Recollections of a Varied Life

by George Cary Eggleston

"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.