William Randolph Hearst.
In nineteen four he spent a lot of money putting his name up in electric lights at the Chicago Convention to land the Democratic nomination but Judge Parker and Wall Street got it away from him.
In nineteen five he ran for Mayor of New York on a municipal-ownership ticket.
In nineteen six he very nearly got the governorship away from the solemnwhiskered Hughes. There were Hearst for President clubs all over the country. He was making his way in politics spending millions to the tune of Waltz Me Around Again, Willie.
He managed to get his competitor James Gordon Bennett up in court for running indecent ads in the New York Herald and fined $25,000, a feat which hardly contributed to his popularity in certain quarters.
In nineteen eight he was running revelations about Standard Oil, the Archbold letters that proved that the trusts were greasing the palms of the politicians in a big way. He was the candidate of the Independence party made up almost exclusively, so his enemies claimed, of Hearst employees.
(His fellowmillionaires felt he was a traitor to his class but when he was taxed with his treason he answered:
You know I believe in property, and you know where I stand on personal fortunes, but isn’t it better that I should represent in this country the dissatisfied than have somebody else do it who might not have the same real property relations that I may have?)
By nineteen fourteen, although he was the greatest newspaper-owner in the country, the proprietor of hundreds of square miles of ranching and mining country in California and Mexico,
his affairs were in such a scramble he had trouble borrowing a million dollars,
and politically he was ratpoison.
All the millions he signed away
all his skill at putting his own thoughts
into the skull of the straphanger
failed to bridge the tiny Rubicon between amateur and professional politics (perhaps he could too easily forget a disappointment buying a firstrate writer or an embroidered slipper attributed to Charlemagne or the gilded bed a king's mistress was supposed to have slept in).
Sometimes he was high enough above the battle to see clear. He threw all the power of his papers, all his brilliance as a publisher into an effort to keep the country sane and neutral during the first world war;
he opposed loans to the Allies, seconded Bryan in his lonely fight to keep the interests of the United States as a whole paramount over the interests of the Morgan banks and the anglophile businessmen of the East;
for his pains he was razzed as a pro-German,
and when war was declared had detectives placed among his butlers,
secretserviceagents ransacking his private papers, gumshoeing round his diningroom on Riverside Drive to investigate rumors of strange colored lights seen in his windows.
He opposed the peace of Versailles and the league of victorious nations
and ended by proving that he was as patriotic as anybody
by coming out for conscription
and printing his papers with red white and blue borders and with little American flags at either end of the dateline and continually trying to stir up trouble across the Rio Grande
and inflating the Yankee Doodle bogey,
the biggest navy in the world.
The people of New York City backed him up by electing Hearst's candidate for Mayor, Honest John Hylan,
but Al Smith while he was still the sidewalks' hero rapped Hearst's knuckles when he tried to climb back onto the Democratic soundtruck.
In spite of enormous expenditures on forged documents he failed to bring about war with Mexico.
In spite of spraying hundreds of thousands of dollars into moviestudios he failed to put over his favorite moviestar as America's sweetheart.
And more and more the emperor of newsprint retired to his fief of San Simeon on the Pacific Coast, where he assembled a zoo, continued to dabble in movingpictures, collected warehouses full of tapestries, Mexican saddles, bricabrac, china, brocade, embroidery, old chests of drawers, tables and chairs, the loot of dead Europe,
built an Andalusian palace and a Moorish banquethall and there spends his last years amid the relaxing adulations of screenstars, admen, screenwriters, publicitymen, columnists, millionaire editors,
a monarch of that new El Dorado
where the warmedover daydreams of all the ghettos
are churned into an opiate haze
more scarily blinding to the moneyless man
more fruitful of millions
than all the clinking multitude of double eagles
the older Hearst minted out of El Dorado County in the old days (the empire of the printed word continues powerful by the inertia of bigness; but this power over the dreams
of the adolescents of the world
grows and poisons like a cancer),
and out of the westcoast haze comes now and then an old man's querulous voice
advocating the salestax,
hissing dirty names at the defenders of civil liberties for the workingman;
jail the reds,
praising the comforts of Baden-Baden under the blood and bludgeon rule of Handsome Adolph (Hearst's own loved invention, the lowest common denominator come to power
out of the rot of democracy)
complaining about the California incometaxes,
shrilling about the dangers of thought in the colleges.
Deport; jail.
Until he dies
the magnificent endlesslyrolling presses will pour out print for him, the whirring everywhere projectors will spit images for him,
a spent Caesar grown old with spending
never man enough to cross the Rubicon.
Richard Ellsworth Savage
Dick Savage walked down Lexington to the office in the Graybar Building. The December morning was sharp as steel, bright glints cut into his eyes, splintering from storewindows, from the glasses of people he passed on the street, from the chromium rims of the headlights of automobiles. He wasn’t quite sure whether he had a hangover or not. In a jeweler’s window he caught sight of his face in the glass against the black velvet backing, there was a puffy boiled look under the eyes like in the photographs of the Prince of Wales. He felt sour and gone in the middle like a rotten pear. He stepped into a drugstore and ordered a bromoseltzer. At the sodafountain he stood looking at himself in the mirror behind the glass shelf with the gingeralebottles on it; his new darkblue broadcloth coat looked well anyway. The black eyes of the sodajerker were seeking his eyes out. “A heavy evening, eh?” Dick nodded and grinned. The sodajerker passed a thin red-knuckled hand over his patentleather hair. “I didn’t get off till one thirty an’ it takes me an hour to get home on the subway. A whale of a chance I got to . . .” “I’m late at the office now,” said Dick and paid and walked out, belching a little, into the sparkling morning street. He walked fast, taking deep breaths. By the time he was standing in the elevator with a sprinkling of stoutish fortyish welldressed men, executives like himself getting to their offices late, he had a definite sharp headache.
He’d hardly stretched his legs out under his desk when the interoffice phone clicked. It was Miss Williams’ voice: “Good morning, Mr. Savage. We’ve been waiting for you . . . Mr. Moorehouse says please step into his office, he wants to speak with you a minute before the staff conference.” Dick got up and stood a second with his lips pursed rocking on the balls of his feet looking out the window over the ashcolored blocks that stretched in a series of castiron molds east to the chimneys of powerplants, the bridge, the streak of river flashing back steel at the steelblue sky. Riveters shrilly clattered in the new huge construction that was jutting up girder by girder at the corner of Fortysecond. They all seemed inside his head like a dentist’s drill. He shuddered, belched and hurried along the corridor into the large corner office.
J.W. was staring at the ceiling with his big jowly face as expressionless as a cow’s. He turned his pale eyes on
Dick without a smile. “Do you realize there are seventyfive million people in this country unwilling or unable to go to a physician in time of sickness?” Dick twisted his face into a look of lively interest. He’s been talking to Ed Griscolm, he said to himself. “Those are the people the Bingham products have got to serve. He’s touched only the fringes of this great potential market.” “His business would be to make them feel they’re smarter than the bigbugs who go to Battle Creek,” said Dick. J.W. frowned thoughtfully.
Ed Griscolm had come in. He was a sallow long man with an enthusiastic flash in his eye that flickered on and off like an electriclight sign. He had a way of carrying his arms like a cheerleader about to lead a college yell. Dick said “Hello” without warmth. “Top of the morning, Dick . . . a bit over hung I see. . . . Too bad, old man, too bad.”
“I was just saying, Ed,” J.W. went on in his slow even voice, “that our talkingpoints should be first that they haven’t scratched the top of their potential market of seventyfive million people and second that a properlyconducted campaign can eradicate the prejudice many people feel against proprietary medicines and substitute a feeling of pride in their use.”
“It’s smart to be thrifty . . . that sort of thing,” shouted Ed.
“Selfmedication,” said Dick. “Tell them the average sodajerker knows more about medicine today than the family physician did twentyfive years ago.”
“They think there’s something hick about patent medicines,” yelled Ed Griscolm. “We got to put patent medicines on Park Avenue.” “Proprietary medicines,” said J.W. reprovingly.
Dick managed to wipe the smile off his face. “We’ve got to break the whole idea,” he said, “into its component parts.”
“Exactly.” J.W. picked up a carvedivory papercutter and looked at it in different angles in front of his face. The office was so silent they could hear the traffic roaring outside and the wind whistling between the steel windowframe and the steel window. Dick and Ed Griscolm held their breath. J.W. began to talk. “The American public has become sophisticated . . . when I was a boy in Pittsburgh all we thought of was display advertising, the appeal to the eye. Now with the growth of sophistication we must think of the other types of appeal, and the eradication of prejudice. . . . Bingo . . . the name is out of date, it’s all wrong. A man would be ashamed to lunch at the Metropolitan Club with a bottle of Bingo at his table . . . that must be the talkingpoint. . . . Yesterday Mr. Bingham seemed inclined to go ahead. He was balking a little at the cost of the campaign. . . .”
“Never mind,” screeched Ed Griscolm, “we’ll nail the old buzzard’s feet down yet.”
“I guess he has to be brought around gently just as you were saying last night, J.W.,” said Dick in a low bland voice. “They tell me Halsey of Halsey O’Connor’s gone to bed with a nervous breakdown tryin’ to get old Bingham to make up his mind.” Ed Griscolm broke into a tittering laugh.
J.W. got to his feet with a faint smile. When J.W. smiled Dick smiled too. “I think he can be brought to appreciate the advantages connected with the name . . . dignity . . . established connections. . . .” Still talking J.W. led the way down the hall into the large room with a long oval mahogany table in the middle of it where the whole office was gathered. J.W. went first with his considerable belly waggling a little from side to side as he walked, and Dick and Ed Griscolm, each with an armful of typewritten projects in paleblue covers, followed a step behind him. Just as they were settling down after a certain amount of coughing and honking and J.W. was beginning about how there were seventyfive million people, Ed Griscolm ran out and came back with a neatlydrawn chart in blue and red and yellow lettering showing the layout of the proposed campaign. An admiring murmur ran round the table.
Dick caught a triumphant glance in his direction from Ed Griscolm. He looked at J.W. out of the corner of his eye. J.W. was looking at the chart with an expressionless face. Dick walked over to Ed Griscolm and patted him on the shoulder. “A swell job, Ed old man,” he whispered. Ed Griscolm’s tense lips loosened into a smile. “Well, gentlemen, what I’d like now is a snappy discussion,” said J.W. with a mean twinkle in his paleblue eye that matched for a second the twinkle of the small diamonds in his cufflinks.
While the others talked Dick sat staring at J.W.’s hands spread out on the sheaf of typewritten papers on the table in front of him. Oldfashioned starched cuffs protruded from the sleeves of the perfectlyfitting doublebreasted grey jacket and out of them hung two pudgy strangely hicklooking hands with liverspots on them. All through the discussion Dick stared at the hands, all the time writing down phrases on his scratchpad and scratching them out. He couldn’t think of anything. His brains felt boiled. He went on scratching away with his pencil at phrases that made no sense at all. On the fritz at the Ritz . . . Bingham’s products cure the fits.
It was after one before the conference broke up. Everybody was congratulating Ed Griscolm on his layout. Dick heard his own voice saying it was wonderful but it needed a slightly different slant. “All right,” said J.W. “How about finding that slightly different slant over the weekend? That’s the idea I want to leave with every man here. I’m lunching with Mr. Bingham Monday noon. I must have a perfected project to present.”
Dick Savage went back to his office and signed a pile of letters his secretary had left for him. Then he suddenly remembered he’d told Reggie Talbot he’d meet him for lunch at “63” to meet the girlfriend and ran out, adjusting his blue muffler as he went down in the elevator. He caught sight of them at a table with their heads leaning together in the crinkled cigarettesmoke in the back of the crowded Saturday-afternoon speakeasy. “Oh, Dick, hello,” said Reggie, jumping to his feet with his mild smile, grabbing Dick’s hand and drawing him towards the table. “I didn’t wait for you at the office because I had to meet this one. . . . Jo, this is Mr. Savage. The only man in New York who doesn’t give a damn. . . . What’ll you have to drink?” The girl certainly was a knockout. When Dick let himself drop on the redleather settee beside her, facing Reggie’s slender ashblond head and his big inquiring lightbrown eyes, he felt boozy and tired.
“Oh, Mr. Savage, what’s happened about the Bingham account? I’m so excited about it. Reggie can’t talk about anything else. I know it’s indiscreet to ask.” She looked earnestly in his face out of long-lashed black eyes. They certainly made a pretty couple.
“Telling tales out of school, eh?” said Dick, picking up a breadstick and snapping it into his mouth.
“But you know, Dick, Jo and me . . . we talk about everything . . . it never goes any further. . . . And honestly all the younger guys in the office think it’s a damn shame J.W. didn’t use your first layout. . . . Griscolm is going to lose the account for us if he isn’t careful . . . it just don’t click. . . . I think the old man’s getting softening of the brain.”
“You know I’ve thought several times recently that J.W. wasn’t in very good health. . . . Too bad. He’s the most brilliant figure in the publicrelations field.” Dick heard an oily note come into his voice and felt ashamed in front of the youngsters and shut up suddenly. “Say, Tony,” he called peevishly to the waiter. “How about some cocktails? Give me a bacardi with a little absinthe in it, you know, my special. . . . Gosh, I feel a hundred years old.”
“Been burning the candle at both ends?” asked Reggie.
Dick twisted his face into a smirk. “Oh, that candle,” he said. “It gives me a lot of trouble.” They all blushed. Dick chuckled. “By God, I don’t think there are three other people in the city that have a blush left in them.” They ordered more cocktails. While they were drinking Dick felt the girl’s eyes serious and dark fixed on his face. She lifted her glass to him. “Reggie says you’ve been awfully sweet to him at the office. . . . He says he’d have been fired if it wasn’t for you.” “Who could help being sweet to Reggie? Look at him.” Reggie got red as a beet. “The lad’s got looks,” said the girl. “But has he any brains?”
Dick began to feel
better with the onionsoup and the third cocktail. He began to tell them how he envied them being kids and getting married. He promised he’d be bestman. When they asked him why he didn’t get married himself he confusedly had some more drinks and said his life was a shambles. He made fifteen thousand a year but he never had any money. He knew a dozen beautiful women but he never had a girl when he needed her. All the time he was talking he was planning in the back of his head a release on the need for freedom of selfmedication. He couldn’t stop thinking about that damned Bingham account.
It was beginning to get dark when they came out of “63.” A feeling of envy stung him as he put the young people into a taxi. He felt affectionate and amorous and nicely buoyed up by the radiating warmth of food and alcohol in his belly. He stood for a minute on the corner of Madison Avenue watching the lively beforechristmas crowd pour along the sidewalk against the bright showwindows, all kinds of faces flushed and healthylooking for once in the sharp cold evening in the slanting lights. Then he took a taxi down to Twelfth Street.
The colored maid who let him in was wearing a pretty lace apron. “Hello, Cynthia.” “How do you do, Mr. Dick.” Dick could feel the impatient blood pounding in his temples as he walked up and down the old uneven parquet floor waiting. Eveline was smiling when she came out from the back room. She’d put too much powder on her face in too much of a hurry and it brought out the drawn lines between her nostrils and her mouth and gave her nose a floury look. Her voice still had a lovely swing to it. “Dick, I thought you’d given me up.”
“I’ve been working like a dog. . . . I’ve gotten so my brain won’t work. I thought it would do me good to see you.” She handed him a Chinese porcelain box with cigarettes in it. They sat down side by side on a rickety oldfashioned horsehair sofa. “How’s Jeremy?” asked Dick in a cheerful tone.
Her voice went flat. “He’s gone out west with Paul for Christmas.”