I hurried to the hotel, but I spent that thirty minutes, not in eating but in making a written report, for my own future use, of Mr. Pulitzer's instructions. The memorandum thus made is the basis of what I have written above.
The climax of the great national drama thus put upon the stage was worthy of the genius that inspired it. The responses of the banks and bankers—sent in during the night—showed a tremendous oversubscription of the proposed loan at a price that would yield to the government many millions more than the syndicate sale offered, and there remained unheard from the thousands and tens of thousands of private persons who were eager to buy the bonds as investment securities. In the face of the facts thus demonstrated, it would have been political suicide for the men in control at Washington to refuse a public loan and to sell the bonds to the syndicate for millions less than the people were eager to pay for them. The administration yielded to moral force, but it did so grudgingly and with manifest reluctance. It cut down the proposed loan to the minimum that the Treasury must have, and it hedged it about with every annoying device that might embarrass willing investors and prevent the subscriptions of others than banks and bankers. In spite of all such efforts to minimize the administration's defeat, the bond issue was promptly taken up at a price that saved many millions to the Treasury, and within a brief while the very bonds that Mr. Cleveland and Mr. Carlisle had so insistently desired to sell to the syndicate at 104-¾ were very hard to get in the open market at 133 or more.
The Power of the Press
I have related this incident with some fullness because I know of no other case in which the "power of the press"—which being interpreted means the power of public opinion—to control reluctant political and governmental forces, has been so dramatically illustrated.
The only other case comparable with it was that in which not one newspaper but practically all the newspapers in the land with a united voice saved the country from chaos and civil war by compelling a wholly unwilling and very obstinate Congress to find a way out of the electoral controversy between Tilden and Hayes. No newspaper man who was in Washington at any time during that controversy doubts or can doubt that the two Houses of Congress would have adhered obstinately to their opposing views until the end, with civil war as a necessary consequence, but for the ceaseless insistence of all the newspapers of both parties that they should devise and agree upon some peaceful plan by which the controversy might be adjusted.
At the time when the prospect seemed darkest I asked Carl Schurz for his opinion of the outcome. He replied, with that intense earnestness in his voice and words which his patriotism always gave to them in times of public danger:
"If left to the two Houses of Congress to decide—and that is where the Constitution leaves it—the question will not be decided; on the contrary, the more they discuss it, the more intense and unyielding their obstinate determination not to agree will become. If it isn't settled before the fourth of March, God only knows what the result will be—civil war and chaos are the only things to be foreseen. But if left alone, as I say, the two Houses of Congress will to the end refuse to agree upon any plan of adjustment. The outlook is very gloomy, very discouraging, very black. Only a tremendous pressure of public opinion can save us from results more calamitous than any that the human mind can conceive. If the newspapers can be induced to see the danger and realize its extent—if they can persuade themselves to put aside their partisanship and unite in an insistent demand that Congress shall find a way out, a peaceful result may be compelled. Fortunately, the Southern men in both houses are eager for the accomplishment of that. They and their constituents have had enough and to spare of civil war. They may be easily won to the support of any plan that promises to bring about a peaceful solution of the controversy. But public opinion, as reflected in the newspapers, must compel Congress, or nothing will be done."
LXVIII
Recollections of Carl Schurz