The Epic of New York City (74 page)

Curiously, no arrests were made. In his autobiography Jacob Riis suggested an explanation for this omission. He said that Roosevelt's enemies within the police department raided the Seeley party in the
belief that they would catch him there. The plot failed because Roosevelt did not attend the affair.

The young president of the police board finally wearied of his thankless job. He negotiated for an appointment as Assistant Secretary of the Navy and in April, 1897, resigned his New York post to return to the nation's capital. Although Roosevelt failed to rid die city of all corruption during his two years in office, he greatly improved the police department.

 

*
From
The Making of an Insurgent, An Autobiography: 1882-1919
by Fiorello H. LaGuardia. Copyright, 1948, by J. B. Lippincott Company. Published by J. B. Lippincott Company.

Chapter 35

W
ILLIAM
R
ANDOLPH
H
EARST
galloped onto the New York scene in 1895 like a one-man cavalry charge. For the next several decades his influence was felt not only in this city but also throughout the entire world.

He was born in San Francisco, the only child of a doting mother and of George Hearst, a multimillionaire mineowner, rancher, and Democratic Senator from California. Young Hearst studied at Harvard until he was expelled for sending every faculty member a chamberpot with his picture pasted on the bottom. After working briefly for the New York
World,
Hearst talked his father into buying the San Francisco
Examiner
for him in 1887.

Senator Hearst died in 1891 and left his widow $17,000,000. When Mrs. Hearst learned that her beloved son wanted to invade New York's world of journalism, she sold her seven-sixteenths interest in the Anaconda Copper Mining Company to the Rothschilds of London for $7,500,000 and gave the sum to him. For the bargain price of $180,000, Hearst bought the
Morning Journal
on October 7, 1895. The
Journal
occupied part of the
Tribune's
shabby little building at Park Row and Spruce Street. Hearst soon outfitted a magnificent office for himself on the second floor.

Only thirty-two years old when he took up residence in New York, Hearst was slender and stood six feet two inches tall. He had a long face, icy-blue eyes pinched together above a pointed nose, and blond hair. He behaved in a lordly, yet courteous, manner, spoke in a high-pitched voice, shook hands limply, and teetered back and forth on his heels while talking. He never smoked or drank or told dirty stories or swore in public. In private, though, he sometimes flew into tantrums. A megalomaniac, Hearst craved to become President of the United States.

Now that he owned the
Journal
and had more than $7,000,000 left to operate and promote it, Hearst began a vicious circulation war with Pulitzer's
World,
the leading newspaper in New York. Because the
World
always championed the underdog, Hearst decided to scrape up his own issues. He soon learned that Cuban patriots sought to free Cuba from Spanish tyranny. For more than a quarter century New York had been a haven for Cuban exiles plotting the downfall of the Spanish government on their island home. By 1898 the center of revolutionary intrigue in New York was 66 Broadway in the office of Horatio Rubens, a New York lawyer who sympathized with the Cubans. To this junta headquarters Hearst sent
Journal
reporters, and before long the
Journal
office itself was being frequented by swarthy exiles. Their tales about Spanish atrocities were only partly true, but Hearst believed them. In the fight for Cuban independence he thought that he had found the issue which would enable him to win his battle with the
World.

With an audacity seldom matched in American history, Hearst assumed the role of spokesman for the United States. In a letter to a Cuban who called himself the president of the republic of Cuba, Hearst began by saying, “Sir: Will you kindly state through the
New York Journal,
acting for the people of the United States, the position of the Cuban Government on the offer of autonomy for the island by
the Government of Spain? . . .” Even before William McKinley was inaugurated President of the United States on March 5, 1897, Hearst demanded that McKinley openly declare himself in favor of the independence of Cuba. When McKinley failed to do so at once, Hearst charged that he was “listening with eager ear to the threats of the big Business Interests. . . .” It was true that Wall Street did not want war with Spain because of American investments in Cuba. It was equally true that McKinley was influenced by business leaders, but the President hesitated because of his humanitarian impulses.

In one of Hearst's earliest signed editorials in the
Journal
he had announced that newspapers had the power to declare war. Seeking fame and eager to eclipse the
World,
Hearst now tried to plunge the United States into open conflict with Spain. Pulitzer hung back at first, but when he saw the
Journal
increase its circulation by whipping up a war spirit, he succumbed. Pulitzer actually said, “I rather like the idea of war—not a big one—but one that will arouse interest and give me a chance to gauge the reflex in our circulation figures.”

With both papers trying to outdo one another as warmongers, their circulation figures shot to record-breaking heights. They published one extra after another, and when the Spanish-American War actually broke out, the
Journal
sometimes printed as many as forty editions a day. The
Journal
faked stories and photographs and sketches. Hearst sent illustrator Frederic Remington to Cuba to report the atrocities allegedly occurring there. Remington soon cabled Hearst: “Everything quiet. No trouble here. There will be no war. I wish to return . . . Remington.” Hearst sent to Havana this memorable answer: “Please remain. You furnish the pictures and I will furnish the war . . . Hearst.” As the
Journal
and the
World
piled one sensation on another, Edwin L. Godkin, editor of the New York
Evening Post,
declared:

Under pressure of the
Journal
and
World
and the war hawks in Congress, President McKinley slowly began to abandon his position of neutrality. The Prime Minister of Spain said in bewilderment to an
American correspondent, “The newspapers of your country seem to be more powerful than the government.”

On the recommendation of America's consul general in Cuba the 24-gun battleship
Maine
sailed into Havana harbor as a “friendly act the
Journal
boasted in a headline: “OUR FLAG IN HAVANA AT of courtesy” to Spain. After she anchored there on January 25, 1898, LAST.” At 9:40 on the sultry night of February 15 the
Maine
blew up, killing 260 of her complement of 350 officers and men. Among the dead were 22 American Negroes, whom the Spaniards called Smoked Yankees. To this very day no one knows the cause of the explosion, but Hearst, Pulitzer, and other American jingoists seized on the tragedy as a reason for going to war. “Remember the
Maine”
became the slogan of the hour, and anyone voicing doubt that the Spaniards had blown up the battleship was branded a traitor.

President McKinley still hoped to preserve peace. For his fair-mindedness he was denounced by Assistant Secretary of the Navy Theodore Roosevelt as having “no more backbone than a chocolate éclair.” Roosevelt was a leading warmonger. At a private Gridiron dinner in Washington, McKinley's closest adviser, Mark Hanna, spoke out against war. Roosevelt retorted, “We will have this war for the freedom of Cuba, Senator Hanna, in spite of the timidity of commercial interests.” In the absence of his superior, the Secretary of the Navy, Roosevelt deployed warships so that they could take up what he considered the best offensive posture. In regard to the naval strength of the United States and Spain the ratio was about three to two in favor of the United States.

Aware that they would lose any war with America, Spanish officials conceded point after point, trying in almost every way to avoid open conflict. On February 18 the Spanish cruiser
Vizcaya
paid a courtesy call to the port of New York. When her commander learned of the loss of the
Maine,
he expressed regrets, half-masted his colors in mourning, and declined to take part in the scheduled ceremonies of welcome. Despite this, the
World
shrilled that the
Vizcaya
had treacherous intentions, saying, “While lying off the Battery, her shells will explode on the Harlem River and in the suburbs of Brooklyn.” But the Spanish cruiser left New York without even firing a pistol shot.

Spain now asked for the recall of the American consul general in Cuba, Congress appropriated $50,000,000 for defense, the War Department began to mobilize the army, Pope Leo XIII appealed for
peace, and the United States cabled an ultimatum to Spain. In the Knickerbocker Theatre at Broadway and Thirty-eighth Street audiences went wild with patriotism as the song “Unchain the Dogs of War” was introduced into the musical comedy
The Bride Elect.
Hearst sent
Journal
reporters throughout the New York area to interview mothers of sailors who had died in the
Maine.
Every day Hearst worked busily in his office in the Tribune Building. Pulitzer seldom visited the golden-domed World Building, directing his editorial staff from one or another of his five mansions or from aboard his yacht. Both the
Journal
and the
World
raised their price from one to two cents. The
Journal
introduced its readers to a new card game, called Game of War With Spain.

Because the American navy did not own a single troopship, the government began buying yachts, coastal steamers, seagoing tugs, and other vessels to transport troops to Cuba, to patrol the American coast, and to blockade our harbors. When J. Pierpont Morgan was told that the government wanted his yacht, the
Corsair,
he twisted and turned in every way to keep his beloved vessel, but without avail. The
Corsair
was taken to the Brooklyn Navy Yard, where her beautiful mahogany was ripped out. Hearst freely offered the government his yacht, the
Buccaneer.
John Jacob Astor placed his yacht, the
Nourmahal,
at the disposal of the United States, equipped an artillery battery, and later served as its lieutenant colonel. Jay Gould's daughter, Helen M. Gould, gave the navy $100,000.

On April 23 President McKinley called for 125,000 volunteers. Theodore Roosevelt resigned as Assistant Secretary of the Navy to organize the First Volunteer Cavalry Regiment. He wrote his family that he had plans for a “jim-dandy regiment” in case of war and that “it would be awful to miss the fun.” He bought a uniform from Brooks Brothers in New York, sewed extra sets of pince-nez inside it, and rushed to San Antonio, Texas, where the regiment was being organized. The elite corps, which took the name of the Rough Riders, consisted of 1,000 cowboys, Indians, Ivy League athletes, and 4 New York policemen. Totally without military experience, Roosevelt accepted a commission as lieutenant colonel under the commanding officer, Colonel Leonard Wood, an army surgeon, who had fought Indians in the West. Unlike army regulars, who wore blue woolen shirts, the Rough Riders wore thin khaki uniforms.