Page:History of Journalism in the United States.djvu/370

344 was better fitted for the task and he has for years been the "Well-Beloved" of the profession, endeared to many who opposed him politically. He was one of those ardent journalists who led the liberal movement in 1872 and he has since been a leader, and nearly always a liberal. His recently published reminiscences have shed new light on that interesting time. Watterson, Samuel Bowles of the Springfield Republican, Horace White of the Chicago Tribune and Murat Halstead of the Cincinnati Commercial were the men who ran the national convention in that year. With Carl Schurz they formed a combination to control the nominations. Whitelaw Reid was present as a representative of Horace Greeley and the Tribune, and when he heard of the "combine" he insisted that the Tribune should be admitted.

Watterson urged Reid's admission, on the ground that Greeley never would be considered as a candidate, and the seemingly ingenuous and very polite young man from New York was taken into camp. As a matter of fact, as he wrote in later years, Reid knew full well what he was doing; it later proved to be themselves and not Reid that had been taken in, for Greeley was nominated.

The combination took to itself much credit for the formation of the convention, although outside of the circle were many men of influence and power, men of the type of Alexander K. McClure of the Philadelphia Times, an ardent supporter and friend of Lincoln during the war, and one of the most insistent of the reformers who brought about the liberal movement.

Watterson is now eighty years of age. He is one of the few men living who knew the great men of the country before the Civil War; he is the only great editor who