Pulitzer_ A Life in Politics, Print, and Power - James McGrath Morris [98]
Unencumbered by financial and managerial demands, Pulitzer turned his attention to his most important passion. Since his return to St. Louis, the silence regarding his political plans had been like waiting for the other shoe to drop. All his friends, as well as his detractors, knew that Pulitzer still wanted to hold office. His success as a newspaper publisher had strengthened his chances and his resolve. The day following his speech at the courthouse, word leaked out that he would run for the U.S. House of Representatives from the second congressional district of St. Louis.
Pulitzer made plans to devote time to his own election, and to the entire Democratic ticket. But they almost all unraveled while he was out of town on his first political trip a couple of weeks later. At quarter past midnight on January 23, 1880, a Post-Dispatch employee smelled smoke. He ran into the deserted street yelling “Fire!” A nearby watchman tried to ring an alarm, but his key was so plugged with dirt he couldn’t open the box. Luckily, a police officer spotted flames bursting through the windows of the paper’s back building and set off an alarm, summoning two corps of firemen.
By one o’clock in the morning, when the business manager arrived on the scene, the facility was a wreck: half burned, half soaked in water. Later, the foreman of the pressroom was found standing disconsolately in the midst of the steaming wreckage. The new Hoe press had been warped by the heat, and the stockpile of paper was rendered useless by the water. Telegrams were dispatched to Pulitzer, who was staying at his favorite New York hotel, the Fifth Avenue. Early estimates put the loss at more than $6,000, probably closer to $8,000. But although he had risked his savings in the enterprise and had operated for many months with little or no cash, Pulitzer had not risked going uninsured. Seven paid-up insurance policies covered his losses.
Awakened with the news of the fire, McCullagh sent word that the paper could be printed at the Globe-Democrat, as it had been before the Post-Dispatch obtained its own presses. In the morning Cockerill wrote an editorial headlined OUR BLACK FRIDAY, predicting that the paper would take two weeks to get back on its feet. The paper, concluded Cockerill, “is a thoroughly established institution and is able to survive the ordinary vicissitudes of life.”
In New York, the fire put Pulitzer in a foul mood. A reporter for the New York Tribune approached him about the election prospects for Democrats. A Republican will be in the White House for another four years, Pulitzer curtly replied (leading Hutchins at the Post to quip that “Pulitzer should always be interviewed just after dinner and a cursory examination of rent-rolls”).
Reports from Cockerill calmed Joseph and he left New York to meet Kate in Washington. There, he and Kate returned to the Church of the Epiphany, this time to baptize Ralph. Kate’s unmarried older sister Clara Davis and Joseph’s friend U.S. Representative John Bullock Clark Jr. served as witnesses. The priest did not ask Joseph for a profession of faith; only the godparents were required to give that. Yet standing by the baptismal font and agreeing to have his child raised as an Episcopalian, Joseph sealed his departure from Judaism.
By early February, with his family in St. Louis, the paper back in its office, and circulation holding steady, Pulitzer once again turned eagerly to the oncoming election. Despite his dour pronouncement to the Tribune’s reporter, all signs pointed to a Democratic victory. In 1878, the party had taken back both houses of Congress for the first time since 1858. The Democrats’ political fortunes were such that the presidency, which they had not won since 1856, should at last be theirs.
With a heightened sense of power as one of the new breed of independent newspaper publishers, Pulitzer intended to both direct the Missouri Democratic