by John Jakes
The Knights had been founded in Philadelphia in ’69. It was a secret society, originally restricted to members of the Garment Cutters Association. The first so-called “sojourner” from another trade had been admitted to membership last year, but the society still seemed to put exclusivity before everything else. Exactly how long it would take for solidarity to replace exclusivity and lead to genuine gains in the labor movement for the skilled and unskilled workers alike, Gideon didn’t know. He was afraid it would be a long time.
And with a great deal of violence in the interim.
He could understand Margaret’s worries about the risks of his work. He could also understand why she resented their modest standard of living. Since the night of that first terrible quarrel, however, he was convinced something else was at the root of her unhappiness. She resented his independence, which she herself had helped to develop. He had a career while she, by tradition, was required to stay in the home attending to domestic pursuits.
Still, he couldn’t change every aspect of society at once. And since marriage was a give-and-take proposition, he felt it was wrong of Margaret to force him to choose between responsibility to his family and responsibility to others. Especially since the element of risk didn’t matter to him. One time he’d tried to explain to her that the Kents seldom shrank from doing what needed to be done just because risks were involved. That, too, had been the wrong thing to say.
“Kent, Kent, Kent! I’m sick of that name! I wish our name was anything but Kent! Being a Kent has taken you away from me!”
Yes, her fears were understandable. And he would have borne them, and done his best to soothe them away, except for her desperate new insistence that he decide about what was most important in his life. That angered him. The anger was still simmering when he arrived in Chicago.
Perhaps it was the anger that made the memory of Julia Sedgwick pop into mind as the train chuffed into the large and ornate La Salle Street Station. At Louis’ funeral, he remembered Julia saying she’d built a home on State Street, within sight of the lake and near the southern limits of the growing city. It struck him that if any human being would understand why he had to continue his work, it would be a suffragist. They were nearly as unpopular as trade unionists.
For a few moments he merely toyed with the idea of calling on Louis’ former wife. Finally he decided to do it. It would be refreshing to chat with a woman who cared about something more than the size of her house, or whether a piece of decorative sculpture was broken. Julia had money, but that wasn’t enough to satisfy her. She had involved herself in a movement which was trying to change existing conditions—just as he was.
His cheeks reddened as he stepped down from the car. The thought of Julia Sedgwick had produced an embarrassing physical reaction. He swung his shabby portmanteau in front of him. He realized how much he missed the physical affection he and Margaret had once shared so eagerly.
In the jostling crowd heading into the terminal, a ragged old woman fought against the flow of passengers, a beggar woman. She reached Gideon’s side, offering withered apples.
“Buy, sir? Only half a dime for three.”
“No, thank you,” he said with a pleasant smile, and then started. The filthy old woman was scrutinizing him closely, particularly his face and the eye patch.
He walked on. The back of his neck prickled. He glanced around and saw the woman still watching him, not offering her wares to anyone else.
Then he remembered his contact, Nils Ericsson, writing to say he feared Wisconsin and Prairie management had gotten wind of the organizational meeting and would attempt to prevent or disrupt it. That was one more justification for Gideon’s invitation; no regular newspaper in Chicago or anywhere else for that matter would ever carry a story about company thuggery. The large dailies generally thought of unions as instruments of the devil.
From the first, however, Gideon had believed the story could be a good one. An eyewitness account of the struggle to found a switchman’s brotherhood. Now there was a hint of trouble. If it occurred, he planned to add material on the lengths to which management would go to oppose a trade union.
The old woman was still staring. He recalled telling Ericsson in his last letter that he could be identified by the eye patch. Had someone read the letter? Or heard Ericsson mention it? There were always spies among militant workers—men paid to feed the bosses reports of disloyal employees with union leanings.
Gideon threw his shoulders back, striding along just as he’d done when he wore a Confederate uniform. The possibility that he’d been observed made him wary, but it lent his arrival a certain zest, too.
More important, it took his mind off the all but insoluble problems with Margaret.
ii
The limited traveling budget that he’d established for himself didn’t permit him to stay at a hotel as fine as Potter Palmer’s elegant Palmer House at State and Quincy Streets. Ericsson had given him the name of a small, clean establishment called the Dorset. It was located on Jackson, directly south of a squalid area of shanties called Conley’s Patch.
At the hotel. Gideon unpacked and napped for an hour and a half. Then he cleaned up with soap and razor and set out to stroll the town.
Last year Chicago had replaced St. Louis as the nation’s fourth largest city. Only New York, Philadelphia and Brooklyn were bigger. Chicago had about three hundred and thirty thousand residents, and Gideon thought he met at least half of them that morning. The streets and sidewalks seemed even more congested than New York’s.
It was Friday in the first week of October, an exceptionally warm day—entirely too warm for autumn. There was a light haze in the air, and a light breeze carrying a mixture of odors that included the tang of the lake and the heavier stench of fresh butchered meat. He presumed the latter came from the Union Stockyards southwest of the business district.
Cattle, railroads, lumber, grain and the vast McCormick Harvester Works kept the economy of the city growing. While still in New York, he had purchased and read a small Chicago guidebook. He knew there were various nicknames for the place. Porkopolis. Slab Town. Wild Onion and Bad Stink—people argued about which of the two was the correct translation of the original Indian name, which he believed was spelled Checagou.
The Chicago River and its two branches divided the city into three districts. He was staying on the so-called South Side, and would attend the organizational meeting on the West Side. He spent the rest of the morning roaming the south section, admiring the courthouse with its imposing bell tower at Randolph and Clark; the fine retail section along Lake Street; the one hundred percent fireproof Chicago Tribune building at Dearborn and Madison; and some of the newer businesses on rapidly developing State Street.
Up along the main branch of the river, he saw great numbers of steam and sailing craft, mostly small but in total amounting to a huge quantity of shipping for an inland port. The McCormick works which turned out the reapers revolutionizing the farming industry, loomed on the river’s north bank. Bridges at main streets pivoted in the center and swung parallel to the current to permit commercial craft to pass.
The river skyline was a jumble of wooden office buildings, grain elevators, masts—wood everywhere, Gideon soon noticed. Strolling southwest again, he observed a great number of lumber and planing mills, each with its end product stacked in the yard. Close by the south branch he saw shavings and wood scraps piled up outside small homes sandwiched between saloons and retail stores. He asked a newsboy about the scraps and shavings. The boy said thousands of people gathered the waste material of Chicago’s lumber industry and stored it on their property for winter fuel.
By two o’clock Gideon’s stomach was growling. He decided to omit lunch in order to save money. Like his late father, he often had difficulty believing the California gold fortune was real, and he behaved accordingly. That was another of his traits which Margaret no doubt found annoying.
He walked back to State Street. There, amid the carriages
, horsecars and pedestrians, he chanced upon an incredible sight: two houses, resting on rollers and being dragged along by oxen. He asked a policeman what was happening; he’d never seen such a sight in his life.
The policeman laughed and assured him it was common in Chicago. The city had been platted on low, swampy ground. To improve drainage the city council had simply decreed that the grade be raised. Thus, starting in the mid-fifties, the existing buildings had been raised too. Put on pilings, or shifted to new locations.
“Sometimes you see nine or ten houses a day being moved. The Briggs Hotel was jacked four and a half feet, all twenty-two thousand tons of it, and new foundations put in underneath, while it stayed open doing business as usual.”
Gideon thanked the officer and moved on. He was impressed again by the ingenuity of the American mind.
A clerk at his hotel had told him Field, Leiter and Company at State and Washington was the city’s finest retail store. Gideon headed there now. By the time he’d been in the store ten minutes, his New York chauvinism asserted itself; he silently acknowledged that the store was a good one, but of course it couldn’t match Stewart’s in Manhattan.
Having carefully counted his pocket change in advance, he bought a bright-colored toy omnibus for Will and, hoping it would help make peace when he went home, a bottle of scent for Margaret.
To find something for his daughter, he went to a nearby row of bookshops. Eleanor was always begging to be taken to the theater. But Margaret no longer approved of that form of entertainment, even though she’d once sighed over the good looks of Mr. John W. Booth and other leading actors when she sat in the gallery of a Richmond theater and watched matinee performances of popular comedies and tragedies. Gideon guessed that Margaret’s new dislike of what she termed the immoral theater stemmed from her general retreat from the world. In any case, he hoped it wouldn’t cause a fuss if he gave his daughter a little taste of the forbidden fruit. He bought an inexpensive edition of four of Shakespeare’s comedies.
Eleanor was only nine, but she was a very bright child. He was reasonably sure she could understand the plots of the plays and all but the most difficult or obscure words in the iambic pentameter. How he loved the roll of that on the tongue! He said it half aloud—“Iambic pentameter!” The clerk peered at him as if he’d committed a public indecency. Gideon didn’t care; he was forever trying out new words and terms.
He discovered it was nearly four o’clock. He was sweaty and tired as he started back to the Dorset. On Clark Street he fell in behind a couple of well-dressed gentlemen and heard one say, “—I sent my family up to Wisconsin.”
“Don’t you think you’re being excessively cautious?” the other man asked.
“I do not. How many fires were there last Sunday and Monday? Five, six every night? Small ones, I grant you, but with no more than an inch of rain since July, we’re sitting in a tinderbox. Two hundred and fifteen firemen aren’t nearly enough to control a really bad blaze if one should—”
The men turned into a building. Gideon recalled all the wood he’d seen stacked in cottage yards, and all the wooden structures in the city. But he forgot about those things the moment he entered the little lobby of the hotel. The clerk signaled him to the desk.
“Mr. Kent, there’s a gentleman waiting for you in the saloon bar. He’s been here almost an hour.”
Gideon wasn’t expecting his contact today. But perhaps something had come up. “Ah,” he said, “is his name Ericsson?”
“No, sir.” The clerk consulted a card. “Florian. Mr. Sidney Florian.”
He showed the card. Gideon scowled. Below Florian’s name was his title:
ASSISTANT GENERAL MANAGER
WISCONSIN & PRAIRIE RAILROAD CORPORATION
iii
The clerk identified Florian as the tallest, thinnest man in sight. Gideon found him easily in the saloon bar—a cadaverous fellow wearing a tasteless checked suit and a derby hat. Florian hunched over the bar, a cane tucked beneath one arm. He was stuffing raw oysters into his mouth and washing them down with what appeared to be schnapps.
Gideon approached warily. “Mr. Florian?”
The other man was four or five inches taller than Gideon. He turned and peered down. His thin-lipped mouth parted in an insincere smile that revealed several silver teeth.
“Yes, sir?”
“Gideon Kent”
“Mr. Kent!” A moist, cold hand pumped Gideon’s. “The editor of Labor’s Beacon—a pleasure, a distinct pleasure! I’ve been very anxious to meet you.”
“And you knew where to find me. Did you also have someone at the train station to meet me? An old beggar woman, for instance?”
Close-set eyes scrutinized him. “I beg your pardon?”
“Never mind.” But Gideon did wonder who among Ericsson’s associates had taken a bribe. He supposed they’d never learn that.
“May I buy you a little something to cool you?” Florian asked as Gideon leaned against the bar. “This blasted weather dries a fellow out. Damned unusual for so late in the year.”
Gideon figured he might as well end the charade of politeness.
“I’m not in Chicago to accept Wisconsin and Prairie hospitality, Mr. Florian.”
A curt shrug, and Florian was no longer smiling.
“No, you’re here to write up what those stupid yardmen are going to attempt. Write it up and spread it in that yellow sheet you publish.”
Gideon laughed. “I’m flattered my little paper’s known to the bosses of your line.”
A nasty chuckle. “Of course. We keep stacks in the switch yard privies. The paper may be read, or it may be used. Mr. Courtleigh and I happen to think it’s more suitable for the second purpose.”
Gideon’s jaw clenched. “That would be your president, Mr. Thomas Courtleigh?” He had never met the man, but he knew a good deal about him. Courtleigh had inherited the immensely profitable trunk railroad from his late father. Reputedly the man lived in high style. He also ran one of the most repressively managed lines in the entire country—and bragged about it. When some Wisconsin dairy farmers had protested about exorbitant rates for shipping milk—the W & P was the only railroad in their region—Courtleigh’s amused comment for the press had been, “Each man is entitled to the maximum profit he can earn. The farmers milk the cows and we milk the farmers and that’s the way it is.”
“Correct, correct,” Florian said, his long, rather horselike head bobbing up and down. “Mr. Courtleigh sent me with a message. He wants no publicity about the meeting scheduled for Sunday night.”
“Oh, you know about that too, do you?”
“Certainly we know about it. Mr. Courtleigh wants to get it across to Nils Ericsson that the meeting had better not take place—especially not in Ericsson’s house.”
Sarcasm edged Gideon’s voice. “Yes, I don’t doubt Courtleigh would like to see it canceled with no resistance.”
Florian licked his lower lip. Beneath the brim of his derby, his dark eyes were unfriendly.
“It had better be, Kent, because if it isn’t, Ericsson’s endangering his family. His family and the family of every man who attends. Do you suppose you could convey that to him?”
“Why doesn’t your boss try delivering his messages in person?”
Florian snickered. “Why, Kent, he can’t bother with the likes of you or Ericsson. Mr. Courtleigh’s an important man! A leader in society in this town. Right now he’s involved in planning a ball for his fiancée to be held a week from tonight. He delegates routine matters to me.”
To goad him, Gideon smiled and feigned innocence. “I really don’t understand, Mr. Florian. If Sunday’s meeting is so routine, why do you bother making threats?” Before the cadaverous man could reply, Gideon went on. “Of course I know the answer. The desire of the switchmen to organize and bargain for better pay and better treatment is anything but routine to you and Courtleigh. I should imagine it’s got your boss scared to death. Giving the families of yardmen postmo
rtem and injury benefits might mean smaller profits for Wisconsin and Prairie stockholders. A smaller diamond for your employer’s fiancée. Or a smaller orchestra for this grand soiree he’s planning while his toadies scurry around town doing his dirty work—”
Florian couldn’t believe what he was hearing. His eyes were wide with astonishment. Slowly, Gideon reached out and took hold of the tall man’s lapel, his smile rigid and his blue eye glaring.
“If I hear one more such threat, Mr. Florian, I will kick you in your bony ass, and keep kicking all the way to the street.”
Several customers further down the bar overheard Gideon and stared. Suddenly Florian jerked back, whipped up his cane, flourished it and shouted, “You damn Communard! You’ll regret you came to this town. You’ll regret you bucked Tom Courtleigh—and Ericsson’s wife will regret it even more. You tell him that!”
He shook his cane one more time and stormed out of the bar.
Gideon laughed, but just a bit uneasily. He glared at those who had been watching the altercation. They went back to their own conversations.
“Whiskey!” Gideon snapped to the gawking barkeep. He was unsettled by the encounter, and not at all inclined to laugh off the threats of the Wisconsin and Prairie’s president. When he met Ericsson for breakfast, he must tell him what Florian had said and let him make a decision about the meeting. Gideon was glad he’d brought his old LeMat cavalry revolver with him from New York.
As he prepared for sleep that night he unwrapped his night shirt which had protected the revolver in his portmanteau. Far in the distance, he heard what sounded like bells on fire pumpers racing through the streets.
He hefted the revolver and, with the tip of his little finger, removed a speck of dust from the bright barrel. He listened to the clang of the distant bells and abruptly recalled the word used by one of the men he’d walked behind on Clark Street.
