Shrouded In Thought (Gilded Age Mysteries Book 2) (12 page)

Chapter 10—Trained Troops

Much to his chagrin, Freddie was forced to halt his desultory investigation into the death of Nora Johnson for a while.
Chicago
had become the focus of national attention and every reporter in town was kept hopping. It was now the beginning of July and the
Pullman
strike had reached a critical stage. Despite the efforts of the Civic Federation to urge arbitration, George Pullman had remained adamant. “There is nothing to arbitrate,” was his only comment. After closing his shop for the summer, he had retreated to his island castle down east.

His workers, left stranded, appealed to the American Railway Union for assistance. Because
Pullman
owned a few small railway lines to transport his cars, his workers were qualified to join the ARU. And join they had. On June 26th, the ARU, led by its fiery president, Eugene Debs, voted to boycott
Pullman
cars. This meant that any train which carried a
Pullman
Palace
sleeping car would not be manned by an engineer, fireman, conductor, or switchman who happened to be an ARU member.

As Debs repeatedly emphasized, the boycott was intended to be peaceful. Any train that uncoupled its
Pullman
cars was free to travel. However, the men who managed the railroads took a dim view of this arrangement. They insisted they had a contract with
Pullman
to carry his cars and carry his cars they would. They weren’t about to let “Dictator Debs” tell them how to do business. Debs ordered his men to quietly walk off the job. If the railroads hired replacements, they were entitled to do so. The ARU would not resort to violence. Unfortunately for Debs, the ARU, the Pullman strikers, and the citizens of
Chicago
, things didn’t work out as planned.

Unbeknownst to the major players in the drama, the starvation winter of 1894 had curiously affected the mood of
Chicago
’s poor. Hungry, homeless, and angry, they were looking for a target for their rage. They found it in George Pullman and the railroads.
Pullman
had let his workers starve while he continued to pay a six percent dividend to his shareholders and maintained a multi-million dollar capital surplus in his company. Railroad expansion was the main reason for the great depression of 1893 and the railroads were carrying
Pullman
cars. That was all about to change.

The ARU boycott ignited a firestorm on
Chicago
’s south side as roving mobs sought to bring the railroad industry to its knees. Switches were spiked, trains derailed, engineers dragged from their compartments and beaten. Thousands gathered to tip over boxcars and set them on fire. The tracks that hadn’t been ripped up were rendered impassable because of the twisted masses of smoking metal lying across them.

An injunction was issued to force the ARU strikers back to work. Even if Debs had obeyed, it would have made little difference. The wild fires in the freight yards were spreading too fast. There was rioting as far away as
Sacramento
and at many points in between. Finally, when the railroads complained that the delivery of mail was being impeded, the White House intervened. The army was sent to restore order to
Chicago
and get the trains moving again.

On the fourth of July, 1894, the Fifteenth U.S. Infantry, two companies of the Seventh Cavalry, and a battery of the First Artillery arrived by train from Fort Sheridan. They were quickly deployed to the terminals on the south side which had been hardest hit by the mobs—the Union Stockyards,
Blue Island
, and Grand Crossing. As the troops struggled to curtail vandalism in the freight yards, the passenger lines serving the embattled neighborhoods shut down, making the simple act of moving around the city increasingly difficult.

Freddie was painfully aware of the rigors of travel as he glanced down at the pedals of his bicycle. It had been years since he had attempted to ride a wheel and his balance was a bit shaky. When his editor gave him the assignment to cover troop movements at the stockyards, his first task was to improvise a means of getting there. Since traveling forty blocks on foot was hardly efficient, he pleaded with one of the boys in the print room to lend him his wheel. The price of renting the contraption was exorbitant but Freddie was in dire straits. He paid the lad three dollars and mumbled something about buying one for less as he wobbled off down
Dearborn Street
in search of a story.

It was ironic, he thought. The government always knew how to make a bad situation worse. While the rioting had been alarming, the mayor and governor were on the point of getting matters under control. It was only when the federal troops marched in that all hell broke loose. To arrive on the fourth of July, of all days. Freddie laughed bitterly to himself. Whose independence were they protecting? Not the ARU’s, nor that of the workers at
Pullman
.

He turned down
Van Buren Street
and headed toward the lake. In the one day since the troops arrived, reports of violence had doubled. Granted, none of it had touched the
Loop
, but even at this distance Freddie could smell the smoke.

When he reached
Michigan Avenue
, an unusual sight awaited him. Directly ahead, on the green field known as
Lake
Park
, he could see white tents. The infantry had set up camp there. They certainly had a good view, overlooking the Illinois Central tracks and Lake Michigan, with
Chicago
’s grandest hotels at their back. It seemed like a parade ground. Gentlemen and ladies with parasols were strolling along
Michigan Avenue
to review the troops. Some of them waved and called out encouragement to the boys in camp.

Freddie pedaled on southward. He was finally getting a feel for the machine and his sense of balance was returning. When he reached
Sixteenth Street
, he decided to swing over to millionaires’ row on
Prairie Avenue
. He was curious to see how the hoi poloi were dealing with this affront to their sensibilities.

The street was quiet. He supposed many of the residents had fled to their country houses until order was restored. A deathlike stillness hung over the
Pullman
mansion in particular. Freddie could see no movement. All the curtains were drawn. Though the lawn was trimmed, there was no sign of a caretaker either. He speculated that when George Pullman left town, no one remained behind to tell tales to the press.

Freddie became increasingly aware of the afternoon sun as it scorched his back. He was wearing a dark wool suit, not the sort of thing one ought to wear in July while cycling. He could feel sweat dampening his hat band and streaming down his temples, but he reminded himself that it would be ten times hotter when he reached his destination.

At
Thirty Ninth Street
, he veered west toward
Halsted Street
and the sprawling expanse of the stockyards. Reports had been coming into the press room all morning of various locations where mobs had formed and dispersed, so Freddie decided to head directly for the train tracks at the north end of the yards. Sooner or later, the troops would try to move a train through that point and, sooner or later, they would be met by something ugly.

When Freddie finally slowed his wheel and dismounted to survey the situation, none of the descriptions he had read prepared him for what he saw. He caught his breath in shock. Boxcars had been reduced to piles of molten metal. Several were lying on their sides, their burning remains strewn across the tracks as if tossed there by some careless giant. An engine had jackknifed where it had been derailed by a spiked switch, still coupled to the cars behind it. Its humped back gave the appearance of a beached whale.

And then Freddie saw an even more chilling sight. The face of the mob. There were thousands of men, women, and children but they all wore the same enraged expression. Many were screaming curses: at the sky, at the trains, at the troops who were bringing an engine up the one track that was still open. The men were hatless and coatless, their sleeves rolled up.
 
Some carried ropes to topple the few cars that remained upright. Others carried half-empty whiskey bottles and staggered as they searched for the next object of their wrath.

The women were more frightening than the men: wild-eyed furies, their hair streaming in all directions, shrieking at the engine as it came into view. They reminded Freddie of pictures he had seen of the Parisian women who stormed the Bastille a hundred years earlier.

Most frightening of all were the children, their faces pinched and hardened by hate. Some, no more than toddlers, were screaming obscenities along with their elders. He glimpsed a gang of boys, about nine years old or younger, lighting fires beneath empty boxcars. Their parents must have taught them how and set them the task because the police wouldn’t shoot children.

Bombarded by the violent images directly ahead of him, Freddie stepped back a few paces, almost tripping over his bicycle. He retreated to a safe distance on the other side of the street where he saw a few onlookers gathered. They were men who wore business suits and derby hats. Respectable citizens who had come to gaze at the curiosity of humanity gone mad.

Freddie smiled nervously at a short, rotund man to his left. The man sported an enormous gold watch dangling from his vest. “Hello,” he offered tentatively.

“Quite a sight,” the short man commented jovially. “Something to tell the grandchildren.”

“Assuming we live to have any.” Freddie gulped.

His companion chuckled. “It isn’t us they’re after. They hate the roads and the men who built them. If any of the railroad managers was to show his face in the yards, there would be a lynching for sure.” He held out his hand. “Silas Mayhew, pleased to make your acquaintance.”

The young man returned the greeting. “Freddie Simpson. I’m a reporter for the Gazette.”

Mayhew nodded. “All the papers have come to the yards looking for stories lately.”

“There must be several thousand people gathered here!” Freddie was awestruck.

“They come and go. I’ve been watching them for a few days now. They swarm around anything that’s moving. They tear it up or burn it down and then go off looking for something new, somewhere else.”

“Is that what’s drawn them here?” Freddie pointed to an engine that was backing up to join two freight cars standing behind it. The freight cars were being guarded by about twenty soldiers carrying rifles, bayonets pointed toward the encircling crowd.

“The soldiers are trying to move the beef.”

“I don’t see any cattle.” Freddie squinted to get a better view.

“Not the live ones, son. They come in from the west on the hoof and go out to the east as dead meat. Those two cars are packed with dressed beef on ice. Bound for
New York
if the troopers can manage to get ‘er moving before all the ice melts.”

Freddie remembered an article in the Courier from the day before. “Meat famine threatened in
New York
.” He had thought the headline was absurd. Nobody was in any danger of starving to death for lack of sirloin—especially not the customers at Delmonico’s, who would have to make do with lobster until their filet mignon arrived.

He realized with a start that his loquacious companion was still talking. “...and that’s how it stood until this morning.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t catch that.”

“Why the meat cars, son, the meat cars. They’ve been sitting here for two days and the mob didn’t want to let the ice men come through. ‘Let it all rot!’ they said. But that wasn’t the best of it. Some idiot from one of the packing houses tried to reason with ‘em.”

“How?”

“He climbed up on a boxcar and started reading them the injunction.” Mayhew shook with laughter until tears came to his eyes. “What a sight that was.”

Freddie was shocked. “They must have tried to kill him!”

“Nope. Even they knew he had to be crazy as a bedbug to do a thing like that. One of the mob just climbed up next to him and tore that piece of paper right out of his hands. Kicked him off his soapbox, too, and that was the end of it. Just about that time, the troops came in. Uncle Sam’s boys have been trying to get an engine down here ever since. Looks like they finally did it.”

Mayhew nodded toward the tracks where Freddie could see that the engine had been successfully coupled to the freight cars. He could also see an officer standing on the stairs next to the engineer’s compartment, his saber drawn and pointing toward the sky. “On my order! Forward, double-time, march!”

The train sprang into motion. Two dozen soldiers flanked it, bayonets still pointing at the crowd. Additional guards were posted on top of the freight cars, ready to shoot any of the mob who attempted to climb aboard. The sullen crowd drew back when the train gained speed. Its guardians broke into a run to keep up. As the engine pulled out of view, the soldiers clambered aboard to escort the train the rest of the way into the city.

After its departure, only a dozen police and deputy marshals remained behind to keep order, but there seemed to be no need. The mob had lost a locus for its anger. It began to scatter. Knots of people wandered off in different directions.