City of Scoundrels: The 12 Days of Disaster That Gave Birth to Modern Chicago (14 page)

The national press, fully invested in the image of Thompson as a traitorous buffoon, was incredulous: “Chicago’s Shame!” screeched the
New Haven Journal-Courier
. The
New York Times
could only scratch its editorial head: “It is difficult for outsiders to understand the complicated interplay of machines and personalities and more or less artificial issues … that enter into a Cook County municipal election,” the paper admitted. Somehow, voters in that “bedraggled and dirty” city had seen fit to reelect an “eccentric Caliph,” and one who had proven himself “a bitter joke as a patriot.” It was apparently more than the members of a truly civilized East Coast electorate could fathom.

The local newspapers seemed to have a better grasp of what had happened. The much-hoped-for surge of anti-Thompson votes—among soldiers and others hostile to the mayor—had been dissipated by the presence of too many alternative candidates in the race. Calling Thompson’s victory a “fluke,” the
Daily News
tried to make much
of this huge but splintered opposition vote: “He becomes a minority mayor, holding office not by virtue of any confidence still felt in him by the community … but simply because the anti-Thompson voters did not work together.”

The
Chicago Daily Journal
, however, was far less diplomatic. “Negroes Elect ‘Big Bill’ ” was the banner headline on their special election edition, over a story explaining how Thompson’s overwhelming support in the Black Belt accounted for virtually his entire 17,600-vote margin of victory. “The Negroes were in a frenzy of delight when they learned that their votes had put Big Bill in the mayor’s chair for another four years,” the paper reported. “South State Street, South Wabash Avenue, and the other thoroughfares in the district witnessed a demonstration of hilarity seldom seen on an election night.” In an already divided city, then, the election results provided just one more point of contention, just one more reason for many embittered whites to resent the city’s ever more powerful black population.
²¹

The mayor himself offered a different analysis. “I have been maligned. I have been misunderstood,” Big Bill announced. “[But] I hope during the ensuing four years to be understood.” Turning to his perennial trump card, the Chicago Plan, he tried to refocus the city’s attention on its hopeful future. “I want to make Chicago a great city,” he effused. “I want to build her a lakefront, to finish widening streets and building bridges. I love this city! My love for her was inherited! I love Chicago with all my heart!”

For Fred Lundin, the triumph of his protégé meant a second chance to extend the reach of his organization beyond the city to embrace his greater state and national objectives. Before that could happen, though, there was a lot of work to be done. In the days after the election, he was already busily tallying up the contributions of their friends during the campaign, in order to know who was to be rewarded and who was to be shunned. The calculus of
political obligation could be arcane, but no one knew it better than the Poor Swede.

One thing that did not escape his notice: Among the customary letters of congratulations, conciliation, and contrition—the bread-and-butter missives that came from both Republicans and Democrats, from both friends and enemies—one was conspicuously missing. From the governor of Illinois there was nothing.
²²

B
ARELY CHASTISED
by the close call of his narrow reelection victory, Big Bill Thompson moved quickly to punish his enemies and reassert his authority over a city where discord and divisiveness now seemed to be worsening every day. “Re-Election Starts Mayor on Warpath,” the
Daily News
reported on the day after the election. In words “bristling with militancy,” the mayor made it understood that he was ready to do battle with the full gamut of “greedy plunderers of the people.” He would launch an official investigation into the “rotten influence” of the Municipal Voters’ League, begin an effort to purge the board of education of his opponents, and take aim at the utility and transit interests that wanted to bleed the people with higher gas prices and transit fares. All this, he claimed, was to “restore to the people their constitutional powers to govern themselves.”
¹

The hidden agenda behind these multiple crusades was not lost on the members of the press. “Thompson Men Plan to Extend Rule in State: Have Visions of Lowden Forced into Line,” the
Tribune
warned on April 3, citing rumors that the governor’s political future was now in Big Bill’s hands. “Mayor Thompson let it be known that he will shoot full of holes … Governor Lowden’s alleged hope of entering the Republican lists for the presidential nomination,” the
Herald and Examiner
reported. “If the Governor wishes the Mayor’s assistance, he will have to plead on his political knees.” Lowden, in other words, was going to have to start giving the Thompson-Lundin organization what it wanted—or else suffer the consequences.
²

In his official statements, of course, Big Bill adopted a different tone and was mostly magnanimous in victory. When asked in a sit-down interview with
Tribune
reporter Charles Wheeler if he wanted to say anything to the newspapers, Thompson chuckled. “I guess we gave you a pretty fair fight, didn’t we?” he said. “But seriously, I am not apologizing for my fight against you. I am ready for more if you want it.” After a moment, though, the mayor relented and offered to let bygones be bygones: “I am here for four years more. Let’s try to forget our personal likes and dislikes for a while and see if there isn’t something good and big and enduring we can all do for Chicago.”

Apparently hoping to get past this genial rhetoric, Wheeler went on to press the mayor on possible changes to his cabinet and on the coming wars with the MVL and the new city council. But just when Big Bill seemed ready to be more candid, the office door burst open and Fred Lundin rushed in. “Hello there, old-timer,” Lundin said to the veteran reporter, with a smile that “hung on either earlobe.”

When Wheeler asked the Poor Swede for his own perspective on the election results, Lundin (who owned a hardware business) merely threw up his hands. “Don’t know a thing about politics,” he cried. “I’m just selling doors.”

“Isn’t he a wonder?” Thompson beamed.

And that was the end of the interview.
³

Whatever their real plans, the Thompson administration continued to insist publicly that its first priority was to unite the discordant city behind “a constructive program to boom Chicago”—translation: to rally support for as much of the Chicago Plan as money could be found for. “Be a Chicago booster!” the exultant mayor now cried at every opportunity in his speeches. “Throw away your hammer! Get a horn and blow loud for Chicago!” Such enthusiasm would certainly be needed to accomplish the goal. Given the current state of the city’s finances, funding Big Bill’s big plan would not be easy. Because of
strict limits on the city’s taxing and bonding powers, special legislation would be needed to aid Chicago in the months ahead—not just to raise the money for long-term projects like the Michigan Avenue extension but even for current expenses. In a time of rising prices and growing government debt, such legislation was sure to meet with stiff resistance from some quarters. “A new spirit must control public officials chargeable with expenditures of public money,” Governor Lowden warned in his public statements that spring. “The war is over. We must now plan to pay the cost.” He threatened to veto any tax increase bill “unless it is one absolutely necessary.”
⁴

Fiscal conservatism, however, was not high on Big Bill’s agenda in 1919, and with his new leverage over the governor, any rumblings about a veto could likely be made to disappear. In late April, Thompson and his entourage traveled south to Springfield to lobby for passage of the required aid bills in the state legislature. At a distinctly awkward luncheon with the Lowdens on April 29 (at which the chastened governor, it was reported, offered his “delayed congratulations” to Thompson on his recent reelection), the mayor turned up the pressure on Lowden to support the bills. That afternoon, Big Bill made a more public pitch before a joint committee of the Illinois house and senate. Alluding to “conditions over which the municipal government of Chicago has no control” (among them, the anticipated loss of revenue due to the coming of Prohibition), the mayor, now that he was safely reelected, made no secret of the city’s dire financial condition. Under present law, he averred, Chicago could expect to raise revenues of some $20 million for the year; the sum required to run the city, however, would be $33.5 million. The conclusion was simple: “The city of Chicago must have relief if it is to continue functioning as a city.”

It proved to be an effective plea. Although the measure faced predictable opposition from southern and rural elements in the legislature (the struggle between “the city” and “downstate” was—and still
is—a recurring theme in Illinois politics), the mayor ultimately got his way. The bills passed, and Lowden, apparently persuaded that it would be in his interest to find the tax hikes “absolutely necessary,” signed them into law, however reluctantly. For Thompson and Lundin, the pleasure of seeing the proud and aristocratic governor bow meekly to their will must have been exquisite. But passage of the bills was also an important political victory. Although individual bond issues would still have to be voted on by the taxpayers, Chicago had essentially had its credit limit substantially raised. The mayor and his Mephistopheles, as some were now calling them, had cleared yet another hurdle on their way to doing that “something good and big and enduring” for the city of Chicago—no matter what the cost.
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*   *   *

In the meantime, the citizens of the Windy City were finding refuge from their worries, as always, in sports and other amusements. Baseball season had opened in mid-April, and both Chicago teams had won their first games handily—the Cubs beating the Pirates 5 to 1 and the White Sox trouncing the St. Louis Browns 13 to 4, with the “Gleason gang” collecting a total of twenty-one hits off four different pitchers. (“I wish you could of [
sic
] seen this ball that Eddie [Collins] hit in the third inning,” Ring Lardner reported in the
Trib
the next day. The ball had been hit so hard, according to Ring, that Browns second baseman Joe Gedeon “doesn’t know yet if he caught it or not.”) In May, the city’s two big amusement parks—Riverside on the North Side and White City on the South—opened with all appropriate fanfare. It was White City’s fifteenth summer season, and park officials had high hopes for the anniversary year. True, White City’s aerodrome was still being used for the construction of blimps and other aircraft, but the park had plenty of other attractions on tap, including a freak show, a riding academy, and “The Garden Follies,” a musical extravaganza featuring the spectacle of “100 dainty
dancing ankles.” One big unknown was Prohibition’s likely effect on attendance. Because there was still no ratified peace treaty officially ending the war, the Wartime Prohibition Act, a grain-conservation measure banning alcohol consumption in most states, was set to go into effect on July 1, six months before national Prohibition. But park officials hoped that the demise of alcohol might actually increase business at the park, forcing saloon habitués to seek a more wholesome venue in which to spend their dollars and their leisure hours.
⁶

Fears of Bolshevism, unfortunately, also carried over from spring into summer. The success of the Russian Revolution had put the fear of God (or, rather, godlessness) into many U.S. officials, and now a full-blown domestic spying campaign was under way to root out Americans considered of dubious loyalty—a category that could include everyone from pacifists to union leaders to persons insufficiently enthusiastic about buying Liberty Bonds. During war, in fact, even Mayor Thompson himself had complained of being spied on. “My enemies have recently bored holes in the walls of my apartments, installed pictographs, tapped telephone wires, stationed operators in adjoining rooms, and employed spies to hound me,” he complained. Hearing this, many Chicagoans suspected that the mayor might be succumbing to outright paranoia, but federal records indicate that Big Bill was indeed under surveillance at the time.

And now, in 1919, the possibility of violent revolution in the United States was considered very real indeed. The Red Menace appeared to be everywhere, with Chicago’s “Bolshevik squad” turning up rumors of sabotage conspiracies all over the city. Then, in late April, a genuine nationwide bomb plot was uncovered. On the 28th, an explosive device “big enough to blow out the entire side of the County-City building” was found in the mail of Seattle mayor Ole Hanson. The next day, a package addressed to Georgia senator Thomas R. Hardwick exploded in the hands of a servant in Atlanta. A clerk at the New York Post Office proceeded to turn up sixteen
undelivered packages in a back room; all contained explosives. By the end of the week, a total of thirty-six package bombs had been found, addressed to prominent figures such as J. P. Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer, and Chicago’s own Kenesaw Mountain Landis. It was enough to make even the wildest conspiracy theories appear plausible.
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