Captains and the Kings

by Taylor Caldwell

  The problem of Senator Bassett now confronts us." Joseph thought of the time, only four years ago, when the strikers against the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad in Maryland had desperately rebelled against a reduction in their miserable pay of ten percent. On July 20, 1877, the governor had called out the 6th Maryland Militia, who marched to the railroad station, fired on the strikers and their wives and children and killed twelve people. But the strike had spread to Pittsburgh, where the Pennsylvania Railroad had also cut wages. Governor Hennessey had ordered out the militia and there fifty-eight strikers, and soldiers, had died in furious pitched battles, and millions of dollars' worth of railroad property had been destroyed. But the Great Strike, born of the terrible depression of 1877, and nourished by starvation and wretchedly small wages, spread all over the country. President Rutherford Hayes had finally halted it, but not until the railroad barons had been forced to concede a little and had reduced a working day from fourteen hours to twelve and had made it possible for the workers to afford enough bread for their children, and meat once or twice a month. Joseph remembered that a large number of the strikers had been Irishmen, the Molly Maguires, fresh from the "ould sod," who had found the railroaders little different from their English landlords. However, they had been seduced by the slogan that in America there was no difference between races and religions, and that a man could practice his faith in peace. Perhaps their disillusion had fired their desperate rioting and not only the incredibly low wages. Joseph smiled grimly, and his colleagues, who thought him a capricious man and not entirely "solid," saw that smile though they were unaware of the reason. Joseph thought: There are other ways of revenge than rioting and striking. He said, "Our new President, Mr. James Garfield, has said that he will institute new reforms in this country." The others exchanged discreet glances. Mr. Jay Regan, the New York financier, said gently, "I am sure he can be dissuaded by intelligent and reasonable argument." "Or, if not, he can be assassinated," said Joseph, and laughed his disagreeable laugh. "Like Mr. Lincoln." He saw their coldly affronted faces, and laughed again. "Gentlemen," he said, "I am not against judicious murder, as you know. But we were speaking of Senator Bassett. He is a Republican, but not a radical like our Reconstruction fanatics and our shouting congressmen and senators, therefore the conservative Democrats also voted with him in considerable numbers. The President likes him, and consults him. They may be hatching schemes deleterious to us. That is what you fear, isn't it?" "True," said Mr. Regan, and shifted his heavy belly in his chair and lit a cigar.

  "Gentlemen," he said to the others, "Mr. Armagh and I are Americans, and so we are blunt and prefer to nail a subject down and not dance a minuet or a waltz about it." "Your politics," said a German, "are your own, at this point, Mr. Regan. But we do know that Senator Bassett is leading the coalition against foreign contract labor, and trying to force through an Alien Contract Labor bill, which will prohibit the importation of cheap labor from Europe to work in your mills and mines and factories. The senator is listening too much to the criminal unions in America, and to sobbing sympathizers, and to 'reformers.' And other senators, and congressmen, too, are listening to Senator Bassett and his mobs. We all know that if alien labor is halted American labor will become arrogant and overweening and demand impossible wages and conditions, and that will be the end of American progress and wealth. You will not be able to compete in foreign markets. Our own profits will be fearfully diminished. Besides"-and he looked at the Americans-"does not America need more and more immigrants? Think of your vast Territories to the West, lacking cities and factories and industry. Must they be deprived of people, of growth?" "You touch my heart," said Joseph. This was the sort of remark, uttered with quiet irony, that disturbed his colleagues, even Mr. Regan, who had a great affection for him. "It has been the experience of America," said Joseph, "that alien labor does not move West in any quantity, but huddles in the warrens of the Eastern cities. Which, of course, is our plan in any event. If they moved West to open the Territories, who would work in our mills, mines, and factories? Gentlemen, let us be rough and honest, and not use sanctimonious words. We want alien labor because it is very cheap, and because American labor is demanding the right to live, too. That is intolerable to us. Let us proceed from that honest premise." He saw secret cold eyes, calculating, but he knew he was safe from them. His knowledge made him invulnerable. Besides, Mr. Regan, the Morgans, the Fisks, the Belmonts, the Vanderbilts, the Goulds, might all be American villains but they had an American sense of humor also, and not an overpowering affection for their European colleagues. They would plot with them, but they would always have some peculiar sardonic reservation. They would plan to destroy American freedom and establish themselves as the Elite-as the others planned for their own countries-but they would do it with urbanity and self-mocking hypocrisy. It would all be the same in the end, but the means were gayer and not icily cynical and bloodless. The words of Mr. Vanderbilt, "The hell with the public," would prevail, but the public would well know the sentiments of their coming rulers, and their present ones, and might even smile at their raucous effrontery. It was the deadly men, who spoke in low tones of "human rights" and "compassionate considerations"-while they methodically looted, and endlessly plotted against human freedom and human dignity- who were execrable. But, thought Joseph, would a nation prefer a jovial executioner to a solemn one? He thought it very likely that America would. His experience with politicians had so convinced him. Well, America chose her own politicians, not on the basis of worth and honor and manliness and probity, but on their smiles, their public good-nature, their appearance, the people's own emotionalism, their own excited delusions. Joseph thought of his son, Rory, handsome, enchanting, humorous, gay, and witty-a born equivocator and, of course, a politician. "Always lie, always be charming," Joseph had told his son. "Americans adore delightful pitchmen." Rory was not quite nine, but he was extremely intelligent, an attribute Joseph was later to tell him not to display before the American electorate. "Americans suspect too much intellect," he would say. "They prefer a glittering clown. You must learn to kiss babies and have a throb in your throat, and if you can have tears in your eyes and a smile on your lips simultaneously the public will go mad over you." "If Senator Bassett succeeds in getting the Alien Contract Labor bill passed," said Mr. Regan, "it will be the end of American expansion, and the end of profits. Labor, if in short supply, can enforce impossible demands. It is as simple as that. So, Senator Bassett must be-persuaded. Other senators hold him in the highest regard." "So Senator Bassett must lose that regard," said Joseph. "What skeleton does he have in his closet?" "None that we can find, and we have sought," said Mr. Regan. "He has led a life of the utmost virtue." The others smiled bleakly. "He has never taken graft. He has never had a mistress. When he was congressman he refused the spoils. He is not a rich man. He owns farms and pays his workers high wages, incredible wages. His wife is a Southern lady-" "That ought to be enough to swing the radical Republicans away from him," said Joseph. (That was another sort of remark of which his colleagues disapproved.) "Can't we bring it up that due to his wife the senator never helped loot the South the way the Reconstruction boys did?" Mr. Regan coughed a little, but his eyes, ambushed under his thick brown brows, twinkled. "Unfortunately, the conservative Democrats and the conservative Republicans have noted that fact with approval." Joseph said with politeness, "Has anyone considered murdering him?" Mr. Regan laughed. "That would only inflame those who are with him, Joseph. Well, it seems in your pocket, my boy. We have decided that you, who have never been conspicuous, should try to persuade the senator. You have shown more discretion than others of us." "I gather," said Joseph, "that Senator Bassett is well informed about the labor situation in America.

  He cried for the impeachment of the Governors of Maryland and Pennsylvania, who brought out the militia against the railroad workers. He is no tyro, no radical. We can't bribe him. We can't threaten him with 'exposure.' Or," he added in a meditative voice, "Call we?" "I think we have
told you that there is nothing. He is a mountain of the Christian virtues." "There is always something," said Joseph. "I will set my men to work at once." he looked at the men around the great oval table and saw their eyes. "There is no man alive, gentlemen, who does not have something to conceal, large or small. If small, then it can be blown up to gigantic proportious. It is easy to make even a saint into a mountebank, a deceiver, a betrayer of the people, if one is clever enough. I think my men are very clever." Four weeks later Joseph went to Washington, which he called "a white ship on a sea of mud and fog." He hated its smells of sewers, its heat, its spiritual atmosphere of corruption and slyness and expedieucy and spoils. Grand avenues were being laid out, and Joseph reflected that similar ave- nuts in France had led to the easy looting and insurrections and assassinations by the Parisian mobs, for no walls or turnings had impeded them, nor had soldiers any means of ambush. We don't, thought Joseph, as yet have a Rousseau or a Mirabeau or a Robespierre, nor are we as yet infected by commoness as were the French revolutionaries and their rich leaders. But, thanks to my friends, we will most likely have them in the future, in the lifetime of my sons or my sons' sons. Joseph detested Washington, which amused his friends, for was he not part of its corruption, venality, and spoils? Had he not used senators and congressmen with cynicism? They did not know of his ambiguous probity, for he was hardly aware of it, himself. For instance, he had not rushed eagerly to invest heavily in munitions during the Franco-Prussian War, ill which his friends had made combined billions. He had liked neither combatants, though at one time he had heartily hated Bismarck, who had been infected by Socialisnl. Yet, were not his friends plotting to infuse Marxism into all nations for their destruction and bankruptcy, so that they could be silently conquered and ruled by the Elite? When something could not be reconciled in his mind he suppressed it as irrelevant. He had rooms in the Lafayette Hotel, a modest hostelry, for at all times, unlike some of the more flamboyant entrepreneurs, he avoided ostentation and the public eye. His tastes were austere. He did not like gleaming carriages and fine horses. So his invisibility was not strategy but nature. That it immeasurably helped him did not occur to him, though it did to his colleagues. However, politicians usually knew when he was in town, and some were uneasy. Senator Bassett was a resolute man, but he was disturbed at the news. When Joseph Armagh appeared hides had a habit of becoming raw--or were groomed to glossiness. Senator Bassett doubted that if he should encounter Joseph he would be groomed, though he did not know Joseph personally. Joseph's presence, in itself, was ominous, as the senator's friends had informed him. "He is one of the prime movers against the Alien Contract Labor bill," the senator was told. "He moves quietly and without overt noise, but he is there just the same." "I will wait," said the senator. "My God, how I hate these behind-the- scenes politicians! They are worse than the elected ones, for they control too man)' of us. I thank God that senators are appointed by State Legislatures and so never have to run for office like the unforttmate congressmen. I hope senators are never elected by direct vote of the people, for the people are volatile and can easily be misled by a smile or a wiuk or a few coppers in their hands, and, above all, by grandiose promises." "Joe Armagh is one of the chief promoters of a Constitutional Amendment to elect senators by direct vote of the people, and to stop their appointment by State Legislators only." "Not in my lifetime, hope," said the senator, in a stern voice. "We'd be redundant, then, which is probably the whole plot anyway. And we'd be the creatures of the politicians just as the congressmen are." Senator Enfield Bassett was from Massachusetts. He was a small but compact man with a great head, too large for his frame. He gave the in- pression, in spite of his stature, of considerable strength of body and mind. He had a big and vital face, kind and very intelligent and eloquent, and was forty-five )'ears old. He did not wear a beard but only a very curly mustache which he vainly tried to straighten with wax. His hair, somewhat short, had that tendency also, and he lavishly used oil on it. His eyes were beautiful, large, black, and expressive, with long silken lashes. There was something about them, however, which disturbed his friends. They were never known to harden or grow too intent or piercing, but always shone with humor. His nose was not conspicuous, though his mouth was unusually generous, and he had fine white teeth. If there was a slight inclination to the rococo in his attire his friends loved him for it. They knew that this did not extend to rococo judgments, but that always he was balanced, thoughtful, sincere and moderate. Above all things he was adamaut against the exploitation of American labor, its agonies, its unjust oppression and misery--and against the importation of alien labor which was willing to work for almost nothing in its wretchedness and so cripple American labor. "I am not against Europeans," he would say, "for are we not all Europeans? But I an against the importation of foreign labor which is brought here in cattle boats, sick and starving and diseased, not to be succored and helped by 'compassionate' owners--and do they not act like owners?--but to be driven into our mills and factories and mines like beasts, there to work until they die on their feet--and then are buried in unknown graves. They are confined behind stockades, with no access to the world outside those stockades. Their wives and their children are pressed into service. Their lot is terrible, unconscionable, not to be endured in any Christian nation. Their fate is far worse here than in their native countries. At least there they had a little land. What have they here? Nothing but servitude. They never see a copper of their earnings. It goes to company stores for their meager needs. "The time has come, my friends, when we must practice what we preach. Ve say we are a free nation. But, are those who are imported here like cattle free? Ve must stop such importation. Henceforth those who come to our shores must be free men, willing to assume the responsibilities of freedom, proud men with trades and with skills, and not mute creatures willing to work to their deaths for a little bread and unmarked graves. Thank God we have abolished open slavery. Let us now abolish covert slavery. No entrepreneur must henceforth be permittcd to import desperate men for his own profits, to the detriment of our own people, who demand a decent wage and a decent shelter." "Progress," said his opponents. "Shall we close the doors to our country to the wretched, the serfs, the meek?" Senator Bassett knew who "owned" those politicians. No man owned him. It had been, in its way, a miracle that he had been selected by his State Legislature for his office. "An oversight," he would. say wryly. "They must have just come from church." This was the man of integrity that Joseph Armagh had arrived to suborn. He did nothing overt. He asked two senators to extend an invitation to Senator Bassett to meet him, "in the interests of mutual concern." The invitation was extended. Senator Bassett believed in the aphorism that a man should know his enemy, the better to judge him and to overcome him. So he agreed to have dinner with Joseph in the privacy of the latter's rooms. It was a day of intense heat, July 1, 1881, tropical, dripping with moisture though the sun shone and there had been no rain; fetid, stinking of sewage, fouled dust, horse droppings, stagnant water, and rotting vegetation, and other smells which could not be defined but were rank. The hotel was not situated in a fashionable quarter and the bricked street was narrow and, as usual in Washington, blowing with scattered filth in a hot wind. Across the street stood endless rows of what Joseph called "terrace houses," from his memory of the towns in Ireland, that is, attached houses of a dull reddish stone with tiny smeared windows and painted doorways on flagged or wooden walks. The windows of Joseph's rooms were open and the curtains blew in and out and the velvet draperies were dust. There was constant traffic; the rattle of steel-rimmed wheels invaded the rooms and the clopping of horses and the barking of stray dogs. The rooms were small, plushy and very hot, and some of the crowded furniture was of horsehair, and the rugs were cheap. The senator observed this with some surprise. This hotel seemed hardly the place for one like Joseph Armagh and for a moment the senator thought that this must be secretiveness. Then he studied his host and saw his good but austere clothing and decided that this atmosphere was mor
e to Joseph's taste than grandeur, and for some reason he was more alarmed than before. Ascetics were not as easily moved as grandiloquent men; they tended to fanaticism and were often less than human in their emotions. Too, they frequently lacked conscience, could not be bribed easily, and, if they had humor it was usually wry and acrid, and without pity. Yet when Joseph turned to him with a formal greeting and an expression of gratitude that the senator had kindly vouchsafed to accept his invitation, Senator Bassett saw something in his fleshless face that touched him. Here was a man who had known infinite pain and sorrow and cruelty and rejection, and as the senator had suffered these himself he recognized them. He also remembered that a French poet had said, "In this world the heart either breaks or turns to stone." Joseph's had probably turned to stone, and now the senator felt oppressed and despondent. There was nothing so relentless as a man who had endured all the evil that the world can inflict, and who had turned against that world. "I have ordered ham and a bird for you, Senator," said Joseph, "and beer and plum pudding. I hope it is all to your taste." "You are very kind," said the senator with new surprise. "They are my favorite victuals." He was about to ask how Joseph knew that, and then he remembered, with a fresh rise of alarm, that Joseph had probably learned a great deal about him and such minute inspection was not flattering and could be dangerous. It had also had a purpose. The senator well understood that Joseph was here to try to persuade him to retract on his support of the Alien Contract Labor bill, for the withdrawal of such support would endanger its passage. "I am gratified," said Joseph, in the stilted and formal tone he had used since the senator had arrived. "I, myself, eat sparingly, and this heat ruins any appetite at all. I wonder why you senators remain here in the summer, and especially as a holiday is almost at hand." "We have work to do, very pressing work," said the senator. He sat down at the laid round table with its clean but cheap linen and tarnished silver. "I don't like Washington, myself, but I am here to serve my country." The old and pompous words sounded, in the senator's strong yet musical voice, not hypocritical but sincere.