Death at Pullman (16 page)

I fell back from his accusations as from blows. The issue of Fiona MacGregor was completely unexpected. What did he want me to do?

“There are no supplies to be had. I talked to Miss Giles this morning, but Miss Addams is on her way to see her dying sister and there is no one to find the money needed. As for Miss MacGregor, she is on my committee, but with nothing to distribute I have had to send them away. In any case, as you yourself remarked, since the arrival of Mr. LeClerc she has chosen to spend her time assisting him rather than handing out supplies with me or helping you in the clinic. If I see her, I will be sure to let her know you were asking.”

I turned on my heel, quickly leaving the clinic. I left the doctor and the detective to each other. I was sick of them, sick of the strike, sick of the violence, and furious at my helplessness. As I hurried down the stairs I was frustrated yet again. A crowd of men was flooding out of the meeting room on the floor below, blocking the stairway. As I waited for the crowd to thin, I saw Fiona MacGregor lingering in the meeting room. I was about to continue on my way when I saw that Raoul LeClerc was there as well, tidying up after the meeting. He saw me and his face lit up with a smile as he came towards me.

“Miss Cabot, you are here. Have more supplies come?”

My face started to burn with embarrassment. No, there was no food. If there was food I would be upstairs handing it out. I restrained myself from snapping at him. “No, unfortunately. I have had to turn people away again.” I noticed Fiona move up until she was between me and LeClerc. “I'm glad to have found you, though, Fiona. Dr. Chapman was just asking for you. He sorely misses your help in the clinic.”

She frowned. LeClerc put a hand on her arm as she turned to face him, staring up into his large brown eyes. “Go,” he said, and nodded towards the stairs. “Go to help the doctor. It's all right. Go.”

Reluctantly, she allowed him to turn her towards the door, where he gave her a little push. Passing me, she hesitated. “Go.” He waved a hand at her. “Shoo, go.” When she clambered up the stairs he smiled at me, putting a hand on my arm. Then he looked to see if there was anyone else around. Before I realized what he was doing, he had pulled me into the room, out of sight of the doorway, and pushed me against the wall. I felt his breath on my face, then his lips on mine. I felt the pressure of his kiss for a long moment before I pushed him away with both hands.

“What are you doing?”

His hand caressed my cheek. “Don't be alarmed. I couldn't resist. You were so beautiful, standing there, in the doorway.”

I slid away from him until I was in the hallway once more, then I turned to him. “You mustn't do that. Have you heard what happened? Have you heard that the Pinkerton man, Stark, shot and killed Mr. Mooney? And they let him go. They didn't even arrest him.” My face was burning with embarrassment. I should not have let him kiss me, I should have protested more, but for all of that my anger at the death of Mooney was more compelling. I thought at least Raoul LeClerc would understand. I hoped he would, because no one else did.

His large brown eyes seemed to have tears in them as he shook his head. “I know, it is tragic. Very tragic.” He reached out to touch my arm as if to calm me. “Listen, Emily, don't you see what it means? They are desperate. They will do anything. It means they are at the end of their rope. They will shoot a mere passerby, they will try to starve the people, they will ride the engines aiming their shotguns at the crowd. But it won't work. They cannot run the trains without the workingmen, the union men. Can't you see how close we are to winning? Mooney's death is tragic, but he is a martyr. And there are others. But we are so close. If only the people can hang on and stay together a little while longer. We will win. The ARU will win, and it will be a new day for all working men and women in this country.”

“You really believe that, don't you?”

“Of course I believe it. That is what we are doing here.” He took me by the shoulders. “I promise you, Emily Cabot, when this is over, and Eugene Debs and the ARU are in charge, men like Stark will not be tolerated. But we must win this struggle and to do that we must find a way to feed the people. You know they are desperate. Can't you help? Can't your friends at Hull House help us to hold out just a little longer?”

I closed my eyes and clenched my teeth in exasperation. When I opened them, I was looking directly into his warm brown eyes. He reached up to caress my cheek. I brushed his hand away, confused by the feelings he had stirred in me, and distracted by the more pressing situation. “All right. I'll go myself. There is no one at Hull House who can help. Miss Addams is not there. Others are staying away out of fear that they might meet mobs in the streets. I'll have to go up there myself and hound them all until they give me supplies, just to make me go away. I can do that. I
will
do that.”

He smiled and stole another kiss before he put an arm around my shoulders, hurrying me along the hall and down the stairs. “Come, I trust you to find someone to help you get a cart for the supplies you'll bring back. You can do this. We will be waiting for you to return.” When we reached the street Ian MacGregor was standing there holding a clipboard. Raoul pointed to him, giving me a slight push in that direction, and then headed back inside.

I marched over to Mr. MacGregor and demanded his help. As it turned out, it was easy for him to recruit two men to take me to the city in a wagon, in the hopes of returning with supplies. But when I reached Hull House I learned that Jane Addams was still stuck in Milwaukee, completely taken up with the imminent death of her beloved sister. Florence Kelley was managing the settlement house's affairs in her absence. She told me that the people in the city viewed the strike very differently. People were afraid to go out now, fearful of meeting marauding bands of strikers.

I thought of the sturdy men at the ARU meeting I had attended and could not believe they would suddenly turn into a rowdy, destructive crowd. The crowd I had seen at the crossing where Mooney was killed had not been striking railroad men or strikers from Pullman. I was sure they were not. More likely, they were people already out of work or unable to get to work due to the strike. From the Hull House residents themselves I learned that people were beginning to believe the newspaper claims that Eugene Debs was out to force industry and government to do as he dictated. There was a tangible fear of rioting and the general managers were calling for the federal government to intervene.

“But it is a labor action, it is a dispute between the workers and the railroads. Why don't they make Pullman return from his country house and just talk to his working men and women? Why is that too much to ask? How can the government get involved?”

Mrs. Kelley grimaced at my naïveté. “The local government does not want to intervene. The mayor is on the side of the strikers, as you very well know, but the police are wary. Governor Altgeld refuses to intervene although there have been calls for the National Guard to be brought in. It's the general managers. They are trying to say the United States mails are being interfered with.”

“But I heard that the strikers are
not
interfering with mail trains.”

“Who is to say? There are powerful men who own the railroads and they are determined to break the strike. Debs has been more successful than he may have wanted. The strike has spread, especially out west. The railroad men will do anything they can think of to force the government to act. They want to force a crisis. The governor is afraid of what the attorney general might do.”

“You mean in Washington?”

“Oh, yes. The general managers are in constant contact with the president and Olney, the attorney general. They are taking the battle to the courts, to get injunctions against Debs and the ARU.”

“They cannot interfere. Surely they cannot interfere.”

“We shall see.”

Frustration drove me to action. We scoured Hull House for supplies to take back to the starving town. The previous winter, the settlement house itself had been a relief station during the terrible smallpox epidemic. We turned out the closets and pantries for stores left from that time. We solicited from visitors, but it was little enough in the end. With Miss Addams gone there was no one to go to the parlors of Prairie Avenue asking for money, so I did it myself. I begged and bullied and made a pest of myself. I approached Mrs. Louise Bowen, who had saved us on Christmas Eve, when the turkeys we were to distribute were destroyed. I timed my arrival to coincide with her likely preparations for dinner guests and demanded an audience. She heard me out with a grim expression. She wrote me a check but advised me that her acquaintances were no longer sympathetic to the strikers, or even to the Pullman families. The tide had turned. People wanted an end to the violence being reported in the papers and a return to normalcy. This was not the way to recruit sympathy. There was nothing more that she could do. And she pointed out the injustice of Miss Addams's inability to reach her dying sister, due to the effects of the strike on the railroad lines. I realized I had received as much aid as I was likely to get.

I arranged for my purchases and returned to Hull House, eager to pack up the wagon and make my way back to Pullman. But when I entered the front door I heard angry voices coming from the library. Miss Giles was attempting to ignore the noise while she led the kindergarten in ring-around-the-rosy. She looked worried as she came to greet me.

“It's Mr. Pullman,” she told me, with a furtive look at the closed door. “Miss Addams had only just arrived back when he came in. He sounds very angry.”

I sent Miss Giles and her toddlers out to the kitchen for cookies. The loud shouting coming from the library was muffled but alarming. I took a deep breath and clenched my teeth, then opened the door and stepped in.

Miss Addams was seated behind her small desk opposite the door. George Pullman stood in the middle of the room facing her. He wore neither hat nor gloves and his cravat hung slightly off center. I had only met him that once, at his home, but he seemed like a shrunken version of himself. Perhaps it was the pasty color of his skin, replete with brown age spots, or his slightly disheveled hair, which was much whiter than I remembered. He held a silver- topped cane that he swung around wildly as he spoke. He was no longer the immovable rock that he had appeared to be on our first meeting.

“You will cease and desist from your interference, madam. You will stop it now. What right have you to complain of my actions? What business is it of yours?” He was shouting, but the tirade, which had apparently been going on for some time, flowed over Miss Addams. She saw me, however, and appeared glad for the interruption.

“Emily, Mr. Pullman is seeking his children, his younger children. It seems they have had a disagreement and left home. You will remember Miss Cabot, Mr. Pullman. She has been running the relief station down in Kensington, providing food and medicine for the people. Perhaps your sons and younger daughter have gone there.” I shook my head and she hurried on. He stood with his voice barely restrained, ready to start raving again. “I regret it very much if I have done anything to displease you, Mr. Pullman. It is the duty of each of us to try to understand and alleviate the suffering of our fellow man. We try . . . ”

“Suffering, suffering. Who are you to judge suffering? What do you know about it? I built this company from the ground up. I employed these people. I took them away from the dirt and temptation of the city to a town conceived and built by me. I saved them from the squalid surroundings where you choose to live. Where do you and these union agitators come from that you think you can tell me how to run my business? The town of Pullman is named for me. It is my town, my company. You have no say in the running of it. None at all and neither do Debs or his radical extremist followers.

“Don't you see what you have done?” He gestured with the cane towards me, raising his voice even louder. “If those people are without food it is your doing and the doing of those vicious radicals who have infiltrated the works and bribed the men with false hopes.” He whacked his walking stick on the wooden floor as if he would beat his message into it. “Ingrates. Never have there been such ingrates. I cannot work in my own offices for they are closed. I cannot use my own desk. I cannot entertain at the hotel named for my own daughter for fear of actions by these violent strikers.”

“Oh, really, Mr. Pullman,” I interrupted. “I have been staying at the Florence myself. I assure you no harm has come to me. The actions of the strikers have been greatly exaggerated.”

But he spread his arms widely and screamed, “Will you let me speak? Will you hear me out? Can I not even speak once without contradiction?” His aspect was wild and he quivered with rage. Miss Addams clucked, waving her hands gently as if to tell me to be quiet. I obeyed, fearing for the man as his face reddened and his eyes protruded.

“I, who have built this company with my own hands over thirty years, cannot even go to my club without being spurned. To the society of this city, which I have helped to flourish, I am no longer welcome. I am a pariah. Where is gratitude now? Who remembers my contributions now? No one. It is all because of the despicable lies about me from men and women who would never have had the homes they live in if I had not built them. Do they thank the provider of these good things? No, they demand MORE! They refuse to work unless they may dictate the terms. To me—ignoring the fact that without me they would still live in these miserable slums.” Here he made a wide gesture to encompass our neighborhood. “These slums where you and your like come to stir up envy and discord. Well, they can go back. You may have them back, all of them. But you may NOT have MY CHILDREN.” Another crack of the stick on the floor.

My face was burning. It was only with a great effort, clenching my teeth painfully, that I kept myself from yelling back at these accusations. But Miss Addams gave me a stern look and rose from her seat behind the delicately carved desk in the corner. “Mr. Pullman, I assure you again that I have no knowledge of the whereabouts of any of your children. But, please, I can see that at this time you too are suffering from this awful situation, just as your people in the town of Pullman are. Please, will you allow me—or Mayor Hopkins, or someone else, anyone of your choosing—to begin a conversation, to call all the parties to sit down together to arbitrate this disagreement? I know in my heart that, if we can only begin to talk, all other obstacles will fall away before us.”

She stood and walked towards him with her arms outstretched, but even Miss Addams could feel the waves of rage emanating from him, as he stood there glaring. She stopped before she reached him.

I thought he would burst. His face was so red the word apoplexy popped into my mind. He struggled wordlessly for a moment, gripping the cane so fiercely in one hand that his knuckles were white. His other fist was clenched and he raised both fists before his face, shaking them like a baby. “There is NOTHING . . . TO . . . ARBITRATE.” It was a bellow that made me fear he would explode, and collapse from the effort, but he abruptly banged his stick on the wooden floor a final time and dashed from the room.

Miss Addams and I rushed to the window to see him fling himself into his carriage, which then hurried away. She returned to her seat wearily. I could not even think of any response to the display we had just witnessed. She buried her face in her hands and I noticed the black-banded stationery on which she had been writing.

“Miss Addams, you were trying to reach your sister in Wisconsin . . . ”

She raised her head. “Poor Louisa passed away before I could reach her.”

“I am so very sorry.” I remembered how I had been called to my mother's bedside in the spring. How would I have felt if a train strike had kept me from her deathbed? I would have been furious. It had given me some peace to be there at the end. “I am so sorry these circumstances kept you from her. I know how very hard that must be for you. I wish I could do something for you and your family.”

There were tears in her eyes. “Thank you, Emily. We are grateful for the prayers of all of our friends. But I understand that you have come for more supplies for the people of Pullman. You must return with them. Tell me about it.” She generously put aside her own grief to hear my report, and then said, “You must start back as soon as possible. This is a great tragedy.”

“It could have been so good,” I couldn't help complaining. “He is right about the slums. The town is so much better. But they are truly starving.”

She sighed. “Mr. Pullman thought out in his own mind a beautiful town. He had the power with which to build this town, but he did not appeal to, nor obtain, the consent of the men who were living in it. There is an arrogance inherent in philanthropy that can completely spoil the offering. And when that happens, the loss seems worse than the original lack it was meant to help. It is truly tragic.”