Broken Link

Last week death broke one of the remaining links between the late great Joseph Pulitzer and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Dead from a stroke was 83-year-old George Sibley Johns, one of the great ancients of journalism, whose busiest years ended in 1930 when he became editor emeritus of the Post-Dispatch after 48 years as a newspaperman.

The career of Editor Johns on the P-D extended from the days of John A. Cockerill, who as managing editor had to shoot an indignant reader in self-defense, to the brawling '20s when the P-D thundered against Prohibition, whooped it up for the League of Nations, and denounced iniquitous Republicans. In charge of the P-D editorial page for 30 years, Johns never deviated from the P-D platform outlined in 1907 by Joseph Pulitzer, which called for Jeffersonian democracy, individual liberty and journalistic independence.

Editor Johns joined the P-D five years after Pulitzer bought it. The year he started saw the purchase of the New York World. It wasn't long before Johns was Pulitzer's liaison man between New York and the PD. His powers were enormous. Typical of Pulitzer was his method of introducing Johns to Manhattan confreres. "Gentlemen," he would say, "this is the editor of my Western paper. I pay scarce ly any attention to that paper; I am too busy in New York. The main thing that interests me about it is the check I receive in dividends."

Born at St. Charles, Mo., three years before the Civil War, Editor Johns studied at Princeton, was a legman on the Princetonian when Woodrow Wilson was editor. Meeting Wilson years later, Johns remarked: "You taught me all I know about journalism, and I taught you all you know about statesmanship." Said Wilson: "You may be right. I used in my last speech something you wrote for the Princetonian." After leaving Princeton, he worked for a while on the old Philadelphia News, founded and edited a paper in his home town.

For the PD, Johns covered everything from murders to human interest yarns. Together with Augustus Thomas, later an eminent playwright, he reported the trial of the Maxwell-Preller murder case, which started out with a corpse in a trunk in the Southern Hotel, wound up with the hanging of an Englishman named Arthur Maxwell three years later. For their work on the case, Johns and Thomas got a bonus of $2.50 apiece. Once he sat beside the driver of James G. Elaine's coach all day, overheard enough of the conversation inside to write probably the most complete story of a day in the life of a candidate ever put together.

Silver-haired, fine-featured, Editor Johns had an immense zest for life, a heroic capacity for whiskey, and an absolutely untamable will to say and print what he thought. He was twice fired from the PD, reinstated on both occasions. It was after being fired by Part Owner Charles H. Jones in 1898 that he was brought back as editor in charge of the editorial page.

It was through Johns that Oliver K. Bovard, famed ex-managing editor of the P-D was taken on the paper. As a reporter for the St. Louis Star, Bovard unearthed all the facts in a bribery case that his paper figured was too hot to handle. He took his story to the PD, was hired, and Johns, then an editorial writer, promptly had it printed. Bovard stayed on to become nationally celebrated for his successful six-year struggle to crack the Teapot Dome scandal.

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