Pulitzer_ A Life in Politics, Print, and Power - James McGrath Morris [82]
Part II
1878–1888
Chapter Twelve
A PAPER OF HIS OWN
In the early morning of July 6, 1878, a carriage ferrying Joseph and Kate Pulitzer made its way across Manhattan and joined a procession of others heading for Pier 52, between West Twelfth and West Fourteenth streets, where the Britannic awaited the last of its Liverpool-bound passengers. The newlyweds were among a select group of 175 persons who paid between $160 and $200 in gold for first-class cabins on the White Star Line steamship. The fare was four times what the 1,500 men, women, and children jammed below in steerage paid. The Pulitzers were given staterooms in the middle of the ship, insulated from engine noise and less susceptible to the motion of the waves. By ten o’clock that morning, the Britannic set sail and soon cleared Sandy Hook, reaching open water and refreshing ocean breezes.
Ostensibly, Kate and Joseph were off on a two-month honeymoon. But Kate soon learned, or may already have deduced from Joseph’s frenetic business pursuits on the eve of their wedding, that her husband’s attention would never be hers alone, even on a honeymoon. His mind constantly churned with political and business schemes. As soon as they reached England, Joseph dived into the newspapers, making careful note of everything he read, and buttonholed all he met to ask endless questions.
Having spent all his adult life in the United States, Pulitzer now looked at European life from an American perspective. Landing in England, he was struck by the rigidity of class. The British, he concluded, deluded themselves into thinking that their democracy and court system were open and fair. “A people with such inequalities, such artificial and unnatural arrangements and laws, are like a woman who uses French heels, tight lacing, and paints,” Pulitzer wrote. “While they look well, they are like the red decayed apple. As the continuous tight lacing will ruin the woman’s lungs and vital organs, and retard the free pulsation of the blood, so will the artificial and unjust arrangements of government eventually ruin the body politic.”
When Joseph and Kate reached Germany, he was outraged by the destruction of political freedom caused by Chancellor Otto von Bismarck’s drive to suppress an emerging socialist movement. “There was not a single day,” Pulitzer wrote, “in which I did not hear, either through the press, or conversation, of cases so arbitrary and unjust, so cruel and despotic, that they would be appalling to any American.” What he witnessed fueled his nascent fear of leaders who traded on the passions and prejudices of the masses. “People without liberty have despots. People with too much liberty have demagogues. Both agree in abusing liberty,” wrote Pulitzer. “The despot thinks there is too much of it. The demagogue thinks there is not enough. The despot rules from fear of demagogues; the demagogue from fear of despots.” This fear of demagoguery remained with Pulitzer all his life. Years later, it would cause him to be one of the only progressive-minded leaders to be on the outs when William Jennings Bryan and Teddy Roosevelt took hold of the American imagination.
To Kate’s relief, politics did not consume the entire honeymoon. In Paris the Pulitzers toured the dazzling Exposition Universelle. The exhibits came from all across the globe and included such American technological marvels as Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone and Thomas Edison’s phonograph. Also on display was the completed head of Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi’s Statue of Liberty. Several years earlier, the French sculptor had begun designing and casting the 150-foot statue, to be presented to the United States on its centenary in 1876. The plan called for French citizens to pay for the statue and for American citizens to pay for the pedestal and foundation.