Free The Kingdom and the Power by Gay Talese Page A

there had been a traditional delicacy toward faithful employees, and people with prestige on the staff were rarely humiliated. Many of the dukes, too, were valuable men who had made, and were still making, important contributions to the paper which, in addition, was a very successful enterprise, and many people on
The Times
saw no reason for change. If Catledge wished to stage a revolution and demote the dukes and thus bring the power back to the managing editor’s office in New York, he had better do it subtly, he knew, and he had better be lucky. Still, there was no alternative, he thought; the paper could continue with its factionalism for just so long before it would proceed to destroy itself. He had seen firsthand some of the abuses of the dukedom in Washington, having gone there in 1929 shortly after he had been hired by
The Times
. In those days, the Washington chief, Richard V. Oulahan, Krock’s predecessor, ran a bureau in which reporters did as they pleased, and if three of them wished to cover the same assignment on a particular day, they did, and sometimes all three versions would be sent to New York and be printed. When Krock took over the bureau in 1932 upon the death of Oulahan, he quickly converted this self-directed staff into a team,
his
team, and the most ambitious young member of the team was Turner Catledge.
    Catledge sometimes wrote four to six major stories a day, became an expert on tax law, developed news sources throughout Washington; and all this tremendous energy and ambition could have worked against him if he had not also possessed a quality that redeemed him. Catledge had a wonderful way with men. Particularly older men. Particularly older men with power. This is a quality that perhaps cannot be learned but is inherent in certain rare young men who, partly because they are very bright and do not flaunt it, and partly because they are respectful and not privileged, confident but not
too
confident, attract the attention of older men, self-made men, and receive from these men much advice and help. The older men probably see something of themselves in these bright young men, something of what they were, or
think
they were, at a similar age. And so they help the younger men up the ladder, feeling no threat because these younger men are also endowed with a fine sense of timing.
    Turner Catledge had all this as no other young
Times
man would have it until the arrival in 1939 of James Reston, and it is not surprising that these two would become, in their mannered ways, rivals throughout the Forties and Fifties, and especially during the Sixties.
    One of the first important men to help Catledge was Herbert Hoover, who, as Secretary of Commerce in 1927, was on a survey of the Mississippi River flood area; Catledge was there for the
Memphis Commercial Appeal
. Catledge had left his home state of Mississippi for Memphis in 1923, riding the rails with $2.07 in his pocket, and now four years later he had come into prominence as a newsman principally for his vivid reporting on the Mississippi flood. Hoover, an orphan who always admired initiative in young men, was so charmed by Catledge that he wrote a letter in his behalf to Adolph Ochs. It was not until 1929, however, after Hoover had been elected President, that
The Times
hired Catledge.
    Krock also was much impressed with Catledge and by 1936, when Krock was fifty and Catledge thirty-five, Krock hinted that he did not intend to spend his whole life in Washington and that Catledge had the makings of an ideal successor as bureau chief. Catledge was very pleased but he still continued to call him
Mister
Krock, and was not encouraged to do otherwise, and this formality later stiffened a bit when Krock heard that President Roosevelt was also becoming enchanted with Turner Catledge. Krock disliked Roosevelt, and the feeling was returned, due in part to Krock’s turningagainst the New Deal in 1936, and due also to an episode prior to Roosevelt’s inauguration