City of Light

by Lauren Belfer

  “Do you think someone is paying Bates to do this?” Elbert whispered. “Do you think he really believes this nonsense?”

  “I think he believes in himself.”

  “Well said, Louisa. I should make that one of my homilies: He who believes in himself believes in whatever he says.”

  “Quiet, Elbert.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Bates too turned quiet. “Ask yourself this, my friends: Who owns the Falls of Niagara? Is it the lovers of nature and God, or is it J. Pierpont Morgan?”

  At the mention of his employer, Frederick Krakauer sat up suddenly, startled out of a quasi-nap, and looked around confusedly, wondering what he’d missed.

  “Is it J. Pierpont Morgan and John Jacob Astor and Nicholas Biddle and your own Thomas Sinclair and John Albright”—Bates was raving now—“and George Urban, Jr.—”

  His words were drowned out by the cheers of his supporters in the front row. Susannah stood to applaud. Everyone else was silent. Bates nodded at his followers in gratitude, then motioned for Susannah to sit.

  “Oh yes, they will try to trick us,” he continued. “They will tell us that electricity is good for us.” He laughed disparagingly. “That it brings us wonderful things. But let’s be honest here. No one but the rich will ever have electric lights. Gaslight makes for glorious streetlamps, and horsepower has willingly pulled our trolleys for generations.”

  “I wonder if he asked the horses about that,” Elbert said. I bit my lip to stop myself from smiling.

  “For the common man, electricity has created nothing of value and never will! And so my friends, let us unite. Let us rise up together and take control of our God-given heritage.”

  “You don’t think he’s a socialist, do you?” Elbert pondered.

  “We—yes, we—have the ability to create the future. Will we create it in the image of God or the image of the devil?” He glanced around. “I know I am only a David, fighting a Goliath. But in this fight I shall never tire. I will fight to victory or to death. My troops are here before you.” He motioned to his followers in the front row. “I must warn you that soon the day may come when we will be forced to take matters into our own hands. When we will be forced to fight in every way necessary to fulfill God’s will. But we fear no jail. We know that for each of us who is silenced by prison bars, another will come to take his place to fight for the glory of Niagara. God is with us: This we know. Did not God himself pull the devil’s engineer Karl Speyer beneath the ice to drown? A big, tall, proud man—sucked helplessly into the holy water of God. Was not his death a sign of what God has in store for all who anger him?”

  “Well, here’s an interesting new theory of Speyer’s death,” Elbert mused. “I wonder if Bates has shared his idea with the police. How exactly would you investigate such a theory? Would you begin in a church, do you think? But what denomination? Trinity Episcopal or Westminster Presbyterian? Or would you go right to the source and visit St. Anthony of Padua?” he asked, referring to the Roman Catholic church downtown. “Or even Temple Beth Zion!” Beth Zion was our primary Jewish congregation.

  I didn’t respond. I had no humor regarding Karl Speyer. Again I envisioned his bulky form, bundled up in a fur hat and a heavy coat with a warm fur collar, heading out the door toward death.

  Now Bates’s voice was a stage whisper, hissing. “I am a fair man, for God teaches both justice and mercy. So I will tell you: I have here a list”—he took a folded sheet of paper from his jacket pocket and held it up in his fist—“a list of New York State inspectors being bribed to look the other way while the power station steals God’s water. I will not humiliate the men on this list by reading it aloud. Not yet.”

  Around me, the crowd murmured and mumbled—except for the board members in my row, who wore looks of studied boredom and indifference, revealing nothing. Franklin Fiske had referred to bribery when he visited me; I glanced sharply at him, but he too appeared determinedly indifferent. Where would Bates get such a list, I wondered, before remembering Tom’s concern about a spy.

  “I am satisfied for now, that those involved should know that I possess this list. And that I will use it. When the time is propitious.”

  “He’s got nothing,” Elbert said dismissively. “If he did, he would at least unfold the paper. Show us that there’s something written on it. It could be completely blank. Nonetheless,” he admitted, “it’s a convincing tactic. I could learn from this fellow.” Elbert made a note in his pocket diary.

  “And so I invite all of you to join me in this holy fight—this crusade for Niagara. To you who are leaders of the project, I invite you too—even you—to repent your ways, to enter God’s forgiveness, to join us in our holy war to recapture the great cataract of Niagara in the name of the Lord!”

  Appearing exhausted and vulnerable, and amidst the cheers of his followers, he collapsed into his chair beside the podium. He covered his face with one hand as if he were praying. His supporters rose in a standing ovation, but he kept his face covered. Clapping with a kind of fury, Susannah Riley turned to search the crowd. Tears glinted on her cheeks, and she did not wipe them away. She seemed in a religious ecstasy, swept up in the moment, her face shocking in the purity of its beauty. Francesca half-stood to acknowledge her, and Susannah’s sudden smile was like a brilliant jolt of love that made me avert my eyes, ashamed to have invaded their intimacy.

  Elbert was saying appreciatively, “Yes, yes, he certainly has dramatic flair. He’d make a top-notch salesman. Just need to get him a better product. Maybe he could do a book for us. On roses. Roycroft Roses. He could barnstorm the country. Make a fortune.” Elbert made another note in his diary.

  Miss Letson took the podium. Meanwhile Susannah hurried onto the stage to give Bates a quick hug of reassurance. As she turned to leave, she squeezed his hand between both of hers and then slipped away. “In the interest of free and open discussion,” Miss Letson said with flat objectivity, “we have asked Mr. James Fitzhugh, acting chief engineer of the Niagara Frontier Power Project, to give the rebuttal.” Surprisingly, Bates’s supporters in the front quickly calmed, returning to their seats.

  Mr. Fitzhugh was in his early thirties, clean-shaven and pale. He had been Karl Speyer’s on-site assistant.

  “Thank you, Mr. Bates, for sharing your opinions,” Fitzhugh said with a touch of nervousness. He arranged his papers on the podium and cleared his throat. “First, I wish to say—and here I speak for the entire staff and directors of the Niagara Frontier Power Project—that we share your concerns. The preservation of an adequate scenic effect at Niagara has always been foremost in our minds. The Falls at Niagara are a source of daily amazement and spiritual comfort to us all.”

  This was greeted by hostile mumbling from the front row: The preservationists would consider Fitzhugh’s remarks hypocritical and disingenuous.

  “Let me say too, that the notion of taking all the water from Niagara is irrational on its face. No one could possibly take all the water. The technology to do so does not exist.”

  So Fitzhugh, like Krakauer, regarded “all” as a relative term.

  “Furthermore, our charters from the state of New York would never permit us to take all the water. Water use is strictly controlled and we are subject to frequent inspections.”

  “And who’s paying the inspectors’ salaries?” someone in the front shouted.

  Fitzhugh ignored the question. As he began to read from his prepared statement, I knew he would not address or even acknowledge Bates’s threats and innuendoes; Fitzhugh would say only what he’d been told to say.

  “The most important point to realize is that our work is in fact saving Niagara. As many of you know, the Falls suffers a natural recession of as much as four feet per annum or more, on average. In other words, the cataract is destroying itself. In the thousands of years since its creation, the cataract has cut a gorge some seven miles long, from the Queenston Bluff to its present location. By lessening the water’s incessant grinding
at the limestone and shale of the escarpment—even by such small amounts, mere inches on the overall depth—we significantly slow this natural process of destruction.”

  I saw my father diagraming the process for me, showing me how the soft rock broke down. A relentless retreat, he called it: five hundred feet per century. Someday Niagara would be gone. How I missed him. How I yearned to be held again within the aura of his affection. To be his child again. Forever. To feel his beard scratch against my face as he kissed my cheek.

  “As we take water from the river, we remain alert always to our charters from the state of New York.” Like an echo, Fitzhugh’s voice invaded my mind. “Solemnly we vow to preserve Niagara for the enjoyment and contemplation of future generations.”

  I sighed. Fitzhugh was appealing enough, and he spoke with a measured calm that I appreciated after Bates’s dramatics. But he was an innocent compared to Daniel Henry Bates, a lamb in the lion’s den.

  “Mr. Bates visits us from the esteemed city of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania,” Fitzhugh continued. “Therefore it is easy for him to speak of Niagara as if it existed only as a tourist attraction. But for those of us like myself and Mr. Thomas Sinclair and, I would guess, most of the audience here tonight—those of us who make our homes on the Niagara Frontier—benefits beyond tourism derive from the production of hydroelectric power at Niagara.

  “First, this power reduces our dependence on coal. No longer are we at the mercy of the labor unrest which so often disrupts the coal industry. I’m sure no one here has forgotten last year’s devastating six-week strike, which pushed coal prices to extortionist levels. In the first months of 1901, however, our electrical output was equal to more than one thousand tons of coal a day. Furthermore, as electricity replaces coal, there is a concomitant natural purification of the atmosphere. In other words, the air becomes cleaner. Easier to breathe. Here too, as with saving the Falls, our interests commingle with those of the nature preservationists.

  “In addition, the power station has created jobs for this area—thousands of jobs at the power station itself and at developing industries throughout the area, including the steel mills now under construction at Stony Point.”

  Clearing his throat, he ruffled through his papers. “Now to the specifics of power generation. Mr. Bates grossly exaggerates in his reports of water usage. But in order to understand the true figures and their meaning, the numbers must be put in context. When you understand the volume of the Falls, you will understand how little impact the power station has.”

  He took a deep breath and, so to speak, plunged in. “The natural flow of water over the Falls is two hundred and two thousand cubic feet per second, or five and a half billion gallons per hour. This is the equal of five million horsepower. The depth at the center of the Horseshoe Falls is estimated at approximately twenty feet. Mr. Bates’s diversion figure of thirty-six thousand cubic feet per second is absurd. The maximum capacity of each station is no more than nine thousand cubic feet per second, or seventy-two thousand horsepower.”

  “Ah,” Elbert whispered, “he’s trying to slip something past us, telling us the usage for one station, when they have, what, two online, another coming? Sneaky little bastard.” From Elbert, that was a compliment.

  “In actuality, the power station diverts approximately seven million gallons a minute, which equals no more than three to six inches off the depth at any given time. Such usage is minuscule within the overall context, and completely unnoticeable. The accusation that water usage increases at night is patently false, as well as illogical. Apart from those few industries which operate twenty-four hours a day, demand lessens at night.”

  Could this be a trick too? I had thought that the whole point of electrolytic and electrochemical industries was that they did operate twenty-four hours a day.

  “An aggregate of daily water use—”

  Sotto voce, Elbert said, “I’ve had enough of this.” He rose beside me. “Excuse me, Miss Letson. Forgive me, Mr. Fitzhugh.” With his voice carrying through the hall and capturing all attention, Elbert bowed to them both. “An inspired and passionate presentation for the engineers and mathematicians among us, but I can keep silent no longer.”

  Fitzhugh looked stunned, moving backward to find his chair and sitting down with a bump beside Bates, who kept his face shielded with one hand.

  Elbert stood proudly tall. He was renowned for his lecture tours (and for the high fees he received for them), and many in the audience probably felt themselves lucky to be hearing him speak for free. “The real issue here, if I may be so bold, is not cubic feet per second or gallons per minute or horsepower per hour or year or century.” He waved off these details. “The real issue here—and a great truth it is—has been ignored. Must I speak to it? Will no one else rise up to share the great truth that has been ignored?”

  Pausing to build dramatic impact, he looked around with a benign, forgiving smile. “Will no one offer unto this debate the truth that Sinclair, Albright, Astor, Vanderbilt, Biddle, and all the rest are as much heroes as Daniel Henry Bates so obviously thinks he himself is? Will no one speak for the industrialist heroes among us?

  “Let me paint their picture.” He waved his arm expansively, as if to create the illustration on the wall. “There they are, straddling the continent: investing their money, putting their families’ futures at risk, changing the nation with the discoveries they have helped bring into being. They are the new explorers: the new Columbus, the new Ponce de León, the new Henry Hudson. They are the ones willing to open themselves to new ideas. They are the ones who find the engineers and inventors and support them through the long hard hours of dark struggle until the coming of the light. They are the ones who offered a haven to Nikola Tesla with his alternating current, Charles Martin Hall with his aluminum, Edward Goodrich Acheson with his carborundum. Ladies and gentlemen, I propose a round of applause: to the industrialists!”

  And he got his applause, all right. Indeed he had electrified the crowd.

  “Now, I must also say”—and here he took on that self-deprecating, I-know-how-naughty-I-am look that let him be all things to all people—“being just an old-time socialist, as many of you know …” Grinning, he glanced around the room, eliciting a few laughs. “Mr. Bates raises one interesting question, and that is, who does own the Falls of Niagara?” Honest bewilderment seemed to suffuse his demeanor. “Mr. Bates would have us believe that ‘lovers of nature and God’ own the Falls of Niagara. One presumes that Mr. Fitzhugh would vouch for ownership by the titans of industry. At the moment, the only people who appear to own the Falls are those who are in a position to exploit it. And I find Daniel Henry Bates to be as exploitative as Thomas Sinclair!” The audience began to shift in their seats uncomfortably.

  “Let us debate this question: Who owns the Falls? Not the land itself, now so graciously preserved as the reservation—” He bowed toward the men (most of them in our row) who had spearheaded the movement for the state park years before. They noticeably did not meet his gaze. “But the water that flows over it. Who owns that water? Surely not our friends from the nature preservation movement. Nor the eminently trustworthy and incorruptible bureaucrats of the state of New York.” This garnered a few laughs. “Nor their fellows of the royal province of Ontario. Nor even the noble industrialists wealthy enough to build power stations.

  “Once we know who owns the waters, then we will know who owns the power so graciously produced by the power company. We will also know who owns the profits from the power being so graciously produced by the power company. And then we may even be surprised to discover”—he paused for effect—“that the common citizenry own the profits. Who should administer those profits on behalf of the citizenry is a question that I, your humble servant, am unable to answer.”

  Abruptly Elbert sat down, to absolute silence. “Well, that certainly shook them up a bit,” he whispered to me, looking pleased.

  John Milburn rose—as I could have predicted. Needless to say, he
was the attorney for the Niagara Frontier Power Company. “May I interject a word here, Miss Letson? With due respect for the speakers thus far, I wish to enter this debate from a somewhat different angle. An approach closer to the truth, I believe, than what we have heard. Far removed from the threats of violence and defamation presented here tonight. Such threats have no place at civilized gatherings in a nation founded on democratic principles.” He paused, allowing this rebuff to Bates’s tactics to register with the audience.

  “I am a God-fearing man,” Milburn continued. Elbert gave a loud sigh. “I worship my God each week at Trinity Church, as many of us do.”

  “Mmm. An appeal to crass elitism, not always bad,” Elbert now reflected.

  “It seems to me—and I’m more than willing to consult the Reverend Davis on this issue—that God made the earth for the glorification of man. God has given the great Falls at Niagara to man, for man’s benefit. In the sight of God, men are more important than waterfalls. In Genesis 1:26, the words are clear. Forgive me if I compress: ‘And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion … over all the earth.’

  “Therefore we see that the question of ownership is irrelevant: God owns the waters, and gives them to man to do with what he will, for the benefit of others. Is there any greater benefit than the easing of backbreaking labor through the electrification of factories? Is there any greater benefit than the lighting of the darkness? Are these not amongst God’s greatest blessings? Is not the power that we produce at Niagara a holy thing—as blessed surely as the sight of water pouring over a cliff? Let us not forget that we are making light at Niagara. Is not light the symbol of God incarnate?” He paused, looking over the crowd with the persuasive sincerity of the attorney he was, playing us as if we were a jury. “And if light is the symbol of God incarnate, then electricity is a manifestation of the divine.”