slender, dapper, twenty-five-year-old correspondent for the New York Herald. His softly spoken English betrayed only the slightest accent. His ascendency to the New York Herald had completed Albert’s professional metamorphosis and also brought a dramatic change in his personal life.
During his first year at the paper he was sent to the Grand Central Hotel, then the largest hotel in the country, to follow up on a story of an Englishwoman who, even in the company of a chaperone, had been defrauded of all her money upon arriving in New York. Albert located the victim and discovered that she was young, attractive, and unattached. His interview for the paper turned into a courtship and on June 15, 1873, Fanny Barnard and Albert Pulitzer were married.
At the Herald, Albert won a reputation for his interviews. “Cool, genial, winning, indefatigable, incapable of being rebuffed, he was the champion interviewer of his paper,” said one noted British journalist and politician. “No one could hold a candle to him.” He was certainly persistent in pursuit of his quarries. Once he obtained an interview with the embattled Mayor Oakey Hall, caught up in the Tweed scandal, by shouting questions through the keyhole of a bathroom where the mayor was hiding.
Joseph joined Albert at Babcock’s trial. Hutchins had assigned Joseph to cover the event for his St. Louis Times, a minor paper in comparison with Albert’s. A small journalistic triumph, though, helped Joseph overcome the discomfort of being overshadowed by his younger brother. About a week before the trial got under way, the attorney general sent a letter to prosecutors prohibiting any plea bargaining. The letter ostensibly reflected the “no deal” policy that the president had proclaimed in an effort to seem supportive of a vigorous criminal investigation. However, the real effect of the letter, as any lawyer knew, would be to scare off witnesses and curtail a prosecutor’s best means of persuading guilty parties to testify against higher-ups.
When he received his letter, U.S. District Attorney David P. Dyer in St. Louis immediately understood what its publication could do to his case. He sealed it up in another envelope and put it away. “I did not think it prudent at the time to publish the letter or let any one have it; there was no man in my office, not even my assistants, that saw it,” Dyer said.
A few days later, Joseph came to the U.S. attorney’s office and handed Dyer a clipping from the Illinois Staats-Zeitung. Laughing, Pulitzer said, “I wish you would read this slip.” Dyer took the sheet from Pulitzer, gazed at it for a moment, and replied that, as he could not read German, the only word he recognized was the name of the attorney general.
“Now,” Pulitzer said, “I want to read you the translation I have made of that letter and I want to know whether you have such a letter in your possession.” Pulitzer then read his English translation. Dyer confirmed that, indeed, he had a letter that sounded very much like the one Pulitzer had just read.
“Won’t you permit me to examine your letter and compare it with my translation, to see whether the translation is correct?” asked Pulitzer.
“No,” Dyer said, “you cannot see any official letter in my office.”
“I will publish the letter anyhow tomorrow morning, whether you give it to me or not, and if not correct, you will have to take it to be correct.”
“You can publish what you please from other papers, but you cannot get my letters.”
Pulitzer returned to the St. Louis Times office. The next morning the paper published the letter. A furious