The Titanic Plan (5 page)

“
For you, Jack.”

“
Thank you. What is it?”

“
The blueprint of the future.”

“
Okay.” Astor’s impatience was becoming evident. “But what is it?”

Gillette leaned close, affecting an almost conspiratorial posture. It was an instinctive move – after so many years of door-to-door sales, Gillette knew all the tricks of drawing people in. He lowered his voice. “It is the greatest building project mankind has ever known.” Gillette tilted back. He smiled. His eyes twinkled. “It is a plan to take humanity out of the darkness it suffers and into paradise, where all men and women will live happy, fulfilling lives. It’s a plan to build one large city, a Metropolis, where mankind can labor together and then enjoy the highest expressions of culture and art. It would be a place of true sharing, where greed and crime and jealousy would cease to exist because we would be satisfied with the riches all around us.”

Gillette opened the book for Astor. He showed him the carefully drawn plans of thousands of skyscraper apartments geometrically placed amid an intersection of avenues, lawns and gardens. “Can you imagine the endless beauty of a conception like this?” Gillette continued. “I envision in this city sixty million souls, fifteen thousand miles of main avenues, every foot of which would be a continuous change of beauty.”

Gillette blazed as he laid out his utopian vision. “We would build it in the only possible place on the American continent: Niagara Falls – a source of everlasting power.” He flipped a page and pointed to a map. “The manufacturing center would be across the river and would be connected to the city by great bridges over which railroads would run.

“
Once it is demonstrated that within this Metropolis the citizens have achieved a level of happiness never experienced by men before, I envision similar great cities being erected throughout the world, and all of humankind truly entering a golden age.” Gillette glowed beatifically seeing his vision of a modern day Eden. “So what do you think?”

Astor thought he was mad. “Interesting,” said Astor. “But I imagine it would take vast sums of money to build your Metropolis?”

“
That’s why I’m here, Jack. You’re an inventor, a visionary who desires the highest aspirations for mankind. You are the type of man that would join with me in providing the needed wealth.”

“
Even my riches would be a drop in the bucket to what you need for such an undertaking,” Astor said to Gillette.

“
Yes, of course, I am a practical man, after all. My plan is to start small. Build several Metropolis’ on a limited scale.”

“
How would people within these cities make a living?”

“
That’s the great beauty of it: everything will be self-contained, from shops to groceries to amusement. Work would only be for the greater good of the Metropolis and ones fellow man. I believe we can never achieve the perfect social system until money and everything of material value is swept from the face of the earth.”

“
Am I understanding you correctly?” Astor asked, puzzled. “You are soliciting me to invest capital without any profit motive whatsoever?”

“
Your profit motive would be bringing mankind into its golden age. You would be remembered as one of the greatest men who ever lived.”

He’s not just mad
, Astor thought,
he’s a stark raving lunatic.

“
It is a very interesting concept, King, and I am flattered that you approached me with your proposition,” Astor said, and then swallowed the rest of his champagne. “Let me read your book and ponder your extraordinary idea and I will get back to you. Now, if you’ll excuse me, my head is throbbing and I must get something for it.”

King Gillette jumped up, still burning with passion, and pumped Astor’s hand. “John Astor you have demonstrated that you are truly the sage I believed you were.”

Astor kept trying to pull his hand away. “Yes. Thank you, King. Forgive me for having to leave. I’ll take a look at your book this evening. Good afternoon.”

He finally wrenched his hand from Gillette and scampered out of the room.

Astor did crack the book open that evening. He found it obtuse, grandiose, preposterous, and silly. And it fascinated him to no end. For all its outlandish plans and proposals, Astor saw the spark of a brilliant idea. Not in Gillette’s naïve scheme for a grand utopia, but in the way he laid out the details of a new type of centralized real estate development. John Astor saw what the entire Astor family had a talent for seeing: money.

The next morning Astor mailed the book to George Vanderbilt at his estate in North Carolina. The note accompanying it simply read: “What do you think?” Vanderbilt read Gillette’s book immediately. He wrote back: “Absolutely batty.” Astor replied: “I believe something is there.” Vanderbilt wrote back: “Of course something is there. It’s called socialism.” Astor answered him: “No, George. It’s called the future.”

* * *

On October 27, 1908 Mrs. Caroline Astor suffered a major heart attack. She had four previous “heart episodes” that month. Her physician, Dr. Austin Flint, remained at her side for three days, as did her diligent son John and his wife Ava.
The
Mrs. Astor died early on the night of October 30. The next morning’s headline in
The New York Times
plainly announced: “MRS. ASTOR DIES AT HER CITY HOME.”

Her funeral took place on November 1 at Trinity Church in Lower Manhattan. It was a simple ceremony. Beside her coffin was a wreath of lilies, provided by her son John, a six-foot long cross made up of 10,000 violets, and her favorite carved chair in which she always sat when receiving guests. 1,500 people attended. John Astor wept throughout the entire service.

Her death and the opening of probate records provided a glimpse into the world in which Mrs. Astor inhabited. Apparently, as her health declined, so did her riches. Newspapers ran breathless stories about her diminished fortune – less than two million dollars – and the disheveled state of her mansion, which she never left after the traumatic New Year’s Eve Ball of 1908.

* * *

There was another funeral just a day before the Astor service. It was smaller, attended by a handful of people in a small churchyard in Augusta, Georgia. Another faithful son had lost his beloved mother, who died suddenly on October 29, 1908. Captain Archibald Butt was heartbroken by his loss. On a cool, misty autumn morning, Archie stood beside the simple pine casket that held his mother. “Today four children are tragically orphaned,” Archie began, his voice unsteady with grief. “It doesn’t matter that they are well into adulthood, because losing the most precious thing in one’s life is a tragedy at any age. Our priceless jewel, our guiding light, our mother, Pamela Roberson Butt, has been taken from us. She has gone home to the Lord she put so much faith in. Heaven’s gain leaves us with heavy hearts and a very sorrowful burden to bear.” Archie stopped, choking back tears. “She was everything to me.”

That evening Archie traveled back to Washington by train. Ever the faithful soldier, he went to work the next morning. Roosevelt told him to take the day off, suggesting he take a Potomac cruise on the presidential yacht with Mrs. Roosevelt. Archie replied that it would be best to resign his post, as “I should not intrude my grief into the White House.” The President would not hear of such a thing.

The next day, November 3, 1908, William Howard Taft was elected President, carrying 30 of the 48 states and defeating William Jennings Bryan by over 1.2 million votes. Roosevelt was initially “radiant over Taft’s victory.” He felt it validated his policies and presidency. A burden seemed to have lifted from Roosevelt; he kept repeating how much he was looking forward to a new phase of life. The feeling wouldn’t last long. Within weeks of the election Roosevelt began to have serious misgivings. Publicly he continued to say supportive things about Taft. Privately, his opinion changed like a fickle wind. Roosevelt fretted about every Taft trait, from his conservative instincts to his lethargic energy. Roosevelt’s main fear was that Taft would retrench on the progressive programs Roosevelt had initiated.

His fears proved right on almost every account. The first signs of a rift came when Taft recanted on his promise to retain most of the people within Roosevelt’s administration. Besides the Secretary of the Navy, the only other person Taft wanted to continue on was the Military Aide, Archie Butt. Archie was not inclined toward a re-appointment – he had tremendous attachment and loyalty to Roosevelt and his opinion of Taft, while respectful, was not enthusiastic. Still, he felt duty bound to stay on through a transition period.

On March 4, 1909, a day marked by raging blizzards in Washington D.C., William Howard Taft took the oath of office and became the 27th President of the United States. The ceremony had to be moved into the Senate Chamber because the traditional inaugural area in front of the Capitol building was enveloped in a blinding snowstorm.

Archie was overwhelmed with sadness. “I felt about as depressed as I have ever felt in parting with anyone in my life,” he wrote, “save only my own mother.” Roosevelt tried to comfort his former aide with a curious, enigmatic aside. “It isn’t goodbye,” Roosevelt murmured. “We will meet again, and possibly you will yet serve me in a more important capacity than the one you have now.”

A tumultuous era had passed. Most people believed that Taft and his prudent manner would usher in calmer waters for the United States. They did not foresee the treacherous rapids ahead.

CHAPTER 4

1909

New York stank. The big, teeming, strapping, brawny city belched out a variety of perfumes. Its universal fragrance arose from the street – a bouquet of horseshit mixed with the noxious fumes spewing from the newfangled automobile. Co-mingled with that base scent were the smells of each specific neighborhood. While along Fifth Avenue the aroma of shit and gasoline was blended with French perfume, travel a few blocks east and the unmistakable odors from the eastside gashouses swirled over the short city blocks. Go south to Second Avenue on the Lower East Side and the stink of an overrun, new world ghetto broiled with the stale stench of sweat-soaked-bodies, standing sewage, and the brine of pickle barrels. Hell’s Kitchen smelled like bloody death from the slaughterhouses that lined 42nd Street and 11th Avenue. The German section on the Upper East Side reeked sickly sweet of fermenting hops and yeast from Adolph Ruppert’s breweries. Wafting through the narrow cobblestone streets of Greenwich Village was the aroma of cigar smoke, coffee and alcohol. While in northern Manhattan, bubbling brooks meandered through verdant farmlands and thick forests, as they did centuries earlier.

Though many tongues and accents were heard throughout Manhattan, there was one very common language that every New Yorker shared – the language of money. For some, the acquisition of money was the measuring stick of success; for most, it was the thin lifeline of existence. Within the feeding chain of wealth was the criminal element, which asserted its influence from the mean neighborhood streets all the way to City Hall. Crime and corruption were part of daily life, as ubiquitous as the clatter of the new subway. In the Italian districts of East Harlem and Little Italy, the Sicilian Black Hand extorted protection money from local stores and businesses with an unambiguous message of a broken storefront window and a sinister black hand sitting amid the rubble. Jewish gangsters prowled the Lower East Side, making money through prostitution, card games, blackjacking services, burglary and pick pocketing. Irish toughs ruled the streets around Five Points and were locked in a continual war with Italian, German and Jewish gangs.

It was into this cauldron of greed, crime, corruption and power that Captain Archibald Butt escorted William Howard Taft to his first foray as President into New York in March of 1909.

It had been just a year since Archie had come to Washington. He never foresaw how close he would become to Roosevelt or the essential position he would assume in the White House. Archie did not anticipate finding himself in the same intimate role with Taft as he did with Roosevelt. For one, what drew he and Roosevelt together was their common love for athletics and manly competition. When William Howard Taft took office he weighed 320 pounds. Archie wrote of Taft, “He moves very slowly, and I defy anyone in the world to hurry him.” Archie did not believe he would be sharing a sporting relationship with the new President.

As it turned out, Archie was wrong. Taft proved to be a decent horseman – he and Archie would go riding at least three times a week – and an avid golfer. Many believed Taft was more dedicated to his golf game than his Presidency.

Archie soon grew as close to the new President as he was with the old. Where he was a companion to Roosevelt, he became an all-purpose friend, attendant, escort and confidant to Taft.