Haymarket (21 page)

William, taken aback at my vehemence and looking chagrined, meekly shook his head no.

“Mike McDonald.” I paused to let the shock sink in. “Yes, King McDonald.”

Everyone in Chicago, of course, knows who Mike McDonald is, though that didn’t stop me from rubbing in the facts a little. “Thanks to his alliance with the police, he now controls all forms of gambling in this city—horses, dice, cards—he’s packed the County Board with his
supporters, controls every type of bail bond and, come election time, pays wagonloads of repeaters to drive precinct to precinct voting for his dear friends.”

“You sound pretty self-righteous,” Lucy said, out of nowhere. “Who doesn’t know that Chicago politics are corrupt? And since when are games of chance really one of life’s major sins?”

“When helpless animals are involved,” I replied. “Speaking of self-righteous, who was just denouncing innocuous little dime museums as if they were Satan’s own creation?”

“Mike McDonald has done what all American—sorry, white American—boys are told to do: make money any way they can,” Lucy responded blithely. “He started out as a boy selling candy and magazines at the railroad station, and now he’s got a lovely brownstone and holds court with cigars and brandy at The Store. It’s a classic American success story.” Lucy spoke with airy mockery, the tone, as she well knows, that most provokes me.

“The store?” William asked weakly. He looked downright ashen, having never seen Lucy and me go at each other before, and having been brought up to believe that social decorum between husbands and wives was the clearest sign, if not the only guarantee, of a good relationship. He’d never met a woman like Lucy, for whom passionate engagement was the lifeblood of a happy home.

Lizzie, on the other hand, was long familiar with our ways. She knew that although I was far more even-tempered than Lucy, I could be just as tenacious in an argument. I flared less, but probably yielded less. With Lucy, Lizzie understood, the point was never to calm her down, but to move her along, to sidetrack her into a new topic.

Turning to William, Lizzie explained, “The Store is McDonald’s deluxe gambling establishment downtown. It’s a large townhouse with everything you can think of inside—an elegant dining room, a cigar store, a saloon, expensive antique oak furniture, and gambling tables offering every form of cards and dice known to man.”

“That’s
where we should go tomorrow!” Lucy shouted triumphantly.

“They don’t allow women on the premises,” I said, laughing. Lucy frowned, but with the hint of a friendly twinkle that signaled the end of contention.

Lizzie immediately sensed the shift. “I think it’s time I took charge,”
she said with benign firmness. “After all, I’m the one whose recovery we’re celebrating.”

“That seems fair to me,” Lucy said, suddenly the picture of docility. William let out an audible sigh of relief.

“Here’s what I suggest.” Lizzie plunged ahead, knowing that Lucy was unlikely to remain compliant for long. “I suggest we buy tickets to the new panorama on Michigan Avenue, and after that we get some beer and toast
everyone’s
continued good health.”

And that’s precisely what we did. And with great pleasure all around. Lucy and I had never managed to see a panorama when they were at the height of fashion a decade ago, and now that they’re becoming popular again, it was a chance—for a steep fifty-cent price of admission—to find out what the hullabaloo is all about. I must say, we were more impressed than we expected. The panorama was a gigantic painting of the beauties of California, accompanied by verbal descriptions, and it was unrolled in long strips from giant upright scrolls placed in front of the audience. The effect was quite startling, like actually having the visual experience of seeing California from, say, the seat of a moving train.

Afterward, Lucy had the sudden inspiration that we should have a drink of “soda water,” the newest sensation, at one of the fountain parlors that have sprung up. They use some sort of artificial carbonation, sodium bicarbonate or baking soda, and combine it with various syrups and extracts. We chose sarsaparilla. None of us was much taken with it. It tickled my nose and made me burp, and surely the miraculous medicinal powers ascribed to it are poppycock. The breweries needn’t worry about competition.

Lizzie then decided that we should buy tickets on the fancy Citizens’ Omnibus Line, which has been running for five years and owns some twenty-five hand-carved buses and two hundred head of healthy horses. They make the trip around the lakefront in thirty minutes! When we passed Haymarket Square, all of us were amazed at the bustle of activity since we’d last been there. Filled with stalls set up by hundreds of wagon drivers from outlying truck farms, Haymarket seems to have suddenly become as large as the markets on West Randolph and South Water Streets.

Toward evening, Lizzie announced that she’d been celebrated enough and now wanted to celebrate
us
for having taken such good care of her. She especially wanted to do something nice, she said, for her “dear William.” She came up with the notion—pretty far-fetched, I thought,
but held my peace—that, in honor of William’s Yorkshire background, we go for our final drink of the evening to one of those concert saloons the English favor.

“I left Yorkshire when I was five years old!” William protested, “and besides, those saloons, which aren’t confined to Englishmen, are mostly dens of iniquity.” Even as he protested, William blushed with such obvious pleasure that we concluded at once to go. On impulse, Lucy stopped a police officer on the street and—he didn’t even blink—boldly asked him to recommend a more or less safe English or Irish concert saloon. The stern-faced officer, nattily dressed in his blue uniform coat, politely suggested we try Sullivan’s, located just to the south of the downtown area.

“But that’s where the Patch is,” Lucy said indignantly. “It’s the center of the prostitution trade!”

“The Patch, madam, is located to the southwest.” The officer seemed deeply offended at the implication that he’d given unreliable advice. “Suit yourselves,” he said, and strode off.

So on to Sullivan’s we went, and the officer proved entirely dependable. The place serves up (along with a wonderful malt beer) a less than bawdy Punch and Judy show, a few naughty song-and-dance routines, and a couple of wiggling “legmania” dancers—one kicked so high, she exposed her drawers, which made Lucy hoot out loud. But it was all sham vice, about as daring and dangerous as learning to dance the Minnehaha.

We didn’t get home until nearly midnight, good spirits and morals intact. But we found Lizzie’s sister, not used to big-city ways, in a state of real concern over our safety—the only genuine fright anyone had had all evening.

October 5

Well, Van Patten’s gone and done it. He’s expelled ten members of the
SLP
, including Spies, Paul Grottkau, and Oscar Neebe, because of their opposition to the Greenback alliance. How sad that it’s come to this. Especially since Van Patten misrepresents our views. Yes, we’ve become more and more disenchanted with the ballot, but we’ve never condemned politics as “mere parliamentary chatter,” as the New York
SLP
branch has. They’ve announced that from now on they intend to focus on union organizing, strikes, boycotts, general work stoppage and, should those efforts meet with outright repression, preparations for self-defense. But here in Chicago
we’ve continued to maintain that native-born workers regard voting as the touchstone of democracy and that to scorn it out-of-hand would risk our being viewed as un-American.

Van Patten may not realize it, but by expelling those who resist an expedient alliance with Greenbackism, he’s effectively killed the
SLP
. Our faction will survive. We retain the leading journal, the
Arbeiter-Zeitung
, and the bulk of the radical readership. But the dream of a broad-based, unified party is gone.

Who can predict what’s on the horizon? The plutocrats seem to dictate the agenda, while the workers go for each other’s throats.

February 15, 1881

I pick up the diary again to record wonderful news: we are the proud parents of a healthy six-pound girl, Lulu Eda! Lucy came to term earlier than expected. She was brought to bed on February 2, attended by a number of neighborhood women, with Lizzie orchestrating the group. For precaution’s sake, we had a midwife in attendance, too. But at one point, when Lucy’s pain became intense and Lizzie asked the midwife to administer chloroform, the wretched woman refused and even dared to quote the Bible at us—“In pain thou shalt bear children.” Our polite Lizzie became furious and practically shoved the midwife out the door. Happily, Lucy’s pain soon subsided and her labor lasted but four hours. She’s made a rapid recovery and now seems entirely herself. We smile all day long over our little girl.

Pittsburgh
October 18, 1883

My Dear Wife,

It’s been a glorious Congress, Lucy—historic in its importance, I’m certain. It’s also been, for Spies and me, a considerable nightmare. We’ve been locked away day after day with none other than Johann Most himself, battling over the final draft of the Manifesto. If this pen could sputter and gasp you’d have some sense of my state of mind. The man’s impossible. Until I get home, I can give you only a bare outline of what I mean.

Do you remember when you and I briefly met Most last August? How we’d both found him strangely reserved and fastidious? Well, that Most was downright charming compared to the verbally ferocious, posturing, bullying Most that Spies and I have had to contend with here. When it comes to polemics, he seems more feral than human—a lion’s roar comes out of that sparrow’s beak. At one point he gleefully referred to dynamite as “the good stuff,” and gloated that “we must bring war to the throne, war to the altar, war to the money bags—to the whole reptile brood” (his pet phrase for the bourgeoisie).

Spies reprimanded him for “irresponsible hyperbole,” then added, “As telling as your attack on the cruelties of capitalism is, I can’t accept your advice to become just as cruel.”

“Alas,” Most sneered, “the propertied classes don’t share your scruples about the use of force and murder. As for myself,” he went on, “I’m proud to say that when Czar Alexander was assassinated two years ago, I publicly praised the act—and paid for it with sixteen months at hard labor.”

“No one questions your courage,” I said.

“Tell me if you can,” Spies asked Most, “precisely what the Czar’s assassination accomplished.”

“If you do not know,” he haughtily replied, “then you’re not fit to call yourself a revolutionary.”

Spies actually laughed. He’s Most’s equal in learning and eloquence and isn’t at all intimidated by him, which I can’t say about myself. “The czar’s assassination,” Spies said, “failed to make Russia one whit less brutal than when he was alive.”

Most threw up his hands in mock resignation: “There’s no point engaging men like yourselves in general philosophical debate; you’ve been too corrupted by bourgeois values. I remain in this room for one purpose only: to complete work on the Manifesto.”

Do you get the picture? Is it any wonder my hair’s gone gray at such a pace that I’ve had to apply the black dye you gave me (again, please don’t tell even Lizzie) twice this week—and even so, look as if I’ve aged ten years?

But of course, despite Most’s vow, we were soon back to arguing general principles. I insisted that the Pittsburgh Manifesto has to reflect the view of most American workers that our main goal is to build a strong trade union movement and to achieve an eight-hour day.

“The eight-hour day,” Most shouted, “is a mere sop! The workers’ lot might become an iota better, but at the cost of encouraging them to believe that their masters do care, thus diluting the ardor needed for revolutionary struggle.”

“It’s unwise and immoral,” Spies replied, “to ignore the workers’ current misery. The Manifesto has to give priority to winning better working conditions now. They’re desperately needed. What you don’t seem to understand is that by championing trade union demands, we’ll attract recruits for the long-range struggle to revamp the social order.”

When it became clear that Most wasn’t going to budge an inch, Spies and I took our case directly to the convention floor, with mixed results. The delegates did pass a resolution declaring trade unions “the advance guard of the coming revolution,” but only slightly modified Most’s declaration that “the first principle of this Congress must plainly and simply be the destruction of existing class rule by any and all means.” On one matter, we did get an outright victory. Over Most’s strenuous objection,
the delegates approved a pledge to work for “equal rights for all without distinction to sex or race.”

“In my experience,” Most later told us, his voice dripping with disdain, “women show up at revolutionary meetings primarily to search for eligible husbands, and once found, both disappear.” I offered you and me as an example of a couple who have helped each other evolve toward a better understanding of social questions. To which Most replied, “Can she cook?” (I can hear your bloodcurdling yell all the way from Chicago.)