Haymarket (7 page)

Still worse was to come. One afternoon, as Lucy was absorbed in stitching a waistband, a tearful Margaret rushed in, barely able to blurt out the news that her eleven-year-old, Tom, had been arrested for trying to pawn stolen goods. In the investigation that followed, Tom was linked to a gang of street children—several such gangs had sprung up in the city—who’d been employing an arsenal of inventive survival tricks. One of them had mastered the epileptic fit, convincingly collapsing in convulsion in the middle of a crowded street; horrified passersby would drop a few coins into the boy’s outstretched palm before fleeing the scene. Another, a girl of twelve, had become a pathetic “cripple,” hobbling down the street on broken-down crutches, her hand held out for alms; sometimes, bored with her own performance, she’d substitute a fake prosthesis or swath herself in filthy bandages. In the same high spirits, the gang would leave their own brand of calling cards at the mansions
along Prairie Avenue: they rang the doorbells and unhinged the gate at the Marshall Field residence; and on the lawn of the Pullman mansion, they planted a large “Tripe and Pigs’ Feet” sign.

The police treated the children as dangerous criminals. Tom, without a trial, was sent at once to Dunning, the notorious three-story brick building situated nine miles outside the city that simultaneously served as jail, madhouse, and shelter for the indigent poor. A sobbing Margaret told Lucy, who’d never heard of Dunning, that it was Chicago’s most dreaded institution. “I used to threaten my Tom with the place when he misbehaved.”

Lizzie, outside Margaret’s hearing, told Lucy some additional horror stories about the place. “A girlfriend of mine,” Lizzie said, “had a nervous collapse from too much work and not enough food, and they sent her to Dunning. The staff members—not a respectable soul among them—stole every single personal item she had, down to her ripped stockings. The only two ‘doctors’ in the place were inexperienced students who prescribed the same medications for all ailments. And the meals, every meal, consisted of watered-down soup, moldy bread, and some sort of ‘meat’ concoction so tough it got nicknamed ‘B.A.’—‘blacksmith’s apron.’ ”

“I wouldn’t have stood for it!” Lucy said indignantly.

“Ah, Lucy, you still have a lot to learn about Chicago! Who would you have reported it to? The warden of Dunning?”

“Yes, to those in charge.”

Lizzie shook her head with amusement. “You weren’t here a few years back when the Dunning scandal broke.”

“What scandal?”

“Promise you won’t start cursing and yelling, but it was discovered that the warden had appointed his seventeen-year-old daughter as head of housekeeping, and that the chief physician, under cover of night, had for years been digging up the corpses of newly deceased inmates and selling them, at twenty dollars each, to medical colleges. It was apparently a lucrative trade.”

“What did he do with the empty coffins,” Lucy said evenly. “Use them to start the Great Fire? You see, I don’t
have
to curse and yell.”

The very day Tom was sent away, a tight-lipped Margaret told Lucy that “my Tommy will not be long at Dunning. That much I swear.”

“But how will you get the court to release him?” Lucy asked, misjudging Margaret’s intentions. “That costs money. Lots more money than any of us have.”

Three days later, when Lucy went to knock on the Hennesseys’ door, she found it wide open, the apartment stripped of its few remaining items, and the Hennesseys gone. At first she thought the landlord had turned them out, but he proved as mystified as everyone else at their disappearance.

It was only months later that they learned from an unemployed neighborhood youth named Kruger, who’d “gone tramping” but had returned briefly to Chicago to visit his parents, that he’d spotted the entire hollow-cheeked Hennessey clan, including young Tom—somehow spirited out of Dunning—on a boxcar freight traveling west from Des Moines. They were part of the growing army of vagabonds, homeless and jobless, wandering the nation. “I seen folks,” Kruger said, “sleeping under bridges, in hayricks, barns, and hen roosts. In Iowa, heard about one family of five—went to sleep in an old lime kiln and was crushed to death that night by a cave-in.”

“How do people get food, what do they live on?” Lizzie asked, sounding dazed.

“An occasional dole from town officials, a few days’ work as farm laborers or street sweepers or coal carriers,” Kruger said. Then he smiled slyly. “And stealin’.”

He told the Hennesseys’ Chicago friends that in fact he’d been able to speak with the family for only a minute or two. He’d caught up with them during a brief train stop when they were frantically trying to wash up in a nearby canal. When he greeted Margaret, she looked at him blankly, then turned away. Joe Hennessey would say no more than that they were heading west, where he hoped to work once more in the mines.

Lucy never saw the Hennesseys again. Nor heard a word about their fate.

“That Mr. Gianni was on the street today,” Lucy told Lizzie. For companionship, the two women had taken to doing piecework together in the Parsons’s apartment.

“Gianni?”

“You know—the produce man who comes around sometimes with his
horsecart. His stuff’s not the freshest, but he looks so worn down I try to buy a few tomatoes at least. I asked him how his daughter was, and he almost burst into tears. ‘My Sophia,’ he said—he doesn’t know much English—‘has much too hard in factory … material bad … break needle … must pay.’ I couldn’t catch his meaning at first, but he rubbed the heavy material of his overalls between his fingers and somehow got me to understand that that was the kind of rough material his daughter sews. It often breaks the machine’s needle and sometimes even the throat plate.”

Lizzie shook her head knowingly.

“The foreman fines Gianni’s daughter and the others girls five cents per needle, fifty cents per plate. Sometimes they bring home no money at all at the end of a week’s work.”

“And the breakage isn’t even their fault,” Lizzie said.

“What
is
their fault?” Lucy scoffed, “that they were born poor? The girls aren’t even allowed to talk to each other to help pass the time! It’s even worse with Gianni’s son. The boy’s only eight and has to work ten-hour days filling sausages and cleaning casings—all the while breathing in disgusting air and standing on a stockyard floor flooded with water. The child came by on the cart one Sunday a few weeks back. He looks like a little old man. Oh, Lizzie!” Lucy wailed. “We’ve got to do something! If only I could think what …”

Albert took off his coat and dropped wearily into an armchair. “It’s awful out there,” he groaned. “The suffering’s worse’n anything you can imagine.”

Lucy stiffened a bit at the implication she hadn’t had enough misery in her own life to understand. But she’d rarely seen Albert so upset and decided to go easy. “I can imagine,” she said, keeping her voice neutral. “Lizzie and I were talking about it most of the day.”

Albert got up from his chair and started to pace the room. “The
Times
won’t print but a small part of what’s going on. I complained to one of the reporters today, tried to tell him about a scene I’d witnessed during lunch break. He just shrugged and looked past me. ‘The proprietors don’t want to alarm the public,’ he said, ‘with too many unpleasant stories.’ Hell, don’t they think the public’s alarmed already, what with families sleepin’ in horse stalls and going to jail for stealin’ a little food?” With a groan, Albert slumped back into the armchair. “It’s an outrage, that’s what …”

“Which is just what Lizzie and me were sayin’ … the big shots don’t seem to care and the rest of us don’t know what to do … What happened at lunchtime?”

“Oh God,” Albert said, “it’ll just make you more miserable … never mind …”

“Tell me, Albert. I want to hear.”

Albert paused a moment. “It was this young girl …” he began, and then stopped.

“Tell
me, Albert.”

“There was a crowd gathered around the back of a parked grocery wagon … I thought maybe they were sellin’ fresh produce, so I edged towards the front, thinkin’ I’d surprise you with a few pieces of fruit … and then I saw her …” Albert’s chest started to heave. “Just a little slip of a thing … no more’n thirteen or fourteen … she … she was … frozen to death! The only lodging that poor child could afford was the back of an empty wagon—”

Albert started to sob, his body shaking. Lucy rushed over and took him in her arms, cradling him and rocking him back and forth until he slowly began to breathe more easily. He took a handkerchief from his pocket and dried his eyes. “I’ll get you some tea,” Lucy said softly and went to the kitchen. When she came back, they sat side-by-side holding hands and talking quietly.

“Lizzie says they’ve started to let some homeless sleep in police stations at night. That means a few less deaths …”

“For
one
night,” Albert said. “Ten to a cell so small two of ’em have to stand up. At the stroke of six, the police throw ’em back out on the street—no breakfast, no chance to wash or even relieve themselves. The papers are full of praise for Superintendent Washburne’s ‘humanity.’ ”

“Where do they go?” Lucy asked, her expression stony.

“Where does who go?”

“After they’re thrown out of the police station.”

“Oh. Well the desperate ones go to the Tramps’ Lumber Yard, where they can—

“The tramps’
what
?”

“Haven’t you seen all the signs posted up on buildings?”

“If I had, would I be askin’?”

“Now don’t get testy,” Albert said. “I’m in no mood.”

“Was I?” Lucy seemed genuinely surprised. “Sometimes I don’t think I hear the sound of my own voice.”

“Often, my pet.”

“Well, why don’t you hold me more to account, then?”

Albert smiled. “The problem is, I like your ardent ways. You want people to have better lives. And you want it right now.” He let out a chuckle. “Still, it’s true, you can sound like an awful harpy sometimes.”

“Oh Albert, that’s terrible! No, no, stop laughin’. This isn’t funny. I don’t like it at all—you have to help. Help me be better.”

“Awright—I will! It’s a promise.”

He gave her a loud, wet kiss on the cheek.

“I hold you to it. Now, what is the Tramps’ Lumber Yard?”

“The propertied class is gettin’ alarmed at the number of jobless men roaming the city. So the Relief Society’s opened this yard, where any man who saws and splits a cord of wood will get three meals and a night’s lodging, worth in total, about fifty cents. It’s work that ordinarily pays two dollars and seventy-five cents.”

“How generous.”

“Even less than you know. It takes an experienced lumberjack ten hours to split a cord of wood. Most of the jobless have never done that sorta work. Besides, they’re weak from lack of food and sleep. So all they can usually manage is to cut enough wood for a single meal.”

“And it’s probably pigs’ feet.”

“The Relief Society has declared itself enormously pleased with the lumber yard experiment. They’re callin’ it a touchstone, an infallible way of finding out whether the masses of men ‘loitering about’ really want to work or not.”

“And those who refuse this grand opportunity?”

“If a man won’t work in the Lumber Yard, he’s officially branded a professional beggar—and turned over to the police.”

“Albert, this is monstrous! Something must be done!”

“Yes,
something
. But what, what?!”

“Horror stories from Lizzie! Horror stories from you! And here we sit, soaking ’em up with our tea as if we were at a Prairie Avenue social …”

“Some protests are being organized …”

“Oh? Why haven’t you told me? Why haven’t I heard anything about them?”

“I’m just beginning to hear things myself. I should be learning more very soon,” Albert said enigmatically.

“Hearing what? Tell me, tell me!”

“Well, I’ve been exchanging greetings—just a nod of the head or a few words—for some time now with a young carpenter working in the
Times
building. Then just this week, he asked if I’d care to share lunch with him at one of those nickel-and-dime counters downtown for workingmen. So I did. By the way, they
chain
the utensils to the counter.”

“Nothing surprises me any more.” Lucy said matter-of-factly. “So who is this carpenter? What did he tell you?”

“His name’s George. Won’t give me his last name. He recruits for the Knights of Labor, but he’s also, secretly, an organizer for the First International. He’s very intense, very—”

“What’s the First International?”

“It’s a Marxist group.”

“Followers of Karl Marx?” Lucy asked. “But isn’t he very—”

“Yes
very
—radical, that is. George says Chicago’s had a section of the International for a decade, mostly made up of German workers. But now, since the crash, the membership’s jumped upwards.”

“To how many?”

“George says about four hundred.”

Lucy laughed. “The
Times
probably employs more people than that”

“It’s a large enough number to scare the hell outta the rich. The papers are writin’ up the International as if it’s the Paris Commune all over again. Here, look at this.”

Albert tossed a copy of the
Chicago Tribune
on the table.

Lucy picked it up and read aloud: “Men claim they can find no work, yet somehow they have money enough to get drunk and threaten every description of trouble. They are a thriftless and improvident lot.”

“Well,” said Lucy, putting the paper down, “too bad the
Tribune
’s editor never met the Hennesseys. What a bunch of drunken rotters they were, eh?”

“My own dear employer, the
Times,”
Albert said, “is demanding that a National Guard garrison be set up to put down what it calls the imminent revolution. My carpenter friend George agrees. He’s sure the Revolution will come any day now. To tell you the truth, Lucy, he scares me a little.
I feel more and more in sympathy with the Knights of Labor, they’re right that a fair day’s work ought to bring a fair day’s pay. And they’re embracing all workers, skilled and unskilled … But the International—leastwise as George describes it—wants to get rid of capitalism altogether. He thinks any man who’s ever made a large amount of money is, by definition, a scoundrel.”