The Titanic Plan (23 page)

He lay back, hoping to maybe get an hour of sleep. He closed his eyes, waiting for sweet relief. All that came was a jumble of thoughts that caused him to toss and turn for a half hour. Sleepless, he got up and showered, followed by a long, soothing shave.

Archie knew what he had to do and was reluctant. So he fussed combing his hair, took his time dressing, packed and repacked his minimal luggage, called room service for coffee, then finally, picked up the telephone.

“
Operator,” the efficient voice said.

Archie cleared his throat. “I’d like to be connected to the office of John Astor. This is Captain Archibald Butt.”

“
One moment, please, Captain Butt,” the operator politely said.

Archie waited as the connection was made. “You may go ahead with your call,” the operator said. Then came Astor’s tenuous voice. “Captain Butt, to what do I owe the pleasure of this call?”

“
Your business proposition,” said Archie, foregoing any small talk. “I’m curious and would like to hear more about it.”

“
Well, Captain, I never imagined you would come around. You seemed so determined to remain an impoverished military man.”

“
Circumstances have changed. And I would like to find out more about the project.”

“
You’re in luck. We are having a small gathering of gentlemen who have expressed interest in the project. I believe you will find the group quite impressive. Why don’t you join us?”

“
That would be fine,” Archie said. “But I’d like to spend some time alone with you as well.”

“
Of course,” Astor answered. “We’re meeting on April seventh, a Friday. I’ll have a formal invitation sent to you. I am so glad you called, Captain.”

“
Yes, so am I, Colonel Astor. I will see you then.”

* * *

On March 23, 1911, William Howard Taft called Archie into the Oval Office. He had a surprise for him. Captain Butt was to be promoted to the rank of Army Major. Taft signed the new commission with the surprised Captain looking on. The President’s photographer snapped three pictures of the intimate ceremony. While Archie downplayed the promotion, saying it affected absolutely nothing in his life, he always kept one of the photographs in his wallet. It showed a beaming Taft pinning a new service bar onto Archie’s uniform blouse. In the picture, Archie stood ramrod straight, eyes fixed ahead, looking to be the perfect soldier.

CHAPTER 25

T
he morning of March 25, 1911 dawned beautiful in New York. A cold, crisp, Saturday morning. The subways were empty and the only people on the sidewalks were the pushcart merchants setting up their improvised street markets. There was no hint that this splendid day would change the course of history in America.

The spark that lit the fuse was, literally, a spark. It happened in the afternoon. No one was exactly sure where it came from – an electric motor or an errant match or cigarette. Whatever the cause, a small ember kindled in the wooden bin under Isadore Abramowitz’s fabric cutting table on the 8th floor of the Ashe Building, where the
Triangle Shirtwaist Company
had its manufacturing facilities. The factory floor was crowded, sweatshop style, with mostly immigrant women hunched over sewing machines, just finishing their day’s work.

When the small fire was first noticed, three of the supervising men filled red fire pails with water and splashed the flames. Rather than dousing it, the water stirred the fire. It exploded from the bin and within seconds began consuming every bit of flammable material until the entire room became an inferno. Sam Bernstein, the floor foreman, leapt on a cutting table and screamed to the girls, “For God’s sake, get out of here as quick as you can!” Fire alarm bells started ringing throughout the building. A hot fire wind spread the blaze onto the bundled blouses, the hanging paper patterns, the wicker waste baskets, the wood tables, the raw bundles of material, the cotton floor scraps. The conflagration traveled quickly up the airshaft and spread to the floor above. Clusters of panicked girls raced about both floors, looking for ways to escape the flames. One group scrambled toward the stairway door, crushing a girl who was fighting to open the door. It hardly mattered, that exit was locked.

Another group of girls ran for the fire escape, which led down an outside airshaft to a back basement skylight. They charged onto it, with the stronger girls shoving past the slower, weaker ones. The fire escape of the
Asch Building
creaked and swayed under the weight of so many desperate people. Then, like a twisting spring, the flimsy fire escape uncoiled from its moorings, slinging people into the air. Several girls plummeted through the basement skylight below. Some were impaled on the spiked iron fence that was at the bottom of the airshaft.

On the street below a crowd began gathering. Flames were shooting out the windows. At 4:55, only fifteen minutes after the fire had begun, two fire teams had arrived. Firemen raised their ladders, but they only reached six floors up, not eight. The crowd on the street noticed a dark bale come out the window. One man shouted, “Someone is in there all right. He’s trying to save the best cloth.” A gust of wind caught the bundle and spread the cloth. It wasn’t a bundle, but a young girl plunging nine stories to the sidewalk. She hit with a sickening thud. People started screaming.

More men and women began jumping out of the window, trading a painful, fiery death for quick extinction. Within 10 minutes, 54 broken bodies lay dead on the sidewalk. By 5:15 the fire brigades had gotten the entire fire under control. By 6:10 the fire was completely out. 146 people died. 123 women and 23 men.

The next day word of the tragedy screamed from newspaper headlines across the nation. As Americans read the personal stories of the girls that were incinerated in a fire that could have been prevented with better workplace conditions, attitudes began to change. The young workers that perished in the fire and leapt to their deaths were not being looked upon as aliens from other countries unable to adapt to the American way of life, but as poor, hardworking immigrants scraping to create their American dream. The outsiders were now being embraced, as were the ideas of safer working places and fairer wages.

The city declared an official day of mourning on Wednesday, April 5, 1911. It was a cold, depressing day marked by a continuous downpour. A funeral procession wound through the city streets. Black was the color of the day – black suits, black derbies, black bunting on buildings, black umbrellas. Over 100,000 New Yorkers marched with the coffins through the Manhattan neighborhoods. Another quarter of a million people lined the route to witness the procession and express their solidarity with the immigrant labor community. Until another devastating disaster 90 years later, those 350,000 people would represent the single greatest public outpouring of pain and anguish the citizens of New York would ever demonstrate.

CHAPTER 26

F
or the men who gathered at the Astor mansion, the Triangle fire was tragic, but also familiar. As captains of industry, they all had accidents happen to their workers. And they too were blamed like the owners of the
Triangle Shirtwaist Company
. But these men believed that if businesses were to thrive and jobs created, then certain risks must be taken. If tragedy strikes, sorrow should be expressed but never dwelt upon. These men’s vision was toward a new horizon. They moved forward, played large, created empires. That’s why they came to Astor’s, to hear of a new empire to be built.

The Astor library was festooned for the occasion. Four rows of plush leather chairs were arranged in a semi-circle that faced a single lectern, which stood next to a table that was covered by a red silk spread. A large American flag loomed behind the lectern.

Astor and Vanderbilt entered the room and circulated quickly, greeting the assembled guests with gracious hellos and earnest handshakes. When Astor spotted Archie, he saluted. “Good to see that you made it, Major Butt. I read about your promotion. Congratulations.”

“
Thank you for inviting me, Colonel,” Archie said, as non-committal as possible. Then Astor saluted again and Archie reluctantly saluted back.

The men found their way to seats and quieted, waiting for the presentation. Archie settled into a chair in the last row to be as anonymous as possible. Vanderbilt walked behind the lectern while Astor positioned himself to the side of the large covered table. “Gentlemen, thank you all for coming,” Vanderbilt began. “I can say without understatement that this evening you will hear the most ambitious, innovative, and promising undertaking America has seen since the great Transcontinental Railroad was completed some 40 years ago. The fact that we have two great railroad men with us tonight, Mr. Thayer and Mr. Hays, is a testament to the magnitude of our project.” Vanderbilt gestured to Hays and Thayer, who waved.

“
Gentlemen,” Vanderbilt started formally again. “Colonel Astor and I have peered into our great country’s future and asked how we can make it even greater. Realizing we are not politicians…thank goodness…we, as builders and businessmen, pondered how to reignite American’s great capitalist engine. We studied the old to determine what was needed for this new century. We concluded that despite America’s great capability to produce goods, the distribution of products suffers because of a haphazard commerce infrastructure. It’s as if we live in the greatest mansion ever built but the pipes that deliver our water are antiquated and could burst anytime.

“
If,” Vanderbilt struck the lectern with his open palm, beginning to hit a passionate stride, “we would have a more efficient commercial distribution system, America’s wealth would grow even greater than that of the last century. Gentlemen, this is the next great frontier in American business. Commerce in America is virgin territory, waiting for visionary businessmen like…well, like all of you, to bring it into being.

“
And so, gentlemen, Colonel Astor and I have carefully and scientifically designed a schematic for a completely new American commerce network that will be faster, cheaper and, for its owners, more profitable than any system now in existence.”

Vanderbilt was sounding more like P.T. Barnum than a moneyed aristocrat. He swept his arm toward Astor and announced: “Gentlemen, I present…The Plan!” Astor climactically pulled the red silk spread from the table to reveal a complete clay model of a commerce center down to every exacting detail – the bridges, the roads, the depots, the power plants, the streetcars; there were even little clay figurines of workers loading and unloading goods at a dock along a river.

“
Our plan,” Vanderbilt continued, “is to create commerce centers in strategic areas around the country. By building such a network, we will become the obvious choice for any business that wishes to transport goods. If our projections are correct, our commerce network will become the prevailing artery through which the commercial economy of the United States will flow.”

Vanderbilt looked over the faces of the men and could see they were captivated. He wasted no time in getting down to details: “Thirty self-sufficient commerce centers, gentlemen, including eight regional hub centers costing approximately 45 million dollars each to build. Most people would say it is an absolutely impossible task. But with the skills and the resources of the brilliant men assembled here, I know that this plan, far from being impossible, will become a reality.”

Vanderbilt stopped to catch his breath. Benjamin Guggenheim shouted out, “Here, here,” and then a cascade of “here, here’s” swept through the room. Though not joining the outpouring of enthusiasm, Archie was surprised by what Vanderbilt presented. He had expected some grand investment scheme that would add to the wealth of the rich investors but hardly benefit anyone else. But this was something different, original, something that could actually be beneficial to the nation. Archie got so caught up in the excitement, he momentarily forgot that his purpose in coming was to ascertain if Astor had some sort of relationship with Mick.

Vanderbilt held up his hands for quiet. “Thank you, gentlemen, thank you. Now, if I might take you along a little geographic excursion.” He nodded to Astor who went to the front of the library where he pulled a cord that brought down a large relief map of the United States.

“
The centers are real, gentlemen. The Plan is in the first stage of development,” Vanderbilt trumpeted. “Preliminary agreements to buy the land for our commerce centers are in place. To date, John Astor and I have made down payments on land here,” Vanderbilt walked to the map and with a long pointer, touched an area just south of Chicago. Astor stuck in a large red tack on the spot. Then Vanderbilt pointed to another spot and Astor added another tack “and here…” With each new location of a commerce center marked, the men in the room caught the enthusiasm. Vanderbilt’s voice rose, “and here…and here…And Here…And HERE!!…AND HERE!!!”