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A Look at Three of the Men Who Wrote the Articles

George Brown was the highest-salaried newspaper reporter in St. Louis about 1875. He came here with some experiences on an English paper, but wholly unacquainted with this country. Yet he stepped into a good position within a week and advanced rapidly to star place on the local staff. One day the door of Mr. [William] Hyde’s room at the Republican office opened. A stout young man entered just far enough to expose his presence and without a word of introduction, asked:

“Want a reporter?”

“Not today,” said Mr. Hyde, without looking up from his paper.

The visitor began to back out and was just about to close the door when the editor called after him:

“Hold on! If you want to show what you can do, you may go up to Dr. Finney’s church tomorrow morning and make a report of his sermon.”

“How much do you want?” asked Brown in the matter of fact manner which was his striking characteristic.

“Half a column,” replied the editor. Not another word was said. The door closed. The editor told his city editor, Mr. MacAdam, of the occurrence.

On Monday morning Mr. Hyde, looking over the paper, saw the sermon story occupying exactly half a column to the line. In a little while George Brown came in. Mr. Hyde nodded to him and said:

“I told you to give us half a column on Dr. Finney, didn’t I?”

“Yes sir, I did,” said Brown

“I see you did,” continued Mr. Hyde. “But tell me; how did you happen to make just half a column, no more, no less?”
With not a smile or suggestion in tone that he had done anything more than what was ordinary, Brown replied: “I took a copy of your paper and folded it once so as to make a half column. I counted the lines in the half column. I counted the words in enough lines to strike an average. I multiplied the number of lines by that average, and then I wrote just that number of words about the sermon.”

Mr. Hyde was a man of few words and of quick action. He employed Brown.

Reporter, city editor, manager, Frank R. O’Neil was a figure in the newspaper life of St. Louis. The quality of his work was far above the ordinary. His associates first discovered his talent and then came the public appreciation. What Frank O’Neil wrote could be identified by the daily reader. The man enjoyed his work. He was wonderfully accurate in statements and rigidly faithful in portrayal. More than this he had a capacity for turning out “good copy” which was the envy of his fellows. The revelations of life to the newspaper man sometimes beget cynicism and hardness. Frank R. O’Neil never lost his inborn kindness of heart.

Weaknesses of human nature strengthened his feeling of charity. He never glossed wrong doing in his writing. Perhaps a more politic man would have won greater personal renown with those who did not know him so well, but he would not have won to such a degree the confidence, the admiration, the love of those with whom he worked day by day. In 1883, after the death of Jesse James, when Frank James had a price of $10,000 on his head and was being hunted by detectives, O’Neil met with the noted bandit, through arrangement of a mutual friend, remaining with him for two days, and, under a promise not to reveal his whereabouts, returned to St. Louis and wrote a graphic interview with him, which he held for release, faithful to his promise, until James surrendered, when it was published.

In 1878, during the yellow fever epidemic in the South, Quarantine Station, below Jefferson Barracks, full of refugees, became infected, scores of deaths being reported daily. The people of the city were panic stricken. Health Commissioner Francis invited the newspapers to send reporters to the station to investigate conditions. O’Neil and two other reporters accepted the dangerous assignment, spending an entire day there. On their return O’Neil wrote a vivid description of the prevailing conditions, which was widely copied. Just as he finished this story, O’Neil was sent to cover an assignment at the Insane Asylum, where several patients had been mysteriously poisoned. He returned in time to write a graphic two-column account of this for the regular edition, thus in one day having accomplished a task that ordinarily would tax the capacity of several men.

When Frank R. O’Neil and Clarence N. Howell were the central figures of the Republican local staff, a kid reporter was taken on. He was a slender boy, laughing-eyed, interrogation-faced. He was at the age and of the temperament to absorb knowledge. He had adopted mankind for his study and the newspaper office for his school room. The boy looked up to O’Neil and Howell with all the admiration and confidence the youthful collegian gives to favorite professors. His daily assignment was the school board offices in the old Polytechnic building at Seventh and Locust streets. A cultured woman, a lady of breeding, Mrs. Bernoudy, who had charge of the office of the superintendent of schools saw what the boy needed. She talked books to him. She opened to his mind the opportunities for reading. In time knew more of what the public library contained than any other one person except the librarian, himself, Mr. Crunden.  The faculty to self-educate runs strong in the Irish blood. The boy reporter gained from his reading, first, information of wide range, then style of expression and finally, ideas which put him on the road to become the writer of more than local fame. The evolution of William Marion Reedy belongs to the history of St. Louis journalism.

(Originally published in St. Louis, the Fourth City by Walter Barlow Stevens, 1911).

Things at TSN Used to be a Lot Different
(Condensed from original article)

In the spring of 1948, as a pre-journalism would-be sportswriter freshman at Mizzou, I wrote a term paper on the Sporting News for an English composition and rhetoric class. I sent a letter to John George Taylor Spink, owner, publisher and editor, informing him of my project. In return, I received a torrent of material, including books, a subscription and an invitation to a baseball game. The letter was signed in the unreadable scrawl that was one of Spink’s many trademarks.

The term paper is long gone; even a packrat such as I can’t keep everything. But the memories are strong, from the first time I rode the rackety elevator to the seventh floor of 2018 Washington Ave. and crossed the old , creaky, rutted wooden floor to visit the jowly, gnarled, gravel-voiced, profane, cigar-chewing little man in the corner office.

I saw him a few times a year, even introduced him to my father, a baseball fan from the days before World War I. The two men got along famously, swapping old stories. When my father retired, Spink was shocked. He was of the old school, where people worked forever. But dad sent him postcards from Tokyo, and from Paris and Rome, and Spink would send them along to me, with a carbon of the thank-you note he had sent to dad. My folks traveled a lot by ship in those days, and I remember a letter Spink sent to the president of United States Lines, a man he somehow knew. Spink said he didn’t understand Samuel Pollack, because he sailed on small ships, but he wanted all courtesies extended to his friend.

Dad often recommended retirement and travel to Spink, but it fell on deaf ears; Spink was a man so dedicated to his work that when he took a rare evening off and went to the Muny Opera, it was a real event when he stayed beyond intermission. Sometimes he left at the overture, recalling a phone call he had to make. The portable phone was invented too late for him.

Spink was one of the last of the personal journalists. He inherited the Sporting News from his father and uncle, who founded it in 1886. He left it to his son, Charles C. Johnson Spink, named for an elder Spink and for Ban Johnson, a sportswriter who founded the American League.

Now the Sporting News is leaving. It’s being sold by the Times Mirror Corporation, which bought it from Johnson Spink in 1978.

The Sporting News, known as “the Bible of baseball” for its massive coverage of professional baseball teams, with complete statistics and weekly “letters” from a group of correspondents across the country, came to accept other sports the way baseball came to accept African-Americans – very slowly. Of course, the paper was subsidized by major league baseball for many years, including the purchase of thousands of copies to distribute to soldiers during World War II. For a while, it had a special section, The Quarterback, dealing with football but printed as a pull-out so that baseball fans could pitch it without having to see even a mention of other sports.

Taylor Spink read practically every word that went into the paper. I remember piles of proofs on his desk, towering over the short man. He didn’t write, even though he had a column in which baseball players often were quoted as addressing him by name. “I was born, Mr. Spink, in a log cabin (or on a farm)…” was a favorite parody. Hard-working editors like Lowell Reidenbaugh, Oscar Kahan, Oscar Ruhl, Edgar Brands, Ray Gillespie and others who did the work, bolstered by local sportswriters who worked one or two days a week as copy editors. Writers from across the country filed stories on the teams they covered, and the greatest sports artist of all, Willard Mullin of the New York World-Telegram, provided covers. It was Mullin who devised the “Brooklyn Bum” and the “St. Louis Swifty,” a lean riverboat gambler type to represent the speedy, and winning Birds of the early 1940s.

Bill Fleischman, long-time chief sports copy editor (the slot man) at the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, was one of them, and the favor was returned by many Sporting News people who filled in on one of the dailies’ sports copy desks on a regular basis.

Spink was a legendary character in sports journalism. Though he rarely attended a game and probably never saw more than a couple to their conclusion, he always was one of the official scorers at the World Series. Spink had a habit of strolling through the office after the edition was printed, often tossing 5- or 10-dollar bills to people, an instant bonus for a clever headline or just for fun. At one point, his son Johnson told him this was messy bookkeeping, confusing to the accountants. Why didn’t he just give everyone a raise? Spink thought it was a good idea and did so. A few weeks later, he was back at the old habit, dropping paper money here and there.

He was violently opposed to unions, too, but I recall an incident in the late 1950s. As a bit of harassment of the Newspaper Guild and its members, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and Globe managements decided to forbid staffers from outside employment, a long-time practice guaranteed in the contract. It didn’t last, of course, but a friend at the Sporting News chuckled over a Spink call to Rollin Everett, the Guild’s executive secretary, that began, “Rollin, you’ve got to help me…”

Before the 20th and Washington site, the weekly was at 10th and Pine Streets, catty-corner from the Scruggs, Vandervoort, Barney department store. As the mercantile calendar shortened the period between holidays, the store began playing recorded Christmas music right after Thanksgiving, and it floated across the street to Spink’s office. Spink asked his secretary, the cherubic-looking, always smiling, long-suffering, asbestos-eared Frances, to call Walter Head at the department store and ask to have the music volume lowered. She did, and she reported, “Mr. Head told me to tell you he won’t give you advice on how to run the Sporting News and you don’t have to give him advice on how to run a department store.”

Spink’s response was unprintable, and he then took action, hiring a brass band to perform continuous renditions of “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.” An hour or two later, the phone rang, and Frances asked Spink to look out the window.

Walter Head was outside, waving a white flag.

Bob Broeg, sports editor and columnist emeritus at the Post, also shared a story that Spink used to tell on himself. He was, as everyone knew, an expert on tracking down people he wished to talk to (with the help of Frances and the legendary long-distance operators of the time) and his language, which could blister the paint on a door jamb, was  more styled for ship’s boiler room than a tea party.

Anyway, Spink was in New York in a cab when he noticed the driver’s name was Tommy Holmes, also the name of a Brooklyn Eagle sportswriter and Spink’s long-time Dodger correspondent. Spink knew the difference but he innocently asked the driver if he was related to the Tommy Holmes of Brooklyn.

“I’m not,” said the driver, “but some silly son of a bitch in St. Louis thinks I am. He calls me at all hours of the day and night asking for information on the Dodgers.”

By Joe Pollack

(Printed with permission of the St. Louis Journalism Review. Originally published 10/1999).

Process of Newspaper Illustration Pioneered by Post-Dispatch

The Chalk-plate process of illustrating papers, discovered and perfected in 1885 by Joseph W. Hoke, a St. Louis engraver, revolutionized the picture printing part of the newspaper business. In his book of reminiscences published in 1922, Augustus Thomas describes the process and tells of the use he made of it in his newspaper work on the Missouri Republican in the [eighteen] eighties. In her “Notable Women of  St. Louis,” Mrs. Charles P. Johnson credits Miss Martha H. Hoke, Joseph’s daughter and a local artist, with having made the first chalk-plate drawing published in a newspaper. It was the first of many pictures printed with our newspaper reports of the crime known in local history as the Maxwell-Preller murder…

Miss Lillian M. Brown, daughter of one of Missouri’s great public men B. Gratz Brown, was a young artist connected with the Hoke Engraving Plate Company in 1885. One day she visited the Post-Dispatch office with the elder Hoke (J.W., the head of the engraving company) to show what could be done on and with chalk-plates. Miss Brown copied on a prepared plate, using a pointed stylus for a pencil, the picture of a “snake charmer,” a woman caressing a snake. A cast or cut from the engraved chalk-plate was made by placing the latter like a matrix in a stereotyping box and filling the latter with molten type metal. A proof taken of the cut showed that the test had been a success. The printed picture was like the original from which the drawing was made, and true, of course, to the sketch itself. The managing editor, city editor and reporters all seemed pleased with the result.

An opportunity for another more practical test came a few days later and was promptly accepted by the Post-Dispatch. At the Southern Hotel the body of one of the guests had been found in a trunk in his room, and the Hoke Engraving Company was asked to make for the paper, as soon as possible, a chalk-plate drawing of the open trunk, showing the body doubled up inside.

Miss Martha Hoke was the artist selected for the undertaking. She first made a pencil sketch of the horrible scene before her and then from that picture made a chalk-plate drawing with a pointed stylus, the pointed end being so curved as to meet the plate at right angles. The second drawing, however, was not made near the trunk, where the odor was something never to be forgotten, but at the Post-Dispatch office, then on Market street, not far away. The chalk-plate drawing was soon in the stereotyping box, the hot metal poured in and a few seconds later the cut with the picture was ready for the composing room. Mr. Hoke thinks his sister began work about one o’clock and the picture was printed in the regular afternoon edition of the Post-Dispatch a couple hours later – the first publication of a chalk-plate picture. Before the end of 1886 thousands of such pictures were printed every day. Probably no other newspaper picture was ever written about so much as the one made by Miss Hoke and published by the Post-Dispatch that day, Tuesday, April 14, 1885, with a five-column report of the crime, three of the columns being on the front page. Conspicuous at the top of the reading matter on that front page were the chalk-plate picture two columns wide and (alongside of it) the customary head, in this case a six-line head with the word “Horrible” (not very sensational) at the top and fifty or more words…in nine lines at the bottom, comprising the “sixth line” of the big head. To Miss Hoke’s first picture of the open trunk showing the body of Preller inside had been added an underlining: “The Trunk When Opened, Showing Portion of Body, Sketched by Post-Dispatch Artist,” and below that a reproduction of what Maxwell had written on a piece of paper and places at the side of Preller’s head in the trunk: “So Perish All Traitors to the Great Cause,” the words being divided so as to make three short lines. The underlining for this was: “Facsimile of the Inscription in the Trunk, from Tracing Made by Post-Dispatch Artist.”

Then, below the chalk-plate work, in what might now be called a two-column “box” was this explanatory statement, probably written by the city editor, John F. Magner: “The above cuts give the exact  appearance of the trunk when opened and its contents, and the facsimile of the sensational inscription upon the inside of the trunk. In the cut of the trunk the position of the inscription was shown to the left of the corpse’s head. The inscription is a perfect facsimile of the original, having been obtained by the Post-Dispatch Artist, who, in spite of the overpowering stench, copied it by means of a piece of tracing paper.”

Miss Hoke’s name is not given in the drawing or elsewhere in the paper, and if the Post-Dispatch did any boasting about that really great and memorable historic feat, it remains undiscovered.

By William Kelsoe

(Originally published in the St. Louis Reference Record 1927).

Bill Everett’s Humorous Look at the First Days of His Career at the Post

My first day on the Post-Dispatch was almost my last.

The city editor was completely charming. He told me in a fatherly manner that nothing much would be expected of me for a time, that I was just to sit quietly and study the paper and the style. He cautioned me against hurt feelings in the event that he might find constructive criticism necessary. It would be in my best interest – nothing personal, he assured me.

He kept his word. No one noticed me, but after about six hours, I began to feel hunger pains. I approached the desk to find out about eating arrangements. I didn’t find out at once.

The assistant city editor was addressing one of the staff. “Mr. Dresser,” he was saying, “it is a cardinal principle that our reporters read the Post-Dispatch, and I hope you will, you may observe that when we refer to a man as a Corporal, we spell it out. When we refer to his rank before his name, we abbreviate it with Cpl.”

There was much more. Mr. Dresser was trying to say something, but rank had him whipped. He sounded as futile as Jack Benny trying to interrupt his sponsor. Finally brass ran out of brass, and more important, out of wind. Mr. Dresser had his chance. He said, “but sir, I did not write that story.” This information left the editor quite cold. He removed his glasses, wiped them, and then in measured tones said, “I think it is a damned good thing for you to keep in mind anyway.” Mr. Dresser left and I almost did.

My First Volunteer

The city editor summoned me to the desk and told me that there was a volunteer in the hall. He advised me to handle the situation with great acumen. Some of our biggest stories came in that way, he warned me.

I was a trifle nervous. This was a new and tremendous responsibility.

It turned out that the volunteer was more nervous than I. He peered over my left shoulder, then my right shoulder. I decided to follow suit. To the astonished persons in the hall waiting for the elevator, we must have looked like the pioneers of rock ‘n’ roll.

He told me his trouble. Every time he walked in the streets in south St. Louis, people called him bad names. I asked him for a few samples. They were bad. I suggested that he move to north St. Louis. He told me he had tried that, but they called him even worse names. I asked for a few samples. They were much worse.

I was worried. I could tell from his clothing that it would not be wise to offer the advice of Greeley, and it would not be seemly to tell him to jump into the river. I compromised. I told him that the Post-Dispatch would keep him in mind and that no one would call him such horrible names again, unless justified.

He was extremely grateful, shook hands with me and wept a bit. He started for the elevator, and then it dawned on me that he had asked me for my name. I rushed back to him. “How,” I asked, “did you happen to ask for me?” He said it had been quite simple. He had been in the day before and was told that Mr. Everett, the man in charge of the “Bad Name Department,” would be in on the following day.

The Strike That Failed

I was a full-fledged reporter now. I had been there one week and called the assistant city editor by his first name. He told me to meet a photographer in the lobby and to be careful. He said there was information that eight meat packers were to cross a picket line at a cold storage firm in north St. Louis. He warned me that heads could fall and blood flow in the streets.

It was a hot August morning, and I was scared. The photographer didn’t do much to reassure me. He advised me that strikes could be nasty. He said we should look the situation over. We did. Finally, after driving in the area for 20 minutes, we saw one picket with an umbrella, and he was about 75 years old. We gathered courage and approached.

Soon we were joined at the one-man picket line by a young Irish cop who had a pencil, a crossword puzzle and a gripe. The cop said he had only four words to go to finish the puzzle, that he had never finished one and that his wife always made fun of him because he couldn’t finish one.

I interrupted to ask the picket what would happen if the packers crossed his line. He pointed to some men entering the storage company. “Them fellers have already crossed, now how about the puzzle?” he asked.

I went to the nearest telephone and called the desk. It was too early for a beer, but the phone was in a tavern. I told the editor that the only controversy was with a young cop, a picket and our photographer over a crossword puzzle. “Stay there,” Sam said.

 I went back. They were down to two words and were becoming very excited. I went back to the tavern. I reported that they were down to two words. I was told, grimly, to stay there. I went back to the trio. They were wildly excited. They needed only one word to complete the puzzle. I went back to the friendly tavern and telephone. “Sam,” I said, “all they need is a three-letter word for the Queen of Fairies.”

There was a silence for the matter of a few seconds. A deep intake of breath, and then: “It is M for moron, A for addle-brained, B for bastard, MAB, and you, you SOB, you come on in, and now!”

(Originally published in Page One, 1958. Bill Everett began working as a general assignment reporter at the Post-Dispatch in 1944.)

“Little Mac,” as He Was Called, Was a Principled Man of the Press

About 1880, St. Louis entered upon a crisis. The fire of 1849, the cholera epidemics, the Civil war, none of these so tried St. Louis as did the ten or twelve years’ period beginning about the year mentioned. The decade of greatest danger that time might be called. Chicago boomed with the prodigious development of the northwest. Kansas City and Omaha suffered from the exaggerated methods of Chicago. Wichita and a dozen other places in the west went wild with the fever of real estate speculation. St. Louis almost stood still. Cities west and south confidently expected to outstrip her before the end of the century.

The period was one of revolution in material conditions. Railroads were usurping the waterways. The community, which had grown strong and wealthy, which had defied the panic of 1873, which had shown more population than Chicago in 1870 – to some extent a fiction – was turning slowly to the new channels of commerce. St. Louis was advancing a little, backing almost as much as the gain, using first one paddle wheel and then the other, like an immense, unwieldy steamboat getting ready to go ahead after having made a landing. The opportunity was [Joseph] McCullagh’s. One day, in 1881, he came into the local room and said to the city editor: “We will have a railroad department. Make all you can of it.” He gave explicit and detailed instructions. Up to that time the railroad news of the Globe-Democrat, as with other papers, had been a matter of a half-column, more or less, as the notes of daily incidents and accidents seemed to justify. “The Railroads” of the Globe-Democrat became at once a dominant feature, – three, four, five columns, a page if so much space could be well filled. Not for a week or for a month, but for years. McCullagh taught a lesson of commercial salvation for St. Louis.

But this innovation was only one element of his broad policy to build up St. Louis. A moving conviction in his mind was that St. Louis must grow with the Globe-Democrat. “The towline” as he called the paper’s influence was never coiled. He sent a correspondent to Philadelphia to make a study of the building associations and he stimulated the idea in St. Louis by giving a great deal of space to these institutions here. He sent correspondents and artists south, west and north to write and to sketch, paying their way and dealing with whatever they conceived to be interesting…

When the Gould railway system was tied up with a strike which seemed to McCullagh to be unjustifiable and the result of dictatorial willfulness on the part of the leaders rather than of just grievances, he attacked the situation vigorously. After the trouble was over, Jay Gould met McCullagh in the rotunda of the Southern hotel. He wanted to express appreciation of the course of the Globe-Democrat. McCullagh said the Globe-Democrat had done only what seemed to be right for a newspaper having the interests of the community and the southwest at heart. Gould replied he believed that, but the railroad would like to show its good will in some tangible way. McCullagh suggested that St. Louis business men had been trying to get a fast mail service on the Missouri Pacific westward. If the railroad felt like showing its good will toward the city and the Globe-Democrat, that might be the opportunity. Gould turned to one of the officers of the road and asked that preparations be commenced at once to install the service. This was the first of the fast mail trains started out of St. Louis.

(From St. Louis, the Fourth City by Walter Barlow Stevens, 1911).

THE GLOBE-DEMOCRAT’S GOLDEN CENTURY
Story of newspaper is an absorbing one of outstanding personalities conscientiously performing a public trust
by Robert Willier

St. Louis in the 1850’s was not the calm. deliberate, orderly city it is today. Its 80,000 residents, confined largely to an area bordered on the west by today’s Eighteenth street, were a composite of English, French, Irish and German – frontiersmen, aggressive, energetic, impatient.

From varied backgrounds, faced with the common struggle of creating a new life under great hardships, they tended to disagree violently on many things, notably politics.

Mob violence was not uncommon; indeed, Mayor Kennett’s election on Apr. 5, 1852, was attended by a riot which involved most of the city, resulted in one death and the destruction of numerous houses. One section of the mob, not content with small arms, obtained two brass six-pounders from the armory and fixed them in position “so as to sweep with murderous certainty either side of Second street, on either side of which were immense crowds of Germans.”

True, St. Louis was not the raucous life of Gold Rush towns, but living here at mid-century was at least rugged, filled with dynamic atmosphere of competition, of conflicting ideas and of differences normally arising from a melting pot of many races, creeds and backgrounds suddenly thrown together. To add to the confusion, there was a constant flow of people to the West, through this gateway, the “jumping off point” of the early settlers.

There was one unifying influence – the press. Just as Colonial America had early realized the need for a communications medium – Benjamin Harris, an exiled English newspaper editor, having issued his “Publick Occurrences Both Foreign and Domestick” in Boston on Sept. 25, 1690 – so early St. Louis found comfort in its first paper, the “Missouri Gazette,” issued July 12, 1808, the first newspaper ever published west of the Mississippi.

Seven years later an “opposition” paper, the “Western Journal” appeared, and from then on till mid-century there were numerous journals, “Enquirer,” “Beacon,” “Herald,” “People’s Organ and Reveille,” to name but a few. These all had their effect as a means of bringing issues into focus and in generating public opinion. Mortality of the papers was high, however, reflecting the problems of publishing and, to a certain extent, the fact that the papers were “one-man” operations.

From the 1850’s on, the pattern of journalism became more fixed, particularly in the morning field. The “Democrat,” for example, established in 1852, has had an unbroken history of 100 years. It became the “Globe-Democrat” in 1875 and has continued under that name to the present.

In the evening newspaper field, the “Globe-Democrat’s” contemporary today, the “Post-Dispatch,” emerged under its present name in 1878. (Joseph Pulitzer purchased the “Dispatch” at public auction in front of the Old Courthouse in December of the same year, the price – $2500.) Just as its ancestry might be traced to July 3, 1838, with the founding of the “St. Louis Evening Gazette,” later to become the “Dispatch,” so the “Globe-Democrat,” which acquired the “St. Louis Republic” in 1919, could claim ancestry back to 1808, since the predecessor of the “Republic” was the “Morning Gazette.”

That only one morning and one evening newspaper eventually should survive in St. Louis is not out of the ordinary. Alfred M. Lee, in his history of American journalism, pointed out that there have been some 16,000 dailies launched in the United States since 1783. By 1952 there were only 1873 dailies left out of the 16,000. This high mortality rate, accentuated in recent years, is mute evidence of the many problems, including constantly increasing costs, of publishing daily newspapers today.

Inevitably those who today can recall the “Globe-Democrat” before 1900, do so with chief reference to a personality known as “Little Mack” – editor Joseph B. McCullagh. Like other great editors, publishers or proprietors of the paper, McCullagh helped shape metropolitan St. Louis’ destiny.

But the man who began the “Democrat” (of today’s “Globe-Democrat”) was William McKee, who entered the field of journalism as owner of a paper called the “Barnburner,” in which his anti-slavery sentiments were strongly expressed. It was McKee’s “Barnburner,” its name changed to “Signal,” which became the “Democrat” in 1852, and which was strengthened by the addition of the “Union” a year later.

McKee was not unaware of the dangers of voicing unpopular sentiments of criticism, especially in a city which was Southern in character and politically Democratic. The proprietor of the “Union” (under its new name of “Argus”), one Andrew Jackson Davis, was assaulted on the street by an irate reader “in such a manner that he died a day or two later.” The assailant was tried, convicted and fined $500.

With the aid of his associates. B. Gratz Brown and Francis P. Blair, McKee hammered away on the anti-slavery theme, despite the antagonism it created in this border state. To say the campaign had repercussions, especially in profits, is to put it mildly since it took some seven years for the company to pay off its $15,000 debt for the purchase of the “Union.”

Under McKee’s leadership the “Democrat” swung its weight behind Lincoln, McKee himself having been influential in obtaining Lincoln’s nomination. The “Democrat” fought so vigorously against secession that the Great Emancipator said it had done more “to preserve the Union than 20 regiments.” But the “Democrat’s” stand was often assailed, mobs collecting at the “Democrat” building to demand a change. Soldiers from the armory had to be called to break up these mobs. McKee would give no ground; indeed, if anything he guided the paper’s writers (he wrote very little himself) into stronger reiteration of their stand.

Following the Civil War the “Democrat” flourished under the guidance of McKee and his partners, Daniel M. Houser and George W. Fishback. Houser, who had been with McKee in earlier newspaper ventures, was the mastermind of the business office. It was he and McKee who agreed to hire a high-priced editor named McCullagh in 1871, a man who had gained a national reputation as a war correspondent covering the campaign of Gen. Grant.

This step and others not to the liking of Fishback resulted in a dissolution of the partnership, with the “Democrat” being sold to Fishback for $456,100. Within a matter of months the team of McKee and Houser were back in business with a paper they named the “Globe,” and within a year they had McCullagh as their editor.

The competition of three morning dailies (Republic, Globe and Democrat) was too much for the “Democrat.” McKee and Houser, now aided by a third associate whose family name is familiar, a nephew of McKee, Simeone Ray, bought it for $125,000 less than Fishback had paid for it.

“Little Mack,” the new managing editor of the “Globe-Democrat,” the man who had come to American from Dublin at 11 and who started as a compositor on the “St. Louis Christian Advocate” in 1858, was at last in his element. The “Globe-Democrat” was his only love. He lived it day and night.

A bachelor, short and somewhat stout, but with an impressive hard-boiled demeanor, McCullagh made newspaper history. The newspaper interview, with public figures permitting direct quotations – Little Mack invented it. The short, pungent, one-sentence paragraph – he is said to have originated it. The use of complete wire service – McCullagh used so much the “Globe-Democrat” became famous as the largest wire service newspaper outside New York and Little Mack found himself immortalized by Eugene Field in a poem that ends:

  “From Africa’s sunny fountains and Siloam’s shady rills,
  He gathers in his telegrams and Houser pays the bills.”

First and foremost, McCullagh was a great reporter, with a sense of news and timing, based upon his own wide experience, that kept his staff scurrying at top speed. He knew what to expect of reporters and they of him, especially after they read his 48 points for good reporting.

As editor, however, Little Mack truly hit his stride. His crusading spirit was an invigorating element in the ‘80s and ‘90s, perhaps unequalled in St. Louis’ history. Why, he asked, was St. Louis so slow in railroad development and service? He began a campaign, sent reporters into the Southwest to show the developments resulting from railroad service; he opened his own railroad department; he editorialized.

Ably assisted by Daniel Houser, who succeeded McKee as president, he even financed the first fast mail services for St. Louis.

In many other ways he “boomed” metropolitan St. Louis, being credited, incidentally, with originating the word “booming.” To reward him for his efforts, a group of citizens offered him $25,000 to purchase a residence, but, he declined the offer for fear “they might come around later and try to run the paper.”

McCullagh dared match editorial swords with anyone. He is quoted as saying on one occasion “why use a barrel of vinegar when a couple drops of prussic acid will do the job?” Among his most noted campaigns was the one in 1878-79, now referred to as the “gambler’s roundup.”

Gambling had become big business, being afforded police protection through bribery. McCullagh saw it as a blight upon the city, the “cause of suicides, embezzlements and thefts to cover gambling losses.” Only an aroused public opinion, he determined, could force the cleanup required.

The public did become aroused as a result of the “Globe-Democrat’s” articles, features and editorials. A grand jury was impaneled with McCullagh as foreman. A new anti-gambling law was rushed through the State Legislature. And the gambling ring, together with its kingpins, was effectively smashed.

Before the turn of the century the “Globe-Democrat” had established its niche in the newspaper field in metropolitan St. Louis. It was a “world” paper, proudly printing on its front page a map and slogan “All the News of All the Earth.” By wire and special correspondents the paper brought to its readers a wealth of information from all parts of the globe.

This, of course, was in striking contrast to earlier journalism here since, before the telegraph in St. Louis (1849) news was primarily local and personal. But the “Globe-Democrat” realized the avid interest of readers in things “foreign and domestic,” surpassed all other papers in producing the world-wide coverage desired.

In 1897, on a single Sunday in July the “Globe-Democrat” printed 65,000 words of telegraphed copy in addition to 35,000 words of Associated Press telegraphed copy. Here, for example, are a few typical headlines from the front page on Jan. 1, 1909: Gloom in England, telling of Great Britain’s “miscalculation and disaster” in South Africa; Germany Objects, a story about German protests over the seizure of one of their mail steamers by the British; Bomb Plot Foiled in Manilla; and Naval Officers Disturbed (Dateline: Washington), because some Navy order automatically gave special privilege to certain officers while others had to use the “regular red tape method” of getting the same privilege.

These stories and others from outside the city occupied over 80 per cent of the front page. While this percentage of “national” vs. “local” news did not hold throughout the rest of the paper, there is no doubt that the editorial policy was to give weight to the national and international news the subscribers wanted to read.

In later years this policy has been modified only to the extent of providing a more even balance of news, with emphasis naturally shifting as events justify. By gradual evolution the “Globe-Democrat” has adapted itself to its geographical area – the “49th State” – to the likes of morning newspaper readers, to the effect of new means of communications – radio and television – and has emerged with increasing circulation, prestige and influence.

The opening of the Twentieth Century marked the beginning of an era in which one personality – E. Lansing Ray – stands out above all others in the “Globe-Democrat’s” second 50 years. While he did not officially take the helm until 1918, he was on his way up through the ranks starting in 1903.

Like McKee in the first 50 years, Ray has proved to be a man capable of great leadership without personally intruding himself into the limelight of publicity. The paper he has directed for so many years is living evidence of his ability and personality.
His personal antipathy toward the limelight has tended somewhat to restrain the paper from extravagant claims and back-patting. The test of the paper, as he has viewed it, has been the paper itself, day by day, the kind of job it was doing, the service it was rendering its community and readers.

Avoiding unnecessary controversy, the “Globe-Democrat” has nonetheless been a constant source of information about important issues and needs of this area. For example, it can point to numerous articles and editorials advocating smoke elimination. But the paper makes no claim to having single-handedly cleared the city of smoke. It is content to say it did its share.

As is well known, a paper’s editorials are the reflection of opinions and policies of the publisher. Examination of American journalism shows the widest possible divergence of editorials as might be expected. Biting, sarcastic, controversial, liberal, conservative, instructive – take your choice and you find successful papers which regularly use one or more of these types.

For the “Globe-Democrat,” since the acquisition of the “Republic,” the policy has been non-partisan, instructive, interpretive and reflective. The publisher on several occasions has explained that he does not approve the paper “dictating to or lecturing” on every subject. Except on major issues the paper prefers to let readers make up their own minds after presenting factual news coverage and editorial material of interest and value.

The value of this approach can be seen in the Pulitzer Prize winning editorial this year, an editorial entitled “The Low Estate of Public Morals,” written by Lou La Coss, “Globe-Democrat” staff member since 1924 and editor of the editorial page since 1941. La Coss, a journalist of national renown, has invigorated the paper’s editorial page, added to its influence and prestige.

A review of the “Globe-Democrat’s” editorials in recent years shows it has spoken out vigorously on major issues. And in the beginning of its second century there may be anticipated an increasing tempo of aggressive editorials because the publisher views these as critical times in our national history – critical in the same sense as McKee viewed the pre-Civil War era, as McCullagh viewed the post-Civil War era.

At the turn of the century, following McCullagh’s death, the “Globe-Democrat’s” managing editor was Capt. Henry King, whose contribution to St. Louis journalism rests chiefly on his development of a well-rounded paper – in news, features, society, sports, financial and editorial. He believed in giving readers their money’s worth, a Sunday edition, for example, consisting of four parts: I and II of news, III features, and IV sports and society.

One Sunday chosen at random in the files in 1900 showed the feature section containing stories on the Holy Year, Part II of a serial by Bret Harte, and an intriguingly intimate story on the home life of Queen Victoria. This section, as well as the entire paper, contained an excellent representation of advertising by national and local concerns.

Typical of the writing was an editorial referring to Gov. Lon B. Stevens as the “sapient son of a sainted sire,” and another which said “the police are so deeply occupied assessing the force and making presents to the Police Board that reports of burglaries annoy them.”

As might be expected, there was a great rivalry between the “Globe-Democrat” and the “Republic.” These morning dailies usually ended up on different sides of the political fence, and not as their names would indicate. For the most part, the “Republic” favored the Democratic party while the “Globe-Democrat” was strongly Republican.

When it is recalled that the rivalry of these two papers began in 1852, that the “Republic” in its last decade was owned principally by one of St. Louis’ most representative citizens, David R. Francis, and that the “Republic” represented a direct line of journalistic practice to the very beginnings of the city, some idea can be gained of the problem that faced President Ray when the “Republic” was purchased in 1919.

The physical absorption was easy, for a newspaper is not a building, brick and steel and concrete, as Francis had learned when he poured hundreds of thousands of dollars of his own money into an effort to find a “formula” to make the paper successful.
The problem was personality – the personality of the “Republic.” For every newspaper worthy of the name is a living, breathing personality, as full of character and moral fiber as the men who run it, who are its reporters, its salesmen, its editors. Great newspapers, reflecting great editors and staffs, have been published from physical surroundings that were little more than a printing shop. But in the language, the makeup, the “faithfulness of their public trust” these papers were the mirrors of great journalists.

To absorb one personality within another is a real problem, and Publisher Ray solved it in a manner that has proved its effectiveness through succeeding years. Ray, through his editorial page editor , Casper Yost, proclaimed the paper now to be no longer politically partisan: “The Globe-Democrat is an independent newspaper, printing the news impartially, supporting what it believes to be right, and opposing what it believes to be wrong, without regard to party politics.” This statement of policy has appeared on the masthead of the “Globe-Democrat” every day since that time.

Eliminating political partisanship did not, of course, infer that the paper would not editorially support candidates it considered best for public office. Nor did it mean the paper would not editorially support or criticize policies of either party. The paper has indorsed candidates and policies as its conscience dictated in the best interest of the city, state and nation without regard to party affiliation.

The “Globe-Democrat,” which had opposed President Wilson as a candidate, surprised its readers by supporting President Wilson’s war policies and his League of Nations, while newspapers all over the country were objecting to his “high-handed” procedure. In other ways the “Globe-Democrat” gained stature with its readers by its honest efforts, as the only morning paper, to produce a highly readable, interesting, entertaining and reliable publication.

On the retirement of Capt. King in 1915, Ray, then secretary of the company, was instrumental in establishing a change in policy which has governed the reporting and interpretation of news since that time. He divorced the editorial page and the news departments, establishing each as a separate unit. Henceforth the editorial page, through its own editor, reflected the policies and thinking of the publisher while the news department, under the managing editor, handled the news.

Another “Mack,” this time a noted reporter-editor, Joseph McAuliffe, was installed as managing editor. He was succeeded in 1941 by the present managing editor, Lon M. Burrowes. Burrowes and McAuliffe joined the “Globe-Democrat” on the same day in 1913 and, at the time the change in managing editors was made in 1915, McAuliffe was city editor and Burrowes telegraph editor. Later Burrowes became news editor, directly under McAuliffe, and was ready to step in and maintain the continuity or direction which has extended for more than 35 years.

Casper Yost, then Sunday editor, became the first editor of the editorial page and was succeeded in 1941 by Louis La Coss, veteran news, feature and special editorial writer.

On the “publishing side,” the continuity has existed the full 100 years of the paper. Sons of Dan Houser – W.M. Houser and D.B. Houser – and a grandson, W.C. Houser, have held executive positions down through the years. Charles H. McKee, nephew of one of the founders, was president of the paper for a period. And, of course, the present publisher is a son of Simeon Ray, nephew of William McKee, one of the founders.

The sequence received a tragic blow shortly after World War II with the death, at age 35, of E. Lansing Ray, Jr., who was to have succeeded his father. Young Ray came to the paper in 1932 and, until he was called into service in 1941, had trained for the day that he would become publisher by working in virtually every department of the newspaper. In his early days he rode delivery trucks, sold ads, acted as a reporter – following fires and the Cardinals, covering Jefferson City and the local news front.

With this sound background, he moved into the executive branch of the business and was associate publisher and secretary at the time of his death in 1946.

Young Lansing, a popular and active figure among the city’s junior executive group, had been president of the Advertising Club and prominent in other civic activities prior to being called into service.

During World War II he served with highest distinction as an officer in the Army Intelligence Corps. He was awarded the Legion of Merit for “exceptionally meritorious conduct in the performance of outstanding service in the Mediterranean theater of operations” and was cited for setting up the counter-intelligence network in that area. He was invalided home in 1944 and, when discharged from the Army in March, 1945, held the rank of Lieutenant Colonel.

When E. Lansing Ray, Jr., died in 1946, the logical choice for succession within the family circle became James C. Burkham, a nephew of the publisher. Like young Ray, Burkham had learned the business from the ground up. He had just about completed this training when he, too, was called into service in 1942. Like Lansing Jr., Burkham was also detailed to the Counter-Intelligence Corps of the Army.

Upon return from the service he moved into the executive ranks at the “Globe-Democrat” and immediately displayed the qualities and love and understanding of the publishing business which Ray Sr. was seeking. Burkham became president of the company in 1949, with Ray retaining his three-way position of publisher, editor and chairman of the board.

Honors and high positions have come to many “Globe-Democrat” personnel through the years. It was the training ground for such men as Eugene Field, Capt. John H. Bowen, Henry M. Stanley (the explorer), John Hay, Myron T. Herrick and John G. Nicolay.

 Publisher Ray, who was for many years a curator of the University of Missouri, has received many honors but values most his distinction of having been for 29 years a director of the Associated Press.Only four men in the whole history of the AP had served longer as a director, when Ray retired in 1951. During that period he served two terms as first vice president. Another distinction he values is that of having been one of the small handful of St. Louisans who backed Lindbergh in his historic flight.

Not particularly enthusiastic about flying himself, Ray nevertheless had made certain that the “Globe-Democrat” was in the forefront of aviation promotion. In it he saw the significance that McKee and “Little Mack” had seen in the coming of railroads during the “Globe-Democrat’s” first half-century. So the prospect of demonstrating the Atlantic could be flown non-stop, plus the prospect of bringing credit to St. Louis if the flight were successful, was a “natural” for Ray.

The “Globe-Democrat’s” interest in making St. Louis an important air center has continued through the years. Immediately after World War II, for example, the “Globe-Democrat’s” front-page reports on the condition of Lambert Field, including the reference to “more wind and words than concrete,” were credited with stimulating improvements which have kept the city very prominently in the world aviation picture.

Ray’s civic interest has caused the “Globe-Democrat” to sponsor a year-round program of community projects of interest not alone in St. Louis but to the whole 49th State.

These projects embrace a wide range of interests, but if there is any preponderance it is to the attention given to children and to youth. Quizdown, soon to be replaced by a Spelling Bee, and the High School Revues – both co-sponsored by Radio Station KWK, in which the “Globe-Democrat” owns a minority interest – are designed for elementary and high school students. The annual Soap Box Derby interests boys from 11 to 16, while the Golden Gloves, probably the most popular of all “Globe-Democrat” promotions, provides healthful training and good sport for hundreds of young men from 13 years of age on up, every year.

Among the most recent “Globe-Democrat” public service projects are two which have developed tremendous interest, both among participants and among the general public of the 49th State. They are the annual Christmas Choral Pageant and the Missouri Soil Conservation Awards program.

When the St. Louis Community Chest Fund of 1930 failed by over $50,000 to reach its goal, the “Globe-Democrat” guaranteed that amount, then put on a campaign that carried it over the top.

Now in its fourth building in a century, the “Globe-Democrat has production facilities which are a far cry from the old Ramage press that did well to produce 200 “Missouri Gazettes” a day. But the intricate machinery and methods of today’s modern newspaper plant are not as impressive to the reader as the single paper he gets each morning – its appearance and content.

To make reading easier, the “Globe-Democrat” a few years ago changed to a style of type face and make-up considered by experts to be among the best there is today. They are easy on the eye and easy for the reader who must get his news in a hurry. Furthermore, the “Globe-Democrat” eliminated the “jump-over” from Page 1, being one of the first papers in the country to do so.

For its Sunday readers the “Globe-Democrat” provides, in addition to its regular sections and comics, three “supplements” known respectively as “This Week,” “American Weekly” and “Globe-Democrat Magazine,” a veritable department store of reading matter.

The area served by the “Globe-Democrat” in 1952 is a far cry from that in 1852. Today the paper provides the only morning newspaper in a metropolitan district of 1,681,300 people. By actual survey, however, the paper’s influence and readership encompass a much larger area, known as the “49th State,” which has a population of over 3,384,000.

In serving this great industrial area of the heartland of the Mississippi Valley, the “Globe-Democrat,” ending its first century, and Publisher Ray, nearing a half century of service, can be certain this morning daily newspaper is progressing, is doing its utmost for its readers. It is, therefore, fulfilling its public trust.

In many parts of the world, the lights have gone out on a free press. Argentina, China, Czechoslovakia, Poland, the list goes on endlessly of countries where dictators or Communists control the press to their own ends.

At least half the world’s population today knows nothing but what their government wants them to know. They are spoon-fed the propaganda by radio and the press, that keeps them servile, subservient.

But here in America, here in St. Louis, we have freedom of the press, one of the great freedoms for which our forefathers fought and died, a freedom which may easily be the key to the success of our way of life.

It is a tribute to the men like McKee and McCullagh and Ray that they have lived up to the trust placed in them in their use of this great freedom in publishing the “Globe-Democrat.” The tribute has in large measure already been paid by the simple fact of the “Globe-Democrat’s” 100 years of existence.

(Originally published in the St. Louis Globe-Democrat 11/9/1952. Author Robert Willier was the senior partner of the St. Louis public relations company Robert A. Willier and Associates.)