The American: A Middle Western Legend (9 page)

“November is a fine month,” the Judge said. “The blood runs easy in the veins. It thins out just enough. Of course, here in the city we live like animals in a cage. I remember how November was when I was a boy. All the black pigs turned out into the cornfields to glean. The pumpkins piled up on the roadside. The cornstalks sheaved and standing like soldiers waiting for orders. My goodness, you could go wherever you wanted in the State of Ohio, and you'd find those same sheaves ready and waiting. And the trees were going bare. The wind blew and the sky would rain dead and shrunken leaves.”

“Those are good things to remember,” Schilling said.

“Well, why don't you sit down? Of course, we remember the good things. What then?”

As Schilling seated himself, he said, “Sometimes we remember other things.”

“That's your mood today. I'm trying to cheer you up on this fine fall morning. You come in looking like a funeral.”

“I don't feel very happy today, Judge,”

“No?” He was making it hard for Schilling; deliberately and carefully, he was making it very hard for him. “What do you expect to do?” he asked abrupdy.

The little carpenter stared at him, started to speak, swallowed back the words, and then let both his hands drop on his knees. Altgeld realized that he had lost a day's work by coming here, and he fought down the sympathy this small but sincere sacrifice provoked. Yet he could not help realizing that in a very real sense the room they were in, the house too, was isolated from a somber fermentation which covered all of the city, perhaps all of the country too. And that prompted him to ask:

“Is there any hope?” his voice kinder than it had been before.

“Maybe—but I don't believe that either. Three men went to talk with the governor. What good will it do?”

“Not much good now.”

“I think so too.”

“Then what can I do for you, George? Why do you come to me?”

Schilling shrugged his shoulders. “Maybe I had to come somewhere. I'm nervous. I'm afraid and I'm frightened. And I'm desperate too. You're the only man in the city with power and reputation whom I really trust. So I said to myself, I will waste a little of the Judge's time on this black Friday morning.”

The Judge was forced into denying that. “You don't waste my time, George.” It was curious how easily Schilling could get the upper hand.

“No—but I always have that feeling. Perhaps I shouldn't. This morning, I want to talk to you.”

“All right.”

“You think it won't do any good. I suppose not. But give me an hour, even a half hour. Let me tell you about Parsons. All the way over here, I was thinking, what should I tell you? Then I decided I would just talk about Parsons.”

“Why? For a year now, every time I opened my paper, there was something about Parsons. Isn't that enough?”

“I suppose so,” Schilling nodded. “If you don't want me to, all right. Only the newspapers don't always tell the truth—you know that, Judge. There are some things I wanted to tell you; even if it don't make any difference.”

“Did you have breakfast?”

“I had it, Judge. You don't want me to talk?”

“Damn it, go ahead and talk, instead of sitting there and arguing the point with me.”

Nervously, at first, Schilling began to speak. He began in English, haltingly, groping for words; then, as he went on, he lapsed more and more into German, until presently he was speaking entirely in that language.

X

“I want to say it right,” Schilling began. “I want to say it so that Pete Altgeld will know what I mean—forgive me, Judge, I'm thinking almost out loud, and walking over here, I turned over in my mind the question, what is it here I must tell him? But to make it understood I must put everything in its place. Like a good German—he puts everything in its place. Also, I will think like a German, that is something I cannot help, and maybe that is why I decide to talk about Parsons, not about Spies, not about Fischer and Engel. About them, what more can I tell you—they came from that one land in the world where freedom is held in such contempt, in such contempt, Judge. Didn't you tell me about your father, how with the bullwhip he taught you obedience? I'm sorry again, I mean to make only one thing, to explain why I talk about Parsons, not those three who were Germans and who went somewhere else to look for liberty—”

“Then talk about Parsons,” the Judge said coldly.

“Yes, but you will remember that all four of them are going to die in a little while.” The Judge said nothing; his eyes strayed to the clock on the mantel, and Schilling continued:

—I know a good deal about Parsons, but I want to put each thing into place. Some would begin by speaking about Albert Parsons' lineage; whether that is a good or bad thing, I don't know, I have so little of it myself. And in this country it is so peculiarly mixed: on the one hand, there is the lineage of wealth; for example, if your father was a millionaire, you are entitled to a place among the great; but on the other hand, there is the lineage of freedom, and that, I think, is the greatest contradiction in all this strange and wonderful country. The lineage of freedom—and it is only here, nowhere else, in no other land, no other place—the lineage of freedom says that if your father's father, or your grandfather's father, fought in the Revolution for freedom, then America has a debt to you which she can never repay. Why do I speak of this?—not only because Parsons stands high in that lineage, very high, for on his mother's side there was an aide to General George Washington, and on his father's side, there were two in the direct line, Major-General Samuel Parsons, who led the Massachusetts troops, and Captain Parsons, I don't know his other name, who was wounded at Bunker Hill; but not only because of these facts, but because how else can one understand America? They haven't our memories here in America; they never had the lord, the duke, the junker, the incarnation of evil to take away their souls as well as destroy their bodies. They never had that, and so they don't know what it means; but a nobility of freedom, that incredible contradiction, that they had, and that we must remember when we speak of Parsons.

—And maybe that's not the least important thing in making Parsons what he is. And we must understand some of the things which went into the making of Parsons; all of them we can't understand, for there is no man whose life isn't a secret book, so much of it in a code which only God himself will decipher. But some of the things, yes; the fact that Parsons fought in the war. He fought on the other side, it is true, but that was because he lived in Texas, worked there, and how does a boy of sixteen or seventeen turn against his comrades? And he fought well; no one ever accused him of being a coward. Afterward, however, he could not stomach what happened, the way the black men were driven back to slavery, and he took the side of the Reconstruction government, worked in it, and became a part of it. But how much more there is which I don't know; how does a boy of twenty think the way Parsons thought, against all odds, clearly, lucidly? Well, he made his own pattern for his life; he became the champion of the Negro, of the downtrodden white man, of the Indian who was being driven westward and wiped out, the way the Germans of old wiped out the Slavs because they wanted their land.

—There is so much to tell about Parsons, and such a short time, only enough time to select a piece here and a piece there. For instance, his wife Lucy, who was half Indian and half Spanish, wild and dark and beautiful, like those roses one finds growing in the woods, alone and splendid. Their love for each other is like somthing out of an old-fashioned romance, but good love. What else should I draw in here? He was a printer, an editor, a newspaper writer, but firstly a workingman who set type. But he had knowing hands; he was a good carpenter, and also, now and then, he rode herd in the cattle country. Do you know the kind of man who is gentle as a woman yet hard as a piece of steel? You must have met that kind in the army; well, that was the kind of a man Parsons was. There is much more I could tell you, I suppose, but I am not trying to make a case for Parsons; in too many things we disagree. I only want to tell you one or two things pertaining to this Haymarket affair, which perhaps you don't know.

—But I must tell you of the first time I met him. You know the old saying, the heart sees only once, and after that the eyes see. So I call to mind the first time I laid eyes on him. It was in 1877, during the great railroad strike. That was like a waking up for the labor movement, like a birth. The very nature of the strike was like a birth, no real organization in the beginning, the workingmen on one railroad laying down their tools, then another, then another, until the land was faced with the greatest strike it had ever known—and a labor movement too. But there were no leaders to speak of; leaders had to come the same way, spontaneously, out of the movement. Albert Parsons came that way. Sure, he had been an organizer before, a good union man, spoken to meetings; but in July of 1877, we had a meeting here that was like no other working-class meeting ever held. The workers were called to Market Street, and they assembled near the junction of Madison. How many were there God only knows; some say twenty thousand, some say thirty thousand. I can tell you this, that they poured in for hours, and then there was such a sea of faces as I had never seen before in all my life, just a swelling carpet of upturned faces wherever men could stand, and over it torchlight and banners; and it made me afraid, and it made me feel like crying too. And then Albert Parsons stood up and spoke to them. That was when I first saw him.

—You've never seen him, have you? But you've seen the pictures, and some of them are good, the high brow, the fine dark eyes, the nose and chin cut like a cameo, the black, silky mustache; I am foolish-looking enough myself to appreciate good looks and also to mistrust them; but it was different with Parsons, believe me; you forgot, right away, that he was good-looking; you accepted him and you listened to him. I listened to him; I tried to write down what he was saying—but only the beginning, and after that I stopped writing and listened. But do you know how he began? He said, “Fellow Americans, whose bread is freedom and whose milk is liberty, I want to talk to you about justice and injustice. Not about the rights of man but about the hopes of man, for we have little enough of rights, yet much of hope.” That much I remember, and after that I stopped writing. But later on I asked myself, how much of him is real? How much is the truth? How much is a play actor? He looked like Booth, like Edwin Booth, and he was a strange man for us then.

—I met him the next day at the office of our paper. We shook hands; we talked a little. And while we were talking, the police came for him. You know how, two of them with their guns in his belly. They marched him over to City Hall and up to Hickey's office. He was chief of police then. They filled the room with officers. They asked him questions, and when he tried to answer, they gave it to him, back and forth, across the face. They asked him, what in hell did he mean, a dirty Texas rebel bastard, coming up to Chicago and making trouble? When he tried to say that he had spoken at a meeting of the Workingman's Party, telling workers what was their right with the ballot, the police shut him up and beat him again. Then they let him go. But they warned him; they told him how simple it would be for him to be found dead on some street corner; they told him a mob might string him to a lamppost, if he continued to agitate. All this he repeated to us when he returned. We waited for him.

—It was after that the Albert Parsons I speak about emerged. You don't threaten a man like Parsons; you don't beat him up; you don't tell him to go back where he came from. That is all right with some men, with the kind who shout and bluster and boast; but with Parsons' kind, the Texas kind, the soft, gentle, quiet-spoken kind, with them it's no good.

—You have to see what Parsons became in the years which followed, and you will understand that there was only one other like him, and that was Sylvis; Sylvis died, but Parsons they have to kill. And I don't agree with Parsons, still I must tell you these things. I want you to look at the man, and I want you to see what happened to him. Then, during the last of the seventies, we worked together. He still had faith in the ballot, and the labor party in Chicago was growing with leaps and bounds. What kind of a man was he? He was tireless; a setback made him stronger; if all of our faces were a mile long, he still could smile. He would speak four times in one evening, and you know that nothing else can take the life out of you so quickly as public speaking. He worked in the Knights of Labor. He wrote; he did twenty things at once, and always he had enough time for his wife. He would walk in the streets with her as if there was nothing in the world more important, each with an arm around the other's waist, and looking at each other as if they had only discovered themselves that very day and moment.

—Nothing, as I said, was too much for him. We put him up for office in the next few years, alderman, county clerk, congress, and he spoke, not only for himself, but for every candidate on the slate. And with all that, he found time to organize the first Trades Assembly in Chicago, became its first president, organized in his own trade the Typographical Union, and was free consultant and partner to anyone who wanted advice or strength in building a union. At one time, we wanted him to be the first labor candidate for President of the United States; and, do you know, he was too young. Can you imagine, he was only thirty-five! He's only forty-three today.

—But I'm getting away from my story, and I must make it quick and short, and not lose all your patience. In 1880, he broke from the labor party. Why? You and I are practical men, but Parsons saw what was happening, the graft, the buying and selling of votes, the corruption. Once, he said to me, “You work a man twelve hours a day, and give him half what he needs to live on, and you want him to vote carefully and honestly. Well, I tell you, if his children starve, don't be surprised that he sells his vote.”