CARL SCHURZ'S POLITICAL CAREER
of editors attracted much attention and brought much prestige to this journal. But skeptical voices were not wanting, with suggestions that such a combination of “all the talents” might be as unfeasible in journalism as it once proved to be in the English government.
The skeptics were justified by the event. Mr. Schurz and Mr. Godkin, in their separate spheres, had been great admirers of each other. Intellectually they were in general of the same aristocratic type. On the proper solution of the great problems of social and political progress they were in substantial agreement; but their methods of promoting the proper solution tended to diverge. Schurz's practice was to reason with his adversaries; Godkin's was both to reason and to lash them. There was also a basic difference in the temperaments of the two men. For the mass of people who had failed to reach his own intellectual level Schurz felt sympathy; for those whom his truly great powers could not convince Godkin often felt contempt or at best indifference. At a time when capital and labor were in frequent conflict and politics was shifting from constitutional to economic and administrative issues, such differences of feeling must produce unpleasant results. The purely technical side of editorial management also gave occasion for trouble. Godkin as editor of the Nation had highly appreciated contributions from Schurz. In the winter of 1872-73, under an arrangement by which the authorship was kept a secret, Schurz sent letters from Washington with much regularity, though he refused the proffered compensation for them. Schurz as superior editor was much less to Godkin's taste. The quality given to the Post by the new management fell short, indeed, of pleasing either of the men. The oratorical and didactic habit of Schurz could not blend with the more distinctively journalistic talent of Godkin. However unlike in
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