Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. Okay, so
Speaker 1: heads up. This is a two part episode that involves
Speaker 1: not only murder, but also discussion of suicide and a
Speaker 1: lot of talk of mental instability. That's not especially heavy
Speaker 1: in this first part, but it does come up, and
Speaker 1: we're starting with it right out of the gate, So
Speaker 1: jump away if if none of that is what you
Speaker 1: want to listen to. On September sixteenth, eighteen, Charles Chapin
Speaker 1: wrote the following upsetting note to his friend and business
Speaker 1: associate Carlos Sites quote. I know how wrong it is,
Speaker 1: but I cannot go on suffering as I have for months.
Speaker 1: I have tried to think out what is best to
Speaker 1: do and cannot bear the thought of leaving my wife
Speaker 1: to face the world alone. So I have resolved to
Speaker 1: take her with me. I've been living with my wife
Speaker 1: for thirty nine years and have been happy during that time.
Speaker 1: I am conscious of being on the verge of a
Speaker 1: nervous breakdown, and it is apparent that the time is
Speaker 1: close by when I will completely collapse. When you get
Speaker 1: this paper, I will be dead. My wife has been
Speaker 1: such a good pal I cannot leave her alone in
Speaker 1: the world. So the man who wrote that note was
Speaker 1: incredibly successful. He had a life that a lot of
Speaker 1: people envied. He had a great deal of power. His
Speaker 1: entire biography, which we will talk about, is full of
Speaker 1: noteworthy achievements, and he's like at the apex of like
Speaker 1: a lot of historical moments that he was responsible for
Speaker 1: reporting to the world. Yeah, this is like a tour
Speaker 1: of previous episodes of the podcast through his reporting. Yes,
Speaker 1: So how did someone who had really the command of
Speaker 1: pretty much anything one could want end up at a
Speaker 1: point where he wrote this note and what happened to
Speaker 1: him after this? It is quite a story. So today
Speaker 1: we are talking talking about Charles Chapin, and heads up,
Speaker 1: this is not Charles V. Chapin, who was a doctor
Speaker 1: who advocated for public health measures to decrease the spread
Speaker 1: of germs and disease. That is exactly how I did
Speaker 1: started reading about Charles Chapin that we're talking about today.
Speaker 1: Those two men were contemporaries. I had been searching for
Speaker 1: info in the doctor after we did our episode on
Speaker 1: Imogene W Reckton's No Kissing Crusade and Doctor Chapin will
Speaker 1: probably be a future episode at some point. But I
Speaker 1: had stumbled across a newspaper account that featured that note
Speaker 1: that I just read, and then I couldn't stop thinking
Speaker 1: about it. So today we are talking about the award
Speaker 1: winning newspaperman, Charles E. Chapin and the way that his
Speaker 1: seemingly perfect life fell apart. So Charles E. Chapin was
Speaker 1: born in Oneida, New York, on October fifty eight. His
Speaker 1: parents were Cecilia and Yale and Earl Chapin. Earl worked
Speaker 1: in the family business, which was a store that sold jewelry, watches, clocks,
Speaker 1: musical instruments, and similar items. Charles, who went by Charlie
Speaker 1: in his youth, was named after an uncle who had
Speaker 1: died as a baby. After the US Civil War, in
Speaker 1: which Earl served but never saw combat, the family moved
Speaker 1: to Junction City, Kansas. That was a town that was
Speaker 1: rapidly growing in the wake of the conflict, but they
Speaker 1: didn't stay very long. Earl was kind of disappointed in
Speaker 1: the business opportunities there and moved on to Atchison, Kansas. Charlie,
Speaker 1: who was the oldest son of the family, had been
Speaker 1: the only one of his siblings to attend any school,
Speaker 1: and that was in a one room schoolhouse in Junction City.
Speaker 1: But by the time they moved to Atchison, fourteen year
Speaker 1: old Charlie felt like it was time to strike out
Speaker 1: on his own. He later wrote of this quote, I
Speaker 1: reasoned out of my small boy brain that if I
Speaker 1: ever was to amount to anything, I must work out
Speaker 1: my salvation in my own way, without help or hindrance.
Speaker 1: He got his first job at the paper known as
Speaker 1: The Daily Champion as a delivery boy for a salary
Speaker 1: of four dollars a week. Chapin had to be at
Speaker 1: the press room at three thirty in the morning for
Speaker 1: every day except Monday. He would pick up and fold
Speaker 1: the papers and then start on a five mile route
Speaker 1: on foot. To add to his earnings, he also started
Speaker 1: running telegram deliveries after his paper route was completed. His
Speaker 1: total income from these two jobs was thirty dollars a month,
Speaker 1: and that was enough that when Earl decided to move
Speaker 1: the family again, Charles didn't go with them. He was
Speaker 1: ready to fend for himself. He negotiated a sleeping space
Speaker 1: in the press room. He had an arrangement with a
Speaker 1: local restaurant to run the cash register when it was
Speaker 1: busy in exchange for meals. His first telegram delivery job
Speaker 1: had been to Senator John James Ingles, who had taken
Speaker 1: a liking to Charlie and allowed him to borrow books
Speaker 1: from his library whenever he wanted. So for fourteen year
Speaker 1: old Charlie, he felt like he had enough to make
Speaker 1: fends meet. Yep, uh, yeah. He was a very very
Speaker 1: voracious reader throughout his life. Even though he didn't go
Speaker 1: to a lot of formal school, he was very smart
Speaker 1: and he absorbed a lot of what he read. He
Speaker 1: later lost access though, to Senator Ingalls library when the
Speaker 1: politician went to Washington, but at that point he supplemented
Speaker 1: his reading with a similar kindness from the newspapers editor.
Speaker 1: Charlie loved to read so much that the editor finally
Speaker 1: just gave him a key to his bookcase. And in
Speaker 1: addition to reading, Chapin expanded his self driven study by
Speaker 1: sending away for a course to learn shorthand, which he
Speaker 1: then used to take notes at public lectures that he attended.
Speaker 1: Again with that same goal of kind of expanding his
Speaker 1: education on his own, he taught himself Morse code and
Speaker 1: said that he subbed in for the town's regular telegraph
Speaker 1: operator when he was too intoxicated to do his job.
Speaker 1: Chapin's first published writing happened accidentally. He had written a
Speaker 1: short piece titled an Autobiography of a Hotel office Chair,
Speaker 1: and he left that in the telegraph office for the
Speaker 1: regular operator to read as an amusement. He didn't see
Speaker 1: it when he came back to the office after a
Speaker 1: dinner break and presumed it had just been thrown away.
Speaker 1: Put it appeared in the next morning's paper on the
Speaker 1: editorial page. He was sent a note from the papers
Speaker 1: editor thanking him for this well written sketch. He also
Speaker 1: got paid two dollars for it, and then it got
Speaker 1: picked up by other papers and republished. Charles Chapin was
Speaker 1: over the moon about this and met with the Daily
Speaker 1: Champions editor about becoming a reporter, a job the editor
Speaker 1: told him he would have within a year. Japan worked
Speaker 1: really hard to practice writing and prepare, but really overworked
Speaker 1: himself and became quite ill. He went to his parents,
Speaker 1: who were living in Freeport, Illinois, to nurse him through
Speaker 1: the sickness, and after he got better, he didn't go
Speaker 1: back to Kansas to see about that promised job at
Speaker 1: the Daily Champion. Instead, he went to Chicago. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: pattern of overwork and then kind of a collapse is
Speaker 1: something that plays out in his life over and over,
Speaker 1: as you will see. When he got to Chicago, Charlie
Speaker 1: met with editors. He pointed out his syndicated piece that
Speaker 1: he had written, uh, and some of those editors were encouraging.
Speaker 1: But based on that one accidentally published piece of writing
Speaker 1: and the fact that he was only sixteen, no one
Speaker 1: was ready to offer him a reporter job. So he
Speaker 1: went back to his family's home in Illinois to regroup.
Speaker 1: The only job he was offered with the papers there
Speaker 1: was an apprentice job, but he knew that wasn't going
Speaker 1: to be any kind of opportunity to write. Apprentices at
Speaker 1: the papers had to do a lot of menial jobs
Speaker 1: like sweeping and tending the office fireplaces, and he was
Speaker 1: not interested in that. Instead, he took an unusual path
Speaker 1: to getting his work published. He bought his own printing press.
Speaker 1: Mus had been auctioned off among the assets of a
Speaker 1: failed insurance company, and Shapin got it for what he
Speaker 1: said was a low bid. He didn't disclose the amount
Speaker 1: of that bid, though he did say that it was
Speaker 1: most of his existing savings. And then he set up
Speaker 1: the press at his parents house. Was given two rooms
Speaker 1: there to set up a print shop. The first things
Speaker 1: he printed were business cards and flyers so he could
Speaker 1: let people know that Charlie Chapin Book and job Printer
Speaker 1: was open for business. And he also started a magazine
Speaker 1: for kids which he wrote. It was called Our Compliments.
Speaker 1: He wrote under various aliases like Edwin S. Stone and
Speaker 1: Telegraph to make it seem like there were other staff involved,
Speaker 1: but it was just him writing and type setting and
Speaker 1: running the press. Yeah. This was a time when personal
Speaker 1: presses that were kind of like minis were very popular
Speaker 1: and a lot of boys were encouraged to like play
Speaker 1: with them, kind of the way we would do a
Speaker 1: science kit today. Um, he bought a real printing press,
Speaker 1: so it's not like a hobby press. Was an actual functional,
Speaker 1: professional press, which I find very funny. Uh. When he
Speaker 1: was seventeen, Charlie did expand the paper staff by joining
Speaker 1: up with a partner that was another young man named
Speaker 1: Stanton S. Mills, and Mills had actually worked in printing
Speaker 1: for several years, so he started managing the actual printing
Speaker 1: of the paper, and Chapin wrote an edited Charlie also
Speaker 1: started a trade group, the Western Association of Amateur Editors,
Speaker 1: and he set up a date for a meeting of
Speaker 1: that group in Dubuque, Iowa. He advertised the event in
Speaker 1: his paper Are Compliments, and the group had only one meeting, though,
Speaker 1: and soon Charlie sold his press and he moved with
Speaker 1: his family to Elgin, Illinois. Once again, the family was
Speaker 1: moving in pursuit of work for his father. At this
Speaker 1: point his life took a turn to a somewhat surprising profession,
Speaker 1: and we'll talk about that after we pause for a
Speaker 1: quick word from our sponsors. Charlie Chapin briefly became kind
Speaker 1: of a late blooming theater kid after getting to Elgin,
Speaker 1: and even toured with a theater company. Although he was,
Speaker 1: based on account, a pretty good actor, this was not
Speaker 1: his life's calling by any means. At one point, Chapin
Speaker 1: actually tried to shoot an actor named Eddie Foy during
Speaker 1: this period in his life. This was over a young
Speaker 1: woman that they were both interested in, but Chapin was,
Speaker 1: according to Foy quote no hiccock in marksmanship. He was
Speaker 1: such a bad shot that no charges were ever filed.
Speaker 1: He also got married in eighteen seventy nine to a
Speaker 1: young woman named Nellie Beebe that was a different woman
Speaker 1: than the one that had inspired his shooting. Nellie had
Speaker 1: been a teacher and then decided to switch careers and
Speaker 1: try acting. In the meantime, Charlie's father had abandoned the family.
Speaker 1: He had moved to Springfield, Illinois to try to find work,
Speaker 1: but then he never communicated with his wife, Cecelia Anne,
Speaker 1: or with anyone else in the family again. It turned
Speaker 1: out that he had found not only a job, but
Speaker 1: a whole other life. Earl, at that time forty eight,
Speaker 1: fell in love with an eighteen year old named Mary
Speaker 1: McCoy and started a different family with her. Charlie's sister Fanny,
Speaker 1: made inquiries and learned that Earle was still alive and well,
Speaker 1: but she never told their mother about this. Charlie and
Speaker 1: Nellie stayed with Cecilia for a while to comfort her
Speaker 1: about all this before going back on tour again. While
Speaker 1: performing in Deadwood, North Dakota, they performed to an audience
Speaker 1: that included Seth Bullock and Calamity Jane Jane is said
Speaker 1: to have spent tobacco juice on the gown of the
Speaker 1: leading lady when she didn't like the character's behavior. She
Speaker 1: was very much in line with everything we've ever heard
Speaker 1: about Collarity. It's just fascinating that Chapin was there. Um
Speaker 1: Chapin's acting career ended pretty abruptly when his theatrical manager
Speaker 1: died in an accident while traveling during the winter, and
Speaker 1: at that time, Charlie was still in Deadwood and he
Speaker 1: didn't have any money to pay for himself and Nellie
Speaker 1: to get back to Chicago, So he got a type
Speaker 1: setting job and then he took over for the papers
Speaker 1: editor when he was called away. He's dayed in that
Speaker 1: job for six months, while also occasionally taking some more
Speaker 1: acting roles, but he and Nelly did eventually land back
Speaker 1: in Chicago. Chapin would later call this foray into an
Speaker 1: acting career a quote false step in his life. Chapin
Speaker 1: quickly got a job at the Chicago Tribune, having returned
Speaker 1: at a time when most of the city's papers were
Speaker 1: staffing up. They were trying to meet the demands of
Speaker 1: a rapidly expanding city. He was working as a reporter
Speaker 1: the most junior reporter on staff, and that meant he
Speaker 1: got the least important assignments, although he wrote later quote
Speaker 1: they were always important to me. He also noted that
Speaker 1: he fell in love with the job and the thrill
Speaker 1: of covering unfolding news, and how it made him feel
Speaker 1: as if he had wasted a lot of time with
Speaker 1: his brief acting career. He got his first front page
Speaker 1: placement in February of eighty four while covering a gruesome
Speaker 1: murder of a wealthy couple north of the city. The
Speaker 1: headline and subheaders read when atkas horror the regularly brutal
Speaker 1: murder of Mr and Mrs James L. Wilson Tuesday Night,
Speaker 1: they warmed a viper in the person of a visitor
Speaker 1: who first robbed and then killed them. At a time
Speaker 1: when the idea of detective journalism was just taking hold, Chapin,
Speaker 1: a newcomer to the job, out did his peers with
Speaker 1: a write up that was incredibly detailed, in thorough, very
Speaker 1: graphic in its description of the bodies, and included a
Speaker 1: pretty thorough biography of the victims, James L. Wilson and
Speaker 1: Clarissa Wilson. This article was laid out very much like
Speaker 1: a case file, and it even included layout drawings of
Speaker 1: the Wilson's home so that readers could understand the information
Speaker 1: that we're given more fully kind of follow along with
Speaker 1: the story. It also had far more information about the
Speaker 1: incident than any of the other Chicago papers had. He
Speaker 1: continued to cover this double murder, which was believed to
Speaker 1: have been committed by someone the Wilson's had invited into
Speaker 1: their home for dinner, but finding out who that visitor
Speaker 1: was actually proved pretty challenging for investigators. When the local butcher,
Speaker 1: Neil mckeg was arrested and put on trial for the crime,
Speaker 1: Chapin secured one of the accused only interviews. They covered
Speaker 1: every day of the trial with the same detail that
Speaker 1: he had the murder scene, including the large group of
Speaker 1: women admirers who came to the courtroom every day to
Speaker 1: support mckeg. Shapen pretty obviously thought mckeege was guilty, but
Speaker 1: the butcher was acquitted. Regardless of the trial's outcome, Charles
Speaker 1: Chapin had gone from cub reporter to one of the
Speaker 1: Tribune's star reporters, and he got much more important assignments
Speaker 1: throughout his time as a reporter for the Tribune, Chapin
Speaker 1: became known for his determined pursuit of every story from
Speaker 1: the moment he started covering it to whichever point it
Speaker 1: reached its conclusion. For example, when the Haymarket incident happened
Speaker 1: in eight six, when a bomb was thrown at a
Speaker 1: labor demonstration, leading to police firing at the assembled demonstrators,
Speaker 1: Chapin covered that story. He wrote it with a very
Speaker 1: anti labor rights slant at the urging of the papers
Speaker 1: managing editor and co owner Joseph Medill. Madill could be
Speaker 1: an episode in his own right, but the short version
Speaker 1: is not a good guy. As that story unfolded over
Speaker 1: a period of time in which Chapin was also chasing
Speaker 1: other big news as well. Chapin wrote about every single development.
Speaker 1: Because the labor organizers at the Haymarket incident had been
Speaker 1: tied to socialist and anarchist activities led by German born
Speaker 1: August Spies. Once they were in custody, xenophobia drove the
Speaker 1: paper's coverage as the Tribune advocated for the death penalty
Speaker 1: when one of the sentenced men, Louis Ling, died by
Speaker 1: suicide the night before he was to be hanged, Chapin
Speaker 1: wrote up every minute detail, sparing his readers absolutely nothing
Speaker 1: in the description of Ling's body after he had detonated
Speaker 1: a small explosive cap in his mouth. Ling had not
Speaker 1: died immediately, and Chapin summed up the hours following the
Speaker 1: small blast by writing quote, Ling died hard. When four
Speaker 1: of the other organizers were executed at the gallows the
Speaker 1: following morning, Chapin witnessed it and reported it, including minute
Speaker 1: by minute accounts of each hangedman's pulse as stated by
Speaker 1: attending doctors. I was curious when you sent me this
Speaker 1: about whether I had read any of his reporting when
Speaker 1: researching our episode on the Haymarket riot. Very likely, I
Speaker 1: don't remember. I did not get to go check before
Speaker 1: we came into the studio. Japan's writing, as we've said,
Speaker 1: really did not spare his readers, but he was not
Speaker 1: hardened to the events that he wrote about. He described
Speaker 1: the scene of the Wilson murders as something that haunted
Speaker 1: him for the rest of his life. Similarly, after watching
Speaker 1: the execution of the labor organizers, he was so rattled
Speaker 1: by the experience that he immediately went to a saloon
Speaker 1: and got what he thought was blackout drunk, though he
Speaker 1: later recounted that he didn't remember anything of that night.
Speaker 1: He was surprised to find that he had written and
Speaker 1: filed his story. The colleagues he had started drinking with
Speaker 1: told him that he only had one brandy and then left,
Speaker 1: So it seems like he entered kind of a fugue state.
Speaker 1: Worked on this article for eight hours straight, filed his story,
Speaker 1: and then went to sleep. Yeah, he wrote about in
Speaker 1: his autobiography, like waking up thinking he had dropped the
Speaker 1: ball and hadn't done his work, and really panicking. And
Speaker 1: then on his way to the office he bought a
Speaker 1: paper on the street and his article was in it,
Speaker 1: and he was very confused for a while while he
Speaker 1: tried to piece this whole thing together. When Chapin was
Speaker 1: covering a story about a possible instance of infidelity involving
Speaker 1: a man named William A. McCauley who was per the
Speaker 1: tip Chapin had received having an affair with his sister
Speaker 1: in law who had gone missing, Charlie accidentally found himself
Speaker 1: very deeply involved in the story as he had been
Speaker 1: interviewing William Ida McCauley, who was William's wife shot McCauley
Speaker 1: in the head. He fell into Chapin's arms. William died
Speaker 1: several hours later, and while this may seem like a
Speaker 1: situation where a reporter would step away from writing the story,
Speaker 1: Chapin did not. He was with the family as the
Speaker 1: police arrived and arrested Ida. He looked through their personal
Speaker 1: photographs to pull things for a story. He located the
Speaker 1: missing Molly Macklin, and he interviewed her. He interviewed Molly's husband,
Speaker 1: Harry Macklin, who was Ida McAuley's brother, and he went
Speaker 1: to the police station after Ida had been booked, and
Speaker 1: then interviewed her. He got all the details and was
Speaker 1: not very delicate about reaching out to anybody involved. The
Speaker 1: story ran on the front page Christmas Morning under the
Speaker 1: headline Mrs McAuley's crime. Because of that high profile story,
Speaker 1: on top of the other pieces he had become known for,
Speaker 1: Chapin was asked by the competing paper, the Chicago Times,
Speaker 1: to be at city editor. He took this job on
Speaker 1: the condition that he'd be given absolute authority over the
Speaker 1: news room. His bosses at the Chicago Tribune took his
Speaker 1: exit very hard, although he was also told that if
Speaker 1: the editor job didn't work out, he could come back.
Speaker 1: All of this transition happened in the course of a
Speaker 1: single day. Charles Chapin was working the newsroom at the Times.
Speaker 1: The night he took the job. He was preparing the
Speaker 1: next morning's paper. He also fired a reporter that very
Speaker 1: night after he heard him trash talking. Chapin when he
Speaker 1: thought he was out of earshot, and then he told
Speaker 1: the rest of the newsroom that if anybody held the
Speaker 1: same opinion, they should share an elevator with the reporter
Speaker 1: he had just fired. There was a turnover. Some of
Speaker 1: the long time staff decided to leave, and Shapin quickly
Speaker 1: filled their positions with other people. We're going to talk
Speaker 1: about more of Chapin's turbulent news career after we take
Speaker 1: a quick break to hear from the sponsors to keep
Speaker 1: stuff he missed in history class going. When he started
Speaker 1: working at the Chicago Times, Chapin was tasked with bringing
Speaker 1: the lagging paper back to life, and he had a
Speaker 1: very strong ideas for how to do that. He hired
Speaker 1: a woman reporter named Nell Cusack to respond to help
Speaker 1: wanted ads for sweatshops around the city so that she
Speaker 1: could write about conditions as an insider, and she started
Speaker 1: the series City Slave Girls as a result, which included
Speaker 1: the striking passage quote, I did not realize the ignominious
Speaker 1: position of respectable poverty un till I reached a cloak
Speaker 1: factory on Madison Street, where labor is bondage, the laborer
Speaker 1: a slave, and flesh and blood cheaper than needles and thread.
Speaker 1: The expose that Cusack wrote under the pen name Nel
Speaker 1: Nelson sold out paper so that the presses actually had
Speaker 1: to run additional copies. Chapin's changes to the paper were
Speaker 1: clearly working, and Cusack would eventually parlay that column into
Speaker 1: two books. When the papor's owner, James J. West, wanted
Speaker 1: Shapen to do the same kind of undercover story to
Speaker 1: find out which doctors in Chicago were willing to perform
Speaker 1: illegal abortions, Chapin refused. You threatened to quit rather than
Speaker 1: work on a story with quote such indecency, and he
Speaker 1: thought West had been abandoned the idea, But instead West
Speaker 1: really assigned the story to two young reporters himself. They
Speaker 1: were a man and a woman. They pretended to be
Speaker 1: sweethearts who were dealing with an accidental pregnancy and they
Speaker 1: went to respected doctors in the city to see who
Speaker 1: would help them with the illegal procedure. When Charles Chapin
Speaker 1: discovered that West had sent the story to print, he quit. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he walked out on the spot. He went back to
Speaker 1: the Chicago Tribune, and he also took some of the
Speaker 1: staff with him. He was back in a reporter role
Speaker 1: at his old paper, putting out paper selling front page
Speaker 1: articles immediately after his return. But then he was lured
Speaker 1: back to the time Himes as the Washington d c. Correspondent.
Speaker 1: He still had a lot of ill will toward West,
Speaker 1: but he really wanted the job, so, as he said, quote,
Speaker 1: I smothered my feelings and accepted. Chapin and Nelly rented
Speaker 1: an apartment five blocks away from the White House, and
Speaker 1: his life as a political reporter began. He held that
Speaker 1: job for six years. He made friends with politicians from
Speaker 1: Illinois who would feed him information that would sell papers
Speaker 1: back in Chicago, and Chapin continued to inject his own
Speaker 1: opinions into stories, influencing public opinion about political appointments, and
Speaker 1: even using his network of contacts to give information to
Speaker 1: politicians about how the public might perceive various decisions before
Speaker 1: they were made or announced. But all the while, James J. West,
Speaker 1: who was still Chapin's boss, had been mismanaging The Chicago
Speaker 1: Times and committing financial fraud to try to stay out
Speaker 1: of debt. West had tried to get Charlie to run
Speaker 1: away to Europe with him with a suitcase full of money,
Speaker 1: although that seemed to be more of a desperation request
Speaker 1: than any kind of a real plan. As the paper
Speaker 1: crumbled and a warrant was issued for West's arrest, Chapin
Speaker 1: resigned after working briefly as a campaign manager for a
Speaker 1: Salt Lake City politician who did not get elected. Uh
Speaker 1: that was a job Chapin took because he needed money.
Speaker 1: He was then offered a job at the Chicago Herald.
Speaker 1: He worked there first as a theater and music critic,
Speaker 1: something he was apparently bad at because he didn't know
Speaker 1: anything about music, and then he moved into the city
Speaker 1: editor position. One of the topics that he assigned on
Speaker 1: an ongoing basis was the wide disparity between the city's
Speaker 1: poorest and richest residents. His reporters filed story after story
Speaker 1: of people dying while charity organizations that were ostensibly raising
Speaker 1: money to aid the poor, seemed to focus more on
Speaker 1: their gala events than actually administering that aid. This led
Speaker 1: to the paper itself launching a relief effort and using
Speaker 1: an empty building near the offices as a base of
Speaker 1: operations to collect donations and assemble relief packages, including basics
Speaker 1: like coal and bedclothes. This then became its own goodwill
Speaker 1: story for the paper and drove up readership and continued
Speaker 1: on through the winter until the early spring of But
Speaker 1: then a few months later, Chapin abruptly left his job
Speaker 1: at The Herald due to ill health. To recover from
Speaker 1: his illness, Chapin traveled to the Atlantic coast and then
Speaker 1: visited New York, where he visited Park Row, on the
Speaker 1: street in Manhattan's financial district that had become the epicenter
Speaker 1: of journalism in the late nineteenth century was known colloquially
Speaker 1: as Newspaper Row. There, Joseph Pulitzer had recently completed the
Speaker 1: New York World Building, and the Renaissance Revival style structure
Speaker 1: was to Chapin like a beacon. This first visit to
Speaker 1: the offices of the World was unplanned. Chapin had seen
Speaker 1: it and had spontaneously decided to go inside. He did
Speaker 1: not stop at the information desk or talk to any receptionists.
Speaker 1: He just walked straight to the elevators, got on, and
Speaker 1: headed to the floor where the editorial desk for The
Speaker 1: New York World was. No one stopped him as he
Speaker 1: strolled off the elevator and went right to the editor.
Speaker 1: Chapin introduced himself and started to explain to editor Ballard
Speaker 1: Smith who he was, but Smith stopped him and already
Speaker 1: knew who he was, and offered him a job on
Speaker 1: the spot. He was working at the World as a
Speaker 1: reporter the next day. Chapin wanted, of course, the same
Speaker 1: front page placements of his stories that he'd had in Chicago.
Speaker 1: Even when he was given smaller stories, he looked for
Speaker 1: an angle on how to expand them into something unique
Speaker 1: that readers would want to discuss with their friends and families.
Speaker 1: He was assigned to cover a train wreck that had
Speaker 1: happened several stops north of Grand Central. There had been
Speaker 1: no fatalities, so it wasn't considered big news, but Chapin
Speaker 1: took this almost as a personal challenge. He wrote about
Speaker 1: what had happened, one engineer, seeming to have ignored a
Speaker 1: clear signal to stop, and the tension of the crowd
Speaker 1: that sawt of crash play out. He did this in
Speaker 1: a way that any thriller novelist would have been proud of.
Speaker 1: At the center of Chapin's write up was engineer John Cummings,
Speaker 1: who seemed to have had some sort of mental break
Speaker 1: even before the crash. He had stayed in his engineer
Speaker 1: seat perfectly still, not speaking or looking at anyone, even
Speaker 1: as the engine was falling apart around him. This is
Speaker 1: on the front page the next day, and Pulitzer telegramed
Speaker 1: the city editor that Chapin was to get a bonus
Speaker 1: for the story and to be given more high profile
Speaker 1: assignments going forward. Chapin was not only focused on news
Speaker 1: in New York. He also knew that his great uncle
Speaker 1: Russell Sage was there, and Russell Sage was rich. He
Speaker 1: had built his empire over the course of the nineteenth century,
Speaker 1: rising from a clerk position in a grocery store as
Speaker 1: a youth to become a railroad executive and a financier.
Speaker 1: He was one of the richest men in New York
Speaker 1: and the world at that point, and Chapin thought that
Speaker 1: if he could cultivate a relationship with Sage that could
Speaker 1: eventually lead to an inheritance, because even though Chapin had
Speaker 1: been one of, if not the highest paid reporter in
Speaker 1: Chicago for years, he always seemed short on money. He
Speaker 1: wrote that he had gotten a taste of a millionaire's
Speaker 1: life while spending time with wealthy contacts and friends over
Speaker 1: the years, and it was clearly something he wanted for himself.
Speaker 1: His opportunity to meet Sage came when the business mogul's
Speaker 1: office made news in early December a man who was
Speaker 1: trying to extort Sage exploded a bomb in sages office.
Speaker 1: Chapin was the first reporter to get an interview with Sage.
Speaker 1: Russell Sage recounted how a man who claimed to have
Speaker 1: been sent by John d. Rockefeller entered his office, demanded
Speaker 1: one point to million dollars and told Sage that his
Speaker 1: bag contained ten pounds of dinah might and that he
Speaker 1: would kill everyone in the building if his demands weren't met.
Speaker 1: Once again, Chapin's right up outpaced other reporters with greater
Speaker 1: detail and the interview from stage. But then Chapin had
Speaker 1: another bout of ill health, which he described as tobercular throat,
Speaker 1: and he left what seemed to have been his dream job.
Speaker 1: He and Nelly went to Colorado so Charlie could rest,
Speaker 1: and then he started working for the Missouri Pacific Railroad.
Speaker 1: That is a job that was probably arranged by Sage.
Speaker 1: He sat on the board of directors for the railroad
Speaker 1: the Chapin State in Colorado for a year. But Charles
Speaker 1: was soon on the trail of news again when Jacob
Speaker 1: Seckler Coxey started his quote petition in boots. That was
Speaker 1: the March to Washington to protest unemployment, which we have
Speaker 1: covered on the show before. Charles Chapin covered that march.
Speaker 1: One of the groups that was planning on meeting with
Speaker 1: Coxey and Washington came to be known as Kelly's Navy,
Speaker 1: named because it was made up of a bunch of
Speaker 1: men traveling on the St. Louis River by raft and boat.
Speaker 1: Chapin had taken a job with the St. Louis Dispatch
Speaker 1: as a reporter, and it was like the New York
Speaker 1: World owned by Joseph Pulitzer, which helped him get his
Speaker 1: job there. But it was a much less intense market
Speaker 1: in St. Louis than it had been in New York
Speaker 1: or Chicago, so Chapin kind of thought this would offer
Speaker 1: him a good on ramp back into reporting. As he
Speaker 1: continued to recover Chapin embedded with Kelly's Navy. We mentioned
Speaker 1: in our episode on Coxy's Army that the protesters had
Speaker 1: been really angry at the press because the coverage of
Speaker 1: their efforts tended to make them look like they were
Speaker 1: just a disgruntled group of malcontents looking to cause trouble.
Speaker 1: So for Chapin to be trusted enough to enter their
Speaker 1: circle was a big deal. Chapin wrote about the high
Speaker 1: degree of organization in the camps as they traveled, about
Speaker 1: hygiene requirements for participants, about how much all of them
Speaker 1: read the news of the day to stay informed. He was,
Speaker 1: he wrote, pretty impressed, and his work on the right
Speaker 1: up may him as central to the staff at his St.
Speaker 1: Louis paper as he had been in Chicago and New York.
Speaker 1: By the end of the year, he was assistant city editor,
Speaker 1: and by spring he was city editor after a significant
Speaker 1: shake up at the paper. This was a job that
Speaker 1: came with benefits and dangers. When an article that went
Speaker 1: after the school board president Frederick Brockman was published at
Speaker 1: the command of Chapin's boss, who was Colonel Charles H. Jones.
Speaker 1: Brockman sued the paper, and it was Chapin that face
Speaker 1: trial as city editor, even though he had not written
Speaker 1: or assigned that piece. The judge in the case was
Speaker 1: biased against the paper because of an article that had
Speaker 1: been published several weeks earlier questioning the judge's military record.
Speaker 1: He tried repeatedly to bait Chapin into arguing with him
Speaker 1: in court, and then he refused himself of the trial
Speaker 1: and attempted to fist fight with Chapin again. Chapin refused,
Speaker 1: although the chief of police had been concerned enough about
Speaker 1: the judge's temper that he actually gave Chapin a pistol
Speaker 1: to defend himself if need be. Nothing ever happened, although
Speaker 1: there were a couple of tense moments where the men
Speaker 1: passed each other in the street and kind of eyed
Speaker 1: one another. Uh. And the Brockman case was dismissed by
Speaker 1: the new judge that came in in March of Polits.
Speaker 1: Their telegraph Chapin that he had to come to New
Speaker 1: York at once, and that was the end of Charles
Speaker 1: Chapin's life in St. Louis, and that's where we're going
Speaker 1: to end it for today. Next time we will get
Speaker 1: into Chapin's time back in New York and the events
Speaker 1: that changed his life and his reputation forever. But that
Speaker 1: is where we're at. UM. I have a journalism related
Speaker 1: listener mail from our listener Sarah, who writes hy Allie
Speaker 1: and Tracy. I hate being that person, but I would
Speaker 1: like to point out Nellie Bligh's real name was Elizabeth Cochrane,
Speaker 1: not the other way around, is Holly stated in your
Speaker 1: latest Behind the Scenes. I studied Bligh in high school
Speaker 1: and pursued a journalism degree because of what she was
Speaker 1: able to accomplish. I recently left the field and now
Speaker 1: work for a symphony. That's a cool career trajectory. UM. Apologies,
Speaker 1: I didn't think about it. I will say I have
Speaker 1: read about Nelly Blie, but didn't retain everything. I feel
Speaker 1: like she sometimes used Elizabeth Cochrane after her Nellie blind
Speaker 1: name became known kind of as an alias, which is
Speaker 1: where I got confused. That's what's up. Thank you for
Speaker 1: the correction, Sarah. UM. I also have a fun another
Speaker 1: I swear I won't talk about butterflies every time. But
Speaker 1: our list Karen also wrote UM. She was catching up
Speaker 1: on things and she mentioned that I can tell you
Speaker 1: that it is very easy to order painted lady caterpillars
Speaker 1: and to grow and release them at your home. It
Speaker 1: was brought to our attention during pandemic and it is
Speaker 1: now our kiddo's favorite late spring activity. So uh, that
Speaker 1: is a good thing to look up if you are
Speaker 1: interested in in doing some butterfly time at home, which
Speaker 1: sounds great to me and it's something I kind of
Speaker 1: want to do. Um, thank you so much for writing us,
Speaker 1: both of you. If you would like to write to us,
Speaker 1: you can do so at History Podcast at i heeart
Speaker 1: radio dot com. You can also find us on social
Speaker 1: media as Missed in History, and you can subscribe on
Speaker 1: the I heart Radio, Apple anywhere you listen to your
Speaker 1: favorite shows. Stuff you Missed in History Class is a
Speaker 1: production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.