Irish Above All

by Mary Pat Kelly

  “So, then you don’t mind if my friend at the Tribune writes a series of articles on the way your crusade is funded. How Big Bill bought you a house that pretends to be a church, and how you’re on the take for a thousand dollars a month?” I said.

  “You can’t print that information. It’s a secret.”

  “I’ll bet it is.”

  “Mr. Thompson told me no one was to know about our arrangement. That if I told anyone he would have to stop all funds. He’s going to think I told you.”

  “Well I guess your sugar daddy will be cutting you off, but, I think, worse than losing the money, will be the disdain any readers you do have will feel towards you when they find out you’re a shill for Thompson.”

  “But I’m not. I’m not. I have a God-given mission.”

  “One that’s about to end.”

  Wilcox started waving his hand toward the marble soda fountain, where George was chatting with a customer.

  “Another,” Wilcox shouted, “another.”

  Pathetic. “Look,” I said, “I don’t have to expose you, Wilcox, if…”

  I paused, and finally he said, “If?”

  “You promise to stay away from the personal life of public officials. Leave their wives and kids out of the stories, and forget about my past. I’m not going to ask you to stop publishing,” I said, because I knew the fellow was a fanatic and would continue no matter what I threatened. In fact, he would write about how he was being intimidated.

  “But, for God’s sake, have the sense to go after Thompson too, and start holding Sunday services at that house of yours. Who knows, you might attract a following and big enough collections to support yourself.”

  “Alright,” he said, “alright.”

  “Remember, one word about Margaret or me, or anyone else’s wives or children, and there will be headlines about you in the Tribune.”

  As John set Wilcox’s fourth malted down, I stood up. “This is on me,” I said, and handed him a five-dollar bill. “Keep the change,” I said. Wilcox was hunched over, his face in the whipped cream.

  14

  “So that’s it, Ed,” I said, proud of myself. “I’ve handled Wilcox.” We were in his office at the Park Commission, six o’clock but still some light in the sky to the west. The day after Labor Day. Ed back at work. Margaret and the children home.

  His secretary and everyone else had left for the day, but I’d asked Ed for a late meeting to explain why I visited Wilcox and describe our strange meeting at the Buffalo.

  I waited for his compliments. Instead, he shook his head. “For Christ’s sake, Nonie, why did you go near that nut? Better to ignore him.”

  “But,” I started, “I found out that Thompson’s funding him.”

  “So what? Did you think he was some kind of neutral crusader?”

  “I suppose I did. He’s a pathetic man and full of the worst kind of prejudices, but he does work hard and seems to know things. I’ve been reading back issues of Thunderin, and, well, is it true, Ed? Even if you get rid of Thompson, will Chicago be as corrupt as Wilcox said?”

  “Do you mean will there be gambling joints and speakeasies on every block? Will bootleggers break the law in plain sight? Will city jobs get passed around among friends and relatives? Will judges let criminals walk while the cops take regular payoffs? Has the chief engineer of the city of Chicago, and the president of the South Park District, made money over the years from the people he gives his contracts to? Are those your questions, Nonie? Are you accusing me too?”

  “I guess so, Ed,” I said.

  “Well then, the answer’s yes,” he said. He stood up from his desk and walked over to a window that faced east toward the downtown skyline. Dusk now and the lights in the buildings coming on, headlights moving along Lakeshore Drive, the lake itself stretching out into the darkness. “How many people live in Chicago, Nonie?”

  “I don’t know. Two million?”

  “Five million, four hundred and thirty thousand, six hundred and fifty,” he said.

  “Oh,” I said.

  “How many of them would have placed a bet or two, would you say?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “At least half,” he said, “and then another half take a drink now and then. Say that’s four million people. Should they all be arrested?”

  “Of course not. But what about the fellows that run the gambling? Sell the liquor? They’re the crooks. Surely they should be behind bars.”

  “You mean men like Spike O’Donnell?”

  “Emmm.” No quick answer to that. “But what about Capone and Torrio, the real bad guys?”

  “They’ll end up dead or in prison, Nonie. I’m sure of that. But it’s the feds who made the laws against drinking and gambling. Let them enforce them. I have to think of all five million, four hundred and thirty thousand, six hundred and fifty people in Chicago. My job is to give them a beautiful, healthy city to live in. Do you know how many people died from drinking the water in Chicago before Pat Nash upgraded our sewers?”

  “I don’t.”

  “About a hundred times as many as will ever take a bullet in the street from the Outfit. Gangsters kill one another, Nonie. I can’t worry about them. Don’t you remember Uncle Patrick telling us a million of our people starved to death in Ireland because they had no power, couldn’t vote? Well, we can now and we’re going to live decent lives,” he said, “and beat Thompson.”

  Whew. “Okay, Ed, okay.”

  “Two years until the election. Best thing we can do is concentrate on building the planetarium and aquarium, putting thousands of men to work. Your job is to photograph the progress and get the pictures in the papers.”

  “With quotes from you,” I said.

  He nodded.

  And so I did. I worked as I had with the crew on Buckingham Fountain. Up at dawn, documenting every stage of construction. No time for thoughts of Peter or to plot a return to Europe.

  The newspapers were glad to take the photographs, along with the copy I wrote. Great quotes from Ed, talking about how millions of gallons of sea water had been brought up from Florida by special rail cars, along with thousands of species of fish for the aquarium, and describing the planetarium’s map of the heavens in the observatory dome.

  Then on September 29, 1929, the stock market crashed. At first only the rich seemed affected. My brother Michael spent one whole Sunday’s dinner explaining that he was safe because he’d invested his money in Samuel Insull’s utility companies, and those bonds were solid. He couldn’t have been more wrong. Insull went bust and Michael lost everything.

  The only bright spots were the opening, in May 1930, of the Shedd Aquarium and Adler Planetarium. “Thank you, Edward J. Kelly,” Max Adler said during the opening ceremony, which infuriated Big Bill.

  By February 1931, when the mayoral campaign was in full swing, the Depression had hit and even Republicans wanted someone steady in office.

  Still, the Tribune said Thompson’s race against Cermak was the dirtiest, most violent election in Chicago history. Thompson called Cermak “Pushcart Tony” and got crowds at his rallies to chant, “Where’s your pushcart, Bohunk?” And, “Mongrels out.”

  Cermak’s election headquarters were bombed—only luck that no one was killed.

  But Chicago had finally had enough. Capone was in jail. Let’s get rid of Thompson, too.

  When Cermak won, the Tribune ran a front-page editorial that Ed cut out and framed.

  “For Chicago, Thompson had meant filth, corruption, obscenity, idiocy, and bankruptcy. He has given the city an international reputation for moronic buffoonery. Barbaric crime, triumphant hoodlumism, unchecked graft, and a dejected citizenship. He nearly ruined the property and completely destroyed the pride of the city. He made Chicago a by-word for the collapse of American civilization. In his attempt to continue this he excelled himself as a liar and defamer of character.”

  Though Anton Cermak didn’t fit the image of a latter-day Celtic hero, he
had managed to lead the clan in beating Thompson. But what if, as he gave his victory speech on election night, the crowd cheering and Ed and Pat Nash clapping along with the rest … what if he’d realized that winning the office of mayor meant he’d be losing his own life? Would he have walked off the stage? Said, “Forget it, boys?” Hard to know.

  * * *

  The Depression spread like an epidemic, and by June 1932, with the Democratic convention scheduled in Chicago next month, Ed’s beautiful Grant Park had become a shantytown and our city’s treasury was empty. I wondered if Big Bill was having the last laugh after all. It was bad enough that factories had closed, and mortgages were in default, but those Chicagoans with money were refusing to pay their taxes. No income for the city. The cops weren’t being paid in cash anymore, but with scrip meant to be redeemed at some imprecise time. At least the gamblers were still paying off the cops, but the teachers had been working without salaries for four months—nobody thought teachers were worth bribing.

  Mayor Cermak was talking to lawyers about how the city could declare bankruptcy, Ed told me. We were in his study at the Ellis Avenue house, and Margaret was packing for the trip to Eagle River. He said that Washington was no help at all. President Hoover and the Republicans claimed that “the invisible hand of the market” was at work, and this downturn was necessary. Mustn’t do anything that would interfere with the laws of economics, and that included any offering of relief to the unemployed.

  “That sounds like the British government’s philosophy, during the Great Starvation. They let one million Irish people starve to death rather than intervene,” I said. “Some idiot Protestant clergymen called the blight that killed the potatoes ‘an instrument of Providence, a way to cull the herd.’” Our great-uncle Patrick gave speeches at Ancient Order of Hibernian picnics denouncing the theories the rich used to justify cruelty to the poor. And here we were again. Wilcox must be pleased.

  The city had stopped my salary, too. I knew Ed would have paid me from his own pocket, but I hated asking him for money. He’d lost a bundle in the stock market crash too, and there was no point in trying to collect rent from the properties he owned. People were skint—Granny’s word, and it sounded like I felt: stripped down. I had depleted my trip-to-Ireland fund and had just enough to pay my rent.

  I was glad to spend the summer at the lake where I wouldn’t have to worry about expenses and could give Margaret a hand with the kids. She and Ed had added a third child to the family: a little boy they’d named Stephen, after Ed’s own father. Not easy to keep up with six-year-old twins and a two-year-old when you’re forty-two.

  I wouldn’t be able to attend the Democratic convention in July, but maybe that was just as well. Ed was not happy about the choices. Al Smith was running for the nomination again, and was expected to be chosen. Ed was afraid he’d lose in the general election, as he had four years before when his Catholicism had sunk him. Ed was impressed with Franklin Roosevelt, the governor of New York, but Cermak was a strong Smith supporter, and disdainful of Roosevelt.

  “Cermak thinks that Roosevelt’s been so wrapped up in privilege all his life that he can never really understand regular people,” Ed said to me, “like Thompson.”

  “Surely he’s not comparing Roosevelt to Thompson!”

  “Cermak thinks Roosevelt wants power. Power does strange things to people. I wonder why fellows want it so badly.”

  “Maybe Roosevelt thinks he’s the only one who can save us.”

  “We’ll see what happens,” Ed said. “We can’t let Hoover back in, that’s for sure. This convention is going to be a knockdown, drag-out. I’m glad you’ll be up in Eagle River with Margaret and the kids. I’ll get out of town as soon as we nominate a candidate, God help us.”

  In Eagle River it was easy to forget everything, even the Depression, with the wind whispering in the pines, and the sunlight sparkling on the lake. Ed’s mother, Aunt Nelly, and her sister, Auntie Kate, Rose’s mother-in-law, were with us, and Rose, too. John Larney had died that winter. After all the years Rose had worried about some gunman cutting him down in the street, it was the cancer did him in. Rose accepted his death with the stoic faith that seemed to sustain her. She lived with Aunt Nelly and Aunt Kate, caring for them and grateful to Ed, who supported the household. The city had defaulted on John’s pension.

  Margaret had decided that while we were in Eagle River we weren’t going to read the newspapers, or even listen to the convention on the radio. She was tired of politics. Cermak had been elected mayor. He respected Ed and left him alone. Kate Buckingham, Adler, Shedd, and Rosenwald had all established funds for the maintenance of what were now Chicago institutions. Ed made both the planetarium and aquarium free, and they had become places where the unemployed, homeless, and families could find some refuge. Ed should concentrate on her and his children now.

  But when Ed came to us in mid-July after the convention, I could see that he was not about to step out of the political arena. In fact, he was on fire.

  “We’ve found him, Nonie,” he said to me, only the two of us up, drinking our coffee on the pier, waiting for the sunrise, “our chieftain—strange that this Dutch-English Episcopalian could be the one to lead us. But Pat Nash agrees. Must be Irish in there somewhere, he thinks.”

  Ed drank some coffee.

  “Cermak never did go along. He forced the Illinois delegation to vote for Smith on all four ballots, even when it was clear Roosevelt was going to win. Jim Farley, the fellow running Roosevelt’s campaign, won’t forget that, but, dear God, Nonie, you should have heard Roosevelt’s speech. The first time that a nominee from either party ever showed up to the convention in the flesh. But Roosevelt was right to come. I’ve never heard any politician speak the way he did. He’s just so confident, so relaxed. I was right near the stage, and I could see he was holding on to the podium to keep himself upright. He has these heavy braces on his legs. I knew he’d had polio years ago but didn’t realize how the disease affected him. But you would never know it. Amazing how he connected with the audience. And it was a detailed speech. Point by point, he laid out what has gone wrong, and how we could fix it. Get us back on the march toward prosperity. And you’ll like this, Nonie. He said that the Republicans pretend that economic laws are sacred and prate on—a great word, ‘prate’—while people are starving. He told us that men make laws and can change them. He ended with promising a New Deal for the American people. That’s what we’re going to fight for, Nonie, a New Deal.”

  Then he began singing what had become the anthem of the Democratic party, “Happy Days Are Here Again,” and got us to sing along. Only Margaret was silent.

  So. What a campaign! Big crowds turned out for Roosevelt all over the country. People dared to hope. In Chicago, Cermak was determined to make up for dragging his feet at the convention by delivering the city for Roosevelt with the biggest vote any presidential candidate had ever received. Democratic Party workers knocked on every door in Chicago. I was getting paid again, hired to photograph the canvass operations and the rallies Cermak led, and try to get the pictures in the papers. Which I’d managed, over the objections of the regular photographers—especially Manny Mandel, the Trib’s expert at catching politicians unaware.

  Roosevelt won in a landslide. “Happy Days” really were here, and soon Chicago’s cares and troubles would be gone, because didn’t our city deserve a big, fat aid package?

  On January 1, 1933 Mayor Cermak went on the radio and assured the citizens of the city of Chicago that the worst was over. Except I knew, from Ed, that the incoming administration was ignoring our problems. None of Roosevelt’s people would even talk to Cermak, though he was desperate to be able to announce some influx of federal funds before Inauguration Day on March 4.

  On February 10, Ed called me into his office. “The mayor wants to see both of us at the Morrison Hotel tonight.”

  I’d first met Anton Cermak during his campaign for mayor. I thought he resembled a high school math teache
r rather than “Pushcart Tony,” Thompson’s insulting nickname for him. Little trace remained of the coal miner he’d been in his youth, after his family emigrated from Czechoslovakia to Braidwood and the mines. As a teenager, he fled to Chicago, worked his way through night school, then made it big in real estate and got himself elected—first as an alderman, then as president of the Cook County Board, and now he was mayor.

  He never paid much attention to me until I joined the crusade for Roosevelt and took a photograph of him pinning “Vote for FDR” buttons on smudge-faced miners. It was a dramatic picture if I do say so myself, and it filled the front page of the Braidwood News. He had his secretary send me a thank-you note and that was that.

  “Why does he want to see me?” I asked Ed.

  “I don’t know. We’ll find out.”

  Freezing cold in Chicago. There were ice floes in the lake and Michigan Avenue was white, the color our streets turn at temperatures below zero. As we drove south to the Morrison Hotel, Ed explained that the mayor had moved out of his house and into the penthouse suite there as a precaution. Frank Nitti had threatened to kill him. Nitti, Capone’s cousin, was running the Outfit while Big Al was in prison. There for tax evasion, of all things … the only way the feds could finally get him.

  “And Cermak’s stopped going into his office after the teachers marched on city hall last week.”

  I’d photographed the demonstrators—twenty thousand strong, shouting and waving grammatically correct placards. One read “I am teaching your children, but cannot feed my own.” They closed down the whole downtown for hours.