The Uncrowned King: The Sensational Rise of William Randolph Hearst (65 page)
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Authors: Kenneth Whyte
BOOK: The Uncrowned King: The Sensational Rise of William Randolph Hearst
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It is one of the perversities of the “pope’s” career that he wound up in opposition to so much of his own legacy, his politics hardening and his style dating as protégés like Brisbane filled the despised yellow journals with flash and progressivism. Nowhere was the debt of succeeding generations more evident that in the realm of newspaper crusades
.
The first purpose of a journalist, Dana liked to advise young newspapermen, was to “tell the truth and shame the devil.”
39
The yellow editors had taken that mission to heart and developed it well beyond his original intentions. Whereas a young Dana had sympathized with the working classes and demanded that political and business elites play fair with the common man, his successors held out for a fundamental rebalancing of American politics in favor of the many at the expense of the privileged few. They expanded the investigative function of newspapers, sending out waves of reporters to expose social injustice and corruption in high places. It was no longer sufficient to deplore social and political problems from the sidelines; the new editors actively investigated injustices and promoted solutions, sometimes even taking matters into their own hands. When trouble hit town—a snowstorm, for instance, or a large fire—editors not only sent teams of reporters into the streets but gathered food and blankets for the relief of victims. Pulitzer was the first master of these techniques in New York. He raised funds to build a base for the Statue of Liberty and sponsored Nellie Bly’s undercover exposés of official corruption and abuse, and helped to convince the Treasury to sell a billion-dollar bond issue directly to the people rather than through the sticky hands of J.P. Morgan & Co. (the
World
canvassed bankers across the country to prove there was popular demand for the notes at prices far better than what Morgan would pay).
.
The first purpose of a journalist, Dana liked to advise young newspapermen, was to “tell the truth and shame the devil.”
39
The yellow editors had taken that mission to heart and developed it well beyond his original intentions. Whereas a young Dana had sympathized with the working classes and demanded that political and business elites play fair with the common man, his successors held out for a fundamental rebalancing of American politics in favor of the many at the expense of the privileged few. They expanded the investigative function of newspapers, sending out waves of reporters to expose social injustice and corruption in high places. It was no longer sufficient to deplore social and political problems from the sidelines; the new editors actively investigated injustices and promoted solutions, sometimes even taking matters into their own hands. When trouble hit town—a snowstorm, for instance, or a large fire—editors not only sent teams of reporters into the streets but gathered food and blankets for the relief of victims. Pulitzer was the first master of these techniques in New York. He raised funds to build a base for the Statue of Liberty and sponsored Nellie Bly’s undercover exposés of official corruption and abuse, and helped to convince the Treasury to sell a billion-dollar bond issue directly to the people rather than through the sticky hands of J.P. Morgan & Co. (the
World
canvassed bankers across the country to prove there was popular demand for the notes at prices far better than what Morgan would pay).
Hardly a month went by without the
World
’s seizing the popular mind with one community-minded initiative or another. Pulitzer grasped more keenly than any editor before him how crusades, campaigns, investigations, and purposeful stunts could serve his business plan. They generated goodwill among the readers and enhanced a paper’s prestige and authority, leading to improved circulation and advertising revenue. This commercial motive does not mean Pulitzer was insincere in combating social ills (although his enthusiasm did wane as his wealth and respectability climbed). He believed in what he was doing and saw his commercial success as confirmation of his paper’s good character.
World
’s seizing the popular mind with one community-minded initiative or another. Pulitzer grasped more keenly than any editor before him how crusades, campaigns, investigations, and purposeful stunts could serve his business plan. They generated goodwill among the readers and enhanced a paper’s prestige and authority, leading to improved circulation and advertising revenue. This commercial motive does not mean Pulitzer was insincere in combating social ills (although his enthusiasm did wane as his wealth and respectability climbed). He believed in what he was doing and saw his commercial success as confirmation of his paper’s good character.
Hearst’s ambitions as a crusader rose in stages. In San Francisco, he practiced a noisy, combative style of community leadership modeled primarily on Pulitzer’s. In New York, he picked up his pace. Elizabeth Schauer, the young woman arrested for soliciting in a citywide crackdown on prostitution, was the first cause he championed in New York, with the
Journal
not only investigating and pleading her case but helping to pay her legal bills. Hearst collected blankets for the poor during a winter storm, raised money for the family of a slain New York policeman, and organized a strike fund for 24,000 New York tailors who walked off the job in protest of low wages in the garment industry. By the end of his first year, the
Journal
had supplanted the
World
as the most flamboyant activist on Park Row.
Journal
not only investigating and pleading her case but helping to pay her legal bills. Hearst collected blankets for the poor during a winter storm, raised money for the family of a slain New York policeman, and organized a strike fund for 24,000 New York tailors who walked off the job in protest of low wages in the garment industry. By the end of his first year, the
Journal
had supplanted the
World
as the most flamboyant activist on Park Row.
At the start of his second year, Hearst launched what came to be known as the “gas gift” campaign. On December 11, 1896, the
Journal
hired a lawyer and sought an injunction against New York Mayor William L. Strong and the Board of Aldermen, who were preparing to hand a new gas franchise to cronies. The deal would have paid the franchisees as much as $10 million to build miles of gas mains, needed or not. Hearst went to court as a citizen and taxpayer claiming the award was illegal and fraudulent—“a $10,000,000 steal.”
40
Within three days of his intervention, the franchise was quietly withdrawn. The
Journal
celebrated with a page-one banner : “While Others Talk the
Journal
Acts.” That headline was immediately adopted as a slogan for the paper and the basis for Hearst’s own declaration of a “new journalism,” a journalism that “does things” while old journalism “stands around and objects.” As an editorial explained, “The
Journal
has adopted the policy of action deliberately and it means to stick to it. It thinks that it has discovered exactly the engine of which the dwellers in American cities stand in need. . . . It showed how the multitudes that are individually helpless against the rapacity of the few could be armed against their despoilers. With an advocate of the People to keep a vigilant eye on the proceedings of public servants and bring them into court when they prove unfaithful, our judges will have a chance to show that they are ready to render justice to all comers . . .”
41
Journal
hired a lawyer and sought an injunction against New York Mayor William L. Strong and the Board of Aldermen, who were preparing to hand a new gas franchise to cronies. The deal would have paid the franchisees as much as $10 million to build miles of gas mains, needed or not. Hearst went to court as a citizen and taxpayer claiming the award was illegal and fraudulent—“a $10,000,000 steal.”
40
Within three days of his intervention, the franchise was quietly withdrawn. The
Journal
celebrated with a page-one banner : “While Others Talk the
Journal
Acts.” That headline was immediately adopted as a slogan for the paper and the basis for Hearst’s own declaration of a “new journalism,” a journalism that “does things” while old journalism “stands around and objects.” As an editorial explained, “The
Journal
has adopted the policy of action deliberately and it means to stick to it. It thinks that it has discovered exactly the engine of which the dwellers in American cities stand in need. . . . It showed how the multitudes that are individually helpless against the rapacity of the few could be armed against their despoilers. With an advocate of the People to keep a vigilant eye on the proceedings of public servants and bring them into court when they prove unfaithful, our judges will have a chance to show that they are ready to render justice to all comers . . .”
41
By the end of Hearst’s second year, the
Journal
’s “policy of action” had become an integral part of its identity, and reporting on its own initiatives and successes was one of the paper’s most regular activities. The
Journal
made its own front page virtually every day through the fall of 1897: in the week before announcing that it had sprung Evangelina Cisneros from prison, the paper railed against corruption in New York’s Commissioner of Public Works, reported on a grand jury investigation into unfair taxation that the
Journal
had urged on behalf of organized labor, and took credit (on weak grounds) for a New York State investigation into irregularities in the insurance industry.
Journal
’s “policy of action” had become an integral part of its identity, and reporting on its own initiatives and successes was one of the paper’s most regular activities. The
Journal
made its own front page virtually every day through the fall of 1897: in the week before announcing that it had sprung Evangelina Cisneros from prison, the paper railed against corruption in New York’s Commissioner of Public Works, reported on a grand jury investigation into unfair taxation that the
Journal
had urged on behalf of organized labor, and took credit (on weak grounds) for a New York State investigation into irregularities in the insurance industry.
Not everyone endorsed the
Journal
’s new trajectory. There were critics inside and outside of publishing who believed that editors belonged on the sidelines, observing and commenting; they wondered what all this activism had to do with journalism. Boss Croker was among those who thought the
Journal
was overstepping its bounds. He had come under attack by Hearst for stacking a local Democratic slate with Tammany lackeys. Through an intermediary, Croker objected to the
Journal
’s interference and sneered at what he viewed as an attempt at “government by newspaper.” The paper responded with a front-page Homer Davenport cartoon, probably suggested by Hearst himself. It was a precise rendering of Emmanuel Frémiet’s famous sculpture
Gorilla Carrying Off a Woman,
the inspiration for King Kong, among other twentieth-century bestial fantasies. Davenport simply added labels to Frémiet’s original: the gorilla was “Bossism,” the woman was “Democracy,” and the chivalric arrow in the gorilla’s back was the “Journal.” A caption read “The Press to the Rescue! ‘Government by Newspapers vs. Boss Rule.’”
42
Journal
’s new trajectory. There were critics inside and outside of publishing who believed that editors belonged on the sidelines, observing and commenting; they wondered what all this activism had to do with journalism. Boss Croker was among those who thought the
Journal
was overstepping its bounds. He had come under attack by Hearst for stacking a local Democratic slate with Tammany lackeys. Through an intermediary, Croker objected to the
Journal
’s interference and sneered at what he viewed as an attempt at “government by newspaper.” The paper responded with a front-page Homer Davenport cartoon, probably suggested by Hearst himself. It was a precise rendering of Emmanuel Frémiet’s famous sculpture
Gorilla Carrying Off a Woman,
the inspiration for King Kong, among other twentieth-century bestial fantasies. Davenport simply added labels to Frémiet’s original: the gorilla was “Bossism,” the woman was “Democracy,” and the chivalric arrow in the gorilla’s back was the “Journal.” A caption read “The Press to the Rescue! ‘Government by Newspapers vs. Boss Rule.’”
42
The cartoon was a cartoon and not a statement of editorial policy but Hearst’s paper had emerged as a remarkable political and social force, and this was even before the revelation of the
Journal
’s most audacious exploit—the rescue of a pretty Cuban girl from a foreign jail. When the full Cisneros story came to light, the paper presented it as the culmination of its policy of action and used the occasion for its most fulsome and triumphant declaration of a new journalism. The “journalism of action,” operating in the service of humanity, represented “the final stage in the evolution of the modern newspaper.” The new daily did not wait for things to turn up: “It turns them up.” The
Journal
ran through a long list of notable deeds—from its exposure of safety issues at railway crossings to its cracking of the Guldensuppe case—before reaching a ringing conclusion: “These are a few of the public services by which the
Journal
has illustrated its theory that a newspaper’s duty is not confined to exhortation, but that when things are going wrong it should itself set them right if possible. The brilliant exemplification of this theory in the rescue of Miss Cisneros has finally commended it to the approval of almost the entire reading world.”
43
Journal
’s most audacious exploit—the rescue of a pretty Cuban girl from a foreign jail. When the full Cisneros story came to light, the paper presented it as the culmination of its policy of action and used the occasion for its most fulsome and triumphant declaration of a new journalism. The “journalism of action,” operating in the service of humanity, represented “the final stage in the evolution of the modern newspaper.” The new daily did not wait for things to turn up: “It turns them up.” The
Journal
ran through a long list of notable deeds—from its exposure of safety issues at railway crossings to its cracking of the Guldensuppe case—before reaching a ringing conclusion: “These are a few of the public services by which the
Journal
has illustrated its theory that a newspaper’s duty is not confined to exhortation, but that when things are going wrong it should itself set them right if possible. The brilliant exemplification of this theory in the rescue of Miss Cisneros has finally commended it to the approval of almost the entire reading world.”
43
The notes Hearst was hitting in his campaigns had all been played before by other newspapers. Advocacy and activism are as old as journalism itself, and the
Journal
’s crusades were not intrinsically different from what had passed before or from what was being published simultaneously in competing papers. The
Journal
was not the first newspaper to solve a big crime: the
World
had proved the identity of the madman who blew himself up in an attempt to bomb New York businessman Russell Sage. It was not the first daily to undertake an audacious international adventure: the
Herald
’s mission to Africa in search of Livingstone remained an exploit with out equal. Even the
Journal
’s promotion of its enterprise was unoriginal; all of the New York papers (including the stodgy
Evening Post
) were in the habit of publishing scads of congratulatory letters and telegraphs to celebrate their journalistic feats. Still, the music Hearst shook from these old notes sounded fresh to many ears.
Journal
’s crusades were not intrinsically different from what had passed before or from what was being published simultaneously in competing papers. The
Journal
was not the first newspaper to solve a big crime: the
World
had proved the identity of the madman who blew himself up in an attempt to bomb New York businessman Russell Sage. It was not the first daily to undertake an audacious international adventure: the
Herald
’s mission to Africa in search of Livingstone remained an exploit with out equal. Even the
Journal
’s promotion of its enterprise was unoriginal; all of the New York papers (including the stodgy
Evening Post
) were in the habit of publishing scads of congratulatory letters and telegraphs to celebrate their journalistic feats. Still, the music Hearst shook from these old notes sounded fresh to many ears.
The difference was primarily rhythmic. Hearst hammered away frenetically, day after day, week after week, at privately held trusts in ice, water, gas, sugar, rubber, coal, and railways, among other commodities and services. He accused the corporate combines and monopolies of foisting high prices on consumers, rallied opposition to them, attacked their supporters on the New York Board of Alderman and in the Republican administration at Albany, suggested legislative remedies, and occasionally resorted to the courts to press his point. Clarence Shearn, the lawyer who drew up Hearst’s application for an injunction on the gas-grab story, was put on retainer by the
Journal
to find new ways to challenge corporate trusts and municipal boodlers through the courts. Hearst hired Edward W. Bemis, an economist and a leading progressive reformer who had been expelled from the University of Chicago for his radical views, to write and advise the
Journal
on the municipal ownership of public utilities.
44
Journal
to find new ways to challenge corporate trusts and municipal boodlers through the courts. Hearst hired Edward W. Bemis, an economist and a leading progressive reformer who had been expelled from the University of Chicago for his radical views, to write and advise the
Journal
on the municipal ownership of public utilities.
44
All of Hearst’s activism operated at a similar pace. He not only ran an unofficial Democratic campaign on behalf of Bryan in 1896 but got up to his teeth in every local and state campaign as well. When a trade publication undertook a survey of acts of charity by Park Row papers, it was able to find two or three examples for all the dailies except Dana’s; it didn’t attempt to list the
Journal
’s activities, citing them as too numerous to mention and too familiar to require it. As an activist and community servant, Hearst was operating with a vigor, scope, and conviction unprecedented in American newspapers.
45
Journal
’s activities, citing them as too numerous to mention and too familiar to require it. As an activist and community servant, Hearst was operating with a vigor, scope, and conviction unprecedented in American newspapers.
45
AMID THE FLOOD OF CONGRATULATORY MESSAGES published in the
Journal
in the wake of the Cisneros rescue was one from distant lands: “As a journalist of the Old World I hail with pride and joy this splendid deed of knight-errantry. . . . No more worthy use can be made of the sceptre of modern journalism than this, to revive the traditions of the age of chivalry by delivery of the captive and bidding the oppressed to go free.”
46
Journal
in the wake of the Cisneros rescue was one from distant lands: “As a journalist of the Old World I hail with pride and joy this splendid deed of knight-errantry. . . . No more worthy use can be made of the sceptre of modern journalism than this, to revive the traditions of the age of chivalry by delivery of the captive and bidding the oppressed to go free.”
46
That message was from William Thomas Stead, now best remembered for having gone down with the
Titanic.
After the ship hit its iceberg, he reportedly helped women and children into lifeboats before returning to the first-class smoking room, where he was last seen in a comfortable leather chair with a book in hand. Born in Northumberland in 1849, the son of a Congregational minister, Stead ran the
Pall Mall Gazette
through the 1880s and made himself the most famous editor in England. He specialized in anti-establishment politics and energetic crusades for social justice. He riveted London in 1885 with a series of articles on child prostitution, in the course of which, to demonstrate the extent of the problem, he arranged the “purchase” of the thirteen-year-old daughter of a London chimney sweep. The stunt landed Stead in jail, but it also speeded changes to the criminal law.
Titanic.
After the ship hit its iceberg, he reportedly helped women and children into lifeboats before returning to the first-class smoking room, where he was last seen in a comfortable leather chair with a book in hand. Born in Northumberland in 1849, the son of a Congregational minister, Stead ran the
Pall Mall Gazette
through the 1880s and made himself the most famous editor in England. He specialized in anti-establishment politics and energetic crusades for social justice. He riveted London in 1885 with a series of articles on child prostitution, in the course of which, to demonstrate the extent of the problem, he arranged the “purchase” of the thirteen-year-old daughter of a London chimney sweep. The stunt landed Stead in jail, but it also speeded changes to the criminal law.
In 1890, Stead founded the
Review of Reviews,
a popular monthly based in London but with editions on both sides of the Atlantic. He also began churning out provocative books on peace movements and social reform, causing a sensation in the United States in 1894 with an early entry in the muckraking genre, an exposé of municipal corruption entitled
If Christ Came to Chicago.
It is said to have sold 70,000 copies on its first day of publication. Three years later, Stead probed the filthy underbelly of New York in
Satan’s Invisible World Displayed.
A chapter of the latter was devoted to “the natural and inevitable emergence of the journalist as the ultimate depository of power in modern democracy.”
47
Review of Reviews,
a popular monthly based in London but with editions on both sides of the Atlantic. He also began churning out provocative books on peace movements and social reform, causing a sensation in the United States in 1894 with an early entry in the muckraking genre, an exposé of municipal corruption entitled
If Christ Came to Chicago.
It is said to have sold 70,000 copies on its first day of publication. Three years later, Stead probed the filthy underbelly of New York in
Satan’s Invisible World Displayed.
A chapter of the latter was devoted to “the natural and inevitable emergence of the journalist as the ultimate depository of power in modern democracy.”
47
Stead ranked with Dana as the world ’s leading evangelist of news - papers, agreeing with the pope on their miraculous capacities and high public purpose. Stead went a step further, however, and wondered why newspapers should not begin to assume some of the functions of government. He dismissed contemporary politics as a hackneyed circus of partisan exhibitionism that contributed little to human progress. Politicians had left a vacuum in public governance, he argued, that editors were best suited to fill. Stead claimed that newspapers had already adopted many of the deliberative functions formerly monopolized by legislatures:
The very conception of journalism as an instrument of government is foreign to the mind of most journalists. . . . [Yet in] a democratic age, in the midst of a population which is able to read, no position is comparable for permanent influence and far-reaching power to that of an editor who understands his vocation. In him are vested almost all the attributes of real sovereignty. He has almost exclusive rights of initiative; he retains a permanent right of direction; and, above all, he better than any man is able to generate that steam, known as public opinion, which is the greatest force in politics.
48
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