The Uncrowned King: The Sensational Rise of William Randolph Hearst by Kenneth Whyte Read Free Book Online Page B

writing, let alone read it.” He visited a doctor, who detected damage in both eyes. The physician also found Pulitzer to be suffering from asthma, a bad stomach, insomnia, exhaustion, and depression. He counseled six weeks in a dark room. Pulitzer obeyed, leaving the World in the hands of a committee of executives as he took his rest, followed by an extended holiday in California and trips to Paris and Wiesbaden, where he visited specialists and took cures. His general health would improve somewhat but his eyesight would continue to deteriorate. In October 1890, he announced his retirement from an active role in his paper.
     
    Dana’s darkness was less tragic than Pulitzer’s but nonetheless profound. The introduction of more pages and an evening edition would bring the Sun back over 100,000 in circulation, but the World continued its own climb, soon exceeding 200,000. Dana would never lead again. His paper was permanently eclipsed, and its character would change markedly over the next decade—the last of his editorship and of his life. The Sun would lose much of its charm and sparkling wit. It would abandon working people to the World and shine instead for New York’s merchant classes, who appreciated its conservative economic policy and its hard line on labor issues. Dana opposed the eight-hour day as folly and had curt advice for the jury in the trial of the eight anarchists accused of the 1886 Haymarket Square bombing: “Let them hang.” 51
     
    To compound Dana’s hurt, Pulitzer’s reputation, in the eyes of many observers, now exceeded his own. A Buffalo weekly wrote that Pulitzer’s “tireless energy and love of justice have made the New York World the foremost paper of the world. There is not a working journalist in the United States who does not regret the cause of his retirement.” 52 Even his adversaries in New York had touching things to say. Throughout the 1880s, the Herald had been turning up its nose at the World while furiously adopting its practices: more pictures, larger headlines, and more human-interest journalism. Now its proprietor, James Gordon Bennett Jr., acknowledged his debt:
    A great vacuum is made in the present actuality of American journalism. What the Greeleys and the Raymonds and the Bennetts did for journalism thirty years ago, Pulitzer has done today. As for us of the Herald, we droop our colors to him. He . . . has roused the spirit of enterprise and personality which, up to this time, had not been known. We have not always agreed with the spirit which has made his ideas a journalistic success, and we cannot refrain from regretting that he did not encourage us in the new departure which he has made, instead of merely astonishing us, frightening us, and we may add . . . perhaps a little bit disgusting us. But le Roi est mort, vive le Roi! 53
     
     
     
    It would especially have galled Dana to see Pulitzer raking in accolades when his retirement was more or less a charade. Pulitzer had merely surrendered the title of editor. He remained proprietor and de facto publisher of the World, with a firm grip on all of its business operations. It also became clear to his staff within days of his “retirement” that he remained sovereign in editorial matters as well. He kept in constant contact with the paper through flurries of telegraph cables, letters, and emissaries as he traveled from New York to Bar Harbor to Jekyll Island to Europe. He made all significant decisions with regard to coverage, politics, staffing, and style. His personal commitment to the World would wane not one bit over the next two decades. Pulitzer had not retired: he had merely taken leave of Park Row. And though he was no longer physically present, he would mark his place in stunning fashion.
     
     
     
    ON DECEMBER 10, 1890, the World celebrated yet another monumental addition to the New York skyline, this one its own. The Pulitzer Building was tall: 16 stories and 309 feet. On the day it opened, it was the