Pulitzer_ A Life in Politics, Print, and Power - James McGrath Morris [94]
After lunch at eateries such as Faust’s, where he had once made an inglorious attempt at being a waiter, Pulitzer would return to the office to review the final page proofs, often bringing them to the composition room to explain his changes. At three o’clock, when the first edition of the paper came off the press, Pulitzer would leave his desk and go to the counting room. There he would join other men in distributing bundles of the paper to the boys who would walk the delivery routes or hawk the paper on the street.
The street urchins were critical to a paper’s success. They could also be its Achilles’ heel. Several times during his early months of managing the paper, Pulitzer clashed with them. In May, for instance, the newsboys went on strike, demanding a 50 percent share of the paper’s selling price. The arrangement had been that they purchased copies of the paper at three cents and sold the copies for five cents. “It is hard to fight women, but still harder to argue with boys, especially newsboys,” wrote Pulitzer. “However kindly we are disposed toward the little brigades who sell our paper, it is an absurdity which we are fully determined and able to stop—no matter how long the strike may last.”
He won.
On April 21, 1879, the St. Louis contractor Edward Augustine returned to his house at dinnertime looking haggard. In the nine years since Pulitzer had shot him at the hotel in Jefferson City, Augustine had fallen from political power, and without county government contracts, his business ventures had failed. When he entered his house, Augustine found his family at the dinner table. His wife asked him to join them. He refused and instead asked her to come into the front parlor. She demurred—understandably. Only a few days earlier, Augustine had brought home a rifle after telling friends it was for the purpose of murdering his family. He turned and went into the parlor alone. “Then, I’ll finish it,” he said. A few minutes later, a shot rang out.
Pulitzer resisted the temptation to use his new position to even the score with his old antagonist. In fact, the Post-Dispatch’s coverage of Augustine’s suicide was muted in comparison with that of the other newspapers, though it included the required graphic description of Augustine’s brain “scattered all about the room.” Pulitzer may have possessed a volcanic temper and held grudges for long periods, but he could be magnanimous.
Pulitzer didn’t have time to worry about old history. The paper needed constant tending. Although it was becoming profitable, the financial foundation of the enterprise was a house of cards. As a precaution, Pulitzer took $300 from his reserve funds and put them in a trunk at home to make sure he could cover the coming expenses of the birth of his first child.
Neither Dillon nor Pulitzer had the capital necessary to continue the paper’s growth. The promise of profits would not pay for the new presses or the paper’s rising expenses. Pulitzer turned to Louis Gottschalk, a prominent lawyer and Democrat in St. Louis whom he had known since Gratz Brown’s election as governor in 1870. In 1875, Pulitzer and Gottschalk had both served as delegates from St. Louis to the state’s constitutional convention. Gottschalk, like a number of other Democrats, believed the Post-Dispatch under Pulitzer’s editorship could benefit the party. He agreed to lend $13,000 so that Pulitzer, in turn, could lend money to the Post-Dispatch as promised in the merger agreement.
In addition to the infusion of capital, Pulitzer had a lucky break with the $15,000 mortgage taken out by the Dispatch’s former owners and thought to have been conveyed when Pulitzer bought the paper at auction. In fact, Pulitzer had been