Page:History of Journalism in the United States.djvu/390

364 for the patronage of the uneducated that the Sun and the Evening World made thirty years ago.

We gather some of the strength of the Pulitzer journalism, and we begin to understand why it was successful, when we read some of his instructions to his editorial writers. A famous case in the history of the New York judiciary was that of Judge Maynard, who, after questionable conduct in a certain election proceeding, came up for re-election on the Democratic ticket. Mr. Pulitzer, it is to be remembered, was a Democrat. Calling in his chief editorial writer, George Gary Eggleston, he said to him:

"I want you to go into the Maynard case with an absolutely unprejudiced mind. We hold no briefs for or against him, as you know. I want you to get together all the documents in the case. I want you to take them home and study them as minutely as if you were preparing yourself for an examination. I want you to regard yourself as a judicial officer, oath-bound to justice, and when you shall have mastered the facts and the law in the case, I want you to set them forth in a four column editorial that every reader of the World can easily understand."

There were model instructions. They are the praecepta of journalism as the defender and upholder of democracy.

Another illustration of his large, democratic and unusual view of the mission of journalism, was his handling of the 1896 bond issue. The government was about to sell two hundred million dollars of bonds to a Wall Street syndicate at 104¾, when it was demonstrated that the bonds were bringing in the market as high as 122. Pulitzer sent for the heads of his departments and the head of the editorial page and gave them rapid-fire instructions,