Page:History of Journalism in the United States.djvu/392

366 editorial its complete confirmation in their replies, and the proposed loan will be over-subscribed on a three per cent, basis. Even Mr. Cleveland's phenomenal self-confidence and Mr. Carlisle's purblind belief in Wall Street methods will not be able to withstand such a demonstration as that. It will compel a public loan. If it is true that the contract with the syndicate has already been made, they must cancel it. The voice of the country will be heard in the subscription list we shall print tomorrow morning, and the voice of the country has compelling power, even under this excessively self-confident administration."

With his idealism and his own knowledge of the suffering and poverty of the submerged world about him, Joseph Pulitzer could never have been content with the mere exploitation of the news, even if that exploitation had been, financially, twice as successful as it proved to be. What esentially appealed to him in journalism was its opportunity to touch the heart; because he was a sentimentalist he was successful in arousing public interest and establishing his papers as great, powerful, popular organs.

He could not see things calmly and philosophically as could Godkin, but he could express in his own way his feelings about the same crimes. So, while he stood for honest government, the reforms that he advocated most successfully were those that dealt with liberty and freedom; with the abolition of cruelty in the prisons, with the stopping of oppression by petty officers of the law, and with the ending of graft, the graft that hit mainly those who were trying to earn a mere living.

The critics who were unable to understand the Pulitzers, or Bennetts, or Greeleys, were generally those who failed