The Gazette’s ‘bittersweet’ Pulitzer Prize

Here’s a place you didn’t want to be in the 1930s: Verne Marshall’s crosshairs.

Marshall, the Cedar Rapids man who drove an ambulance for the French army during World War I.

Marshall, editor of the Cedar Rapids Gazette from 1932 to 1941 and the driving force behind the newspaper’s only Pulitzer Prize.

Marshall, who later became a national leader of the No Foreign War Committee during World War II and “managed to alienate virtually everyone he encountered in this effort,” as author Jerry Harrington wrote in his 2017 book, “Crusading Iowa Journalist Verne Marshall: Exposing Graft and the 1936 Pulitzer Prize” (The History Press).

The Gazette was awarded the 1936 Pulitzer for public service because of Marshall’s bulldog — some called it obsessive — drive to expose corruption in Iowa government related to illegal gambling and liquor sales.

Marshall’s accusations shot all the way to then-Iowa Attorney General Edward O’Connor while Marshall also managed to constantly harangue then-Gov. Clyde Herring during the 1930s.

Harrington’s book gives all the details of Marshall’s drive against corruption but also how Marshall’s prickly personality tarnished him.

Harrington’s book goes into intricate detail about how Marshall, a cigar-smoking champion for what Marshall believed to be right, started to suspect something fishy in Des Moines after state agents raided a canning factory in Cedar Rapids in 1934. Turned out that the factory was a front for an illegal bar that had illegal slot machines.

When Marshall asked himself how this could happen, the only logical answer to him was that someone in Des Moines was looking the other way when it came to unauthorized liquor sales and gambling.

Marshall’s investigation led him to Sioux City, an unlikely place for a Cedar Rapids newspaper some 270 driving miles to the west. But Marshall believed, Harrington notes, that he could connect dots there to Des Moines.

Marshall was right.

He learned that law enforcement officials in Sioux City were taking bribes to allow liquor to be sold at establishments that did not have the required, authorized state stamps, that illegal gambling was taking place, and that consent was coming from Des Moines.

Marshall’s reporting forced Iowa’s Democratic Party chairman to resign. It also forced Woodbury County’s county attorney and Sioux City’s public safety commissioner to resign and, Harrington points out, helped end the attorney general’s political career at the state level.

It also resulted in some 50 indictments, although most did not result in convictions.

Reports that Marshall published in The Gazette produced pushback from the government officials he accused, including accusations that Marshall improperly was influencing a grand jury looking into the allegations. That, in turn, produced pushback from Marshall.

“Whoever says or implies that … is a deliberate liar,” Marshall stated in a front-page column.

Bittersweet

The Gazette learned on May 5, 1936, that it had won the Pulitzer Prize.

The announcement’s timing was bittersweet, though, because the Iowa Supreme Court ruled the same day that cases stemming from Marshall’s investigation against Iowa First Assistant Attorney General Walter Maley and others were being tossed out of court.

In its ruling, the Supreme Court took a dim view of the fact that Marshall had paid $700 — about $15,000 in today’s dollars — to Woodbury County’s special prosecutor — former Iowa Attorney General Horace Havner — for trial expenses and to help amass evidence for the case.

Havner denied receiving any Gazette compensation to prosecute the defendants, and Marshall, who had made thousands of dollars in other payments as well to help build the case, said he didn’t bribe investigators. Rather, he said, he paid expenses that the case accrued.

Thus, you have an iconic May 5, 1936, Gazette front page — the newspaper was delivered in the afternoon with the headlines “Gazette Pulitzer Winner” and “Graft Case Indictments Wiped Out” stacked at the top of the page. No surprise, the Pulitzer got the main headline.

Marshall wrote that the prize vindicated the indictments.

World War II

In Harrington’s book, he also reports on how negatively Marshall — the World War I veteran — became viewed for his opposition to U.S. involvement in World War II.

He makes note of what William Shirer, a Coe College graduate and author of “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich,” said was Marshall’s fanaticism in his opposition to the U.S. becoming involved in a European war.

And he makes note of others whom Marshall rubbed the wrong way, such as members of President Franklin Roosevelt’s administration and one-time ally and aviation pioneer Charles Lindbergh.

Lyle Muller is former editor of The Gazette and former executive director-editor of Iowa Watch/Iowa Center for Public Affairs Journalism in Iowa City. This article is excerpted from a 2017 book review he wrote for The Gazette.