The American: A Middle Western Legend (22 page)

“Yes, one's a Democrat, one's a Republican, but to the Morgans, the Vanderbilts, the Rockefellers, the Armours, the McCormicks, the Goulds—to them it's no damn difference at all. They'd as soon have Grover as William or any other horse's neck that suits them. There's no more two-party system, there's a one-party system. Just in the past twenty years we've seen monopoly grow until it's like a fat, overstuffed hog, embalmed in gold—gold—gold!”

“And I say that's socialism!”

Altgeld snapped, “Schilling, for Christ's sake, will you tell him what socialism is!”

Schilling bestirred himself; Darrow began to grin, and Joe Martin flipped a coin back and forth, from hand to hand. “The hell with it,” Hinrichsen sighed, spreading his hands wide, and Schilling said gently, “It's not socialism, Sam, not at all, not at all. It isn't socialism. No matter how you look at it, socialism does away with the private ownership of the means of production. We don't propose that. So it's not socialism.”

“Don't give me any damned schoolbook lectures,” McConnell growled.

“Look, look,” Altgeld said pacifyingly. “Let's understand each other. Our party, it's the party of the little man, always was, always, ever since Tom Jefferson made it. Read him. He made a party for the little man. Now it belongs to monopoly, body and soul. Grover belongs to monopoly, the party does, body and soul. And the password is gold. Ask the little man, the farmer—all over the state they're losing their farms—ask the small businessman how he's going to pay his debts, and he pays or goes bankrupt. Ask the workingman; every months he gets a dollar less in his pay envelope. I mean, we got something in common, something to fight for, to give them. Give them silver, sixteen dollars of silver to a dollar of gold. Free silver coinage; that's a beginning. Gives us the farmers, the worker, small business—and the silver states. Gives us something to stand on. Then we fight; then out goes Grover onto his fat behind. Sure I hate him; I hate his guts; I want to see him down and nothing and less than nothing, but I want to see the party back where it belongs, back with us, back with the people and not with monopoly. And if you think we're alone, talk to anyone who's been kicked out because he tried to buck the millionaires.”

“And when you throw out the milllionaires,” Joe Martin said, “where do we find our money, Pete? I don't have to itemize a campaign for you.”

“From the people.”

“A dollar Democrat to a thousand dollars Republican?”

“At its worst, yes. But we won't be alone. You and I aren't paupers, Joe, but we're sitting here and talking about this.”

“We can't do it,” from McConnell.

“I tell you we can. We can will Illinois. We can bring a solid delegation to the convention. We can line up the silver states, the farm states, even most of the south. The hell we can't do it!”

“And a candidate?”

“Dick Bland of Missouri.”

“No!”

“Why not?” Altgeld demanded.

“Because he's a roach! Because they're all roaches! You've talked to me three hours, Pete. Sure this can be done. You're right. It's been done before, it can be done again. I like it. I like to think of myself down there in Washington, pulling reins. I like to think of Cleveland out on his ass. But there's only one man in this country who could run on that sixteen-to-one nonsense and make it.”

“And who's that?”

“Yourself.”

There was a sudden quiet in the room. They looked at Sam McConnell, the Chicago judge who had suddenly became such a power in the city, as much perhaps as Mike McDonald, and then they looked at the Governor to see whether he was smiling or not. “You're serious?” Altgeld asked.

“I'm serious as hell.”

“I won't argue with you, Sam. I was born in Germany. I was three months old when they brought me here.”

“No.”

“That's right. I'd like to be president. I'd like to roll that on my tongue. But let's talk sense.”

“I'm sorry, Pete.”

“Never mind. Let's get down to business, it's late enough. I say it can be done, I swear it can be done. Will you come along with me?” He looked from face to face. “Sam?” A brief nod. “Buck!” “Sure as hell.” “Clarence!” A nod again. “George!” A slow smile. “Joe!” “Right to hell, Pete.”

“Any doubts!”

“I got doubts,” McConnell said. “I don't think Bland can do it. I think we'll split the party at best. I hate that thought like hell.”

“We won't split the party.”

“What about your own health!” Darrow said. “You're going to have to carry this.”

“I feel good. I could say I never felt better.”

“Have you any money promised!”

“That's a long way off. We'll get the money. We start small, we start gently. We work in the state committee, slowly, gently, first a word here, then a word there. Talk to people alone, and don't hit them over the head. Let it come from them. Get them thinking on how it would be to call a special party convention on silver. Don't lay it down the line. Just talk silver. And don't worry about the votes I control. Maybe there are enough of them to swing it, but I want it overwhelming. Every step of the way I want it overwhelming. We're not going to split the party—we're going to steer it, away from the east, away from Wall Street. Joe, I want you to work on Coughlin. Bathhouse John's been an alderman so long he's prepared to die that way. Well, start him thinking. Talk his own language. Maybe he can even be mayor some day. He'd like to think about that. Let him get out the torchlight parades and beer parties—that'll be along about June. Clarence, feed publicity; never mind my name, I want to be out of this, but I want the country to start watching Illinois. And George, we're going to need labor. My god, silver's no utopia, but it can't be worse, can it!”

“I think it might be worse,” Schilling said slowly, more tired than the others, looking now, at this late hour, as if he had sold his soul. “But labor will support you, Pete. Who else has labor got to look to now!”

“How's that!”

“I'm tired, Pete. Labor will support you.”

“At least one big meeting on silver, George.”

“I'll promise ten thousand at a meeting.”

“Fine. The convention should be called next month, for June, I think. We'll be a year ahead of any other state.”

But they went on talking, and it was three in the morning before they finally left.

IV

Emma sewed a pattern onto a piece of yellowed Irish linen. The needle went round and round, scooping and searching; when she heard her husband come in, she didn't look up, but went on with her embroidery, isolated in the pool of lamplight. Watching her, Altgeld wondered what her reaction would have been had she remained downstairs with the cigars and the brandy and the talk, and he was suddenly sick and ashamed of himself, and knowing he had spoken too much, was puzzled to find sense in anything he had said. It was all muddled and disjointed now, and the grandiose concept of taking the government of a great nation away from those who owned it, seemed not only far-fetched but completely pathetic. His guilt magnified itself in relation to his wife, and the excitement with which he had finished the session evaporated. Watching Emma, he sat down in a chair. Finally, she put away her work and said, “It's very late, Pete, and hadn't we better go to bed!”

“It was very successful, Emma.”

“Yes, I'm sure.”

“I mean, they listened to me. They didn't think it was impossible. They didn't think it was just a wild dream.”

“I'm sure they didn't, Pete.”

“And I feel fine.” He accentuated that; he came into the light. “I feel fine—I never felt better, Emma.”

“Yes.”

“You're angry with me, aren't you!”

“I'm not angry, Pete. I'm tired, that's all. Two o'clock one night, three the next. How long can you keep that up, Pete?”

“I feel good, I told you.”

“Yes.” She rose and put her hands on his face. “Pete, Pete, why do you hate the way you do? Why must everything be twice as violent for you! Why can't we be like other people?”

“I'm not like anyone else. No one is like anyone else.”

“I'm sure, I'm sure.”

“And Sam McConnell is in it with us. Emma, I'm going to elect the next president. I'm going to sit in there as secretary of state. I'm going to say what and how and why—”

“Pete!”

“Emma, Emma, let me dream, it's going to be so goddamned hard.”

“Pete, sometimes you frighten me.” She took his arm. “Come to bed.”

V

As tired as he was, Schilling could not sleep. Blind paths hemmed him in; gates were closed. How many years now had he followed Altgeld, blindly, trustingly? When he put his finger here and there, to add up the figures, he was not without justification and confirmation The day after the three Haymarket prisoners were pardoned, he, Schilling, went out to the cemetery. At Waldheim, in Chicago, a monument had been erected over the graves of the five dead men. Parsons, Spies, Fischer, Engel, and Lingg lay quietly, and now men spoke words over their graves. By the hundreds, they shook Schilling's hand, and there was one tall, knifelike man who was introduced to him as Eugene Debs. Debs—Debs—Schilling had heard the name. Yes, Gene Debs. He took Schilling's hand in both of his, and his words didn't come like the words of other men, but fell on each other, like a hammer driving home a spike. “When a new kind of history is written, a people's history, they will not be forgotten, and not you, Schilling.” People wiped the tears out of their eyes. “Well, what I did was nothing,” Schilling said, “and who can make the dead alive?”

There was standing next to Debs a little, withered Irishman, Brian Donahue, who had seen with his own eyes what had been done to workingmen called the Molly Maguires; he crossed himself now and shook his head, but Debs put a hand on his shoulder and said, “Sometimes the dead aren't dead. When workingmen go on strike, then Parsons is with them and so is Spies, and who can kill them now? Ask Brian if the Molly Maguires are dead.” Donahue said, “There are those walking and living and breathing and buying and selling, and sure as God was Jesus Christ whom they nailed to a cross with His hands outstretched because He wanted men to be free, then the five blessed martyrs who lie here are as alive as you are and I am. We will sing songs about them and make stories, and my grandchildren and yours will not be quickly forgetful.” “So it's no small service,” Debs said. “No small service, Schilling.” “We all did what we could.” “But what you did—all right, but some time I want to meet this Governor of yours.” “Altgeld!” “Would he sit down and talk with me?” “We could meet again and go into it,” Schilling said.

But it was more than a year before they met again, and then Debs was waging war, with the Pullman Company and Pullman's warm ally, the government of Grover Cleveland, and Federal troops with fixed bayonets were bivouacked in the empty lots of Chicago, and three thousand thugs and desperadoes, wearing the badges of Federal marshals, were ranging the streets of Chicago, beating and killing workmen, and their wives and children, too, and many an innocent citizen who happened in their path.

Schilling met Debs in his strike headquarters, a gloomy basement lit by one lantern; now the strikers were beleaguered; warrants were out for the leaders. They moved from place to place, like hunted men, and a handful were doing the work of a hundred. But for all of that, Debs was delighted to see him, shook his hand warmly, and said, almost pleadingly, “Will he act, Schilling? Will he act?”

“What can he do? Range his own state troops against the Federal police?”

“He's the Governor of the state.”

“And you'd ask him for civil war? My god, Debs—”

“What have we now, if not civil war? Does the Governor want photographs and affidavits of the dead workers who lie on the streets of Chicago!”

“He's doing all that's in his power. He's standing up to Cleveland. He's fighting him in the only sane way, with the law and within the Constitution. The Federal troops will be withdrawn. The people are with him, but every newspaper in the country is against him—worse than with the anarchists.”

“But we'll break first.”

“He can't take sides. Debs, don't you see that if he takes sides, then he's finished. All he can demand is the law, the letter of the law—”

“The law that murdered Parsons. The law that beats us, starves us, murders us, turns us into beasts.”

“I tell you—”

“All right!” Debs stood up, towering over the little carpenter, drawn, haggard, and unforgettable too. At forty, he was coming out of one stage, into another, a man in flux and transformation and search, a man who reminded Schilling of Altgeld, yet so different that a real comparison could hardly be made. “All right!” he repeated. “Go back to the Governor! Go back and tell him that a worker dies or starves or rots as easily in his administration as in any other!” But when Schilling turned to go, Debs called him, his voice muted, contrite, “I would want to meet Altgeld. If I could meet him—”

Schilling went back to the Governor, but Altgeld and Debs did not meet. But afterward, when the strike was broken, Debs arrested, Altgeld took the lead in a public subscription to feed the Pullman workers. At least that. A man does what he can do. But Pullman became another enemy of his, another of those he swore to war on, hunt down, get his claws into, and when Schilling reasoned that it was not Pullman the man, but the system, what Pullman represented, Altgeld angrily exclaimed, “It's the man, I tell you! Is there any law in this land that forces a man to be an unspeakable swine?”

Again Schilling met Debs. Now he could almost see the process of thought behind Debs' face; in defeat, Debs was calmer, in a sense more determined and more confident than he had been at the height of the great strike. His face told about jail; the pallor confronted Schilling like an accusation. But he spoke gently and warmly. When asked if it was hard, “Not very hard. I had a chance to read, to study, to learn. I think that something new will have to come.”