LXV
I shall write comparatively little here of the eleven years I remained in the service of the World. The experience is too recent to constitute a proper subject of freehand reminiscence. My relations with Mr. Pulitzer were too closely personal, too intimate, and in many ways too confidential to serve a purpose of that kind.
But of the men with whom my work on the World brought me into contact, I am free to write. So, too, I am at liberty, I think, to relate certain dramatic happenings that serve to illustrate the Napoleonic methods of modern journalism and certain other things, not of a confidential nature, which throw light upon the character, impulses, and methods of the man whose genius first discovered the possibilities of journalism and whose courage, energy, and extraordinary sagacity have made of those possibilities accomplished facts.
It has been more than ten years since my term of service on the World came to an end, but it seems recent to me, except when I begin counting up the men now dead who were my fellow-workmen there.
I did not personally know Mr. Pulitzer when I began my duties on the World. He was living in Europe then, and about to start on a long yachting cruise. John A. Cockerill was managing editor and in control of the paper, subject, of course, to daily and sometimes hourly instructions from Paris by cable. For, during my eleven years of service on the World, I never knew the time when Mr. Pulitzer did not himself actively direct the conduct of his paper wherever he might be. Even when he made a yachting voyage as far as the East Indies, his hand remained always on the helm in New York.
John A. Cockerill
Colonel Cockerill was one of the kindliest, gentlest of men, and at the same time one of the most irascible. His irascibility was like the froth that rises to the top of the glass and quickly disappears, when a Seidlitz powder is dissolved—not at all like the "head" on a glass of champagne which goes on threateningly rising long after the first effervescence is gone. When anything irritated him the impulse to break out into intemperate speech seemed wholly irresistible, but in the very midst of such utterance the irritation would pass away as suddenly as it had come and he would become again the kindly comrade he had meant to be all the while. This was due to the saving grace of his sense of humor. I think I never knew a man so capable as he of intense seriousness, who was at the same time so alertly and irresistibly impelled to see the humorous aspects of things. He would rail violently at an interfering circumstance, but in the midst of his vituperation he would suddenly see something ridiculous about it or in his own ill-temper concerning it. He would laugh at the suggestion in his mind, laugh at himself, and tell some brief anecdote—of which his quiver was always full—by way of turning his own irritation and indignation into fun and thus making an end of them.
He was an entire stranger to me when I joined the staff of the World, but we soon became comrades and friends. There was so much of robust manhood in his nature, so much of courage, kindliness, and generous good will that in spite of the radical differences between his conceptions of life and mine, we soon learned to find pleasure in each other's company, to like each other, and above all, to trust each other. I think each of us recognized in the other a man incapable of lying, deceit, treachery, or any other form of cowardice. That he was such a man I perfectly knew. That he regarded me as such I have every reason to believe.
After our friendship was perfectly established he said to me one day:
"You know I did all I could to prevent your engagement on the World. I'm glad now I didn't succeed."
"What was your special objection to me?" I asked.
"Misconception, pure and simple, together with ill-informed prejudice. That's tautological, of course, for prejudice is always ill-informed, isn't it? At any rate, I had an impression that you were a man as utterly different from what I now know you to be as one can easily imagine."
"And yet," I said, "you generously helped me out of my first difficulty here."
"No, did I? How was that?"
"Why, when the news went out that I had been engaged as an editorial writer on the World, a good many newspapers over the country were curious to know why. The prejudice against the World under its new management was still rampant, and my appointment seemed to many newspapers a mystery, for the reason that my work before that time had always been done on newspapers of a very different kind. Even here on the World there was curiosity on the subject, for Ballard Smith sent a reporter to me, before I left the Commercial Advertiser, to ask me about it. The reporter, under instructions, even asked me, flatly, whose place I was to take on the World, as if the World had not been able to employ a new man without discharging an old one."
"Yes—I know all about that," said Cockerill. "You see, you were editor-in-chief of a newspaper, and some of the folks on the World had a hope born into their minds that you were coming here to replace me as managing editor. Some others feared you were coming to oust them from snug berths. Go on. You didn't finish."
"Well, among the speculative comments made about my transfer, there was one in a Springfield paper, suggesting that perhaps I had been employed 'to give the World a conscience.' All these things troubled me greatly, for the reason that I didn't know Mr. Pulitzer then, nor he me, and I feared he would suspect me of having inspired the utterances in question—particularly the one last mentioned. I went to you with my trouble, and I shall never forget what you said to me. 'My dear Mr. Eggleston, you can trust Joseph Pulitzer to get to windward of things without any help from me or anybody else.'"
"You've found it so since, haven't you?" he asked.
"Yes, but I didn't know it then, and it was a kindly act on your part to reassure me."
An Extraordinary Executive
Cockerill's abilities as a newspaper editor were very great, but they were mainly executive. He had no great creative imagination. He could never have originated the Napoleonic revolution in journalism which Mr. Pulitzer's extraordinary genius wrought. But Mr. Pulitzer was fortunate in having such a man as Cockerill to carry out his plans. His alert readiness in grasping an idea and translating it into achievement amounted to genius in its way. But during all the years of my intimate association with him, I never knew Cockerill to originate a great idea. With a great idea intrusted to him for execution, his brain was fertile of suggestions and expedients for its carrying out, and his industry in translating the ideas of his chief into action was ceaseless, tireless, sleepless. He would think of a thousand devices for accomplishing the purpose intended. He would hit upon scores of ways in which a campaign projected by another mind could be carried out effectively.
There was at one time a good deal of speculation as to whose brain had made the phenomenal success of the all-daring World experiment in journalism. I think I know all about that, and my judgment is unhesitating. Mr. Pulitzer was often and even generally fortunate in his multitudinous lieutenants, and that good fortune was chiefly due to his sagacity in the selection of the men appointed to carry out his plans. But the plans were his, just as the choice of lieutenants was, and the creative genius that revolutionized journalism and achieved results unmatched and even unapproached, was exclusively that of Joseph Pulitzer.
I do not mean that every valuable idea or suggestion which contributed to the result was originally his, though on broad lines that was true. But it was part and parcel of his genius to induce ideas and call forth suggestions at the hands of others, to make them his own, and to embody them in the policy of the World. So readily did he himself appreciate this necessity of getting ideas from whatever source they might come, that he often offered premiums and rewards for helpful suggestions. And when any member of his staff voluntarily offered suggestions that appealed to him, he was always ready and very generous in acknowledging and rewarding them.
But it was Joseph Pulitzer's genius that conceived the new journalism; it was his brain that gave birth to it all; it was his gift of interpreting, utilizing, and carrying out the ideas of others that made them fruitful.
I emphasize this judgment here because there has been much misapprehension regarding it, and because I knew the facts more intimately and more definitely perhaps than any other person now living does. I feel myself free to write of the subject for the reason that it has been more than a decade of years since my connection with the World ceased, and the personal friendship I once enjoyed with Mr. Pulitzer became a matter of mere reminiscence to both of us.
My relations with Cockerill were not embarrassed by any question of control or authority. Cockerill had general charge of the newspaper, but the editorial page was segregated from the other sheets, and so far as that was concerned, William H. Merrill was in supreme authority. Whenever he was absent his authority devolved upon me, and for results I was answerable only to Mr. Pulitzer.
I shall never forget my introduction to my new duties. It was arranged between Merrill and me, that I should take a week off, between the severance of my connection with the Commercial Advertiser and the beginning of my work on the World, in order that I might visit my family and rest myself at my little place on Lake George. I was to report for duty on the World on a Sunday morning, when Merrill would induct me into the methods of the newspaper, preparatory to his vacation, beginning two or three days later.
An Editorial Perplexity
Unfortunately, Merrill had greater confidence in my newspaper skill and experience than I had, and so when I reported for duty on Sunday, Merrill was already gone on his vacation and I was left responsible for next day's editorial page.
I knew nothing of the World's staff or organization or methods. There were no other editorial writers present in the office and upon inquiry of the office boys I learned that no others were expected to present themselves on that day.
I sent to the foreman of the composing room for the "overproofs"—that is to say, proofs of editorial matter left over from the day before. He reported that there were none, for the reason that Merrill, before leaving on the preceding day, had "killed" every editorial galley in the office.
Cockerill was not expected at the office until nine or ten o'clock that night, and there was nobody else there who could tell me anything about the matter.
Obviously, there was only one thing to do. I sat down and wrote an entire editorial page, for a newspaper whose methods and policy I knew only from the outside. When I had done that, and had got my matter into type, and had read my revised proofs, messengers arrived bearing the manuscripts of what the other editorial writers—men unknown to me—had written at their homes during the day, after the Sunday custom that then prevailed but which I abolished a little later when Merrill went to Europe upon Mr. Pulitzer's invitation and I was left in control of the editorial page.
I have related this experience thinking that it may interest readers unfamiliar with newspaper work, as an exemplification of the emergency problems with which newspaper men have often to deal. These are of frequent occurrence and of every conceivable variety. I remember that once some great utterance seemed necessary, and Mr. Pulitzer telegraphed it from Bar Harbor. It filled the entire available editorial space, so that I provided no other editorial articles whatever. I had "made up" the page and was only waiting for time before going home, when news despatches came that so completely changed the situation treated in the editorial as to compel its withdrawal.
It was after midnight, and I hadn't a line of editorial matter on the galleys with which to fill the void. The editorial page must go to the stereotypers at half-past one, and I had no soul to help me even by writing twaddle with which to fill space. The situation was imperative and the case was clear. The case was that I must write two or three columns of editorial matter and get it into type, proof-read, and corrected, before one-thirty of the clock—or one-forty-five, as the foreman of the composing room, a royal good fellow, Mr. Jackson, volunteered to stretch the time limit by some ingenious device of his own.
I wish to say here, lest no other opportunity offer, that in the thirty years of my newspaper service, I have found no better or more loyal friends than the men of the composing room, whether in high place or low; that I have never known them to hesitate, in an emergency, to help out by specially strenuous endeavor and by enduring great inconvenience on their own part. So great is my gratitude for their comradely good-fellowship that even now—ten years after a final end came to my newspaper work—one of the first parts of the establishment I visit when I have occasion to go to the World office is the composing room, where old friends greet me cordially on every hand. Great—very great—are the printers. They do their work under a stress of hurry, noise, and confusion that would drive less well-made men frantic, and they do it mightily well. To one who knows, as I do, what the conditions are, every printed newspaper page is a miracle of human achievement under well-nigh inconceivable difficulties.
Donn Piatt
It was soon after my service on the World began that I became acquainted with a man of brilliant gifts, often erratically employed, and of singularly interesting personality—Donn Piatt. From that time until his death I saw much of him in a quiet club-corner way, and listened with interest while he set forth his views and conclusions, always with a suggestion of humor in them and often in perverse, paradoxical ways.
One day some question arose between us as to the failure of a certain book to achieve the success we both thought it deserved. Donn Piatt's explanation was ready:
"It is because we have altogether too much education in this country," he said. "You see, our schools are turning out about a million graduates every year, under the mistaken belief that they are educated. All these boys and girls have been taught how to read, but they haven't the smallest notion of what to read, or why to read. They regard reading as you and I might regard a game of solitaire—as a convenient means of relaxing the mind, diverting the attention from more serious things—in brief, they read for amusement only, and have no notion of any other possible purpose in reading. That's why every sublimated idiot who makes a mountebank of himself as a 'humorist' wins his public instantly and easily. The great majority of readers are that way minded, and of course the publishers must cater to the taste of the multitude. They'd be worse idiots than their customers if they didn't. It's the same way with plays. The people who go to the theater want to be amused without the necessity of doing even a little thinking. Why, a few years ago when Wallack was running such things as 'She Stoops to Conquer,' 'School for Scandal,' 'London Assurance,' and the like, in his old Thirteenth Street theater, with Dion Boucicault, John Brougham, Harry Montague, John Gilbert, Harry Beckett, and a lot of other really great actors in the casts, he played to slender houses, while just around the corner there wasn't standing room when 'Pink Dominoes' was on."
My acquaintance with Donn Piatt began in a rather curious way. Some time before, there had appeared in one of the magazines a series of letters signed "Arthur Richmond." They were political philippics, inspired chiefly by a reckless, undiscriminating spirit of attack. They were as mysterious in their origin as the letters of Junius, but otherwise they bore little if any of the assumed and intended resemblance to that celebrated series. There was little of judgment, discretion, or discrimination in them, and still less of conscience. But they attracted widespread attention and the secret of their authorship was a matter of a good deal of popular curiosity. A number of very distinguished men were mentioned as conjectural possibilities in that connection.
Even after the letters themselves had ceased to be of consequence, a certain measure of curiosity as to their authorship survived, so that any newspaper revelation of the secret was exceedingly desirable. One day somebody told me that Donn Piatt had written them. Personally I did not know him, but in the freemasonry of literature and journalism every man in the profession knows every other man in it well enough at least for purposes of correspondence. So I wrote a half playful letter to Donn Piatt, saying that somebody had charged him with the authorship of that "iniquitous trash"—for so I called it—and asking him if I might affirm or deny the statement in the World. He replied in a characteristic letter, in which he said:
"A Syndicate of Blackguards"
"I was one of a syndicate of blackguards engaged to write the 'Arthur Richmond' letters and I did write some of them. You and I ought to know each other personally and we don't. Why won't you come up to the —— Club to-night and help me get rid of one of the infamous table d-hôte dinners they sell there for seventy-five cents? Then I'll tell you all about the 'Arthur Richmond' letters and about any other crimes of my commission that may interest you. Meanwhile, I'm sending you a letter for publication in answer to your inquiry about that particular atrocity."
As we talked that night and on succeeding occasions, Donn Piatt told me many interesting anecdotes of his career as a newspaper correspondent much given to getting into difficulty with men in high place by reason of his freedom in criticism and his vitriolic way of saying what he had to say in the most effective words he could find.
"You see the dictionary was my ruin," he said after relating one of his anecdotes. "I studied it not wisely but too well in my youth, and it taught me a lot of words that have always seemed to me peculiarly effective in the expression of thought, but to which generals and statesmen and the other small fry of what is called public life, seem to have a rooted objection. By the way, did you ever hear that I once committed arson?"
I pleaded ignorance of that incident in his career, and added:
"I shall be interested to hear of that crime if you're sure it is protected by the statute of limitations. I shouldn't like to be a witness to a confession that might send you to the penitentiary."
"Oh, I don't know that that would be so bad," he interrupted. "I'm living with my publisher now, you know, and a change might not prove undesirable. However, the crime is outlawed by time now. And besides, I didn't myself set fire to the building. I'm guilty only under the legal maxim 'Qui facit per alium facit per se.' The way of it was this: When I was a young man trying to get into a law practice out in Ohio, and eager to advertise myself by appearing in court, a fellow was indicted for arson. He came to me, explaining that he had no money with which to pay a lawyer, but that he thought I might like to appear in a case so important, and that if I would do the best I could for him, he stood ready to do anything for me that he could, by way of recompense. I took the case, of course. It was a complex one and it offered opportunities for browbeating and 'balling up' witnesses—a process that specially impresses the public with the sagacity of a lawyer who does it successfully. Then, if by any chance I should succeed in acquitting my client, my place at the bar would be assured as that of 'a sharp young feller, who had beaten the prosecuting attorney himself.'
"But in telling my client I would take his case the demon of humor betrayed me. Just across the street from my lodging was a negro church, and there was a 'revival' going on at the time. They 'revived' till two o'clock or later every night with shoutings that interfered with my sleep. With playful impulse I said to the accused man:
"'You seem to be an expert in the arts of arson. If you'll burn that negro church I'll feel that you have paid me full price for my service in defending you.'
"I defended him and, as the witnesses against him were all of shady character, I succeeded in securing his acquittal. About four o'clock the next morning a fire broke out under all four corners of that negro church, and before the local fire department got a quart of water into action, it was a heap of smouldering ashes—hymn-books and all. A week or so later I received a letter from my ex-client. He wrote from St. Louis, 'on his way west,' he said. He expressed the hope that I was 'satisfied with results,' and begged me to believe that he was 'a man of honor who never failed to repay an obligation or reward a service.'"
With Donn Piatt's permission I told that story several times. Presently I read it in brief form in a newspaper where the hero of it was set down as "Tom Platt." I suppose the reporter in that case confused the closely similar sounds of "Donn Piatt" and "Tom Platt." At any rate, it seems proper to say that the venerable ex-Senator from New York never practiced law in Ohio and never even unintentionally induced the burning of a church. The story was Donn Piatt's and the experience was his.