Hearst's treatment was more effective and focused on the enemy who set the bomb—and offered a huge reward to readers. Pulitzer, though lacking Hearst's resources, kept the story on his front page. The yellow press covered the revolution extensively and often inaccurately, but conditions on Cuba were horrific enough. The island was in a terrible economic depression, and Spanish general Valeriano Weyler, sent to crush the rebellion, herded Cuban peasants into concentration camps and caused hundreds of thousands of deaths. Having clamored for a fight for two years, Hearst took credit for the conflict when it came: A week after the United States declared war on Spain, he ran "How do you like the Journal's war?" on his front page. Modern scholarship rejects the notion that Hearst or Yellow Journalism caused the war. In fact, President William McKinley never read the "Journal", and newspapers like the "Tribune" and the "New York Evening Post", both staunchly Republican, demanded restraint. Moreover, journalism historians have noted that yellow journalism was largely confined to New York City, and that newspapers in the rest of the country did not follow their lead. The "Journal" and the "World" were not among the top ten sources of news in regional papers, and the stories simply did not make a splash outside Gotham. War came because public opinion was sickened by the bloodshed, and because conservative leaders like McKinley realized that Spain had lost control of Cuba. These factors weighed more on the president's mind than the melodramas in the "New York Journal".