The Lure of the World
A little later an evening edition of the World was established. Its success at first was small, but Mr. Pulitzer quickly saw the reason for that. The paper was too closely modeled upon the conservative and dignified pattern of the established afternoon newspapers. To his subordinates Mr. Pulitzer said:
"You are making a three-cent newspaper for a one-cent constituency. I want you to make it a one-cent newspaper."
What further instructions he gave to that end, I have never heard, but whatever they were they were carried out with a success that seemed to me to threaten the very existence of such newspapers as the one I was editing. I was satisfied that if the newspaper under my control was to survive it must adopt the new methods of journalism, broaden its appeal to the people, and reduce its price to the "penny" which alone the people could be expected to pay when the Evening Sun and the Evening World could be had for that price.
The board of directors of the newspaper could not be induced to take this view, and just then one of the editors of the World, acting for Mr. Pulitzer, asked me to take luncheon with him. He explained to me that Mr. Pulitzer wanted an editorial writer and that he—my host—had been commissioned to engage me in that capacity, if I was open to engagement. In the end he made me a proposal which I could not put aside in justice to myself and my family. My relations with Mr. Godwin and his associates were so cordial, and their treatment of me had been always so generous, that I could not think of leaving them without their hearty consent and approval. The summer was approaching, when the members of the board of directors would go away to their summer homes or to Europe. The last regular meeting of the board for the season had been held, and nothing had been done to meet the new conditions of competition. I was discouraged by the prospect of addressing a steadily diminishing audience throughout the summer, with the possibility of having no audience at all to address when the fall should come.
I hastily called the board together in a special meeting. I told them of the proposal made to me by the World and of my desire to accept it unless they could be induced to let me adopt the new methods at an expense much greater than any of the established afternoon newspapers had ever contemplated, and much greater than my board of directors was willing to contemplate. I said frankly that without their cordial consent, I could not quit their service, but that if we were to go on as before, I earnestly wished to be released from a responsibility that threatened my health with disaster.
They decided to release me, after passing some very flattering resolutions, and in early June, 1889, I went to the World as an editorial writer free from all responsibility for the news management of the paper, free from all problems of newspaper finance, and free from the crushing weight of the thought that other men's property interests to the extent of many hundreds of thousands of dollars were in hourly danger of destruction by some fault or failure of judgment on my part. As I rejoiced in this sense of release, I recalled what James R. Osgood, one of the princes among publishers, had once said to me, and for the first time I fully grasped his meaning. At some public banquet or other he and I were seated side by side and we fell into conversation regarding certain books he had published. They were altogether worthy books, but their appeal seemed to me to be to so small a constituency that I could not understand what had induced him to publish them at all. I said to him:
"I sometimes wonder at your courage in putting your money into the publication of such books."