More Powerful Than Dynamite

by Thai Jones

  But the social-reform craze had suffered its cruelest setback in the autumn season of 1912, when The Charity Girl premiered at the Globe Theatre, on Broadway and Forty-sixth Street. Billed as a “sociological document in musical comedy form,” the play opened with a scene in the tenements, peopled with slummers, social reformers, white slavers, and a young girl teetering on the precipice of vice. Over the course of three acts, as many evils as could fit came bustling across the stage while the heroine progressed from the East Side to Fifth Avenue, via an airship and the timely advice of a clairvoyant. Yet despite the antics, as well as vaudeville and snatches of ragtime, critics feared that The Charity Girl was “both too long and too loosely constructed for New York.”

  The Social Evil had relapsed into Human Comedy, and it was a flop.

  3.

  A New Gospel

  “If the ladies will form in line on one side of the room and the gentlemen on the other,” the instructor began, “I will explain the rudiments of the steps which make up the new dances.”

  Fifteen men in tuxedos and fifteen married women ceased chatting and parted to opposite ends of a small ballroom in the Plaza Hotel. It was a Saturday evening, and they—like hundreds of their peers across the city—were here for tango lessons.

  The pianist played a few notes, slowly, so that the teacher—a veteran of the Winter Garden and the Folies Marigny—could explain the simplest moves. First came the hesitation. He counted as he demonstrated, “One, one-two-three, one-two!”

  “Oh, isn’t that pretty?” exclaimed one of the students.

  The ladies and their partners pantomimed the steps separately. “Feet together!” he called out. “Ladies forward with the left … Balance!” The women were quick learners, the men not so quick. Among the latter, one appeared especially befuddled. After a series of missteps, he finally stopped completely, confessing, “I don’t quite get that.” The instructor clasped the pupil’s hands and practiced with him a dozen times, very slowly, counting aloud: “One, one-two-three, one-two.”

  When at last all were ready, the piano played “Nights of Gladness,” and the couples were permitted to attempt the hesitation together.

  “This will be an easy one,” the instructor assured his students, as he displayed the next step. Most took to it. The awkward beginner concentrated hardest. Whenever he did something wrong, he would pause, count earnestly and aloud, and repeat the move again and again until he was satisfied.

  Then, during the hitch and slide, he stumbled and stopped completely. “I don’t quite get that,” he said again. Once more the master clasped his hands, danced him round till he had the knack, and returned him to his practice partner.

  Afterward, the teacher asked one of the onlookers, “Who is the young man who asks so many questions?”

  “Why, don’t you know?” came the answer. “That’s young Mr. Rockefeller!”

  JUNIOR MIGHT NEVER become the most agile dancer, or for that matter the sprightliest wit, the wisest commentator, the most inspiring orator, the best good fellow. In fact, nothing came easily to him. What he lacked in instincts, however, he made back through discipline, pursuing each task with a rapt focus that was utterly unself-conscious. “The annoyances, the obstacles, the embarrassments had to be borne,” he believed. Anything that stood in the way of success “became merely details.” It was this determination that had steered him to remain on the board of the Colorado Fuel & Iron Company until it turned a profit. It guided his philanthropic work, inured him to the criticism and ridicule of public life. I don’t quite get that, he’d ask his advisers, attending to their answers until he was confident in his position. And it was effective. Junior made great progress, even at the waltz. “He ‘scissors” and ‘cortezes’ like an adept,” the instructor raved at the end of the lessons, “he has every little dip and twist at the tip of his toes—it’s a pleasure to watch him spinning about the ballroom, light as thistle-down.”

  Junior was again immersed in reform work. “The first four days of this week were consumed with all day conferences,” he complained to his mother after sitting through meetings for the Rockefeller Foundation and the General Education Board. The new report from the American Vigilance Association, an antiprostitution society, had just arrived. He took this work more seriously than any other; in December he had donated $5,000 to the group, and he personally supervised its team of undercover agents, who infiltrated the city’s brothels gathering information on the prevalence of the Social Evil.

  The latest revelations were as shocking as ever: New York remained a city of sins. To ensure that the proper officials were made aware of its findings, Junior had the document forwarded, through his Bureau of Social Hygiene, to the mayor and police. Wanting future accounts to be even more persuasive, he asked that the next installment be as far-reaching as possible. “It therefore should cover saloons, with their rear rooms, disorderly cafes and other places where vicious people congregate,” he wrote to the investigators. “In view, therefore, of this broader scope of the inquiry, you may think it wise to put another man or two on this month.”

  Few of Junior’s good works meant more—or had caused him more “nervous depression and despondency”—than the Young Men’s Bible Class, which he had led, off and on, at the Fifth Avenue Baptist Church for the previous fifteen years. Teaching religion to others had helped him elaborate his own theology of discipline and service. He credited it with guiding his decision to retire from business, and it was his best avenue for interacting with people outside of work and family. But the effort of preparing his speeches had many times threatened to overwhelm him. Three nights a week he would enclose himself inside his study to write out meticulous outlines on index cards. Then, on Sundays, he would pass along his insights. Recently, in a talk on “Fixing Life Standards,” he had urged temperance in food, work, exercise, pleasure, and drink. “If a man is unwilling to do small tasks and do them well, he ought not be permitted to do big tasks,” Junior had said, “and if he is permitted mistakenly he is most certain to fail.”

  Under his leadership, the class had grown to hundreds of students. And if some of these merely hoped to benefit from his acquaintance, many had been impressed by the patent sincerity of his lessons. Guest speakers had included Andrew Carnegie, Booker T. Washington, and Mark Twain. He invited the members to his home, gave them individual attention, and sponsored annual banquets. Whatever lengths he went to, however, the press and public were quick with malicious comment. “Every Sunday young Rockefeller explains the Bible to his class,” Twain remarked. “The next day the newspapers and the Associated Press distribute his explanations all over the continent and everybody laughs.” Condescending headlines—ROCKEFELLER ON LOVE: SAYS MOTHER’S IS NEXT TO GOD’S, or ROCKEFELLER ON RICHES: WEALTH DOES NOT GIVE HAPPINESS, SAYS BIBLE CLASS LEADER—were bad enough, but the implication that his religion was little more than hypocrisy was far worse. “With his hereditary grip on the nation’s pocketbook,” one newspaper complained, “his talks on spiritual matters are a tax on piety.” Junior bravely kept at it, in spite of the humiliation. And by 1914 this determination had finally earned him some respect. “You have borne all the criticism and ridicule that is necessary,” his wife reassured him, “to let the world see that you are sincere.”

  On Sunday, March 1, as yet another incapacitating blizzard reached the city, Junior prepared to lead a Bible class at the Calvary Baptist Church on Fifty-seventh Street, a couple blocks from his home. His father, who had recently come east, motored down from Tarrytown, a drive that took an hour and a half in the rising storm. In their reserved pew, at the center of the second row, the two Rockefellers sat together—Senior in a fur coat and “a pair of old fashioned ‘galoshes’”—while several nearby benches remained deserted. Few others had been willing to brave the weather to hear the sermon.

  In the late afternoon, as Junior was conducting his class, the Calvary caretaker placed a frantic call to the Forty-seventh Street precinct house: He had heard that
the Industrial Workers of the World were coming, and the church needed protection. A guard of reserves hurried over. As congregants arrived for the evening lecture, they passed through a barrier of police guarding the Gothic portico. At the end of the night, as Junior stepped down into the snowy streets, the officers were still there, stomping and shuffling to keep warm after a tedious watch. All across Manhattan that night, policemen promenaded outside of frightened churches. The I.W.W. was on the march, and no one knew where the menace would appear.

  BY EIGHT P.M., in fact, they had arrived at Washington Square: a straggling column of nearly a hundred unemployed men with Frank Tannenbaum in the vanguard. “Plodding through the thick slush in downtown streets, with sharp sleet cutting into their faces,” the troupe passed beneath the marble arch and paraded up Fifth Avenue. A few blocks north, at Eleventh Street, there appeared the Tiffany windows of the old First Presbyterian Church, “shining through the snowflakes” like welcoming beacons of relief. The minister was preaching “Redemption” to a sparse audience. The main doors crashed wide and in stepped Tannenbaum. Footsteps ringing on the stone floor, the intruders tracked dirty snow down the aisle. They sidled noisily into the front pews, gaping and leering at the gasping congregants, many of whom “were highly excited and apparently half inclined to flee in terror from the horde of ragged and wild-eyed invaders.”

  The reverend had stood dumbfounded as they had entered. It was the Industrial Workers of the World—and they had chosen his church. “There can be no question of our sympathy toward you on such a night as this,” he stuttered, at last, “and no question but that we will give you whatever aid you need.”

  “I’d like to say a few words,” said Tannenbaum, rising from his seat.

  “You may, if you say nothing to create disorder in this sacred place.”

  “Well,” he said, “we’re cold and we’re hungry and we’re going to sleep in here where it’s warm.”

  “I am sorry that I cannot invite you to do that.”

  Then members of the mob leapt up and began to yell.

  “You’ll have to club us out!”

  “We’re going to camp right here!”

  “Yes, don’t worry. We’ll take all the responsibility off of your hands.”

  Fearing a riot, the pastor beckoned Tannenbaum up to the pulpit and offered twenty-five dollars for the men to pay for food and shelter, if they’d only agree to leave quietly. Frank took the money and marched his triumphant mob back through the aisles. As they went, their roar of satisfaction “shook the rafters of the vestry.” But in the lobby the sight of a file of policemen quieted them down. The cops had been called during the confrontation. They had their nightsticks drawn; all they needed was an excuse. The unemployed crept past the menacing cordon, just a little chastened.

  Out in the “miserable, windy night,” they feasted in a Bowery restaurant and then tucked themselves into beds at a nearby hotel. The money was spent down to the last dime.

  THIS WAS THE third straight night that Tannenbaum had trespassed against a city church. By the next morning, March 2, the clergy had split in its reactions. Most were outraged. For years they had complained of the drop in churchgoing, but the I.W.W. solution was not to their taste. Several ministers responded to the threat by canceling their evening services, preferring no prayer at all to the possibility of an appearance by the unemployed. A few offered their support, embracing the challenge of caring for the needy in a desperate season. In that morning’s World, the pastor of St. Mark’s-in-the-Bouwerie had even invited the homeless to shelter in his chapel. Tannenbaum decided to accept his offer.

  That evening he led more than a hundred followers out of Rutgers Square, one of the few slashes of open space amid the crush of East Side tenements, which served as a meeting place for radical gatherings.9 As they passed others along the way, the men called out, “Come on with us and get free food and lodging,” so that their ranks had more than doubled by the time the parish doors opened for them at St. Mark’s. Church-women beckoned them in from the darkness to a large, brightly lit chamber set up with two long tables loaded with coffeepots and piles of bean sandwiches. The men thronged inside, removing their hats, joshing each other. “The great fireplace was piled with burning logs,” a reporter wrote, “and for a moment this aimless crowd seemed at peace with all the world.”

  Frank devoured a sandwich and waited for the others to finish eating before he rose to speak. “We want work, but we will not work for 50 cents or $1 a day. We want $3 a day for an eight-hour day, and any man who works more than eight hours scabs it on us,” he said. “They tell us to go to the Municipal Lodging House, but I tell you that it is not fit for a dog to sleep in. Let Kingsbury sleep there. We are going to establish a boycott on the Municipal Lodging House so that no man out of work will go there.”

  All the time he was talking, more men were arriving; by eleven P.M., the newcomers had filled a second room. Men snored in their chairs by the fireplace. Others stretched out along the floors. All was quiet as the reverend made his final inspection of the night. In the morning there was coffee and eggs, and the men scattered in search of work, leaving a few volunteers to tidy up and shovel snow.

  The Bowery breadline.

  Frank woke with the others, and then headed to 214 West Street, the Wobbly headquarters on the waterfront, to read about himself in the papers. Photo insets showed his wavy curls and round cheeks. The newsmen who had once ignored him were now insatiable for answers. “Who is this young Tannenbaum?” they asked. “Where did he come from? Who are his parents, what his boyhood environment? Is he normal or abnormal mentally and physically? What started him on the program begun a few nights ago when he and his ‘army of the unemployed’ began to raid churches?” Was he “a fanatic or an extremely able propagandist of some special order,” was he even a leader at all, or “a convenient catspaw for the invisible leadership which is the inspiring and directing force of the I.W.W. activities”? Reporters competed now to pen vivid portrayals of him. “His black hair blown half across his face, his jaw set and his eyes agleam with determination …” one passage began. He was often misquoted, maligned, and misrepresented, but his name was in the headlines every morning. And no one misspelled it anymore. “Now, what is the program, the idea, the definite plan proposed by this smooth faced, slender stripling?” asked the Sun. “Why, merely to take possession of New York—that is all.”

  Each night he told his men: We are not slaves. We are not accepting charity. What we’re getting—they owe it to us. Not once—despite what the newspapers said—not once had he raised his voice in anger, preached anarchy, or incited violence. Newspapers called them a “ragged regiment,” a “mob.” Well, they might be a little rough, but he had never felt love the way he did when they were all camping out together at night. Watching them eat a hot meal served on clean dishes in a warm room—it was the most religious thing he’d ever seen. The city knew him now as the “Boy I.W.W. leader,” and Frank was happier with that job than with anything else he could think of. He wouldn’t give it up for anything—not even for a place in President Wilson’s cabinet.

  * * *

  IT WAS SNOWING that week in Washington, D.C., as well, but inside the Willard Hotel on F Street, it smelled like spring. The foyer was bedecked with flowers: pink azaleas, Richmond roses in crystal vases, tulips and hyacinths in gold baskets. Woodrow Wilson’s cabinet members planted themselves amidst this garden in anticipation of their leader’s arrival. Around eight P.M., the White House motorcade appeared and the president hurried his two daughters through the weather into the comfort of the parlor. It was March 7, the one-year anniversary of the administration’s first cabinet meeting, and everyone felt like celebrating. After collegial greetings, the guests passed into the dining room for supper. “There was no set program,” reported the Washington Post, “spontaneity being the keynote of the evening.” The courses progressed, accompanied by enthusiastic toasts and a serenade by the Marine Band. All in all, it was
“as informal as an occasion may be at which the President of the United States is a guest.”

  For the previous several days, newspapers had been offering end-of-year retrospectives on the administration’s progress. Congress had continued in session for eleven of the twelve months of its tenure, and the record of legislative accomplishments was unimpeachable. “It has been a year of incessant activity and of substantial achievement,” the New York Tribune exulted. “Mr. Wilson has already written his name high on the list of the Presidents who have done things.” He had shown himself to be an able executive, a dynamic speaker. “He has always appealed to the ‘intellectuals,’” conceded editors at the Outlook. “He now appeals to very practical persons and to the man-in-the-street.”

  If these glowing assessments, along with “an elaborate menu with the usual liquid accompaniments,” heightened the conviviality at the Willard Hotel, the president also shouldered some private cares. His wife, Ellen, had felt her health decline alarmingly since the start of the year; having already endured a succession of illnesses, she remained bedridden and in pain after slipping on the polished White House floor a few days earlier. Also, though no announcement had yet been made public, Wilson had just learned that his youngest—and favorite—daughter had broken with a longtime fiancé and was now engaged to marry his own secretary of the treasury, a man more than twice her age.10

  And then there was foreign affairs, where a looming crisis threatened to subvert all the administration’s domestic gains. In February 1913, weeks before Wilson had even taken office, a Mexican general, assisted by agents of the U.S. embassy, had assassinated the progressive president of that country and then claimed the office for himself. American entrepreneurs welcomed the change; the new leader was the sort of man they enjoyed doing business with. He had no notion of redistributing land to the peons or of nationalizing the oil reserves. Most of the world’s nations had immediately recognized the fledgling government, but Wilson demurred, refusing to partner with the blood-soaked regime. Political turmoil descended into civil war as various insurgent groups took up arms against the illegitimate government in Mexico City. Investors panicked. War correspondents wired back tales of atrocity and outrage.