The Detroit Electric Scheme

by D. E. Johnson

  “You don’t think I had something to do with John Cooper’s death, do you?” Suddenly it mattered a great deal what Ben thought of me.

  “Whether you did or not ain’t my place to say. But I lied.” He hung his head and continued in a murmur. “I lied to the police. And I don’t think they believed me.”

  Stomach acid burned the back of my throat. My little house of cards was fluttering down all around me. “I understand, Ben. I’ll make sure they know I changed the time. That you had nothing to do with it.”

  His brow furrowed. He looked down at the floor and then met my eyes. “Okay. But I ain’t going to jail.”

  Going back to sleep was impossible. I tossed in bed for half an hour, my mind racing. Disgusted, I threw off the covers and stomped into the kitchen. Frank Van Dam had to be able to help me. While I waited to phone him, I drank a pot of coffee and slurped down a bowl of Toasted Corn Flakes.

  I wasn’t certain if Frank worked Saturdays, though I had to assume so. It didn’t seem likely that the Employers Association would give its men the entire weekend off when everyone else was working. I’d phone him early at home, try to catch him before he headed off for a day of breaking heads. At seven I went into the den, sat at my desk, and, once I’d retrieved Frank’s telephone number from a list of EAD emergency contacts, I picked up the telephone’s receiver. A few seconds later the operator came on the line, and I asked her to connect me.

  His mother, whom I’d never met, answered the phone.

  “Hello, Mrs. Van Dam,” I said. “Is Frank home?”

  “Who is this?”

  “Will Anderson.”

  “Why are you calling Frank?” she said, her voice filled with suspicion. “What do you want from him?”

  “Nothing, Mrs. Van Dam. I just need to talk to him.”

  “Well, he’s not here.”

  “Do you know where he is?”

  “That’s none of your business.”

  “Do you know how I might get in touch with him?”

  “No.”

  “It’s very important. Please.”

  “Leave Frank alone.” She hung up.

  I shook my head as I fumbled the receiver back onto the telephone. As far as I knew, she didn’t even know who I was, yet she was suspicious and afraid. There had to be a reason for that. Frank must know what John had been doing. At lunchtime I’d try him at the Employers Association.

  After dressing, I walked to the streetcar stop. It was cold, and the sky was clear, a brilliant cornflower blue. A newsboy was hawking the Free Press, and I picked one up while I waited for the trolley. I didn’t even need to open it. The front-page-center headline read: GRUESOME MURDER AT ANDERSON CARRIAGE.

  I quickly scanned the article. As I expected, the first half was a grisly description of John’s body. Blood sold newspapers. One of the police quotes was that the crime scene “was one of the more gruesome in the history of the city.” One of the more gruesome? I didn’t want to try to imagine anything worse.

  The Employers Association was offering a thousand-dollar reward for information leading to the conviction of the murderer. The article went on to a short biography of John, highlighting his football career at Michigan, including the 1905 season during which they outscored their opponents 495–2. Most important, the article said the police had no suspects at this time. That was encouraging.

  A streetcar was coming, so I pitched the paper in a garbage bin and waited for the car to stop. As always, the trolley was crammed to over-flowing, men and women hanging off the sides with the barest of footholds. The motorman looked straight ahead, not slowing at all, and passed by at full speed. The crowd at the stop cursed him and questioned his parentage until the car was out of sight. I joined in. We had to get to work. Even though it was illegal, every day during rush hour, trolleys passed by their stops.

  I hopped from foot to foot, not able to stand still. The next car stopped, and I wedged a toe onto the front step. I jumped off just down the block from our factory and walked through the main entrance in a stream of Anderson employees. It was a madhouse in the morning, everyone scattering in different directions, more to the carriage building than the automobile factory. Our car and truck business was growing, but it would be a while before we surpassed the revenue of Anderson carriages and wagons.

  I walked to the factory office, which was something out of a Dickens serial: cramped and grim, with two rows of small desks for the managers and assistant managers of each department. Our desks all faced Mr. McFarlane’s office—a real office with large interior windows that allowed him to keep an eye on us.

  I opened the door and slipped inside, hoping to remain unnoticed.

  A cry went up. “Will! Congratulations!”

  Mr. McFarlane burst out of his office, raced over to me, and shook my hand. “Will, my lad. Well done, well done.” He clapped me on the back. “That’ll give those Baker boys something to stew on, now, won’t it?”

  I had completely forgotten about the record. I nodded and smiled, accepting congratulations from everyone except Mr. Cavendish, who merely glanced up from his desk, then consulted his watch with a small shake of the head. When the rest of the managers arrived, Mr. McFarlane stood at the front of the office and announced a world-record celebration that evening at six, cake and punch to be served. The news of the celebration got a rousing “Hurrah!” from the group; the cake and punch a disappointed groan. My father wasn’t a teetotaler, but he felt it his moral obligation to set a good example for his men.

  For me, this was not good news. I had to talk to Frank. I had to help Elizabeth. I had too much to do to stay late, party or no party. But I had to stay. Normalcy. Act as if nothing’s wrong.

  My desk was piled high with papers, so I hurried through my first duty—a circuit through the machining department to check that the men were working on the proper parts. They were stationed at the machines, grinding, drilling, sawing, and stamping, no conversation other than a shouted “Coming through!” or its German equivalent. The cacophony made talking impossible: high-pitched squeals from drills boring into metal, the angry sound of electric saws, the scream of a grinder shaping a piece of steel, but most of all, the SLAM! SLAM! SLAM! of the presses as the top plates crashed into sheet metal.

  Two men were trying to maneuver a cart loaded with iron rods down the aisle next to me and kept running into the outside wall of the old battery room, which jutted out into the department like a tumor. I gave them a hand, pulling the front away to free it.

  A few years ago, Elwood’s battery department moved from here to the Detroit Electric garage on Woodward, but the equipment stayed—the charging board with its red and black cables dangling down like the legs of an insect, the lifts and tables, a small casting furnace, a welding machine, and four coffin-sized lead-lined tanks set up on sturdy iron feet. The engineers didn’t want to have to run down to the garage every time they needed to recharge or test a battery, and had successfully lobbied to keep the equipment here.

  The room took up valuable space and was nothing but a hazard for us. The engineers never used the welder or furnace, but kept the tanks filled, which was why one of my responsibilities was to ensure every morning that the chains locking down their sliding metal covers were in place. It was a little silly, given that the keys to the padlocks hung on a nail by the door. Still, more than once I had found an open tank, which was hazardous in the extreme, especially the acid tank. The sulfuric acid used to make the electrolyte for the batteries was one of the most caustic chemicals known. Small quantities could burn through skin or blind a man.

  I looked through the windows, which ran the length of the wall on either side of the pair of wide doors. The tanks looked secure, but I went in anyway and pulled on the chains before heading back toward the office. When I walked past the roof press I tried not to think about John, though I couldn’t help but look for traces of blood. The sharp odor of bleach overpowered the normal smells of metal and grease, but other than that there was no
evidence of a man being killed on this machine only two nights ago.

  I couldn’t get out of there fast enough. I returned to my desk and began the tedious process of completing the daily paperwork—filling out dozens of parts requests for the foundry, ordering raw materials, calculating the department’s payroll, approving dozens more parts requests from other departments, and filling out the appropriate work orders. I caught myself in mistake after mistake. God knows how many I missed. I’d have to read a form six or seven times for it to even register, while my mind jumped to John’s body, Riordan, the killer, the blackmailer, Elizabeth.

  I would go see her after work, force my way in if necessary. She would listen to me.

  It didn’t seem possible the killer could be anyone I knew, but I worked the idea just the same. I still had no theories other than the American Federation of Labor. The problem was, I’d never heard of an AFL union going to this kind of extreme. Not that they were opposed to violence, but usually it was the bosses, or in our case, the Employers Association, who upped the ante like this. I had to consider other possibilities.

  As far as I knew, no one hated John, nor was I aware of anything he had done that would make someone angry enough to kill him. But he was no angel. John wasn’t always the kindest person. People his size often don’t learn to couch their comments in ways that would make them more palatable, simply because they don’t have to. John didn’t seem to notice when something he said cut a person deeply, but it was invariably someone he thought to be stupid and bothersome.

  Until a year ago, it had never been me.

  Revenge seemed a possibility. In 1906, police had questioned him about the death of a University of Chicago player in a football game. Maybe someone in that boy’s family had it out for John. It seemed a remote chance. Not only would his family have no reason to frame me, the death happened four years ago, was ruled accidental, and was certainly nothing out of the ordinary—dozens of boys were killed that year in football games. John had anchored Michigan’s flying wedge and was responsible for multiple broken bones, punctured lungs, concussions, and untold numbers of bruises and contusions. The players knew the risk.

  A little after ten o’clock, one of the secretaries from the main office stuck his head into the room. “The IWW is picketing outside. Keep all the men in their departments.”

  The managers and their assistants rushed out of the office and spread throughout the factory. I cut over to the administration building and ran up to my father’s office, joining Mr. Wilkinson at the window. He was peering between slats in the blinds at the mob forming in front of the factory. Fifty or so dodgy-looking men milled about in the street, many of them carrying placards with messages such as CAPITALISM IS MURDER! WORKERS UNITE, and IWW AT ANDERSON NOW! More men were arriving all the time.

  My father hurried out of his office, mopping his forehead with his handkerchief. “Wilkinson, where are they?”

  Wilkinson dropped the blinds with a snap and turned back to my father. “They said it was going to take some time to round up enough men, but not to worry. They’ll take care of it.”

  One of the men in the mob threw a rock toward our building. I put my nose against the glass and looked down the side of the factory, trying to see what he was aiming at. Two blue-suited Anderson security men stood at the door, holding nightsticks. A rock hit one of them in the midsection. He doubled over for a second and then ran into the mob, his associate right behind him. They waded in, swinging their truncheons.

  The other union men closed ranks around them and in seconds had both security guards on the cobbles, kicking and punching them.

  Before I knew what I was doing, I was out the front door. My father shouted, “Will! No!”

  I waded into the mob, throwing wild punches, only now realizing I had no business here. Fortunately, more Anderson employees streamed out of the building behind me, shouting and joining in the fight. A fist glanced off my forehead as I worked my way toward the security guards, who were lying on the ground absorbing kick after kick. I threw myself at the union men, getting in a couple of good licks before a right hook knocked me over backward. A boot connected with my ribs, and then another. I curled up, trying to protect myself.

  A roar sounded over the shouting mob. The men stopped kicking me and began to run away. I looked toward the source of the noise. A line of cars had stopped in front of the factory. Perhaps thirty men in dark suits and hats rushed into the fight and began pummeling the IWW men with heavy clubs and blackjacks. Half a dozen blue-suited Detroit policemen followed them, wielding truncheons. The EAD had arrived.

  I looked for Frank Van Dam, but he was nowhere in sight. Had he been there, I would have seen him. With Cooper dead, Van Dam would have easily been the largest man in the crowd. It was odd. He’d never missed a mix-up before. I had assumed Frank would be taking over the labor bureau’s security, but it appeared not.

  I looked through the rest of them, trying to find a familiar face. Though I had a nodding acquaintance with most of the Employers Association’s men, I didn’t recognize any of these. Rough looking, with stubbly chins and cheap suits, they seemed to be enjoying themselves as they waded into the fray, smashing their bludgeons into heads, midsections, and knees with a brutality I had seldom seen.

  It was over in seconds. Eight or nine Wobblies were laid out on the cobblestones. The rest had scattered to the winds.

  I pushed myself to my feet. A cop I’d seen before dragged an unconscious man past me. “Hey, Anderson. Gimme a hand.”

  I took hold of the man’s other arm and helped the policeman drag him to the paddy wagon. A pair of horses stood placidly at the front.

  “Where’s Frank Van Dam?” I said to the cop.

  He shrugged. “Don’t know. Thought I’d see Frankie here, too.”

  My father came out and chastised me, though I heard a hint of pride behind his words. I returned to the managers’ office and got back to work on the stack of paper, though I spent more time tapping my pencil on the desk, thinking, than I did working.

  Did the Wobblies coming here today make them more or less likely to have been involved? I wasn’t sure, though I thought it less likely, as it made more sense to distance themselves from the murder if they’d been responsible. On the other hand, I’d never heard the Industrial Workers of the World described as “sensible.”

  The next time I looked at my watch it was two o’clock. I’d missed my lunch break by an hour and a half. That told me all I needed to know about my state of mind. I asked Cavendish if I could take a break to use the telephone. He glared at me for a moment, smirked, and shook his head.

  It was clear from the phone call this morning that Frank’s mother would never let me speak with him. My only chance was to catch him at work. Phoning Frank would have to wait until Monday.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The cake, chocolate with chocolate frosting, stood three feet high, in the shape of an automobile, though the elongated front end made it look more like a gasoline car than an electric. Inscribed on top in white frosting was DETROIT ELECTRIC WORLD RECORD—211.3 MILES ON A SINGLE CHARGE! It was quickly cut into pieces by two of our female typewriters and handed out to the men along with a tangy red punch.

  My father stood on a wooden box and raised his arms over his head. “May I have your attention, please?”

  The four hundred or so men who had been milling around and chatting while they ate turned toward him and listened. I was fidgeting, anxious to leave, though no more than many of the other men, who were late for their after-work smoke. Anderson Carriage employees were occasionally caught smoking at work, but most, knowing it was worth their job, managed to hold off until their lunch break or after six, and then smoke only off of the company’s property. They had good reason. My father paid higher than average wages (more than five dollars a day for skilled craftsmen), limited the workweek to fifty-four hours, hired no one under sixteen years of age, and was known as a fair man, often keeping on employees who were unable t
o do their jobs because of age or injury.

  My father cleared his throat and projected out over the floor. “I’ll make this quick because I’m sure you are not interested in hearing anyone, even someone as entertaining as I, go on all night.” He smiled, and the men laughed politely.

  “There are forty-six companies building electric automobiles in this country today. Well, actually, that was yesterday. Who knows how many more sprang up today?”

  The men laughed again.

  “Of those forty-six companies, only one made history yesterday—Detroit Electric. A Model A Victoria, powered by Edison batteries, driven by Will Anderson, and witnessed by Dr. J. O. Miller, went two hundred eleven and three-tenths miles on a single charge, breaking the Baker Electric record by almost ten miles!”

  The men cheered.

  “We will be running advertisements in Horseless Age and The Automobile, not coincidentally the same magazines in which Baker ran the advertisements for their record.”

  The men laughed and gave a hurrah. They seemed to truly like my father, in spite of what some might feel was a bit of priggishness, and the general tendency of many men to resent their superiors.

  “This gives us real momentum. The quality of Detroit Electric automobiles is second to no brand, be they electric, gasoline, or steam.” His voice had been steadily rising, and now he shouted, “This year we will overtake Baker as the number-one supplier of electric automobiles in the country!”

  Applause and whistles echoed through the plant.

  He held out his arms, quieting the men. “But our job has only begun. Remember, our competition is not just electrics but all automobiles.”

  “Even Ford?” one man called out from the back.

  The rest of the men erupted in laughter.

  “All right, all right,” my father said with a chuckle. “I’ll concede it may be a stretch to say all motorcar companies are direct competitors. But we can’t forget about Pierce-Arrow, Lozier, and Packard, even Cadillac. They all compete with us for the same affluent customer. Remember, in Detroit alone there are more than thirty companies that will produce over two hundred thousand automobiles this year. Our production is a small fraction of that.