Political Editor and Public Man in the Time of Roosevelt and Wilson: The New York World's Frank I. Cobb

Abstract

Frank I. Cobb, chief editorial writer of the New York World from 1904 to 1923, was a transitional figure in the changing meaning of liberalism, both as a concept of government policy and as a measurement of journalistic independence. Although he recognized that some government involvement in the economy was needed to control the actions of malefactors of wealth, Cobb militated against an enlargement of federal power over economic affairs. He established a unique identity tied to the forcefulness of his rhetoric, the persistence of his causes, and the connections he made to public men. As a result, the World's editorial page attracted the attention of presidents, diplomats, business magnates, and academics, all of whom had a stake in the positions the newspaper took on domestic and foreign affairs.

Notes

Silas Bent, Ballyhoo: The Voice of the Press (New York: Boni and Liveright, 1927), 371.

Frank I. Cobb, “Mr. Pulitzer's Journalism,” New York World, October 31, 1911. Also quoted in John L. Heaton, The Story of a Page: Thirty Years of Public Service and Public Discussion in the Editorial Columns of “The New York World” (New York: Harper, 1913), 53.

“Frank I. Cobb Dies; Long Illness Ends Brilliant Career of World's Editor,” New York World, December 22, 1923. There is no published record of the specific illness from which he suffered.

Edmund Fawcett, Liberalism: The Life of an Idea (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014), xii–xiii.

Christopher Lasch, The World of Nations: Reflections on American History, Politics, and Culture (New York: Knopf, 1973), 92.

Henry Pringle, “The Newspaperman as an Artist: Frank I. Cobb,” Scribner's Magazine, February 1935, 101.

Among journalists of this type were Rollo Ogden and David Lawrence of the New York Evening Post.

Henry Watterson, “The Newspapers of New York: Some Reminiscences of the City's Papers, Past and Present,” Fourth Estate, September 9, 1916, 12. The dean of American journalists, the Louisville Courier-Journal's Henry Watterson, whose career spanned both eras, considered Cobb one of the outstanding journalists of his generation. He also included in this category Charles Ransom Miller, the New York Times’s editorial chief.

Issac F. Marcosson, “Marse Henry,” A Biography of Henry Watterson (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1951), 4.

Editorial, New York Sun, December 24, 1923. James Creelman, “Joseph Pulitzer-Master Journalist,” Pearson's Magazine, March 1909, 229. Creelman believed anonymity created an uneven playing field, allowing journalists to expose “the utmost [details]” of financiers and politicians, without having to reveal the forces directing them—unseen millionaire proprietors. “An Editor of ‘the World’ and of The World,” Literary Digest, January 12, 1924, 40; “The World: Growth of Its Editorial Page in Thirty Years,” New York Times, October 26, 1913.

Oswald Garrison Villard, “The Press Today: VII, What's Wrong with the World?,” Nation, June 25, 1930, 725.

H. L. Mencken, “Frank I. Cobb: Review of ‘Cobb of the World,’” American Mercury, September 3, 1924, 123.

“Teachers Hold a Conference: Journalistic Instructors Discuss Phases of Their Work,” Fourth Estate, January 2, 1915, 6.

Ralph W. Hidy, Frank Ernest Hill, and Allan Nevins, Timber and Men: The Weyerhaeuser Story (New York: Macmillan, 1963), 172.

Moderator-Topics, November 21, 1918, 186. There is some discrepancy as to whether Cobb completed his studies or dropped out. The Normal School lists him as the class of 1890. It is unclear how he would have taught and then taken a job as a high school superintendent all before 1890, the year he joined the Herald.

James Schermerhorn, “Frank I. Cobb,” American Magazine, January 1913, 30.

“Seven Super Pens: ‘Frank Cobb Chief Editorial Writer of the New York World,’” Everybody's Magazine, March 1916, 356.

Schermerhorn, “Cobb,” 30.

George B. Catlin, “Newspaper Life Is Eventful,” in Incidents of the Lives of Editors, ed. Arthur Scott White (Grand Rapids: White Printing, 1920), 18.

Ibid.

Frank I. Cobb, “Learned Newspaper Work ‘Under Dire Compulsion,’” in White, Incidents, 41–43. Further information on his Grand Rapids experience is in George A. McIntyre, “McIntyre ‘Accepted a Position,’” in White, Incidents, 70.

Catlin, “Newspaper Life Is Eventful,” in White, Incidents, 18.

Schermerhorn, “Cobb,” 30; also “Cobb Dies,” New York World, December 24, 1923.

“William Emory Quinby,” Michigan Alumnus, 1908, 489; also, University Magazine, December 1892, 515. Founded in the 1830s, the Free Press achieved a national reputation near the beginning of the Civil War, when, under the owner-editorship of Wilbur Storey, it began sending back battlefield dispatches, and then later in the war, interviews of military personnel. After the war, a new owner-editor, William E. Quinby, furthered the paper's repute.

Schermerhorn, “Cobb,” 30.

Doris Kearns Goodwin, The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2013), 307.

Frank I. Cobb, “Mr. Morgan and the President,” Detroit Free Press, November 26, 1902. Cobb had been a guest at a dinner for Roosevelt during his Detroit visit.

Richard Kaplan, Politics and the American Press: The Rise of Objectivity, 1865–1920 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 159.

Letter (Frank I. Cobb), “The Newspapers of Detroit,” 1900. Online facsimile from the Detroit Historical Society Collections, Catalog No. 200.061.027. The statement was part of a collection of books, documents, and letters prepared by prominent Detroit citizens and designed to convey the social, religious, moral, commercial, and political affairs of Detroit at the conclusion of the nineteenth century. The contents were sealed in a box and meant to be opened in 2001. S. B. McCracken, ed., Detroit in Nineteen Hundred: Chronological Record of Events (Detroit: Evening News Association, 1901), 129.

Schermerhorn, “Cobb,” 30.

“Goes to New York World,” Detroit Free Press, April 14, 1905.

Joseph Pulitzer to William H. Merrill, April 28, 1904. Joseph Pulitzer Papers, Manuscripts Division, Library of Congress, hereafter cited as Pulitzer MSS. Pulitzer offered Merrill a supervisory role, that is, “providing other writers with thoughts and ideas that may not occur to them [or] that they might not feel confident taking on without some guidance.” This was the role Pulitzer assumed after debilitating ailments, including blindness, forced him to communicate largely by mail and telegram.

Issac F. Marcosson, David Graham Phillips and His Times (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1932), 171. Marcossen points out that Pulitzer had moved Phillips along from London correspondent to features writer, and then to editorial writer and protégé. When Phillips left to pursue a literary career, Pulitzer felt betrayed.

Samuel Williams to Joseph Pulitzer, December 29, 1903. The World records, 1882–1940, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University (hereafter cited as World MSS).

Don C. Seitz, Joseph Pulitzer: His Life and Letters (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1924), 200. Seitz includes several pieces of correspondence between Pulitzer and Cobb.

“Memorandum to Pulitzer of Conversation with Cobb at Bar Harbor,” August 6, 1910, Pulitzer MSS.

Theodore Dreiser, A Book about Myself (New York: Boni and Liveright, 1922), 469–470.

Joseph Pulitzer to Don Seitz, July 13, 1905, Pulitzer MSS. See also “Report on a World Editorial Talk,” August 4, 1911, World MSS.

“Seven Super Pens: ‘Frank Cobb,’” Everybody's Magazine, 356.

Pringle, “The Newspaperman,” 101; Louis M. Starr, “Joseph Pulitzer and His Most ‘Indegoddampendent’ Editor,” American Heritage, June 19, 1968, 18.

Pulitzer to Seitz, July 13, 1905. Pulitzer added, “An editorial writer should always think he is a judge upon the bench when he makes or inflames public opinion on grave public questions.”

“Memorandum of Conversation with Grammarite (Cobb) at Bar Harbor for Andes (Pulitzer),” August 6, 1910, Pulitzer MSS.

“Memorandum by Joseph Pulitzer,” 1904, World MSS.

W. A. Swanberg, Pulitzer (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1967), 309; Oswald Garrison Villard, Fighting Years: Memoirs of a Liberal Editor (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1939), 181.

Frank I. Cobb, “The World and Mr. Roosevelt,” New York World, August 31, 1908.

Frank I. Cobb, “Usurpations,” New York World, March 20, 1909, World MSS.

“Memo for Mr. Pulitzer,” 1904, World MSS.

“Memorandum (for Cobb and Seymour),” August 23, 1910, Pulitzer MSS. Pulitzer was less forgiving of Roosevelt's belligerent and militaristic tendencies, which he feared might provoke a conflict. He instructed Cobb to place greater emphasis on this issue, by attacking both “the Dreadnaught craze” and the “over-taxing and over building for war or naval purposes.”

Frank I. Cobb, “Abolishing the States,” New York World, May 31, 1907. Also see John L. Heaton, ed., Cobb of “The World”: A Leader in Liberalism (New York: Dutton, 1927), 69.

Frank I. Cobb to Joseph Pulitzer, February 1, 1908, World MSS. Cobb described Cortelyou as a reactionary conservative.

Frank I. Cobb, “Innocents at Home,” New York World, April 15, 1909. In the editorial, Cobb revealed that Roosevelt instructed the assistant postmaster-general, Frank Hitchcock, who was collecting the anti-Taft delegates for Cortelyou, to tell them to support Taft or “‘they’ll get me.’”

Joseph Pulitzer, “Memo for Mr. Cobb,” December 3, 1910, Pulitzer MSS. See also Joseph Pulitzer, “Editorial Notes,” July 6, 1908, Pulitzer MSS; Frank I. Cobb to Joseph Pulitzer, June 24, 1909, World MSS; and Joseph Pulitzer to Frank I. Cobb, March 14, 1910, Pulitzer MSS.

J. Frederick Essary, “Political Issues, VI.—Monopolies,” The Outlook, October 22, 1904, 457.

Frank I. Cobb, “Opportunity,” New York World, March 23, 1909.

Arthur S. Link, Wilson, The New Freedom, vol. 2 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1956), 241.

Frank I. Cobb to Joseph Pulitzer, July 1, 1908, World MSS.

Frank I. Cobb to Joseph Pulitzer, February 8, 1908, World MSS.

Frank I. Cobb, “Mr. Bryan's Opportunity,” New York World, January 21, 1908.

See Gerald Fetner, “The Washington Correspondent in the Progressive Era: The New York Times’ Charles Willis Thompson,” American Journalism 28, no. 2 (2011): 23.

Frank I. Cobb, “Democratic Presidential Names—16-1, No. 17, Theodore Roosevelt,” New York World, February 22, 1908.

The former Washington correspondent for the New York Evening Post, Francis Leupp, suggested in 1912 that the similarity in the platforms of the Republican and Democratic parties was more the result of Roosevelt adopting Bryan's 1896 presidential platform than vice versa. Francis E. Leupp, “Roosevelt the Politician,” Atlantic Monthly, June 1912, 1.

Frank I. Cobb, “Memorandum for Mr. Pulitzer,” December 21, 1907, World MSS. See also Cobb to Pulitzer, February 8, 1908, World MSS.

Joseph Pulitzer to Frank I. Cobb, November 27, 1907, Pulitzer MSS. For his part, Pulitzer recommended that Cobb select sixteen candidates and subtitle each selection with the term “16-1,” a less than subtle reference to the Democratic Party's 1896 bimetallism campaign slogan.

“Mr. Cobb's Memorandum of the Conversation with Mr. Pulitzer,” January 3, 1908, Pulitzer MSS.

“Gov. Johnson for the World Tells of Party Hope,” New York World, January 3, 1908.

Frank I. Cobb, “Democratic Presidential Names—16-1, No. 4, A New England Candidate,” New York World, January 16, 1908.

Frank I. Cobb, “Democratic Presidential Names—16-1, No. 5, A Southwestern Candidate,” New York World, January 22, 1908.

Joseph Pulitzer, “Notes for Mr. Cobb,” November 6, 1908, Pulitzer MSS.

Joseph Pulitzer, “Memorandum: Jottings for Ralph,” August 21, 1908, World MSS. Pulitzer's satisfaction with Cobb's performance during the campaign carried over to his offering him the job of political editor of both the World's news and editorial departments. It is not clear whether Cobb accepted the offer.

James McGrath Morris notes that Pulitzer was very appreciative of Cobb's handling of the paper's libel suit brought by Theodore Roosevelt against the World in the matter of the financing of the Panama Canal. James McGrath Morris covers this incident in detail across two excellent chapters. James McGrath Morris, Pulitzer: A Life in Politics, Print, and Power (New York: Harper Collins, 2010), 417ff.

Joseph Pulitzer, “Memo for Mr. Cobb,” December 3, 1910, Pulitzer MSS; Joseph Pulitzer to Frank Cobb, “Editorial Notes,” August 7, 1910, Pulitzer MSS.

It appears Pulitzer commissioned George Harvey, editor of Harper's Weekly, to write the editorial. Harvey was a strong Wilson supporter and a former director of the World's editorial page. Willis Fletcher Johnson, George Harvey, A Passionate Patriot (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1929), 132–135.

Ray Stannard Baker, Woodrow Wilson: Life and Letters, vol. 4, President, 1913–1914 (Garden City: Doubleday, Doran, 1931), 211. Baker said that Wilson valued Cobb's directness in expressing his opinions, and, as time passed, they developed a bond of mutual trust. This was high praise, particularly because, as John Blum noted, Wilson had little use for newspaper people in general. John M. Blum, Joe Tumulty and the Wilson Era (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1951), 62.

Frank I. Cobb, “Where Woodrow Wilson Stands: His Attitudes on Living Issues as Defined in Recent Utterances,” New York World, January 6, 1908.

“Mr. Cobb's Memorandum.”

These areas of academic study, which came to maturity during the 1890s, enabled commissions to create systematic and reliable bases for valuing railroad and utility property and then setting equitable rates of service.

Gerard Henderson, The Federal Trade Commission (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1924), 34. He and others believed coercive judicial proceedings were often only a moral crusade by the Justice Department's antitrust division.

Cobb, “Where Woodrow Wilson Stands.”

Frank I. Cobb, “Democracy—or Despotism,” New York World, November 2, 1912.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Frank I. Cobb, “Enemies of Democracy,” New York World, June 29, 1912; also, Frank I. Cobb, “Wilson—No Compromise with Ryan and Murphy,” New York World, July 1, 1912.

Cobb, “Wilson—No Compromise.”

Henry Morgenthau, All in a Lifetime (Garden City: Doubleday, Page, 1922), 146.

Frank I. Cobb, “A New Democracy on Trial,” New York World, March 4, 1913.

The jurist Learned Hand reconciled himself to the trade commission, even though it ran counter to Democratic policy. However, he believed with a staff of experts, the agency might relieve the courts of the onerous tasks of defining unfair trade practices as well as investigating claims. Gerald Gunther, Learned Hand: The Man and the Judge (New York: Knopf, 1994), 246–247.

The Papers of Woodrow Wilson, ed. Ray Stannard Baker and William E. Dodd, vol. 1, The New Democracy (New York: Harper, 1926), 85–86.

John Blum, Woodrow Wilson, and the Politics of Morality (Boston: Little, Brown, 1956), 76.

Frank I. Cobb, “A Year of Wilson,” New York World, March 1, 1914.

The trade commission never got off the ground, partly because of limited funding and partly because the courts were unwilling to accept its definition of unfair trade practice. The upshot was that the courts were drawn back into setting these conditions. See Baker, Woodrow Wilson: Life and Letters, vol. 4, 375; Thomas K. McCraw, Prophets of Regulation: Charles Francis Adams, Louis D. Brandeis, James M. Landis, Alfred E. Kahn (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1984), 150–152; Philippa Strum, Louis D. Brandeis: Justice for the People (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984), 215–217; and Gunther, Learned Hand, 246–247.

James W. Barrett, The World: The Flesh and Messrs. Pulitzer (New York: Vanguard Press, 1931), 68–69; Frank I. Cobb to Joseph Pulitzer, July 13, 1911, World MSS; Frank I. Cobb to Joseph Pulitzer, July 7, 1911, World MSS; Laurence Stallings, “The Book of the Day: Memories of a Roosevelt Tribune as Provoked by a New Biography,” New York Sun, July 3, 1931.

Barrett, The World, 68–69; Cobb's role as advisor may have included his recommending that Wilson seek a declaration of war against Germany and Austria. This question has intrigued Wilson biographers and others. For background, see John Milton Cooper Jr., Breaking the Heart of the World: Woodrow Wilson and the Fight for the League of Nations (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 433.

Frank I. Cobb, “Vicious and Unconstitutional,” New York World, February 5, 1918.

Woodrow Wilson to Frank I. Cobb, February 7, 1918. Papers of Woodrow Wilson, Seeley Mudd Manuscript Library, Princeton University. Ironically, it was a Democrat, the Oregon Senator George E. Chamberlain, head of the Senate Committee on Military Affairs, who spearheaded the effort.

Frank I. Cobb, “Secretary Baker's Testimony,” New York World, January 29, 1918. Cobb took on other assignments in support of the administration, such as assisting Walter Lippmann, editor of the New Republic magazine, in drafting the “Fourteen Points,” the series of war aims that constituted the basis for America's entry into the First World War.

Frank I. Cobb, The Press and Public Opinion: An Address Delivered before the Women's City Club of New York, Dec. 11, 1919 (United States: 1919), Main Reading Room, New York Public Library.

Ibid. The press agent as a type emerged before the war, mostly in the entertainment industry, but afterward spread to all segments of business, government, and professional life.

Editorial, “Daily Journalism and a People's Progress,” Commercial and Financial Chronicle, May 29, 1920. Politicians concluded that getting news to people mattered more than changing their opinions.

Frank I. Cobb, “Economic Aspects of Disarmament,” Atlantic Monthly, August 1921, 145. Cobb also addressed this issue in talks at the Cosmopolitan Club and the League of Free Nations Association.

“Frank I. Cobb Dies,” New York World, December 22, 1923.

Frank I. Cobb, “Is Our Democracy Stagnant?,” Harper's Magazine, June 1923, 1.

Arthur M. Schlesinger, The American as Reformer (New York: Atheneum, 1971), 24–25. By the 1960s, the commerce clause had reached new heights, becoming the basis for the 1964 Civil Rights Act.