Chapter XI: The Pulitzers

Joseph Pulitzer was the greatest man I ever knew; great as a journalist, great as a writer, great as a business man, great as a scholar, great as a thinker, great in his knowledge of the events of the world, great as the directing force of a big organization of workers. To be associated with him and to listen to the wisdom that came from his lips in ordinary conversation, was an education in itself. To study the working of his wonderful mind was a rare privilege. Some of the most enjoyable hours of my life were spent in his library and in the long drives we sometimes had together. I never came away from him that I did not feel inflated with ambition to accomplish something big and worth while, not just something that might attract his attention and perhaps win commendation for myself, but something that would be a credit to the newspaper he was so proud of. It was the reflex of his magnetic personality.

The story of his humble beginning and his rise to greatness in the face of obstacles that would have kept most men groveling in the mire, has been told so often and is so familiar to all I shall not even attempt to sketch briefly his biography. I am content to write just a few words of the Great Master as I knew him. He was my best friend among men. I watched them lower his body into the grave and I felt as if my spirit were being buried with him. I loved Joseph Pulitzer.

I have heard what others who professed to know him better than I did said of him after he was dead. Some spoke with bitterness, called him a tyrant and described him as unfeeling and brutal. My own experience was just the opposite.

To me he was always kind, courteous, generous, and indulgent, mild in criticizing and almost prodigal when praising my efforts. His mind worked like a kinetoscope. I felt a keen delight while reading newspapers to him, he grasped everything so quickly and with such perfect understanding. No matter what the topic might be, blind as he was, nothing need be elaborated or explained. He instinctively knew.

Sometimes when I have been reading to him he would become explosively profane over an article in the _World_ he disapproved of, or perhaps an editorial writer had not fully comprehended his instructions.

And how shockingly that blind man could swear! With him profanity was more of an art than a vice. Once when I had read something to him that made him angry with the writer’s stupidity he swore so passionately and so loud and grew so choleric and red in the face, that I feared something inside of him might snap.

Suddenly he checked himself and pricked up his ears. There were angry voices in an adjoining room. One of his young sons was having a run-in with his tutor and was forcibly telling what he thought of him. A peculiar expression, a mixture of annoyance and amusement, came over my employer’s countenance.

“Dear me,” he said, “I wonder where that boy learned to swear.” He didn’t utter another oath during the remainder of my visit.

It was at the time of this incident that I learned a useful lesson that guided my conduct in all the years afterward that I was with his newspaper. He had telephoned to my home before six in the morning, asking me to call at his home before going to the office. He was breakfasting alone when I got there and the first question he asked me was: “What is the news at the office?”

I replied that the most important to me was that I had discharged a dozen young reporters the day before.

“Were there no good ones among them?” he asked.

“Some were very promising and in time might have developed into first-class men.”

“Then, why fire them?”

“I was ordered to by Norris.”

John Norris was at that time financial manager of the entire _World_ establishment. Whenever a spasm of economy hit him he would order the head of each department to reduce his payroll and often this involved discharging men without regard for merit. The last ones employed were usually the victims. It was a rotten thing to do and all of us knew it, but Norris was supposed to have full authority from the proprietor and we took it for granted that when he said retrench the order must be obeyed.

“But why fire men you considered worth keeping?” demanded Mr. Pulitzer. He was looking straight into my face and his blind eyes seemed to be searching my inmost thoughts.

“What could I do but obey the order from Norris?”

His face twitched nervously, there was a frown on his brow and his compressed lips indicated irritation.

“I know what I would have done had I been in your place,” was the placid response, after it had been carefully weighed in his mind.

He didn’t explain in words what he would have done and I didn’t ask him to, but the next time Norris ordered me to cut down the staff I didn’t do it. Norris fumed and fussed and ripped and snorted and even threatened, but I stood pat and never again did I discharge competent men for no other reason than that I was ordered to. The financial manager who came after Norris won his reputation for efficiency by less destructive methods.

If other newspaper proprietors would speak as candidly to subordinates as Mr. Pulitzer did to me that morning there would be fewer wholesale dismissals of capable men at the whim of the chap who controls the finances. It is the instability of newspaper employment that rises like a specter to disturb the peace of mind of every young man who is fighting for a foothold on the elusive ladder of journalistic fame. They never know when the dreaded “iron ball” will next roll and knock them out. I have watched their faces when a hateful blue envelope reached them with its curt note of dismissal, and I have seen the look of dismay as they packed their belongings and silently headed for the elevator; and I have fairly hated myself for being in a job that made me the instrument of such ruthless treatment of men.

Once when I had breakfasted with Mr. Pulitzer he asked me to read the morning newspapers to him. While I was opening the bundle his butler brought, he lit a black cigar and settled contentedly back in his chair to listen. In a few minutes he interrupted to ask if his cigar was burning. With the inquiry he blew a cloud of fragrant smoke into my face and I was nearly choked.

I have thought of this incident many times and I have closed my eyes while smoking to try and realize the sensation that comes to a blind man when he is unable to tell if his cigar is lit. I have read of the enjoyment of blind men for tobacco, but I don’t believe it.

Another pathetic incident connected with his blindness impressed me deeply. We were both in London. I had completed my vacation, after an extended automobile tour of France and England, and had packed and was intending to sail for New York the following day. Mr. Pulitzer arrived from the continent shortly before midnight and when he was told that I was in London and was to sail in a few hours he had them call me up and ask me to cancel my passage and come to him the next day for luncheon. He was interested in all I told him about my trip and insisted that I remain at least another week, suggesting points of interest in and about London he particularly wished me to visit. Among others were the House of Commons and the National Portrait Gallery.

I spent the next two days in visiting places he recommended and the third day drove with him through the park and described what I had seen. I recall how interested he was in the speech I had heard Chamberlain deliver, of my being invited to tea with lords and their ladies on the broad portico overlooking the Thames, of being shown the wardrobe of the King and his Queen in a room off from the House of Lords and of being permitted to sit in the throne chair and to recline on the Cardinal’s woolsack.

What interested him most was the description I gave of the wonderful paintings in the portrait gallery. I had spent almost an entire day there and he had me lead his imagination through all of the rooms as I had visited them and describe to him the portraits of English Kings and Queens of bygone centuries and of some of the famous men who were conspicuous figures in the history of Great Britain. When I finished tears were flowing down his cheeks.

“What wouldn’t I give to see what you saw,” he sobbed, as he sank back into the cushions of the carriage and remained pensively silent throughout the remainder of our drive. I thought then that I would gladly have given him one of my eyes were it possible.

Mr. Pulitzer was ambitious that his three sons should follow in his footsteps and be fitted by actual experience some day to assume control of his newspaper properties. They were fine chaps, the best types of a rich man’s sons, but they were full of the joy of youth and the father seemed to expect them to grow into sedate, serious men before nature intended they should. Ralph, the eldest of the three, came from college and passed through the various stages of news reporting, gravitating to the editorial rooms after a few years, he having developed an inherent ambition for editorial writing. Consequently he was well-equipped with actual experience as well as brains to assume active control upon the death of his father.

I recall when young Joe came from college. He was a lovable lad, with many of his father’s characteristics and much of his mother’s gentleness. Joe loved fun. Something at college, bills I suspect, displeased the father and by way of discipline Joe was told that he was to be put at work in the office. Nothing could have pleased him more. Mr. Pulitzer got me on the telephone and these were the instructions he gave, as nearly as I can remember:

“I am sailing for Europe in the morning and I am sending Joe down to work under you. Treat him exactly as you would any other beginner and don’t hesitate to discipline him should he need it. There is to be no partiality shown because he is my son. Do you quite understand?”

“I think so.”

“Promise me you will do as I ask.”

“Your instructions will be carried out.”

“Good, I shall rely on you. Don’t forget about the discipline. I have told him that he is to report to you every morning promptly at eight and work until five. Please see that he does it and that he gets there on time. I know how you handle young men and I wish you to do the same with him that you do with them.”

Joe came the following morning and we talked matters over. He appeared to be enthusiastic and eager. He was assigned to assist Bob Wilkes in covering the Criminal Courts Building. Wilkes had grown up in the office, and was a veteran reporter and I knew that he would be particularly interested in breaking Joe in. Joe reported for duty promptly at eight for two consecutive mornings. The third morning he was more than an hour late. His excuse was that the “butler neglected to call me.” I explained to him that reporters were not supposed to rely on butlers getting them out of bed and suggested that he stop at a department store on his way home and invest in an alarm clock. The alarm clock did the business and Joe got down on time for almost a week. Then came a day when he failed to put in even a tardy appearance.

When next I saw him he explained his absence by saying that he had been at his dentist’s an entire morning and at a ball game in the afternoon. We had a serious talk about it and I tried to impress upon his youthful mind that every member of the staff was expected to obey the rules of the office, one of the rules being that no one should be absent from duty unless he were ill or had been excused. He was sorry he hadn’t understood and promised not to do it again. The next day he asked to get off in order that he might be at the station to welcome a girl friend who was coming from the West. The day following it was a request to spend the week-end with the young lady’s relatives in the country. I explained to him what his father’s instructions were, but both of his requests were granted.

There was another week-end party a week later and Joe would very much like to be with it, he positively wouldn’t ask again and would work very hard when he got back to make up for his absence. Again I was a traitor to the promise I had given his father. Joe must have enjoyed the party, for he overstayed his leave and was roundly scolded when he got back. He was as penitent as an heir to millions might be expected to be and he made a lot of promises that I think he sincerely intended to keep.

But the sting of reprimand is soon forgotten, and promises and good resolutions are easily broken when a pretty girl beckons from afar. And that is what happened to Joe the following week. Despite all I had told him about the instructions his father had given me and his own promise not again to ask me to disobey them, he came with another pleading request to get away for a few days and I refused. Joe went without permission and didn’t come back for almost a week. When he did come I fired him.

The office gasped with astonishment when it got noised about that I had discharged “Prince Joe,” as they called him, but Joe good-naturedly treated it as a joke and took the night train for Bar Harbor, where he fitted out his yacht and sailed it in all of the regattas there that summer, or until his father returned from Europe and sent him out to St. Louis. This was just what Joe wanted, for that is where his heart was. He married the girl and they have a beautiful home and babies, and Joe is now president of the _Post-Dispatch_ Publishing Company and one of the important men of the town. I imagine he has forgiven me for firing him.

Ralph was more serious-minded. Although in such delicate health in his early manhood as to cause his parents much anxiety, he built up his strength by outdoor life and hunting expeditions in the western mountains, and was in full vigor of robust manhood when called upon to take the management of his father’s newspapers. His management has been along safe and sane lines, but few changes having been made in the splendid organization that his father so intelligently assembled. The most important change has taken place within the past year when Florence White was made general manager, a title that is new in the _World_ office. He had been financial manager for many years and has been with the Pulitzers ever since he came from college, more than thirty years ago. He is the quietest and most seldom seen man in the entire establishment, and certainly one of the most efficient. Another quietly efficient man is Don Seitz, business manager for nearly twenty-five years. Much of the prosperity of the _World_ is due to his untiring energy. I always found him broadminded and liberal.

I have mentioned the instability of newspaper employment, but this condition no longer exists in the _World_ office, where nearly every man who occupies a responsible position in the business, the editorial, or the mechanical departments, has been with the paper for twenty years or longer, many of them in the same positions they now fill. I do not think this can be truthfully said of any other American newspaper.