Taking its editorial page, its criticism, and its news together, the Evening Post of the period under review was quite indispensable to New Yorkers of culture. One was as certain to see it in any home of intelligence and means as he was certain to find a set of Shakespeare. It is interesting to note how our writers have singled it out as an essential piece of furniture in any household of refinement. Edith Wharton shows us old Mr. van der Luyden immersed at his Skuyterscliff mansion in the Evening Post; Joseph Hergesheimer lays it beside the study of Beethoven and the Tanagra figurine on Howat Penny’s study table. The news was not superabundant, but it was well proportioned and thoroughly reliable. The financial columns were without an equal. The criticism of books, drama, music, and art was the best in the country. The editorial views might seem congenial or repugnant, but one simply had to know what Mr. Godkin was saying.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
HORACE WHITE, ROLLO OGDEN, AND THE “EVENING POST” SINCE 1900
The editorship of Horace White was a three years’ interlude (Jan. 1, 1900-Jan. 31, 1903) between the eighteen years of Godkin, and the equally long editorship of Rollo Ogden. Its outstanding feature was the campaign of 1900, during which the Evening Post faced the two major parties in a plague-on-both-your-houses spirit. It was impossible for it to support either McKinley or Bryan. But it did applaud Bryan’s anti-imperialist speeches, and from them and the Democratic platform plank on the Philippines it expected the greatest good. “They will put one-half the people of the United States in a high school to learn the principles of free government,” wrote Horace White, “as a class learns a lesson by repetition and observation.” In other words, believing that the Democratic Party had possessed no definite ideas regarding the Philippines previous to the Kansas City Convention, the Post hoped that the campaign would imbue it with a lasting set of principles on the subject. That hope has been justified. After Bryan defined imperialism as the paramount issue, the paper—which knew his opponent would win—more and more implied that a vote for him would be a healthy vote of protest.
The decisiveness of McKinley’s victory showed that the people were quite unconvinced of the views of Bryan and the Evening Post regarding our Philippine policy. It happened that Carl Schurz had made a tour of the West shortly before the election, speaking against imperialism, and on his return had visited the Evening Post confident that Bryan would carry a long list of States there. The day after election Joseph Bucklin Bishop argued in the editorial conference that the Post should treat the result frankly, and abstain from any pretense that the anti-imperialist cause had not been hard hit. The editorial which he wrote harmonized with this view. About noon Schurz came in, eager to learn what the editors thought of the election, and was shocked when he read Bishop’s editorial. Towering over the younger man, and shaking his finger in Bishop’s face, he declared in his severest tones: “You admit too much—you admit too much!” “Too much what?” demanded the irritated Bishop. “Too much truth?”
But the Evening Post of course no more surrendered its position upon the Philippine question than upon the tariff. It took the view that the islands should be freed as soon as a stable government could be erected, and it believed then, as it believes still, that the Republican idea of a stable government is altogether too exacting. That American troops should be sent to the other side of the world to impose American rule upon an unwilling people seemed to it horrible. Horace White warmly approved of President McKinley’s and John Hay’s liberal attitude toward China in the Boxer troubles, and their insistence upon the open door and Chinese integrity. The same liberal principles seemed to him to condemn the employment of a hundred thousand men and a hundred million dollars a year to subjugate the Filipinos; give them a definite promise of independence, he held, and the fighting might stop.
When Mr. White resigned, in accordance with his original intention of remaining editor but a short period, it was a foregone conclusion that his successor would be Mr. Ogden. A power in the Evening Post office since he entered it in 1891, Mr. Ogden had come to take a leading share in the guidance of policy and the writing of the important editorials. Of his long, exceedingly able, and fruitful editorship, one comparable only with Godkin’s and Bryant’s in the history of the paper, it is too soon to write in detail. But its main outlines may be roughly indicated.
In national politics the Evening Post continued independent, with the leaning towards the Democratic Party which its low-tariff and anti-imperialist tenets naturally gave it. The only occasions since 1884 when it has not supported the Democratic ticket are the three occasions on which Bryan ran. In 1904 it was with Parker against Roosevelt, and in 1912 and 1916 it was with Wilson. In international affairs it remained the champion of peace and of fair play for the weaker nations, with that special regard for friendship with England which has animated it since 1801. It was always to be found arrayed against the Platt and Barnes machines in State politics, and against Tammany in the city. Upon some large domestic questions its policy changed—it early became an advocate of woman’s suffrage, and in due time a supporter of national prohibition; while upon other domestic questions, as the negro question, it grew much more aggressive and insistent.
Much of the energy with which the Evening Post opposed Roosevelt in 1904 was due to its hot indignation over the steps by which, the previous fall, he had gained a right of way for the Panama Canal by hastening to confirm the separation of Panama from Colombia. Mr. Ogden’s attacks upon that high-handed act were stinging. Whether or not American agents had intrigued to bring about Panama’s secession, the Evening Post thought it shameful, in view of our protests in the Civil War against European recognition of the Confederacy, to be so precipitate in recognizing Panama. “Our policy is now the humiliating one of treating a pitifully feeble nation as we should never dream of dealing with even a second-class Power,” wrote Mr. Ogden; “of giving a friendly republic a blow in the face without waiting for either explanation or protest; of going far beyond the diplomatic requirements of the situation, and that with indecent haste—and all for what? To aid a struggling people?... No, but just for a handful of silver, just for a commercial advantage....” On one occasion he published as an editorial, without comment, the Bible passage relating to Naboth’s vineyard.
