by Howard Fast
When he held his political councils, with Sam McConnell, with Clarence Darrow and George Schilling and Joe Martin, with Eugene Debs, they were open and to the point, unlike any he had ever participated in before. Clean air flowed. The litile money they had was apportioned carefully but wisely. Harrison, the Democratic candidate, and Carter, the Republican, were both campaigning on a wild, communist-socialist witch hunt, pouring an almost insane flood of invective upon Altgeld. Rather than answer this, he decided to devote all his energy to getting his own platform across at a series of public and labor meetings.
He had always written his own speeches. But now he had twenty or thirty appearances in the same city, which meant at least a diversity of material—in addition to which he had to keep up his private law practice, both to pay his bills and to find whatever money he could for the campaign. He rose very early, and wrote before breakfast. At the table, Emma was his sounding board and critic. After that to court or his office; perhaps a street meeting before dinner, and then appointments and consultations during dinner. There was rarely a night without two meetings, and often enough there were three and four appearances to be made the same night. Emma was amazed at how well he stood it; she was personal attendant, secretary and adviser. She learned how to mix the guests of honor properly before a meeting, how to circulate among them, how to make the wives of small businessmen and workingmen feel at home with each other, how to arrange an agenda at the last moment, and how to jot down her husband’s interpolated remarks, so that they would have a record later to check against the newspaper accounts.
The meetings were very heartening. In both the West Side and the South Side, he spoke to the largest political meetings those neighborhoods had ever known. Everywhere, halls were jam-packed. Men came from the shops in their work clothes; storekeepers, small tradesmen, women who took their children along because there was no. one at home with whom to leave them, a new and alert cross-section for political meetings. In Chicago, as well as elsewhere in America, it was the time-honored practice to pack political meetings by scouring the flophouses, the vagrancy cells in the jails, the Salvation Army halls, the downtown alleys where the homeless curled up to sleep after poking sufficiently in the garbage cans. Very often, ward-heelers were sent to packing-town and to the McCormick and Pullman plants, where they distributed thousands of tokens. Each of these tokens, presented at the door of a political meeting, could be redeemed for ten cents, which not only assured a packed house for the newspapers to extol, but made a friend for the party. Of course, not everyone would come, but brisk trading went on for the tokens, and since only three per individual were acceptable at the door, the plan was near foolproof. Bathhouse John established and favored the practice of setting up a keg or two of beer adjacent to the hall, with the understanding that once the speeches were finished, everyone was welcome to see the bung punched and wet his whistle. However, even if he favored any of these methods, none was practical for Altgeld’s thin wallet. The meetings were advertised at the union headquarters; volunteers gave out throwaways at the shops and in the neighborhoods; nevertheless, precedent was broken, and night after night, the halls were full.
He had learned a good deal about how to speak to-people. He was fortunate in having an edged, clear voice, the kind that carries without effort. He could lean over the rostrum and talk to men at the rear of the hall, yet retain the intimate, toned-down quality of conversation. He answered questions simply and matter-of-factly, as, for example, when a man asked, “What do you intend to do about unemployment?” “See that no one in my city starves. That’s all I can do, but I can do that.” Generally half of every meeting was given over to questions and answers. He was establishing a new technique in Chicago politics. He minced no words. “I say a mayor is responsible for his police,” he told one meeting. “I have in my possession the case histories of more than three hundred working people, clubbed and beaten by Chicago police in the past five years. I promise you that no worker will ever be clubbed in my administration. I say there’s no justice for a poor man in Chicago today, at the judge’s bench or at the police magistrate’s rail. I’ll fight to give you justice.” He let go with venom, with hate, “This is a graft-ridden city—I know. I played ball with the local politicians. I talk from experience and I don’t claim absolution from guilt. But I say that if I am elected mayor—I intend to clean up this city.” “You’re lying!” flung back at him and his own thrust, “Good. Never believe a politician! That’s the one American axiom that sticks. So write down what I say, and present it for signature as I leave here.” He could come out with those strokes, stabbing strokes that were something new; and once he said to Emma:
“The strange thing is that for once I’m speaking the God’s honest truth.”
Night after night, the faces spread before him. Night after night, their carriage took them from one part of town to another. For Altgeld, it was the long fight against odds that he loved so much; he was living again. He had taken the Democratic Party from Grover Cleveland. Now he would take Chicago from both parties, a gift from the people to their man.
XV
At dinner one night, with Darrow there and Schilling and Joe Martin, and their wives, and one fourteen-year-old boy who had been brought to meet the Governor, Altgeld basked in a warm family radiance; for this was the American home and the American family, with stout stone walls to keep out the cold and a good roof to ward off the rain, and here was what had been built and would endure for the very reasons that man loved peace and security, and in the eyes of the fourteen-year-old boy, watching him so intently, was the future and the promise. He spoke of his boyhood and he spoke of his Civil War experience, and he smiled as he recalled one march in the rain where their uniforms, a mixture of shoddy and paper, had literally washed off their backs.
“But that was in the bad old times,” he told them, men and women and a. boy, full of food and the after-dinner warmth. “The people were swindled because a new thing was happening, and the people still had to wake up to it. Now the people are awake.”
The boy said he would want to go to war if he were old enough, and his mother looked at Altgeld. “Will it last that long?” the boy wanted to know.
“I hope not,” Altgeld said.
“But it could?”
“Not if the people are awake,” he smiled, thinking of how the crowds cheered when he condemned the attack on the Philippines.
“Are you a socialist, sir, because you’re against war?” the boy asked. Darrow looked at Joe Martin, who was grinning broadly. The apologetic mother was eased by Emma’s smile.
“No, I’m not a socialist. There are other people who hate war.”
“That’s not a very polite question,” the mother said.
“Perfectly justified,” Altgeld laughed. “After all, Eugene Debs believes that the only opposition to war is that of the socialists. In fact, he thinks I will lose the election.” But the manner of his speaking left no doubts of his own opinion. Emma had never seen him so confident, so secure, so absolutely certain of the future. She watched him lean toward the boy and say:
“You’re seeing something, young man, that is worth cataloguing and filing away. In my opinion, you are witnessing the last imperialist war. From here on, the people’s voice will sound. The brief march of the oligarchs is over.”
XVI
Emma remembered that dinner when they sat in their home, sat up through the evening into the morning, charting the election results. It was different from that other time in the Palmer House. The hokey excitement of a presidential campaign was absent. There were just a few of them who sat past midnight, charting and studying the precinct results, getting reports from their independent watchers, keeping a tally, keeping that unique score that is the pulse of a democratic people.
By the early hours of the morning, when the shape of the election became apparent, Altgeld’s face was deathly white. Darrow was somber, and Schilling was voiceless and hopeless. Only Joe Martin attempted to simul
ate cheer; only he kept pointing out that they had expected a stuffing of boxes, that they had expected every dirty move known to the game, that they had at their disposal only too few watchers, only too few tellers, and that they had fully intended to fight a fraud.
“But it’s not a fraud,” Altgeld said dully. “I know how large a fraud can be built. Three votes to our one on the Democratic side, two to our one for the Republicans—”
As the vote mounted, as the enormity of Altgeld’s defeat was hammered home, harder and harder, Schilling moaned, “Where are the people?”
In the small hours of the morning, Altgeld’s independent vote had passed forty thousand, with almost every precinct reported and told. For the Democrats, Harrison was close to the hundred and fifty thousand mark, and Carter, the Republican, had passed one hundred thousand. Altgeld went through the formality of conceding defeat. Crushed, Darrow said his goodbys and went home. Joe Martin cut a fresh cigar, and Schilling sat in a big chair, crumpled and beaten as an old bag of clothes. Emma brought them coffee, and they drank it in silence. No one mentioned sleep or home. They wrapped themselves in their own gloom.
Finally, Schilling managed to say, “The working people voted. You can’t tell me they didn’t vote. If someone tries to tell me that, I will not believe it.”
“For Christ’s sake, George, believe it!” Altgeld snapped.
And Martin asked, “What do you make of it, Pete?”
“Nothing but what’s there. It’s better to believe a dream than to believe the fact. I suppose those who followed Debs voted. But tell a man in packing-town that his six dollars a week will buy him more under me than under Carter or Harrison. They just got no reason to vote, no damned reason at all.”
PART SIX
The Restatement
In its effect upon this individual or that one, the news of Altgeld’s defeat was most varied. In the Union League Club, for example, his going down produced hardly a ripple; for they were close enough to the mechanism of things to have no doubts as to the outcome, and they had never believed that this upstart rebellion would produce more than the handful of votes it did. On the other hand, those old-line Chicago politicians who had worked with Altgeld in the past and responded to his masterly direction were somewhat saddened that he had been fool enough to buck a machine, to the building of which he himself had contributed. They felt that his sickness had affected his mind, and they also felt he had been badly swayed by his radical associations. There were those, like Gene Debs, who understood very fully the meaning of Altgeld’s defeat, and there were also those who wept when the news came.
Lucy Parsons wept, and she had not wept in a long, long time. Lucy Parsons’ struggle was a long one; it went on into the future, and it had no ending. She had thought to herself in the beginning, when the blinding shock of her husband’s death began to wear off somewhat, that no man dies completely—that no man, no matter how small, no matter how unimportant, no matter how insignificent, dies so completely that something of him is not left to go into the lives of others, a word, a gesture, a smile, more or less, something that enters the stream of human life and adds to the continuity of all living, all struggle and all hope; and certainly what her husband had been was in the lives of many men, in her own life, in her children’s lives. Out of that concept, it seemed to her only natural, obvious and direct, that she should attempt to take up her husband’s work and carry it through. She recognized what a tall order it was, and how poorly she was equipped. She had her children to care for and to raise; a living, no matter how small, had to be earned for herself and for them; and she could not rest until her husband, who had died upon the gallows like a common murderer, stood forth before the world with his name cleared and his purpose plain. To add onto this an agitator’s career was not a comfortable action, but comfort was something she neither looked for nor expected.
She was a stubborn woman, and when her purpose was laid down and made plain, she followed it through. As the years passed, she became one of the fixtures of Chicago streets. She was to be found here and there, first in one place and then in another, with her little stand set up, and the pile of books which contained her husband’s thoughts and writings displayed. Visitors to Chicago, tourists, curiosity-seekers from one or another European city, were advised to be sure and see Lucy Parsons before they left, much as they were advised to see the stockyards. Those people who thought about it were amazed by the persistence of this small, dark woman, whose face still retained traces of beauty, but most of those who saw her did not think much about it, except to be as satisfied as one is to view the wife of a notorious man who came to his end on the gallows.
But this was only a part of Lucy Parsons’ life. Another part was her children, whom she loved so passionately, and who represented the continuance of her husband’s flesh and blood as they grew into maturity. And still another part was her organizational work, through which she attempted to carry on what her husband had done. She spoke at union meetings; she was to be found on almost every picket line in the Chicago area; she would stand for hours at night in the bitter cold, distributing leaflets; she would trudge the streets, selling copies of the socialist paper. She was stolid, tireless, and as strong as a piece of tempered steel; perhaps the part of her which was American Indian contributed toward this, and there is no doubt that as time went on she came to resemble more and more those forebears of hers who had pitched their teepees on the treeless plains from time immemorial. Her face became lined and the bones made strong ridges as the flesh fell away; sun and weather darkened her skin; her eyes reflected that inward peace with time which so many Indians make, and which gives them such enduring patience; and her voice reached back for the soft, drawling inflection which was as much a part of her people as anything else.
The men who worked with her came to accept the fact that Lucy Parsons was what she was, in so many ways stronger than they were. They used her strength because she offered it without ever asking for pity, and pity was one of the few things that made her deeply angry. Otherwise, she was calm, and apart from her family displayed little emotion. She studied constantly, reading-during every spare moment she found, and even Debs admired and was amazed by her grasp of the labor situation in America.
II
From the day Altgeld pardoned the three Haymarket prisoners, Lucy Parsons watched him. She read all that he wrote; she read the stories the newspapers printed about him. She would give precious hours to go to some meeting where he was speaking. Step by step, she followed his battle against Grover Cleveland, and she had furious arguments with friends of hers who did not trust him, and who insisted that whatever the label, a politician was a politician. And finally, when he came forth on his independent ticket, she knew that her hopes and her dreams were justified. She remembered one night, about six months before the Haymarket incident, when her husband came back from a heartbreaking trip into Pennsylvania. For once, his mood was black; he seemed not so much beaten as worn thin, and he said to her:
“Where do we go, Lucy? Everywhere, the people plead and there’s no one to tell them what to do—no one to lead them. I don’t mean someone like me, I mean someone with power and dignity and office, to stand up and make cause with the worker. If there was even one man in congress, one man to say, follow me.…”
Albert Parsons had gone down to Coal Center on the Monongahela River, one person and alone, to see if there was any hope of organizing the miners. A thing was happening in Coal Center that had happened and would continue to happen in one part or another of America; but when it happened, those involved would isolate the area from the rest of America; it would burn out where it started.
Coal Center was a fairly new place; it had come into being on top of the railroads’ insistent demand for fuel; and as more and more track was laid down, as the country grew, Coal Center mushroomed. America grew up on the black gold.
At first, in what later became Coal Center, there were only a few farms. This was an area up the river, about fif
ty miles from Pittsburgh, and it was the beautiful Appalachian hill country, where the mounds of earth lay like the upturned bellies of fat sows, where rippling brooks trickled down to the rich bottom meadows, where the cows found good grazing on the hillside, where a man could have, not too much, but enough, meat and drink out of the earth, and sometimes a deer to be killed in the pine woods.
Into this place, a hundred years before, had come the Scotch-Irish landless; they were tall, hard men who pushed into the Indian country and built themselves houses of logs and earth, and cleared the forest away for farms. They were men with a fierce sense of liberty and independence, and in the Revolution they, who were called the woodsy folk, took their long hunting guns, formed themselves into a brigade, and fought in the Pennsylvania line of the Continental Army for six uninterrupted years. They did not go back to their plowing and planting, and during those war years, there was great suffering in the Monongahela Valley. But finally, the war was done; they went back to their farms, and the bucolic progression of their lives began once more. Generations passed, and they raised up their sons and daughters, and sons and daughters buried their parents in the good Pennsylvania earth. They remained basically the same Scotch-Irish stock, for the many succeeding waves of immigration passed over the Appalachians, looking for the richer and easier western prairies, and as their numbers increased, they cleared more of the land. Some of them went away to the cities, but many remained. They lived simple lives; in their churches they followed the same stern Protestant faith that their forefathers had brought to America, and in their churchyards the stones were marked with recurring names, Stuart, MacGregor, Cameron, Lynn, MacKee, Williamson, Angusson, McDonald, Bruce—those and a dozen more names, over and over, from generation to generation. Sometimes, flood interrupted their lives; sometimes war, sometimes a plague of disease; but they were a sturdy stock and they endured and increased.
