The American: A Middle Western Legend (34 page)

Altgeld nodded, his face like a mask, his blue eyes staring fixedly at Debs.

“Come with us,” Debs pleaded. The barriers were down. He leaned across the table, his long, powerful hands gripping the edge. His face was an earnest of silent pleading. His tongue wet his lips, and in the live muscles of his cheeks, his chin, was all that he wanted to say and could not find the words for. “Come with us, Altgeld,” he repeated. “The world found democracy through America—it's going to find, socialism through America. It's going to find the life God made man to live. It's going to find the workers building the kind of palaces that will make your lakefront mansions look like shacks. There's going to be a republic of farmers and workers, where men are equal and free. A land without unemployment, a land where children grow up strong and clean and decent. It's going to be a beautiful, great land! God almighty, Altgeld, what's your stake with them?”

No expression on Altgeld's face, no reaction. “I'm not a socialist, Debs,” he said quietly. “That's honest. I'm a dying man, Debs. I've got nothing to hide, nothing to fear. I just don't go along with you—I can't” He made no explanations; in his dry, rasping voice, there was a quality almost of anguish. Debs realized why men loved him; he was the end of something. Beyond him were the mighty forests cut down, the lashing wave of the frontier, the democracy of democracies, where all was possible and nothing impossible. Yet in that moment Debs pitied him and hated him, and the intimacy was gone, and they were just two men sitting at a kitchen table, and finally Altgeld said, “You know why I'm here.”

“Schilling told me.”

“What do you think of a third party, Debs?”

“I told you before. The third party for America is the party of socialism. It can't be different.”

“Then that means you won't support me as an independent candidate for mayor?”

“Well support you,” Debs said wearily. “We supported you for Governor—we'll support you as long as you run, Altgeld. What I'm fighting for won't come tomorrow, and until then I want to live.”

They shook hands, and Altgeld left him. Debs watched him walk away, a small, feeble man whose feet dragged as he walked.

XIV

Altgeld was like a child; his excitement was like a running fever. As he told Emma, “If I was standing for president, it wouldn't be this way.” For the first time, he was on his own; for the first time in his political life, he was a candidate with no strings attached. It was like breathing fresh air after living for a generation in a stuffy room. It was like coming out of a cell into freedom. When Bathhouse John, now against him, told him, “It cannot be done, Governor—it cannot be done,” he answered, “Damn it, I'll show you that it can be done!” He forgot his illness; he forgot Doc Arbady's black predictions. When the
Tribune
said, “The devil must be given his due, and there is no doubt but that John P. Altgeld is one of the most astute political minds in America,” he responded with the first press conference in a long while. He was sick with nervousness as He waited for the reporters. He had seen to the cigars himself, fine black perfectos. He had invited men from the labor weeklies as well as the big dailies. Joe Martin served as doorkeeper and welcoming committee. Emma saw to the setups, cold lemonade as well as soda and water for the Scotch and rye whisky. While waiting, to hide his own nervousness, he lectured his wife and best friend on the importance of the press. “If the boss is against me and the reporter likes me, Joe, well that's a damn sight better than for the boss to be on my side and the reporter to hate my guts. Sure they're out to get me and they rake me over the coals. But look what they do to Teddy Roosevelt, the bosses' own little boy—I don't think there's a newspaperman in the country who doesn't know him for what he is, a puffed-up little ass, and, my word, but it comes through in their stories.”

The press was taken up to his study, and there he was, behind his desk, the way they remembered him, chin on hands, the blue eyes sparkling.

“Going back in harness, Governor?”

“I've never been out of harness,” he said, fetching a laugh with the first sally. “I've just been taking a few deep breaths.”

“How does it feel to be out there alone, Governor?”

“Alone? Have a cigar, son,” he said, holding them out and passing them around. “Tell you something, they used to say about old Dan Boone that he was never lost—not just because he was at home in the woods, but because he was pretty well content with where he happened to be. Changes a man's viewpoint. That's the way I feel.”

“What about streetcar and gas franchises, Governor?”

“They've been used as political spoil. Our public services are a rock around the public's neck, and the men who promoted them are latter-day bandits. You may quote me, gentlemen. This business of fifty-five and ninety-nine-year franchises is a disgrace. I would grant no franchise for more than ten years or some such limited period, and then the public service reverts to the public.”

A labor reporter asked, “What about the right to strike and the right to assemble?”

“Inviolate, in so far as the power of the mayor would be concerned. There would be no limitation except that of conditions, by which I mean traffic, transportation, and so forth. The streets belong to the people of this city, and if they want to picket on them or hold meetings on them, they damn well may!”

“Does that go for communists and anarchists?”

“It goes for all citizens of Chicago, regardless of their race, color, or political persuasion.”

“Does this mean that you've lost faith in the Democratic Party, Governor?”

“It does not. The bigger the independent vote, the more strength to the party.”

“What about the war, Governor?”

“I'm for Cuban independence, and I'm in favor of using American arms to help Cuba gain that independence. But I think the annexation of the Philippines, the Hawaiian and Sandwich Islands is shameful, and one more step on the road toward American imperialism.…”

It went that way. For the first time, there were no strings attached, and he could speak his piece, talk out straightforwardly and forthrightly. He could say where he stood, what he was for and what he was against.

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.