The American: A Middle Western Legend

by Howard Fast

  Quietly, honestly, Altgeld answered, “I don’t know.”

  “When you know where you stand, then go to the party.”

  VI

  Schilling, however, knew precisely why he had been summoned, and after an exchange of greetings, he sat waiting for Altgeld to break the ice; but Altgeld, watching the former carpenter, the friend of Parsons, considered how almost every man has his price, has an end to his ideal, a time when he tires. Schilling had served him well in the gubernatorial race; under the Judge’s guidance, he had formed the Altgeld Labor Legion, and the Democratic Party had come forth as the party of the workingman, Jefferson’s party. One hundred thousand dollars of Altgeld’s own money had furnished the backing for this movement, and the workingman was told that here was Pete Altgeld, a worker himself, who would fight for him right down the line. He spoke in union halls; he paraded his recollections of railroad construction; he wrapped the denims tight around him. When he spoke to workers and said, “Old Abe Lincoln would be the first one to take up the banner of new democracy, the banner of the working class,” they roared with satisfaction, the deep-toned roar which came from this kind of an audience. And when he spoke to a group of German workers, telling them, “Ich arbeite mit meinen Händen! Und du arbeitest mit deinen Händen, und wo gibt es Hände, stark genug, um uns zu nehmen, was wir erarbeitet haben?” the same, deep-toned road greeted him.

  Afterwards, the reward for Schilling was the post of secretary in the State Board of Labor Statistics, so that he no longer had to go hungry most of the time, as he did when he was business manager for the socialist paper in Chicago; and therefore it was hard for Schilling to demand from the Governor. His old comrades knew the tune had had played at the election, and now, looking at him, Altgeld wondered just how thin and rotten and incredible the whole political fabric of the great republic was, how much more it could be stretched, and whether it was not essentially the same all the way through, top to bottom, House, Senate, and White House, only the price changing, only the method of corruption becoming a great deal larger and more complex.

  Yet he liked Schilling, liked him tremendously; at the bottom, Schilling was his own kind; he was declassed wholly, Schilling was not. Emma could make a great thing of both the stone house on Frederick Street and the State Mansion, but there was a point beyond which he couldn’t travel. Those he could live with were not the masters, but the political servants, wisecracking, loud-mouthed, foul of speech, corrupt, graft-ridden, but still with a memory that they lived in the gold palaces only by sufferance; and a million-dollar tag didn’t change it any.

  So when he spoke, the Governor asked Schilling, straightforwardly, “Do they all expect me to pardon the anarchists?”

  “All?”

  “Not all. You know what I mean.”

  “Sometimes, my friend,” Schilling said, “I think that you don’t understand your own game. Whatever you think, the people elected you. More of them voted for you than for your opponent. There must have been a reason.”

  “I never put in a platform that I would pardon the anarchists.”

  “No, of course not. A thousand vote for this reason, a thousand for that. But there are many, many thousands who hope you will pardon Fielden and Schwab and Neebe—no, they believe you will. Pete, what I have heard! They look at you and their hearts go out, so they trust you.”

  “And they’re fools.”

  “No,” Schilling said tiredly. “They are not entirely fools.”

  “If I pardon them, then I’m through.”

  “Unless you believe in the people.”

  “What could the people do for me? What could I do for them?”

  “I think that if you were born in this country, they could make you president. And this way, they would follow you to hell.”

  Altgeld shook his head.

  “And the pardon?”

  With a sudden rush of irritation, Altgeld snapped, “If they’re guilty, they can rot there! If they’re innocent, they’ll get out! God damn it, talk about something else! And if you want to talk about the anarchists, bring me facts, not tears, not this stupid talk about the people!”

  VII

  But Judge Lambert Tree said, pointing to methodology, pure and simple, “There are two ways to go about this. If you extend mercy to these men, no one will dare to protest. Haymarket was a witchburning, a bloodfest, and the heat has passed. Do you think that at this point Marshall Field or Cyrus McCormick give two damns as to whether those three men rot inside a jail or outside one?”

  “I’ve thought of that,” Altgeld agreed.

  “On the other hand, if you imply that Parsons and Spies were innocent, as you must if you are to pardon Fielden on legalistic grounds, or even if you imply that the original trial was unfair, then I, personally, would not give twenty-cents for your political future.”

  “I see.”

  “So the three courses are open. Ignore the whole thing—and you’ll never get the labor vote again in this state. Extend mercy, and both labor and businss will stand behind you—I would say, if you want another term as Governor, yes, and the Senate too. But if you take a third course—”

  “I’m through?”

  “I think so.”

  “You would not take the third course?”

  “I don’t think any man in his right mind would, Peter.”

  “Do you think that if I had sat on that bench instead of Gary and tried the case, the result would have been different?”

  “I don’t know what you would have done. I don’t even know what I would have done. But I think there is a limit to what any one man can do.”

  “And where is the limit?” Altgeld asked.

  “The point where he destroys himself.”

  “Then you would have to consider that Parsons destroyed himself,” Altgeld murmured.

  VIII

  When Altgeld came back to Springfield, he called in young Brand Whitlock, who was in charge of the archives, the chaotic piles of musty documents which had accumulated in cellars and vaults ever since Illinois became a state. Whitlock had been a reporter, and meeting him during the campaign, Altgeld became fascinated by the believing directness of the boy; there was something clean and winning about him, and Altgeld had wanted him for a secretary. But when Whitlock dogmatically refused to be secretary to anyone, the Governor persuaded him to take a job with the Secretary of State. That he worshiped the ground Altgeld walked on was obvious, and talking to him, trying to get at the reason for this without embarrassing the young man, trying to get some of the so necessary food for his own ego without tearing down any of the belief, Altgeld drew out of him a curious concept.

  For Whitlock, America was young, and whereas the heroes of other lands were long-dead ancients, the heroes of this land were only of yesterday. His own grandfather was one such, and out of his childhood, curtained with the lovely translucence of childhood, came others, tall Abe Lincoln and Douglass and old Frémont of the middle border and John Brown, some of whom he had known and some whom he remembered from tales told, and many, many more, and as he said to Altgeld:

  “They did what I would want to do, and you’re doing it, too, sir.”

  “And what am I doing?” Altgeld asked.

  “Well, if I’m out on a story and I talk to a plain man, and we talk about how rotten things are, everywhere, he will usually say, If only there were a few more like Pete Altgeld.”

  “What does that add up to?”

  And somewhat ashamed of his own words, Whitlock said, in his almost formal manner of speech, “I think you’re trying to serve the people, sir, because you’re one of us.”

  And now Brand Whitlock stood in front of the Governor, eager and waiting, and Altgeld asked him:

  “Do you know where everything is on the Haymarket case?”

  “Everything?”

  “I mean everything there is to be had. The verbatim testimony, accounts read into the trial, briefs filed with the Supreme Court, newspaper files compiled by the state
—in other words, everything.”

  “There’s a mountain of it,” Whitlock said. “I know where it is, but my God, sir, it would fill your office.”

  “Then fill my office with it,” Altgeld told him. “Do it today.” And then, seeing that the boy hesitated, “Well?”

  “Are you going to pardon them, sir?”

  “What would you do, if you were in my place?”

  The boy said, “I think I would pardon them, sir, the whole world be damned.”

  IX

  At a dinner which Emma Altgeld gave a few days later—such dinners as she was expected to give now, being the mistress of the executive mansion, there was a banker, a Methodist bishop from downstate, Professor Haley of the university, who was an economist and hoped for a place in the administration, and Joe Martin, who was only a tinhorn gambler, even now, but a friend of the Governor’s. The banker’s wife, a thin, frightened woman, fluttered about Emma pleadingly, but the wife of the Methodist bishop was large and handsome; and the party was rounded off by another man and woman. The woman was Lizbeth Cord-wood, the sociologist, and the man was Samuel Gompers, the trade-union leader, who was making a tour, and who had been invited to meet the new Governor and dine with him All in all, it was a varied and interesting gathering, and in the reception room Emma was pleased to note how well Gompers wore his evening clothes—not like Schilling, who was a shabby man and would always be one—and how nicely he chatted with the banker and the bishop’s wife.

  At the dinner, for the most part, things went nicely too. Being Governor had not changed Altgeld’s regard for substantial food, the kind that sticks to a man’s ribs and recalls to him the good memory of having eaten, and that and the wine mellowed conversation. Lizbeth Cordwood found common ground with the professor, who was a bachelor, and Gompers, with Mrs. Altgeld on one side of him and the wife of the bishop on the other, appeared to be enjoying himself enormously well—although whenever he spoke to the Governor, his voice changed just a little, assuming a note of deference and compliance that annoyed Altgeld considerably more than it humored him.

  The conversation was not brilliant, but at least it had none of those ominous gaps which can be so embarrassing to a hostess, a fact Emma was grateful for, since the Governor was tired and hardly said more than a word or two. The talk ranged from economics, the depression in particular, to religion and the current squabble between the lay and clerical authorities in regard to schooling, with half a dozen other subjects in between. It was after the last course, while waiting for the dessert, that Emma, seeing her husband rub his eyes for at least the sixth time, explained, “You must forgive the Governor, he’s been deep in the Haymarket thing,” ignoring his angry look; but then it was done, and the banker said:

  “If we hanged some of the agitators who are stirring this thing up, we might all have a little peace.”

  “That’s not a very charitable way to look at it,” Miss Cordwood said.

  “I leave charity to those who are expert at it. They are expert enough to claim more money than my stockholders.”

  There was general laughter at this sally, even Mr. Gompers smiling, and Professor Haley said to the Banker, “Apparently, sir, you have little sympathy for the anarchists?”

  “None at all, none at all, with apologies to the Governor.”

  “Why—with apologies to me?” Altgeld asked.

  “Common knowledge you intend to pardon the wretches.”

  “Is it?” Emma knew the danger signs, but it was too late.

  “Political, sir, so don’t misunderstand me. A move which will placate labor, and that has a place. Four were hanged and they were shown what’s what. So if three go free—well, politics.”

  “And what do you think, Mr. Gompers?” Altgeld asked.

  “The labor movement,” Gompers said, “has no sympathy for either socialism or murder.”

  “And you approve of linking the two?”

  The banker laughed heartily. “Score for you, Governor. They have not accused you of murder yet.”

  “Not yet.” And turning to Gompers, “If the labor movement has no sympathy, Mr. Gompers, how do you account for Chicago labor, as well as labor groups all over the country, badgering me for these men’s release?”

  “We have all sorts of elements—” Gompers began, searching Altgeld’s face for some clue as to where his sympathies lay.

  “But you are very quick to say murder.”

  “It was the decision of the court,” the bishop said. “Surely, the individual citizen can do no better than to rely on the time-tested justice of the republic—”

  “Is it very warm downstate?” Emma asked the bishop’s wife, desperately trying to turn the conversation, and hearing her highpitched request, the Governor glanced at her and smiled a little, as if to say, it will be all right, my dear. But Joe Martin said, bluntly, “Wouldn’t mercy be down your line, bishop?”

  “Mercy? Mercy is a large word. Should there be mercy for those who would destroy the works of God?”

  “Yet Christ forgave—” the banker’s wife began, speaking for the first time that evening, and then, under her husband’s glance, allowing the rest of her phrase to trail away.

  “We temper a parable with our experience,” the bishop said. “There are those whom even Christ would not forgive.”

  “Mr. Gompers,” the Governor said, his voice more amiable than before, “perhaps you could clarify me on one matter. These men who were hanged—well, Parsons, for example—they were labor leaders after a fashion, or were they not? In every action they took, they fought for labor, or so it seems to me. In fact, one of the counts used against them was that they wished labor to take over this country. To me, naturally, they are enemies of a sort; I don’t wish labor to take over this country. I employ labor, and I don’t look at myself as a devil. But you, on the other hand, are a labor leader. Are the interests of these men so different from yours?”

  “Very different. They used labor for their own ends, as every socialist and communist does, for their own selfish advancement. To put themselves into power, they would nail labor onto a cross!”

  “And yet they died like heroes.”

  “As has many an evil man,” the bishop said.

  “I suppose so,” the Governor agreed. “You have no sympathy for the anarchists, Mr. Gompers?”

  “Personally, I have very little. However, there are unions in the American Federation of Labor which have cast doubt on the complete impartiality of judge and jurors in the case, and I would not place myself as standing in the way of a pardon.”

  “You would not,” the Governor smiled, and then shifted the conversation abruptly, turning to the bishop’s wife and asking, more pointedly than his wife, just how the weather was downstate.

  Later, when all of the guests except Joe Martin had gone, and the Governor was sitting with him and his wife in the library, Emma begged his forgiveness. “It’s all right,” the Governor said. “I suppose I have what I deserve, Emma. I go to church now. The bishop was impressed with that.”

  “You ought to go away, like Emma’s been telling you to,” Martin said. “You ought to go to Europe.”

  “I’ve been reading the Haymarket briefs. It’s an experience, Joe.”

  “I keep begging him to go away for a while.”

  “I like living,” Altgeld said. “I even like having fools to dinner.”

  “What are you going to do about this?”

  X

  There were so many things to be done as Governor, so many routine things that often it was late at night before he found time for a few hours with the books, the records, the finely written transcripts of the Haymarket affair. By now he no longer attempted to deny, even to himself, that this strange business of the explosion of a mysterious bomb on a Chicago street had become one of the central and important factors in his life. Bit by bit, it had moved in upon him, until now he was living with those eight incredible men whom he had never even known—Albert Parsons, August Spies, Lo
uis Lingg, Samuel Fielden, George Engel, Adolph Fischer, Oscar Neebe, and Michael Schwab. He studied their faces and features in the drawing of them by the newspaper artists, particularly the sketches Art Young of the Daily News had done two days before the execution. He read their statements to the court before they were sentenced:

  SPIES: “… Before this court, and before the public, which is supposed to be the State, I charge the State’s Attorney and Bonfield [Chicago police captain] with the heinous conspiracy to commit murder.…”

  PARSONS: “… I have violated no law of this country. Neither I nor my colleagues have violated any legal right of American citizens. We stand upon the right of free speech, of free press, of public assembly, unmolested, and undisturbed. We stand upon the Constitutional right of self-defense, and we defy the prosecution to rob the people of America of these dearly bought rights. But the prosecution imagines that they have triumphed because they propose to put to death seven men.…”

  SCHWAB: “… I know that our ideal will not be accomplished this or next year, but I know that it will be accomplished as near as possible, some day in the future.…”

  FISCHER: “… I protest against my being sentenced to death, because I have committed no crime. However, if I am to die on account of being an Anarchist, I will not remonstrate!”

  LINGO: “… I despise you! I despise your order, your laws, your force-propped authority! Hang me for it!”

  FIELDEN: “… There is a part of me you cannot kill.…”

  ENGEL: “… Can anyone feel respect for a government that accords rights only to the privileged classes and none to the workers? For such a government, I can feel no respect.…”

  But it was the statement of Oscar Neebe that had the deepest effect on Altgeld. He alone was not sentenced to death, but only to fifteen years in jail; but he had been selected by the police at random, simply because he was a militant worker, and never was any pretense made that he had any connection with what happened at Haymarket. When it came time for him to speak, he rose and said: