The American: A Middle Western Legend (31 page)

“The Pinkertons are armed.”

“Tell him to arm our men—wait a minute!” Martin was on his way to the phone. “Get hold of Buck Hinrichsen—he may be at the Sherman House. I'm going to call out the militia if necessary—I'll put this whole damn state under martial law.”

In a little while, he was on the phone to Hinrichsen. Two reporters from the
Inter-Ocean
and one from the
Tribune
came in. Emma pressed cigars and drinks on them. An artist from the
News
appeared and pleaded, could he draw the Governor? Just a single sketch? “All right,” Altgeld said, “all right.” Sam McConnell sauntered through the door and stood there, grinning. Altgeld dropped into a chair. The reporters began to hammer away, joined now by a telegraph correspondent of the
New York Herald.

“Would you say that you are confident, Governor?”

“Of course, I'm confident.”

“They say that in New York Mark Hanna is taking all money, six to one, on a McKinley landslide. What do you think of that?”

“What do I think of that? Why, gentlemen, if I had a ten-million-dollar slush fund, I'd be in the betting business too. And since it's Morgan's money, why, gentlemen, what does Hanna stand to lose?”

“Will you comment on the bad feeling between you and Mark Hanna, Governor?”

“Bad feeling? I wouldn't call it that. You know, gentlemen, I've worked with a lot of political bosses and I've fought some of them too. They're like other folks. Sometimes, they're very decent. Sometimes, they're thorough going scoundrels. I'll leave it to you to decide where Mark Hanna belongs.”

A late arrival, the correspondent of
Harper's Weekly
, asked caustically, “Do you believe that Mark Hanna would be as much of a power in the White House if McKinley wins as you will be if Bryan wins?”

“If Bryan wins, young man, I intend to be the Governor of Illinois, no more, no less.”

“Governor, Hanna is charging you directly with being an anarchist and a socialist. Will you comment?”

“Well, being neither, I'm not too well learned on the subject. I'm not sure one could be both of them at the same time—you know, they charge me with being a communist too—and maybe I'm all three, if you consider that a man who put up some of the finest office buildings in Chicago is that.”

“Do you approve of socialism, Governor?”

“I disapprove of government by the trusts, by injunction, by terror and murder. Only my enemies raise the question of socialism in this election. Read through our party's platform, gentlemen, and see whether you find the word socialism there.”

“Governor, is it true that there are differences between you and Bryan?”

“Young man, are you married?”

The reporter nodded.

“And are there no differences between you and your wife? Well, a party's like a family.”

He took them like that, parrying, stroking, cajoling, and sometimes attacking savagely, for the next half hour. More reporters came in and out. The artist from the
News
finished his sketch. Schilling entered and whispered to McConnell, who glanced at Altgeld. The Governor nodded.

“All right, gentlemen,” McConnell said. “This is election day, you know.”

They filed out. Martin was still inside, hanging over the telephone. Clarence Darrow entered, followed by a waiter who pushed a table of cold meats, hot soup and beer. No one spoke until the waiter had gone, except Emma, who, filling plates, ladling soup into cups, said, “Please eat. This is going to be one of those days. So you might as well eat.”

Schilling shook his head sadly, so sadly that Altgeld laughed to see his face. McConnell said, “I'm glad someone can laugh. George has a beauty, oh, a genuine beauty,”

“What is it?” Altgeld demanded. “It gets to a point where it can't be worse. What is it now?”

“Tell him, George.”

Schilling sipped at his soup and watched Altgeld. He began apologetically. “I got a message from Debs that he wanted to see me. Gene Debs, you remember?”

“I remember.”

“It's a very simple thing, and they did it very quietly. Debs began to get word of it last night, and I've been checking this morning. I checked New York, Cleveland, San Francisco, and St. Louis. Debs had word from Pittsburgh and from Philadelphia and from Portland. Then three cities in upstate New York. Now, today, Newark in New Jersey. So that makes it almost all over, doesn't it? From that you would—”

“What the devil are you talking about, George?” Altgeld demanded.

“They closed the. factories early. I thought you heard. Sometimes an hour early, sometimes two hours, in some places they only worked half a day. I'm not exaggerating. Hundreds of shops were closed down. In some places, they were frank, just as open about it as they could be. They put up signs—“If Bryan is elected, this plant will remain closed.” In other places, they were more quiet. So they did it by passing around the word ‘Bryan is elected and you don't have to come back. The shop stays closed.' Maybe not those exact words, but always the implication was the same.”

“It's a bluff,” Darrow said. “It's just a damn bluff.”

“It's a beauty,” McCohnell sighed. “In all my life, I never heard of one like that. It's a beauty, all right.”

“Of course, it's, a bluff,” Altgeld agreed. “Suppose you try to explain to a million workers that it's just a bluff. George, do you think it was coordinated?”

“Can there be any doubt? It's not only coordinated, it is Mark Hanna. Pete, that's a smart fellow, that's maybe the most dangerous man in America.”

“I suppose it is coordinated. What were those cities, New York, Pittsburgh, San Francisco—?”

Schilling went through the rest, numbering them off carefully on his fingers. McConnell pushed away his plate. “I've got no appetite,” he said.

“Is it legal?” Darrow asked.

“If McKinley wins, it's damn well going to be legal. I don't know. If we could prove conspiracy—no, no, we'd never be able to prove it. If a man closes down his plant, he's within the law, isn't he? That's what we recognize, isn't it? The right of one man to dictate the fate of a plant that produces more than the whole country did a hundred years ago. If he closes it down and fifty thousand men are out of work, well, that's his business. Who's going to challenge it?”

“But it's the dirtiest trick that's ever been pulled in any campaign.”

“The smartest, too,” McConnell nodded.

“What did Debs say?” Altgeld asked.

“He's been up all night, telegraphing, sending out men, trying to work through the unions. But it's an impossible job. It's too late. Debs though also that it was impossible. Debs—”

His voice trailed away. Debs had said to him, “Schilling, this is the cleanest lesson in economics that I ever had. This makes me a socialist; other things, yes, but until the day I die, I won't forget this. Quietly, they took over the government; quietly, they made it plain to the people that they are the government. Tell Altgeld I'll fight, but it's no use, not one god-damned bit of use. His way is no good. Tell him that. Tell him that he's chasing a rainbow. Or leave him alone, and he'll wake up tomorrow and have the answer.”

VII

Telegrams, messengers, more reporters, ward-workers, long-distance calls, more telegrams, consultations when it was too late for consultation, frantic appeals at a time when some precincts had already closed their boxes and proceeded to count. If any man was removed from innocence in politics, it was John Peter Altgeld; he knew that ballot boxes were stuffed; he knew the workings as well as the principles of election-day resurrection, where a thousand cemeteries gave up their dead of five generations past; he knew of the countless infant fatalities who somehow grew to sufficient maturity to become loyal party voters; he knew of the birth certificates forged for numberless ghosts who had no existence outside of the ward-heeler's file; he even knew the mechanics of such mundane and plug-ugly methods as Bathhouse John practiced, those of loading brewery wagons with bums and thugs, and voting them all day long, round and round the city; he even knew how much laudanum was necessary to load a watcher's coffee, so that he would watch no more, and he was not ignorant of that fact that while votes, by and large, cost five dollars apiece, among certain sections of the population votes could be bought for two dollars, and the contents of a municipal jail could be voted at fifty cents a head. He had seen elections where, out of a total electorate of one hundred thousand, each party had voted twice that number, and he also knew that a conservative politician marked off at least one seventh of the national vote as being fraudulent. This was a part of American democracy, and it was practiced by both parties with equal efficiency although not with equal funds; and it was taken for granted by everyone except very small children and a few maiden ladies.

But in this election there were new refinements that made the fumbling and tradition-bound efforts of Bathhouse John seem completely adolescent. It was a step forward when Pinkertons were hired to promote riots in Bryan meetings with stinkbombs and smokebombs and wild screams and when the newspapers created daily false stories of anarchist assassinations; but even that was unorganized in terms of the insurance and bank scheme. Rumors of this trickled in for weeks before election day; but the farm population was widespread; communications were bad; and while the farmers were almost wholly for Bryan they could not be either reached or organized either by their granges or populist committees in the same terms in which the workers were organized and reached through the trade unions. So, at first, when one farmer told the story of having his fire insurance canceled because of the possibility of Bryan's election, it was shrugged off; but when farmer after farmer reported the same thing, the shape of a national campaign became apparent; but the full shape of it was not realized until a few hours after Altgeld had heard of the closed-shop technique: then Dreyer, the same who had delivered the pardon message, called and said he had to see him. Dose said the Governor was busy; busy was a small word; actually, the suite had become a madhouse by that time. But Altgeld said, “Let him come up. One more won't matter.” But he mattered; he pulled Altgeld into a corner and told him about the banks. More than four hundred banks were involved, and they were demanding all call loans and overdue mortgages. They had timed their demands for today and tomorrow and along with the demands had gone the information that both loans and mortgages would be extended if McKinley were elected president. The majority of the banks involved—and there might be hundreds more, for all Dreyer knew—stretched right across the corn and hog belt and into the south, like a girdle over the grange and populist territory, where Bryan was strongest. “I wanted you to know,” Dreyer said, wiping the sweat from his face, nervous, possessed of a shame that seemed as much of him as his skin. “I'm not for your man, but I'm not for this. What in God's name is a free vote, if you tell a man that when his candidate comes in, he's going to lose his farm and everything else he owns?” “I don't know what a free vote is,” Altgeld said, “but thank you for telling me.” “Well, I'm glad I told you. It's in confidence, you understand, Governor?” “In confidence, of course.”

VIII

Toward evening, it began to quiet down. Only Darrow, Schilling, Martin, and McConnell were left. An hour before, Altgeld had told his secretary, “Bill, it's washed out. We haven't a chance in a million. So you might as well get down to Springfield and catch up on my work. Emma wants to go right back there; I don't blame her.”

A
Tribune
reporter had asked him if he intended to stay up all night for the returns. “I have no doubt about the returns,” he smiled. “I intend to sleep.” He said as much to McConnell, and that old friend of his nodded. “You're right, Pete. We've got nothing to celebrate.” “Except that we've learned something.” “Maybe we have and perhaps we haven't. This isn't the last election, Pete. Every four years, something like this will happen. Perhaps they'll take the simple way and run Jack and Jill; but if they try to buck it, do you think they'll do better than we did?” “If I knew what we were bucking.”

But Darrow didn't think it was lost. “You underrate the people,” he insisted. “That's the trouble with all of you All of you underrate the people. Barnum was clever when he said a sucker is born every minute, but sometimes the people learn.”

Altgeld had relaxed into a chair. The strain was leaving his face, and he was smiling at Emma who stood watching him. “I'm all right, my dear. No, Clarence; Mr. Barnum is a superficial and foolish man. Yes, I've met him, I know. A bad man—anyone is who thinks of people in such terms. We're not dealing with suckers; we're dealing with men and women who think and who react, and who are frightened and unorganized, and, God knows, I don't blame them for that. Unless we try to understand what happened during the past few months, everything we put into this is going to be thrown out, worthless, lost.”

“We can still win,” Darrow insisted, and Altgeld replied, somewhat sharply:

“We can't win. That's what I'm trying to get into your head, Clarence—we can't win. From the very start of this thing, we were beaten, but we didn't know. Because we didn't know what we were fighting and how to fight it—and, God help us, we still don't!”

Schilling said goodby. There were tears in his eyes. Emma kissed him and said, “Go to bed, George. This is a fine thing. You have bags under your eyes.” Clarence Darrow went with him. Night had come, and this was election night in Chicago, with great bonfires lighting up the sky. They went to the window and watched. Joe Martin had said very little; now he said, “Meatpacker and whore to the world,” softly, so that Emma didn't hear but only McConnell who stood next to him. The judge put his arm around Altgeld and whispered goodnight. Emma walked with him to the door, leaving the two men at the window. They stood there in silence until Emma returned, and then Joe Martin murmured: