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By then he was 41 and taking himself really seriously as a social force. From then it seems he was taken seriously by society and his hangings-in-effigy after McKinley's death mark the crystallization in the U. S. mind of the idea that Hearst was sinister. The machinery which he built for Bryan he deliberately used later to carry himself toward the White House where he felt, doubtless sincerely, his "new journalism" could best serve The People. The measures he introduced in Congress (1903-07) were truly liberal in conception, but despite his lavish torchlit campaigns for Mayor, Governor and President, his motives were never sufficiently trusted by The People ("Who Think"). Perhaps, eloquent though he became on the stump, he was too mental for them, too synthetic. It was a simpler, earthier politician than T. R. who drove Hearst out of politics—Al Smith, with the astutely simple declaration. "He's no Democrat." On his Enchanted Hill with his seventies upon him, it is a question whether Hearst is still unreconciled to age. He has never let his newspapers keep a "Morgue" file on him. No man may call him by his first name.
Hearst has seen the journalism he perfected surpassed in profits even by such sober journalism as that of the New York Times. He has seen that Democracy in politics which he championed, suddenly altered to a dictatorship even more absolute than the one that made him attack Woodrow Wilson. In the internationalism which he has always shunned—to the point of being called pro-German during the War—he now sees his country taking the lead. Five years or so ago it was the fashion to regard Hearst as a "failure" and a "tragic figure"—but though he may need cash (as always) and though his papers' prestige is low now that the country has outgrown them in both directions, above and below, it is doubtful that so subtle a mind as Hearst's is trapped in tragedy. He knows he has lived a great life and bent the course of millions of other lives. By the dark mental spiral that is called "inconsistency" he can accommodate himself and his past to whatever is new. That is what he has always been, a newsman.
* W. R. Hearst—An American Phenomenon. Simon &Schuster, 1928.
* Last week Homestake stock passed 200— only stock quoted at that figure on the New York Exchange in more than a year. * His militant peak, however, was when he ordered his London man to sink a steamer in the Suez Canal to keep the Spanish fleet fr.om going after Admiral Dewey at Manila!