Death at Pullman (5 page)

In my youthful ignorance I did not understand the type of man George Pullman was. I did not believe he meant what he said. It took me a long time to learn to understand the ideologues of wealth. Like religious zealots, they meant exactly what they said. They believed very firmly that there was a set of rules for profit that must be followed with all of the rigorousness of a ritual. Not to follow the rules that would lead to the optimum profit was to risk apostasy. Most of us, even those with a comfortable mode of living, were made uncomfortable by the misfortunes of others. Not so for Mr. Pullman and his ilk. They had a view of the world as distorted as a mirror in a funhouse and, by their view, all the world was right only if maximum profit was sustained. But I did not yet have enough experience of the world to understand that, on the warm April day that I met Mr. George Pullman.

I gritted my teeth. He was wrong and Mr. MacGregor and the rest of the workers could prove him wrong by staying together. I didn't believe him when he claimed the company would not be hurt by the strike. I thought Mr. Safer's question had indicated that the railroad clients of Pullman Company were already unhappy with his actions. If he wouldn't listen to the workers, he would have to listen to those who purchased his cars. I believed the workers could win this. They could teach that arrogant man a lesson. But they would need help, a lot of help from people like Miss Addams, and Mr. Safer, and from Debs, and the American Railway Union. It would be a tough fight but I knew I wanted to be in it and to see them win. They had to.

At Hull House that night we called an emergency meeting in the residents' dining room. In those familiar surroundings where we had made plans to fight city aldermen and a smallpox epidemic in the past, now we planned to help the people of Pullman. It was decided that I would go down to set up a relief station and wagons would follow, bringing food and other supplies. A temporary clinic would be set up as well. Miss Addams and the others would go out to the drawing rooms of Prairie Avenue and elsewhere to raise funds for the effort.

I had a difficult time getting to sleep that night. My mind was full of arguments I should have used to convince George Pullman and his manager, Mr. Jennings. I was terribly worried about the fate of Mr. MacGregor and the others, although Miss Addams had contacted the mayor about the situation with the police. I practiced arguments to explain how they could not have been involved in the death and why they must be released. Not only Mr. MacGregor, but Mr. LeClerc and the others, must be released. After a fitful sleep I rose with these arguments and worries still playing in my head. I had counter arguments prepared for every possible situation except for one. During my ruminations I had not contemplated or rehearsed what I would say when faced with a man whose proposal of marriage I had refused the very last time I saw him.

He saw me before I had time to avoid him, or even to prepare myself. It was in the great open space of Twelfth Street Station where I was headed for Track Four to take the train to Pullman. Head down, I weaved through the early morning crowds while rehearsing the arguments for why Mr. MacGregor and Mr. LeClerc must be released. I was terribly afraid the police would keep them in jail and when I finally looked up, there he was, right beside my train.

“Stephen, what are you doing here?”

“I will be accompanying you to Pullman, Miss Cabot.” Of course, the formality of address was proper but it made me wince.

“I thought you were at the university.” After my refusal of his marriage proposal, I naïvely thought that Stephen would continue his clinic duties in the Hull House neighborhood, and that we would still work side-by-side. I had tried to show how polite and mature I could be in the circumstances but, the morning after I turned him down, he left the Hull House men's quarters to return to his research at the University of Chicago. No one else found this at all surprising, since for months he had divided his time between work in the laboratory and time on the West Side training visiting nurses. No one else knew of his proposal and my refusal. Only I had been shocked by his removal to Hyde Park and only I had to hide my reaction.

“I was visiting in the city when Miss Addams contacted me last night. But I thought you were too devoted to your studies to be distracted by something so mundane?” He was being supercilious. I had refused his offer on the grounds that I would not be allowed to take up an offered lectureship at the University if I were married.

“My university position begins in the fall, meanwhile I accompanied Miss Addams to Pullman yesterday and I was chosen to set up the relief station there.” I felt myself becoming warm. I was conscious of the heavy black serge dress and jacket I wore, still deep in mourning after the death of my mother the previous spring. The fabric seemed to get heavier as the weather grew warmer, and only increased my irritation. “Doctor, I must protest. I am quite capable of doing this by myself. Thank you very much, but I need neither your help nor your protection. You are mistaken if you think that my youth or lack of experience mean that I require your assistance—I do not.” A dozen years my senior, it irked me that the doctor had only proposed to me out of pity. I was orphaned and lacking in means when my mother passed away. He had assumed, mistakenly, that I could not survive without his protection. I was determined to prove him wrong.

“You are mistaken, Miss Cabot. I would not presume to attempt to assist you in any way whatsoever, aware as I am of your distaste for any help from me. However, the case for the people of Pullman is not the same. Presumably they would not disdain well-meaning assistance, and unless you have recently received sufficient medical training to be capable of establishing a clinic, my assistance is required and was requested by Miss Addams. Unless you feel that you must set that up as well? By yourself? Without assistance?”

My face burned. Talking to him when he was in this mood was like trying to find my way out of a maze. I kept turning down blind alleys and having to trace my way back from a dead end. “Of course, Miss Addams would not have known of our situation when she consulted you,” I began. He could have refused or recommended someone else. He must have known I had not told anyone of his proposal and my refusal.

“Our situation? You mean the fact that you refused an offer of marriage from me? Surely, Miss Cabot, you would not be so selfish as to deprive the people of Pullman of medical care merely to save yourself a mild embarrassment? Do you want me to leave, then?”

“No, of course not.” Before I could explain myself there was a call from behind me.

“Emily!”

“Alden, what are you doing here?”

“I'm here for the story.” He pulled out a notebook, waving it in my face and taking out a pencil, which he tucked behind his ear. “You'll be happy to hear I have succeeded in finding a job—reporter, for the
Sentinel
.”

After my mother's death two months before, my brother Alden had also moved from the men's dormitory at Hull House. It was after his recuperation from a gunshot wound that he had returned from his time in Boston. My friend Clara Shea had nursed him during his recovery. He had nearly died earlier that spring and he was all the family I had left. So it was a relief to see him whole and filled with the energy that drove him, even if I knew he would use it to tease and provoke me, as he always did. He had decided to return to Chicago and I knew he had been seeking employment.

“Oh, Alden, that's wonderful—I guess.” So, it seemed that he had settled in Chicago. Now, with both of our parents dead, there was no longer a home for us in Boston.

“No guess about it. I'll be a three-day wonder, especially when I get the big story.
Death in Pullman: Hull House Comes to the Rescue
.”

“But how did you know?”

“Him,” he gestured, with a tip of his head.

I looked up and saw Stephen watching us. I was perturbed—had he told my brother about the marriage proposal? If so, I would never hear the end of it. But Alden seemed unaware and it was a topic he would never leave alone, if he knew of my refusal.

“Come on. We can talk on board. It's leaving.” Alden grabbed the satchel Dr. Chapman had been carrying in his good left hand and jumped up the steps of the railway car. I followed with the doctor helping me as best he could. His right arm had been injured during a smallpox epidemic on the West Side. While he was administering vaccinations in a sweatshop, a hysterical little tailor let loose with a shotgun, shattering the doctor's arm.

I settled into a window seat while Alden swung the satchel up to the overhead rack and sat down opposite me. I made room for the doctor but he rather pointedly slid into the seat beside my brother. From that vantage point, I could not avoid his gaze. I gritted my teeth and willed myself to keep from squirming. It was two of them against my one.

As the train pulled away, I quickly told them all about our trip to Pullman the day before, the discovery of the dead man, and our visit to the Pullman mansion.

“He wants them to suffer. He wants them to feel the pinch, to feel hunger. Then, he will reopen the works and try to get some of them to give up on the strike. He wants to break them that way and will never make a single concession. He can't be allowed to get away with it. We must help them so that they can hold out as long as it takes. Even if he reopens the factory, they can't go back.”

“Many will go back, if he reopens,” the doctor warned me. “If a man must watch his family go hungry because he cannot feed them, how can you expect him not to go back to a job that will stave off the hunger, even if only for a while? That is a very difficult thing to ask a man to do, to watch his family starve.”

“But that is why we must provide relief. We have flour, and sugar, and salt coming down today and there will be more tomorrow. Miss Addams will speak for them and get aid. They must stay together or they will never get Pullman to give in to anything.”

“You may find them reluctant to take aid.” The doctor was intent on being perverse with me. “Working people hate to be forced to take charity. They are more proud than the millionaires of Prairie Avenue of the few hard-earned comforts in their homes, because they provide them themselves. They will hate the idea of taking charity, you'll see. Faced with the choice of taking charity from you, or low wages from Pullman, they will be hard put not to return to work.”

“But they must stick together. That is what the union is for. They are part of the American Railway Union.”

“That's Debs's new union,” Alden contributed. “It's huge. They say it's only a technicality that the Pullman workers are in it, but if the rest of the union decides to refuse to hook up the Pullman Palace Cars, that could have a huge impact. It's all over the country. But what about this man that died, Em? I heard he was a spy. That's not saying much for the solidarity of the Pullman workers if they have company spies and then they execute them.”

“Alden, you've no cause to say that. The man was found in a huge shed that's part of the Pullman factory complex. He was hung from the rafters with a sign with the word ‘spy' painted on it and hung around his neck. But I don't believe Mr. MacGregor—who's the leader of the strike committee—knew anything about it. The company man, Jennings, came with the police and took away Mr. MacGregor, even though we told them he was with us all afternoon and could not have been involved. The police are under the influence of the company. They were at Jennings's beck and call. We were terribly concerned about Mr. MacGregor and the others being treated fairly, but Mr. Safer and Miss Addams contacted the mayor and got him to assign Detective Whitbread to the investigation. He's to meet us down there.”

“Hah, the mayor lives in Pullman, did you know that?” my brother asked. “Mayor Hopkins worked there at one time but he has no love for Pullman. He got out by investing in a grocery in the next town. He supports the strikers. But no doubt Pullman has his own supporters in the local precinct, despite City Hall. Well, you know it'll be all right with Whitey on it.” I had worked with Detective Whitbread while compiling statistics on crime for a study at the university. We all came to know him as a man of complete integrity, immune from the political forces that too often influenced justice in the city.

Dr. Chapman had another word of caution. “You are in sympathy with the workers, Miss Cabot. But you know Whitbread will go after the truth of what happened. If the strikers did kill the man, because he was discovered to be a spy for the company, Whitbread will expose them.”

“I asked Mr. Pullman if they really used spies. He as good as said they did. He said there is a plot to blow up one of the buildings. But I cannot believe that Mr. MacGregor would do anything—or allow any of the men to do anything—of that kind. He has them organized to patrol the outside of the factory to make sure there is no sabotage. Wait until you meet him. You'll see.” I felt that I knew more than the two men about what was happening at Pullman. They had not seen what I had seen. They had not heard the workers' complaints, and they had not seen the dead man hanging from the rafters, or helped to lower his empty body to the ground. They had not seen the policemen threaten the crowd and protect the managers. And, most importantly, they had not heard the stubborn selfish words of the man who could put an end to all of it—George Pullman.

The train was pulling to a stop at the neat brick building that was the Pullman depot. On the platform, I could see the tall figure of Detective Whitbread in his wool suit and bowler hat, beside the squat figure of Mr. MacGregor. I was enormously relieved that the union leader had been released. So much for all of the arguments I had spent such time and care concocting. I should have had confidence in Detective Whitbread. He would not let innocent men stay behind bars.

As we followed Alden out of the car, Dr. Chapman added a word of advice. “You may find that your brother and the other men of the press are your best allies, Emily. There's little the strikers will be able to do to influence a man like Pullman, but the press may be able to at least tell their story to the world.” It was another warning from him. He had no confidence in my ability to handle any situation and I found it galling. I brushed past him and stepped down to the platform.