Joseph Pulitzer - Statue Of Liberty National Monument (U.S. National Park Service)

Thank you my friend SGT (Join to see) for making us aware that by August 11, 1885, $100,000 had been raised for the pedestal for Statue of Liberty.
"When the American Committee for the Statue of Liberty ran out of funds for the Statue's pedestal in 1884, newspaper publisher Joseph Pulitzer came to the rescue. Through urging the American public to donate money towards the pedestal in his newspaper New York World, Pulitzer raised over $100,000 in six months- more than enough money to ensure the pedestal's completion. As an article published in New York World on March 16, 1885 argued,
We must raise the money! The World is the people's paper, and now it appeals to the people to come forward and raise the money.

Captains Of Industry - Joseph Pulitzer
"Captains of Industry was envisioned as an inspirational, uplifting and public relations vehicle as all of North America recovered from The Great Depression. Recorded in the early 1930s by Atlas Radio Corporation of Canada, the transcribed canon comprised fifty-two biographical dramatizations of the more noteworthy industrialists and philanthropists of the late 19th century and early 20th century. Atlas Radio Corporation was founded in 1921 by David Louis Harris, a Jewish immigrant who became one of the pioneering radio, television and electronics manufacturers throughout Canada and The United States."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZfSQrKjdMI

Images:
1. Picture of Joseph Pulitzer superimposed on the front page of The Pulitzer World newspaper
2. Joseph Pulitzer, The New York World, from the American Editors series (N1) for Allen & Ginter Cigarettes Brands 1887; Issued by Allen & Ginter American
3. Newspaper magnate Joseph Pulitzer married Kate Davis, a cousin of Confederate President Jefferson Davis, in Washington in 1878.
4. Joseph Pulitzer circa 1875 in St. Louis, Missouri [St. Louis had about ten newspapers operating in 1878 when Joseph Pulitzer purchased the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. His lean, tall figure and prominent nose made him an easy target for ridicule, and he was often the object of caricature for cartoonists. In his early years, he suffered much teasing about his appearance and Hungarian accent.]



Biographies
1. pulitzer.org/page/biography-joseph-Pulitzer
2. jewishvirtuallibrary.org/joseph-Pulitzer

1. Background from {[ https://www.pulitzer.org/page/biography-joseph-pulitzer]}

"Biography of Joseph Pulitzer By Seymour Topping
Joseph Pulitzer was born to a wealthy family of Magyar-Jewish origin in Mako, Hungary on April 10, 1847. The elder Pulitzer (a grain merchant) retired in Budapest and Joseph grew up and was educated there in private schools and by tutors.

Early years
Restive at the age of seventeen, the gangling 6'2" youth decided to become a soldier and tried in turn to enlist in the Austrian Army, Napoleon's Foreign Legion for duty in Mexico, and the British Army for service in India. He was rebuffed because of weak eyesight and frail health, which were to plague him for the rest of his life. However, in Hamburg, Germany, he encountered a bounty recruiter for the U.S. Union Army and contracted to enlist as a substitute for a draftee, a procedure permitted under the Civil War draft system.
At Boston he jumped ship and, as the legend goes, swam to shore, determined to keep the enlistment bounty for himself rather than leave it to the agent. Pulitzer collected the bounty by enlisting for a year in the Lincoln Cavalry, which suited him since there were many Germans in the unit. He was fluent in German and French but spoke very little English. Later, he worked his way to St. Louis. While doing odd jobs there, such as muleteer, baggage handler, and waiter, he immersed himself in the city's Mercantile Library, studying English and the law.

Beginning of a career
His great career opportunity came in a unique manner in the library's chess room. Observing the game of two habitues, he astutely critiqued a move and the players, impressed, engaged Pulitzer in conversation. The players were editors of the leading German language daily, Westliche Post, and a job offer followed.
Four years later, in 1872, the young Pulitzer, who had built a reputation as a tireless enterprising journalist, was offered a controlling interest in the paper by the nearly bankrupt owners. At age 25, Pulitzer became a publisher and there followed a series of shrewd business deals from which he emerged in 1878 as the owner of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and a rising figure on the journalistic scene.

Personal changes
Earlier in the same year, he and Kate Davis, a socially prominent Washingtonian woman, were married in the Protestant Episcopal Church. The Hungarian immigrant youth - once a vagrant on the slum streets of St. Louis and taunted as "Joey the Jew" - had been transformed. Now he was an American citizen and as speaker, writer, and editor had mastered English extraordinarily well. Elegantly dressed, wearing a handsome, reddish-brown beard and pince-nez glasses, he mixed easily with the social elite of St. Louis, enjoying dancing at fancy parties and horseback riding in the park. This lifestyle was abandoned abruptly when he came into the ownership of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
James Wyman Barrett, the last city editor of The New York World, records in his biography Joseph Pulitzer and His World how Pulitzer, in taking hold of the Post-Dispatch, "worked at his desk from early morning until midnight or later, interesting himself in every detail of the paper." Appealing to the public to accept that his paper was their champion, Pulitzer splashed investigative articles and editorials assailing government corruption, wealthy tax-dodgers, and gamblers. This populist appeal was effective, circulation mounted, and the paper prospered. Pulitzer would have been pleased to know that in the conduct of the Pulitzer Prize system which he later established, more awards in journalism would go to exposure of corruption than to any other subject.

Failing health
Pulitzer paid a price for his unsparingly rigorous work at his newspaper. His health was undermined and, with his eyes failing, Pulitzer and his wife set out in 1883 for New York to board a ship on a doctor-ordered European vacation. Stubbornly, instead of boarding the steamer in New York, he met with Jay Gould, the financier, and negotiated the purchase of The New York World,which was in financial straits.
Putting aside his serious health concerns, Pulitzer immersed himself in its direction, bringing about what Barrett describes as a "one-man revolution" in the editorial policy, content, and format of The World. He employed some of the same techniques that had built up the circulation of the Post-Dispatch. He crusaded against public and private corruption, filled the news columns with a spate of sensationalized features, made the first extensive use of illustrations, and staged news stunts. In one of the most successful promotions, The World raised public subscriptions for the building of a pedestal at the entrance to the New York harbor so that the Statue of Liberty, which was stranded in France awaiting shipment, could be emplaced.

More difficulties
The formula worked so well that in the next decade the circulation of The World in all its editions climbed to more than 600,000, and it reigned as the largest circulating newspaper in the country. But unexpectedly Pulitzer himself became a victim of the battle for circulation when Charles Anderson Dana, publisher of The Sun, frustrated by the success of The World launched vicious personal attacks on him as "the Jew who had denied his race and religion." The unrelenting campaign was designed to alienate New York's Jewish community from The World.
Pulitzer's health was fractured further during this ordeal and in 1890, at the age of 43, he withdrew from the editorship of The World and never returned to its newsroom. Virtually blind, having in his severe depression succumbed also to an illness that made him excruciatingly sensitive to noise, Pulitzer went abroad frantically seeking cures. He failed to find them, and the next two decades of his life he spent largely in soundproofed "vaults," as he referred to them, aboard his yacht, Liberty, in the "Tower of Silence" at his vacation retreat in Bar Harbor, Maine, and at his New York mansion. During those years, although he traveled very frequently, Pulitzer managed, nevertheless, to maintain the closest editorial and business direction of his newspapers. To ensure secrecy in his communications he relied on a code that filled a book containing some 20,000 names and terms.

War years
During the years 1896 to 1898 Pulitzer was drawn into a bitter circulation battle with William Randolph Hearst's Journal in which there were no apparent restraints on sensationalism or fabrication of news. When the Cubans rebelled against Spanish rule, Pulitzer and Hearst sought to outdo each other in whipping up outrage against the Spanish. Both called for war against Spain after the U.S. battleship Maine mysteriously blew up and sank in Havana harbor on February 15, 1898. Congress reacted to the outcry with a war resolution. After the four-month war, Pulitzer withdrew from what had become known as "yellow journalism."
The World became more restrained and served as the influential editorial voice on many issues of the Democratic Party. In the view of historians, Pulitzer's lapse into "yellow journalism" was outweighed by his public service achievements. He waged courageous and often successful crusades against corrupt practices in government and business. He was responsible to a large extent for passage of antitrust legislation and regulation of the insurance industry.
In 1909, The World exposed a fraudulent payment of $40 million by the United States to the French Panama Canal Company. The federal government lashed back at The World by indicting Pulitzer for criminally libeling President Theodore Roosevelt and the banker J.P. Morgan, among others. Pulitzer refused to retreat, and The World persisted in its investigation. When the courts dismissed the indictments, Pulitzer was applauded for a crucial victory on behalf of freedom of the press.
In May 1904, writing in The North American Review in support of his proposal for the founding of a school of journalism, Pulitzer summarized his credo: "Our Republic and its press will rise or fall together. An able, disinterested, public-spirited press, with trained intelligence to know the right and courage to do it, can preserve that public virtue without which popular government is a sham and a mockery. A cynical, mercenary, demagogic press will produce in time a people as base as itself. The power to mould the future of the Republic will be in the hands of the journalists of future generations."

1912 - present
In 1912, one year after Pulitzer's death aboard his yacht, the Columbia School of Journalism was founded, and the first Pulitzer Prizes were awarded in 1917 under the supervision of the advisory board to which he had entrusted his mandate. (Relevant extracts from Pulitzer's will may be read here.) Pulitzer envisioned an advisory board composed principally of newspaper publishers. Others would include the president of Columbia University and scholars, and "persons of distinction who are not journalists or editors."
Today, the 19-member board is composed mainly of leading editors and columnists. Four academics also serve, including the president of Columbia University and the dean of the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism. The dean and the administrator of the prizes are non-voting members. The chair rotates annually to the most senior member or members. The board is self-perpetuating in the election of members. Voting members may serve three terms of three years. In the selection of the members of the board and of the juries, close attention is given to professional excellence and affiliation, as well as diversity in terms of gender, ethnic background, geographical distribution and size of news organization.

Pulitzer and His Prizes
This biography – along with a linked history of The Pulitzer Prizes and guide to the administration of the Prizes – was written by Seymour Topping, former Administrator of the Pulitzer Prizes and now San Paolo Professor Emeritus of International Journalism at Columbia University. The three-part work was adapted from his foreword to Who's Who of Pulitzer Prize Winners by Elizabeth A. Brennan and Elizabeth C. Clarage, © 1999 by The Oryx Press. Used with permission from The Oryx Press, 4041 N. Central Ave., Suite 700 Phoenix, AZ 85012.
From 1993 to 2002, Topping administered the Prizes and was San Paolo Professor of International Journalism at Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism. After serving in World War II, Topping worked for The Associated Press as a correspondent in China, Indochina, London and Berlin. In 1959, he joined The New York Times, where he remained for 34 years, serving as a foreign correspondent, foreign editor, managing editor and editorial director of the company's regional newspapers.

2. Background from {[https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/joseph-pulitzer]}
Joseph Pulitzer (1847 - 1911)
Joseph Pulitzer, the son of a grain dealer, was born in Makdo, near Budapest, in the Austro-Hungarian Empire in April 1847. He emigrated to the United States in 1864 and settled in St. Louis. He worked as a mule tender, waiter and hack driver before studying English at the Mercantile Library. In 1868 Pulitzer was recruited by Carl Schurz for his German-language daily, the Westliche Post.

Pulitzer joined the Republican Party and was elected to the Missouri State Assembly. In 1872 he, like many Radical Republicans, supported Horace Greeley against Ulysses S. Grant, the official Republican candidate. Despite the efforts of Pulitzer and Carl Schurz in Missouri, Grant won the presidential election by 286 electoral votes to 66.

In 1872 Pulitzer was able to purchase the St. Louis Post for $3,000. This venture was a success and six years later was able to buy the St. Louis Dispatch for $2,700. He combined the two newspapers and launched crusades against government corruption, lotteries, gambling, and tax fraud.

By 1883 Pulitzer was a wealthy man and was able to purchase the New York World for $346,000. The newspaper, which had been losing $40,000 a year, was turned into a journal that concentrated on human-interest stories, scandal and sensational material. Pulitzer also promised to use the paper to "expose all fraud and sham, fight all public evils and abuses, and to battle for the people with earnest sincerity".

Pulitzer also used the New York World to advocate a ten-point program of reform: tax luxuries, tax inheritances; tax large incomes; tax monopolies; tax the privileged corporations; institute a tariff for revenue; reform the civil service; punish corrupt office holders; punish vote buying; punish employers who coerce their employees in elections. crusades against lotteries, gambling, and tax fraud.

Two years after Pulitzer purchased New York World in 1883, he recruited Richard F. Outcault as one of his artists. Outcault's comic cartoons based on life in the slums were extremely popular with the readers and sales reached 600,000, making it the largest circulating newspaper in the country. About the same time, Pulitzer was elected as a Democrat to the forty-ninth Congress and served from March 4, 1885, until April 10, 1886, when he resigned.

In 1887 Pulitzer recruited Nellie Bly, a journalist working for the Pittsburgh Dispatch. Over the next few years she pioneered the idea of investigative reporting by writing articles about poverty, housing and labour conditions in New York. This often involved undercover work and feigned insanity to get into the insane asylum on Blackwell's Island. Her scathing attack on the way patients were treated led to much needed reforms.

After reading Jules Verne's Around the World in Eighty Days in 1889, Nellie Bly suggested to Pulitzer that the New York World should finance an attempt to break the record illustrated in the book. Pulitzer agreed and held a competition which involved guessing the time it would take Bly to circle the globe. Over 1,000,000 people entered the contest and when she arrived back in New York she was met by a massive crowd to see her break the record in 72 days, 6 hours, 11 minutes and 14 seconds.

In 1890 Pulitzer withdrew from the editorship of the New York World. Although only 43, Pulitzer was now virtually blind and for the rest of his life he was unable to return to the newsroom. However, he continued to manage the editorial and business direction of his newspapers.

In 1896 the New York World began producing a colour supplement, Richard F. Outcault created a new young character that wore a yellow nightshirt. Known as the Yellow Kid, this cartoon became so popular that William Randolph Hearst, owner of the New York Journal, offered him a considerable amount of money to join his newspaper. Pulitzer now employed George Luks to produce the Yellow Kid.

Hearst also reduced the price of the New York Journal to one cent and including colour magazine sections. Pulitzer's New York World and Hearst's New York Journal became involved in a circulation war, and their use of promotional schemes and sensational stories became known as yellow journalism.

Pulitzer continued to promote investigative reporting and in 1909 the New York World exposed a fraudulent payment of $40 million by the United States to the French Panama Canal Company. The federal government indicted Pulitzer for criminally libeling President Theodore Roosevelt and the banker John Pierpont Morgan. However, Pulitzer won an important victory for the freedom of the press when the courts dismissed the indictments.

Joseph Pulitzer, whose eyesight deteriorated rapidly during his later years, died in 1911 aboard his yacht in the harbor of Charleston, S.C.. In his will left $2 million for the establishment of a school of journalism at Columbia University. He also left a fund that established annual prizes for literature, drama, music and journalism. Since 1922 Pulitzer Prizes have also been awarded to cartoonists.

Sources:
Spartacus Educational; Biographical Directory of the United States Congress Photo Hancock Public Library"

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Great read!

Great share brother David