History of Journalism in the United States/Chapter 28
CHAPTER XXVIII
CONCLUSION
Psychologically, as well as chronologically, the journalism of William Randolph Hearst succeeded that of Joseph Pulitzer. It is an interesting fact that, though both editors were of the same political faith and though both, as inventors of the "yellow press," had to suffer the opprobrium of the conservative and Republican journals, their antagonism toward each other was more bitter than that between them and their political opponents. It was in the case of the papers of these two editors that the large amount of capital invested in the modern press began to show influence;—where circulation or business success is concerned there is no common cause in journalism.
At least a dozen serious people have asked in the course of the preparation of this work, "What are you going to do with Hearst?" In treating of contemporary characters, the difficulties are obvious, and the easiest way is always avoidance. The purpose of this study would be belied, however, if we were to endeavor even a lesser makeshift. What little we may have imbibed of the spirit of the men who have inspired these pages would have miscarried, if we ourselves hesitated to apply the rules of fair measurement that we, by implication, are urging on others.
The best way to arrive at a correct historic judgment is to try to conceive of the man under dissection as being thoroughly dead and completely forgotten. He is resurrected for the purpose of finding out what he did, and what effect he had on his contemporaries. The abuse showered on him by his rivals then frequently becomes an evidence that he wielded some power. The question is, Did he wield that power for good or for evil? Was he selfish? Was he (and this is important in a democracy) corrupt?
In the matter of arousing bitter hatred, Hearst's position in American journalism has not been unique. The feeling against the elder Bennett, when the papers of the city united against him in the famous Herald war,—going to the extent of abusing the manager of the Astor House for permitting him and his wife to live there,—was far greater than it ever was against Hearst. Yet we know now that Bennett violated no law, other than the canons of good taste. The office of Greeley was almost sacked, and his life was threatened; Bennett urged for him a public hanging; he was a thorn in Lincoln's side,—but we know now that Greeley was one of the great moral forces in this nation. The "rascally Pulitzer," as his contemporaries called him, was the subject of a most scurrilous pamphlet, he was derided for his humble beginnings; yet his contribution to journalistic advancement, through his school of journalism, is greater than that of any other individual, unless it be Jefferson.
What the final judgment on Hearst will be depends very largely on his own actions, for the popularity or unpopularity of the cause espoused has much to do with the final judgment passed by the people on the journalist. He has certain deep ingrained prejudices, which, if he were a statesman, might be grave defects; to the journalist, however, they are often, if his vision is correct, a source of strength. Journalism is the only profession where prejudice, like versatility, may be an asset.
In analyzing Hearst and his two principal papers, the New York American and the New York Evening Journal, one fact has been ignored. Though a New Yorker by adoption, he has always remained a loyal Californian. He has a thoroughly western contempt for the things that the East reveres; his success has been made over their heads; being financially able, he has bitterly attacked the banking influence that predominates in the East, and in turn has had visited on him all the social disfavor that his opponents could command. As nearly as possible, the war between Hearst and his opponents has been a class war, for the dispassionate historian must admit, despite all the criticism of Hearst, that he has been a vigorous American and has never advocated reforms outside the line of law or against the constitution, but has always been in full sympathy with his patron saint, Jefferson.
Hearst represents a West that has always been more or less, in Eastern opinion, an appendage to the political sentiment of the country. This interesting view was represented in the declaration of a distinguished statesman who said to the writer, within the last decade, that a political battle then imminent would have to be won by the forces he represented, in order "that the political control of the country might remain in the East." The tone in which he spoke indicated his strong belief that the passing of the control from the East would be not only a political catastrophe but a menace to the country.
As a matter of fact, it has been the West and not the East that, since the Civil War, has generated the power back of those reforms and those progressive measures that have developed and strengthened the democracy of the country. A racy people will always be nearer to the springs of government, and, being near the source, will carry out the ideas more vehemently and spontaneously, than a people steeped in tradition and custom. Attrition wears away impulse sometimes with curious results. In the last decade or two we find growing up in the East the feeling that the Federalist party was not, after all, the party of error that for over a hundred years we have assumed it to be. Such a sentiment could never, during the last fifty years, have found any encouragement west of the Mississippi.
The spirit of that country, developed with the printing press as well as with the pick and the spade, would be a separate study in itself; we have been able only to hint at this spirit, in the story of the settlement of the western reserve. When we come to the bloody settlement of Kansas, we find that the printing press anticipated even the pick and the spade.
There were, among the Mormons, many printers, at least enough to be conspicuous as a class, and these men, as the new sect pushed itself westward, identified frontier life with the printing press. A group of New York and New England Mormons, led by a printer named Samuel Brannan, who had already printed a Mormon paper in New York, established a colony on the bay of San Francisco in September, 1846. Brannan had brought out with him printing press, type, paper, etc., and within four months after the founding of this colony he printed the first issue of the California Star. A few weeks before, on August 15, 1846, the first newspaper in the Territory of California had been printed at Monterey by the American alcalde, Walter Colton, a former editor of the Philadelphia North American. On taking over the alcalde's office from his retreating predecessor, Colton had discovered an old press and some Spanish type. By using cigarette paper, the sheets of which were a little larger than ordinary foolscap, he was able to bring out the Californian within a few weeks after the raising of the American flag.[1] The paper was printed in both English and Spanish and, as the Spanish font contained no "W," that letter in the English section of the paper was represented by two "Vs."
The following spring the Californian moved to San Francisco, and a year later both the California Star and the Californian were obliged to suspend publication because all the employees, including the printer's devil, had hurriedly quit when they heard of the discovery of gold. The whole country, from San Francisco to Los Angeles, responded to one cry—gold![2]
In the strange and feverish times that followed, the name of James King of William stands out. Between 1849 and 1856 a thousand murders had been committed in San Francisco, but only one legal execution had taken place. The government was admittedly rotten, business was uncertain and failures common; corruption, gambling and crime were so rampant that the better class of citizens absolutely despaired.
James King of William—the very name he adopted showed him to be a man of strong opinions—was a native of Georgetown, in the District of Columbia, a,nd had worked in the banking house of Corcoran and Riggs at Washington. Before the knowledge of the discovery of gold had reached the East, he had sailed for California, hoping to find, through the change of climate, a renewal of health. He succeeded in establishing himself in the banking business and became widely known as a man of intelligence and courage, as well as of integrity. His open refusal to fight a duel attracted to him that element of the community that was struggling, almost hopelessly, against the lawless element. In the various explanations and statements that he had been called on to make as a business man, he had developed a crisp, direct style that led his friends to suggest the feasibility of his starting a newspaper. On October 5, 1855, the first number of the Daily Evening Bulletin was issued; from the first number it began an attack on the corruption and fraud of the politicians and bankers. From the beginning he refused to accept low medical advertisements, and, though his paper was unrestricted in abuse and vehement denunciation of public and private criminals, King asserted that he would print nothing that was not fit to be read at his own fireside.
The paper was a sensation and greatly heartened those who, until it made its appearance, had believed that the conditions in San Francisco were irremediable.
A month after the publication of the Bulletin, a United States marshal was shot down by a disreputable gambler. King, in the Bulletin, while urging the citizens to be cautious, called on the community to watch the sheriff and to hang him if the murderer escaped. So boldly had King attacked the vicious element in San Francisco that it was decided to kill him. A ruffian named Casey picked a quarrel, and King, as he left his office to walk to his home, was shot before he could defend himself. The San Francisco Herald, a rival paper, referred to the shooting as "an affray between Mr. J. P, Casey and Mr. James King," which reference aroused such indignation that the paper was obliged to suspend. The result of this murder was the formation of the Vigilance Committee of 1856.
To the Eastern mind, such a beginning will seem to have no reflection in the orderly and well-edited papers that now abound in the far West, nor will it seem to ofifer the slightest excuse for a wealthy young Californian's having stirred, angered and irritated the East—and having been successful. Unfortunately, the Eastern mind that takes an interest in the subject is, at best, little given to understanding the West,—even its simpler aspects. Frank students of our policy admit this, while others irritably protest, "Nonsense; we're all alike—like us." It isn't so, but although the West knows that it is not so, the East does not. Whatever is to be the final analysis of Hearst it will be one in which the call of men for strange and lonely venture, the nervous dislike of check and convention, will largely enter. Meanwhile, the student of journalism finds food for thought in the fact that the greatest exponent of personal journalism, in the city that produced the Titans of the profession, was a Californian; one who, whatever his faults, has never been harnessed and certainly never afraid.
We have followed the line of a development strange in the history of civilization. We have seen the rise of journalism from the time, less than two centuries ago, when it had little relation with government and public opinion,—so little that the suppression of the first paper by the government argjised no protest; the records, in fact, indicate that the suppression was regarded with a complacency tantamount to approval. So far as we know there was—save the individual concerned financially—no one to protest, or to resist the complete subjugation of what we call public opinion, which in this instance we may call public soul. Harris stands out as almost the single point of protest against conditions as they were in 1690, as opposed to conditions as they should be. He represented, as did no other man in that community at that time, the idea of rule by public opinion, as it has since developed. He represented the theory of public rights in a community that, while it was founded on the idea of liberty and public rights, still failed to realize that within itself it had created an autocracy just as hateful as the one from which it had fled.
The community had not—in fact, the world had not—grown to realize that liberty or freedom of conscience cannot be had without freedom of discussion. Harris' impotence, as well as his strength, was the fact that he represented an idea, and used an invention, that was as yet hardly developed—the printing press and the new idea of journalism.
In 1690 Harris was the sole point of contact between the great mass of people in America—a vast majority of whom did not even know that he lived—and what we call public opinion. To-day there is no section or group of the people in this country not represented in the court of public opinion; none which has not, in some form or some way, a journalistic representative in the field, battling for its proper share of attention in a democracy where the will of the people, as exercised under a constitution, is the law of the land.
What our study of this development has shown us is that a system has slowly evolved, whereby the people are given the fullest measure of control and are made, in the final analysis, the direct sponsors of the government that they control. A more complete circle of delegation of power and return has never existed, and it is not easy to conceive of making it more responsive writhout producing a chaos that would negative all human effort. As our problems have arisen, the elasticity of the self-devised checks has been proved; imperfections, so-called, have really been the results that are inevitable in a country growing and developing in unprecedented ways. Dangers and failures have been found and will be found, as must be expected under any government into which the human element enters to so great an extent. But it is in this particular regard that the American democracy has achieved its greatest triumph—there has never been in high office a man, with the exception of Aaron Burr, who has shown a vicious intent toward the people, nor have there been, among the thousands of unfettered editors, any conspicuous examples of men who have not had their country's interest first at heart, wrong though some of them have been in their methods.
There is no profession, unless it is medicine, that calls for a higher regard for the simple truth than does journalism. "A good reporter is one who is never deceived by a lie." There have been men, there are men, into whose consciousness this fact never penetrates, but for the vast majority of the men who have achieved distinction in journalism it has been an actuating and primal principle.
From the very humble beginning of journalism in America to this day, there has been a devotion to duty that shows how fundamental is this ethical principle, in those who are drawn into this profession, where success is not measured by fame or by money. Those who, like Bucher, see but the commercial side, or, like Boynton, recognize only a shadowing and imitation of literature, miss something—something fine that lies in the soul of men whose deep interest in their fellowmen satisfies them with positions in life far below what their talents could command.
Walter Pater speaks somewhere,—in Marius, I think,—of the æsthetic charm that lies in mere clear thought. There is indeed an æsthetic charm in the simple and truthful recital of events in the world we live in—it may not be evident to those who soar high, those whose minds are attuned to the rhythm of greater beauties, but it is there; men know it, and carry that knowledge through life whether they have learned it in the grimy, unattractive office of some "patent-inside" weekly or, with greater force, as part of the large, keen organization that prints, in the small hours of the morning, a great metropolitan daily.
No newspaper man reaches forty without having met and talked with thousands of fellow-workers; they leave, in their entirety, an ineffaceable impression of optimism, of high purpose, of indomitable energy and courage. Considered as individuals, no two are alike; twin brothers have curiously opposing facets, overshadowing mere physiognomical resemblances. A regiment of reporters will hear the same speech or witness the same convention, yet what they write will have such rare diversity that one will wonder by what miracle there were gathered together so many intellects so strangely dissimilar.
If their own opinion were sought, the vast majority of these newspaper men, dissimilar as they are in character and point of view, would explain their attraction to their calling,—one long considered unworthy the name of a profession,—by the "love of the game."
The "game"—a child's word; there the explanation greatly lies. For men, like children, must love what they do more than they love themselves, if they are to wield the force that makes youth and romance so omnipotent. The flavor of adventure is never lacking in successful journalism because, underlying it all, is the consciousness, a consciousness curiously aggressive, that evil is being overthrown; that that incomprehensible thing, the public, is being served through the medium of the particular journal for which the work is undertaken.
The "game," however, has behind it a purpose, a deep and serious purpose, as this book, I believe, has shown. Expressed or unexpressed, there is always a strong belief that this country is different from others, and that the making of a happier and better nation is in the hands of each individual, working his own way. There is ever present, under cynical cover at times, the missionary spirit—the sense of personal responsibility for the right conduct of our government and our people, a spirit that leads even to the greatest sacrifice.
Of that spirit two examples come to mind—there must be hundreds that are known to others. At an engagement near Santiago, Cuba, just previous to the battle of El Caney, in the Spanish-American War, there was a correspondent, named Edward Marshall, of the New York Journal. He was where, if he had had due regard for his own life, he would not have been—in the front with the soldiers. A bullet struck his thigh, making him a cripple for life; as he lay bleeding and wounded—how seriously, it was not possible to tell—he dictated to a comrade his story for his paper. It was foolhardy, some one afterward suggested,—but was it not also magnificent?
In the editorial office of the New York World is a bronze tablet bearing the inscription:
IN MEMORY OF
GREGORY T. HUMES
Reporter on the World
Mortally injured in the Stamford Railroad Wreck.
He thought first of his paper and with indomitable courage sent
the news of the disaster.
Born April 22, 1878
Died June 13, 1913
Humes was a passenger on the train when the wreck occurred. When he was lifted out, dying, his first request was that his paper be notified that there was "a big story "at Stamford, and that he was sorry that he could not write it as he was "all smashed up." Not until his duty was done would he ask that his mother be telephoned to come to him.
"For those who see the newspapers from the outside," commented a paper at that time, "and with more suspicion and criticism than understanding, this reporter's example should at least suggest the thought that no trade, business, profession, which can enlist such men and retain such loyalty can quite deserve that fine scorn visited upon it so frequently by those thoughtless cynics who do not see behind its necessary impersonality the keen and vital individuality of hundreds of men like Gregory Humes, whose occupation he has dignified by his complete fidelity to its highest standards and its unwritten code."[3]
I have said that there must be others. There is scarcely an editor whose experience will not bear witness of the youths, many from homes of comfort and luxury, who have, at no matter what discomfort, shown equal spirit. That spirit is not to be explained away by any sordid analysis; it is the finest of American spirit enlisted in the feest of causes—the public weal.
"But," says the critic, "it is not benefiting the public to report a railway wreck." "It wasn't necessary to report it at once; the facts would have come out at the investigation before the grand jury," I hear some distinguished graybeard of a jurist say. The man who feels that way, who thinks that way, does not know the American public. Whether it is in the crowded, congested section of the city, amid the clatter of push-carts and the din of the itinerant peddlers, or far away in the hills where the cowbell at evening echoes for miles, there is caught up, more than all the fulminations of the statesman, the spirit of the "game "—the spirit of sacrifice of the reporter Humes; the spirit that made America free and that has made her people trusting and confident.
- ↑ Walter Colton, Three Years in California, 33.
- ↑ Hittell, History of California, ii, 689.
- ↑ New York Sun, June, 1913.