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"Gee Whiz!" Small wonder that rugged old Senator Hearst was surprised when his gangling son came home and, out of all the riches he might have chosen, asked for the Examiner, a pitiable rag taken in for a bad debt. But greater was the Senator's surprise when "Willie," calling about him some of his blithe college friends, proceeded to run up the old rag's circulation—at wanton initial expense— by an amazing application of the Pulitzer method. (He had brought home bound copies of the World.) "The Monarch of the Dailies," he called his sheet, and the spirit of the office was carnival. "There is no substitute for circulation" and "What we want to arouse is the 'Gee Whiz!' emotion" were the watchwords. Lots to drink (though not for Hearst; he was and is a sipper of fine wines), lots to spend, cannon crackers, yacht rides—Hearst's staff were his familiars, and his paper's contents were historic. He had Ambrose Bierce, Gertrude Atherton, Joaquin Miller and Mark Twain on his payroll. Also Thomas Nast, Jimmy Swinnerton, T. A. ("Tad") Dorgan, Homer Davenport, Harrison Fisher, "Bud"' Fisher. In the Examiner first appeared "Casey at the Bat'' and "The Man with the Hoe." (A Negro doorman turned away Rudyard Kipling when he came peddling Plain Tales from the Hills.} Hearst hired special trains at the slightest drop of the journalistic hat to get big stories. And with the Examiner he tried his first crusading, to break the railroads' domination of San Francisco politics. Daring greatly, or perhaps not daring at all because his was a concentrated, icy, shrewdly calculated excitement, he greatly won. He lost money at more than $10,000 per month for nearly two years—and then got it back to spend over again even faster. He toured Europe intermittently (with a camera) and dreamed expanding dreams. Once, crossing San Francisco Bay, he drew rings around the country's great cities and said to his mercurial employe George Pancoast: "Some day, a paper here and here and here." Around New York he drew a double ring.
Hearst v. Pulitzer. From his devoted mother, four years after his father's death in 1891, Hearst got a $7,500,000 advance on his fabulous patrimony. For $180,000 he bought the doddering Journal and stalked quietly into New York to knock the breath out of imperious, blind Joseph Pulitzer. Few knew he was there until. to add to the cream of his imported San Francisco staff, he began buying up Pulitzer's best brains—including Arthur Brisbane—and in addition made Pulitzer accept 1¢ instead of 2¢ for his paper. Richard Harding Davis and a dozen other star writers were also at call. The sensationalism with which Pulitzer had startled Publishers Dana and Bennett and shocked Godkin, now paled beside the hyperbolic extravagances of the Journal, which in three months rocketed from 20,000 to 150,000, and in ten months to 400,000 copies a day. Two of Hearst's seven millions were in it before the year was out— and then he started an evening edition.