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Phocion Howard Examines the Northern Pacific Railroad, 1873

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 November 2010

Lewis Saum
Lewis Saum
Affiliation:
University of Washington
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Extract

Editor's note: In its October 2004 issue, this journal published a vivid account by Lewis Saum, the well-known historian of the nineteenth-century press, of the dispatches and misadventures of Chicago reporter James “Phocion” Howard during the Black Hills gold rush of 1875. A complete product of an age when news correspondents made no pretence of detachment and no effort to avoid becoming part of their stories, Howard, through what he wrote and what he did, was the sort of reporter who contributed mightily to the image of the post-Civil War era as a Gilded Age. This brief account follows Howard back a little in time, to 1873, when he was noisily bursting illusions along the line of the Northern Pacific Railroad just at the moment when that line's bankruptcy hurled the country into its worst economic collapse in decades.

Type
Essays
Information
The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era , Volume 7 , Issue 4 , October 2008 , pp. 443 - 451
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 2008

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References

1 Winks, Robin W, Frederick Killings: A Life (New York, 1991), 189Google Scholar.

2 See Saum, Lewis O., “The Gilded Age, Dakota and ‘Phocion’ of the Chicago Times” journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 3 (Oct. 2004): 321–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Chicago Tribune, Sept. 19, 1873, p. 1Google Scholar.

4 Chicago Tribune, Sept. 27, 1873, p. 7Google Scholar.

5 See an editorial page item in the New York Times, June 24, 1911, p. 8Google Scholar. Knott had recently died, thus the interest in what he had said about Duluth. A letter to the editor in the Times, June 25, 1911, p. 10Google Scholar, offered some puzzling thoughts about that speech.

6 Chicago Tribune, Sept. 27, 1873, p. 7Google Scholar.

7 Ibid.

8 Ibid.

9 Ibid.

10 Chicago Tribune, Sept. 29, 1873, p. 5Google Scholar. Immediately beside this item there appeared a similar column authored by “X.X.” regarding Washington Territory, at the western end of the Northern Pacific route.

11 Ibid.

12 Chicago Tribune, Oct. 2, 1873, p. 2Google Scholar.

13 Ibid.

14 Ibid.

15 Chicago Tribune, Oct. 6, 1873, p. 7Google Scholar.

16 Chicago Tribune, Oct. 11, 1873, p. 2Google Scholar. An editorial on p. 4 of this issue denounced Northern Pacific “Blood-Suckers.” This editorial began with mention of a St. Paul paper that had been heaping “anathemas” on “outside barbarians” for making efforts to “cripple the Northern Pacific.” Without identifying him by name, the Tribune editorial writer referred to Phocion Howard. In this defense of their man, the Tribune identified “blood-suckers” as those who have feasted on the largesse, especially governmental, made available by this project. The correspondent's letters, the Tribune declared, had been “in no sense denunciatory.” Readers could draw their own conclusions.

17 Bismarck Tribune, Sept. 24, 1873, p. 4Google Scholar.

18 Bismarck Tribune, Oct. 1, 1873, p. 4Google Scholar.

19 Ibid.

20 Bismarck Tribune, Oct. 8, 1873, p. 4Google Scholar.

21 Ibid.

22 Ibid.

23 Bismarck Tribune, Oct. 15, 1873, p. 1Google Scholar.

24 Chkago Tribune, Oct. 6, 1873., p. 7Google Scholar.

25 Chkago Tribune, Feb. 3, 1893, p. 6Google Scholar.