"Suppose you take Mr. Hearst's morning American at $10,000 a year", Brisbane proposed.
"You could come down to the office once a day, look over a few exchanges, dictate an editorial, and then have the remainder of your time for your more serious literary labors.
If within one year you can make a success out of the American, you can practically name your own salary thereafter.
Of course, if you don't make the American a success, Hearst will have no further use for you".

The blue-eyed Watson decided that he would dislike living in New York, and the deal fell through.
Hearst's luck was even poorer when he had a chat with Franklin K. Lane, a prominent California journalist and reform politician, whom he asked for his support.
Lane was still burning because he had narrowly missed election as governor of California in 1902 and laid his defeat to the antagonism of Hearst's San Francisco Examiner.
Hearst disclaimed blame for this, but the conversation, according to Lane, ended on a tart note.

"Mr. Lane", Hearst said, "if you ever wish anything that I can do, all you will have to do will be to send me a telegram asking, and it will be done".

"Mr. Hearst", Lane replied as he left, "if you ever get a telegram from me asking you to do anything, you can put the telegram down as a forgery".

Hearst took a brief respite to hurry home to New York to become a father.
On April 10, 1904, his first child was born, a son named George after the late Senator.
Hearst saw his wife and child, sent a joyful message to his mother in California, and soon returned to Washington, where on April 22, for the first time, he opened his mouth in Congress.

This was not before the House but before the Judiciary Committee, where he asked for action on one of his pet bills, that calling for an investigation of the coal-railroad monopoly.
Attorney Shearn had worked on this for two years and had succeeded in getting a report supporting his stand from the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York.
Hearst had spent more than $60,000 of his own money in the probe, but still Attorney General Knox was quiescent.

Six of the railroads carrying coal to Tidewater from the Pennsylvania fields, Hearst said, not only had illegal agreements with coal operators but owned outright at least eleven mines.
They had watered their stock at immense profit, then had raised the price of coal fifty cents a ton, netting themselves another $20,000,000 in annual profit.

"The Attorney General has been brooding over that evidence like an old hen on a doorknob for eighteen months", Hearst said.
"He has not acted in any way, and won't let anyone take it away from him.
What I want is to have this evidence come before Congress and if the Attorney General does not report it, as I am very sure he won't, as he has refused to do anything of the kind, I then wish that a committee of seven Representatives be appointed with power to take the evidence."

The Congressman tried hard, but failed.
This was the very sort of legislation that Roosevelt himself had in mind.
There can be little doubt that there was a conspiracy in Washington, overt or implied, to block anything Hearst wanted, even if it was something good.
Hatred tied his hands in Congress.
Roosevelt and others considered him partly responsible for the murder of McKinley.
They were repelled by his noisy newspapers, his personal publicity, his presumptuous campaign for the Presidential nomination, and by the swelling cloud of rumor about his moral lapses.
He might get votes from his constituents, but he would never get a helping hand in Congress.
He was the House pariah.
Even the regular Democrats disowned him.
Inherently incapable of cooperating with others, he ran his own show regardless of how many party-line Democratic toes he stepped on.
He was a political maverick, a reformer with his own program, determined to bulldoze it through or to blazon the infamy of those who balked him.
He showed little interest in measures put forward by the regular Democrats.
He sought to run Congress as he ran his New York American or Journal, a scheme veteran legislators resisted.
For a freshman Congressman to read political Lessons to graybeard Democrats was poor policy for one who needed to make friends.
He soon quarreled with all the party leaders in the House, and came to be regarded with detestation by regular Democrats as a professional radical leading a small pack of obedient terriers whose constant snapping was demoralizing to party discipline.

To old-line Democrats, the Hearst Presidential boom, now in full cry, was the joke of the new century.
Yet no leader had come to the fore who seemed likely to give the puissant T. R. a semblance of a race.
There was talk of dragging old ex-President Cleveland out of retirement for another try.
Some preferred Judge Alton B. Parker of New York.
There was a host of dark horses.
The sneers at Hearst changed to concern when it was seen that he had strong support in many parts of the country.
Platoons of Hearst agents were traveling from state to state in a surprisingly successful search for delegates at the coming convention, and there were charges that money was doing a large part of the persuading.
Just when it was needed for the campaign, Hearst Paper No. 8, the Boston American, began publication.
A Bay State supporter said, "Mr. Hearst's fight has been helped along greatly by the starting of his paper in Boston".
His candidacy affected his journalism somewhat.
He ordered his editors to tone down on sensationalism and to refrain from using such words as "seduction", "rape", "abortion", "criminal assault" and "born out of wedlock".

In a story headed, "Hearst Offers Cash", the Republican New York Tribune spread the money rumor, quoting an unnamed "Hearst supporter" as saying:

"The argument that is cutting most ice is that Hearst is the only candidate who is fighting the trusts fearlessly and who would use all the powers of government to disrupt them if he were elected.
The Hearst men say that if Hearst is nominated, he and his immediate friends will contribute to the Democratic National Committee the sum of $1,500,000.
This, it is urged, would relieve the national committee from the necessity of appealing to the trust magnates.
The alternative to this is that if a conservative candidate is nominated the national committee will have to appeal to the trusts for their campaign funds, and in doing this will incur obligations which would make a Democratic victory absolutely fruitless.
The average Democratic politician, especially in the country districts, is hungry for the spoils of office.
It has been a long time since he has seen any campaign money, and when the proposition is laid down to him as the friends of Mr. Hearst are laying it down these days he is quite likely to get aboard the Hearst bandwagon".

If anything, the conservative Democrats were more opposed to Hearst than the Republicans.
In his own state of New York, the two Democratic bellwethers, State Leader Hill and Tammany Boss Murphy, were saying nothing openly against Hearst but industriously boosting their own favorites, Murphy being for Cleveland and Hill for Parker.
They had lost twice with the radical Bryan, and were having no part of Hearst, whom they considered more radical than Bryan.
But his increasing strength in the West looked menacing.
It caused Henry Watterson to sound a blast in his Louisville Courier-Journal:

"Does any sane Democrat believe that Mr. Hearst, a person unknown even to his constituency and his colleagues, without a word or act in the public life of his country, past or present, that can be shown to be his to commend him, could by any possibility be elected President of the United States?
But there is a Hearst barrel."

More splenetic was Senator Edward Carmack of Tennessee, a Parker man.
"The nomination of Hearst would compass the ruin of the party", Carmack said.
"It would be a disgrace, and, as I have already said to the people of Tennessee, if Hearst is nominated, we may as well pen a dispatch, and send it back from the field of battle: 'All is lost, including our honor'".

A lone pro-Hearst voice from New York City was that of William Devery, who had been expelled as a Tammany leader but still claimed strong influence in his own district.
"I understand [Hearst] is a candidate for Presidential honors", Devery said without cracking a smile.
"There's nothing like buildin' from the bottom up.
If he's going to the St. Louis convention as a delegate we ought to know it.
He's got a lot of friends, and he ought to come along and let us know if he wants our help".

Hearst won the Iowa state convention, but ran into a bitter battle in Indiana before losing to Parker, drawing an angry statement from Indiana's John W. Kern:

"We are menaced for the first time in the history of the Republic by the open and unblushing effort of a multi-millionaire to purchase the Presidential nomination.
Our state has been overrun with a gang of paid agents and retainers.
As for the paid Hessians from other states, we are here to instruct the Indiana Democracy in their duty, I have nothing but contempt.
The Hearst dollar mark is all over them."

The talk of a Hearst "barrel" was increasing.
Another Indiana observer later commented, "Perhaps we shall never know how much was spent (by Hearst), but if as much money was expended elsewhere as in Indiana a liberal fortune was squandered".

In his fight for the Illinois and Indiana delegations, Hearst made several trips to Chicago to confer with Andrew Lawrence, the former San Francisco Examiner man who was now his Chicago kingpin, and once to meet with Bryan.
On one visit he stopped at the office of the American, where he was known surreptitiously as "the Great White Chief", and for the first time met his managing editor, fat Moses Koenigsberg.
Koenigsberg never did learn what Hearst wanted, for the latter shook hands and moved toward the door.

"Never mind, thank you", he said.
"I must hurry to catch my train".

Another editor pointed despairingly at a bundle of letters that had accumulated for him, saying, "But Mr. Hearst, what shall I do with this correspondence"?

"I'll show you", Hearst replied, grinning.
He took the stack of mail and tossed it into the waste basket.
"Don't bother.
Every letter answers itself in a couple of weeks".

2.
The Hearst "barrel"
Hearst hopped into a private railroad car with Max Ihmsen and made an arduous personal canvass for delegates in the western and southern states, always wearing a frock coat, listening intently to local politicians, and generally making a good impression.
He laughed at a story that he planned to bolt the party if he was not nominated.

"I should, of course", he said, "like any other man, be honored and gratified should the Democrats see fit to nominate me.
But I do not have to be bribed by office to be a Democrat.
I have supported the Democratic party in the last five campaigns.
I supported Cleveland three times and Bryan twice.
I intend to support the nominee of the party at St. Louis, whoever he may be".

The Hearst press followed the Chief's progress at the various state conventions with its usual admiring attention, stressing the "enthusiasm" and "loyalty" he inspired.
This was historic in its way, for it marked the first time an American Presidential aspirant had advertised his own virtues in his own string of newspapers spanning the land.

Yet his editors did not abandon their sense of story value.
When Nan Patterson, a stunning and money-minded chorus girl who had appeared in a Floradora road show, rode down Broadway in a hansom cab with her married lover, Frank Young, she stopped the cab to disclose that Young had been shot dead, tearfully insisting that he had shot himself although experts said he could not have done so.