by Thai Jones
The triumphal procession in May 1903 was his reward. When the multitudes cheered his apotheosis, they also celebrated the charity of their own forgiveness. Their clemency had lifted him up again to the position he had forfeited. They had redeemed him, themselves, their city. Applause from the Battery to Madison Square, huzzahs from here to heaven: It could never be too much.
IN 1909, WHEN he alone remained from the scandalous nineties, he was promoted to chief inspector, the city’s highest-ranking uniformed officer. “I think I can safely say that it has been a long, hard fight, honorably and honestly won,” he said. “Victory has come to me because I have ‘made good.’”
After nearly a decade as chief inspector, Schmittberger caught cold while watching a Liberty Loan parade. When he died a week later, the flags at every precinct in New York marked mourning for the “Grand Old Man” of the police department. Thousands followed his casket to St. Patrick’s. Mayor Mitchel and Commissioner Woods marched in the procession. As did Frank, his trusted mount. After Schmittberger’s death, reporters found in his apartment half a dozen rooms crowded with commendations and trophies, ornaments from foreign governments, his Slocum Medal, notes of thanks from the neighborhoods he had patrolled. And, on his bookshelves, intermixed with the rest, the five black volumes of testimony from the Lexow Committee hearings.
5.
Somebody Blundered
After the magistrate had disclosed his sentence, Frank Tannenbaum, the dangerous I.W.W. agitator, returned to his cell in the Tombs Prison to settle some outstanding business. He asked a comrade to please return a library book he had borrowed. And he scrawled a quick note to his mother and father.
Dear Folks,
I have just been committed to serve 1 year in jail. Don’t worry. My friends will take care of me. I will not be able to write to you, only once in a few months. But when I come out I will spend some time at home. With regards to all at home.
I remain your loving son, F. Tannenbaum
That done, he was ready for transportation.
Guards bused him from the jail to an East River dock and led him down the gangplank to a Department of Correction ferry. From there it was just a short steam upriver to Blackwell’s Island, where he marched in a column across the yard toward the administrative building. In the photographic room, he was ordered to undress and was slammed down into a chair. A keeper slapped an iron hood over his head, barking, “Stretch your arms!” “Put out your foot!” while posing him in various positions. Then he was issued prison stripes, coarse undergarments, and a filthy blanket before being led to a shadowy three-foot-by-seven-foot cell, possessing neither toilets nor windows.
Until then, none of Tannenbaum’s experiences had affected his inner man. Through it all, he had remained “aggressive, defiant, uncompromising.” In the Tombs, he had enjoyed amiable relations with the guards, and even the wrathful magistrate had treated him with a certain respect. Now—hooded, prodded, and penned on the island—he finally felt the burden of circumstances. “I had ceased to be a human and had become a number,” he recalled. “For at least the next few hours I was the most humble, obedient, I might almost say the most broken-spirited person imaginable.”
Blackwell’s Island did that to people. A narrow two-mile-long shard of earth between Manhattan and Queens, it was blessed with refreshing breezes, as well as lawns and gardens that made it “one of nature’s beauty spots.” Reformers spoke of turning the whole area into a park, and Jacob Riis prophesied that someday it would be “the most marvelous public playground in the world.” In the meantime, the city had found a different use for it. Since the early decades of the nineteenth century, the island had served as a quarantine for New York’s sinners and sufferers. Charity and smallpox hospitals, asylums, orphanages, prisons, and almshouses interposed themselves among the fields and forests.
Prisoners returning from work on Blackwell’s Island.
From the water, these solemn structures made a “fine show,” and the penitentiary in particular had “the pathetic beauty … of an 18th century print.” But any grandeur vanished on acquaintance. Within the picturesque walls, inmates discovered “conditions in daily operation quite at variance with the dictates of humanity and the ordinary laws of health.” In the 1880s, Nellie Bly had spent ten days in the madhouse on assignment for the World. Riis had devoted a chapter of How the Other Half Lives to “The Wrecks and the Waste” of the charity wards. Through these revelations, the island had acquired indelible connotations of brutality and squalor. It was a way station toward purgatory. “When they move out of the Fourth Ward they will move into Bellevue Hospital,” went a typical jeremiad, “when they move out of the Bellevue Hospital they will move to Blackwell’s Island; when they move from Blackwell’s Island they will move to the Potter’s Field; when they move from the Potter’s Field they will move into the darkness beyond the grave!” By the twentieth century, the name was so blemished that the newly constructed Blackwell’s Island Bridge was quickly renamed the Queensboro, and an effort was gaining impetus to rechristen the island itself.12
A few days before Tannenbaum’s arrival, Commissioner of Correction Katharine Davis had presented Mayor Mitchel a report on the penitentiary, revealing a facility dysfunctional in every facet. The cornerstone had been laid in 1828, and the buildings had long since become obsolete. With an intended capacity of eleven hundred inmates, the actual population averaged around eighteen hundred. Cells were “wet, slimy, dark, foul smelling, and unfit for pigs to wallow in.” Hardly large enough for a single person, overcrowding meant that more than half of these chambers held two occupants. Treatment of the prisoners was “vile and inhuman.” On the whole, Davis concluded, the facility “belonged to an era of general political unenlightenment that was long out of date.” In her opinion, the entire edifice should be abandoned as soon as possible, and emergency renovations totaling $32,000 had to be pursued immediately.
Prisoners’ sentences ranged from one to twelve months, meaning thousands of inmates cycled through the penitentiary each year. Though new people arrived daily, outside contact was strictly curtailed: Convicts were allowed one visitor each month, and there were harsh limitations on correspondence. Pencils and newspapers, toothpaste and soap, were contraband; it was against regulations to hang a photograph on the walls. And it wasn’t even necessary to commit a violation to receive discipline. “If a keeper doesn’t like your face, he punishes you by standing you against the wall, depriving you of food, or shuts you up in the cooler.”
Despite all this, Tannenbaum’s initial discouragement did not last long. Discovering a camaraderie among his fellows, he soon returned to the accustomed role of instigator. “No matter how many rules you make in jail,” he soon learned, “the men will find a way to break them.” Before his first day had ended, he himself had transgressed every one. Stolen newspapers were passed around until they fell to pieces. Underground networks smuggled letters in and out. Within a few hours of his arrival, Tannenbaum had already received several illicit notes through these secret means. “My dear Frank,” a note from Alexander Berkman began,
Need I waste words to assure you of my deepest sympathy? You have acted like a Man, and that is the very highest I could say—as a man and true revolutionist. Never mind the barking of the curs—it is their insignificance + cowardice.
I am proud of you. For I am sick of the crawling and kowtowing—before the court—by those who are so loud when it is safe to be. The time has come when we need, most urgently, men—men who will measure up to the need of the hour and stand up as men at the critical moment.
When you get a chance, let us know how you are getting along + how you are treated. You have friends who will remain true to you + who will not stand for any abuse of you by the authorities …
Fraternally,
Alex Berkman
Frank had arrived on the island with a reputation as a troublemaker, and it did not take long for him to confirm it in the minds of his keepers. Every time the gua
rds passed his cell, they discovered him reading an illicit newspaper. Finding the prison library needlessly inefficient—inmates had no choice in what books they were issued, and were often presented with volumes they couldn’t read—he volunteered to reorganize the meager assortment. “Any time, Tannenbaum,” snapped Warden Hayes in response, “that we want your help to run this institution, we will call for it.” Soon, however, he was amassing a private collection of his own. The way the newspapers had portrayed him, as “only an ignorant boy,” had renewed his commitment to educating himself. “I determined,” he recalled, “no one ever again could call me ignorant of the education of books, no matter what the cost.” He had left his supporters a list; the first consignment of materials contained dense tomes on economic and political theory, including several works by Peter Kropotkin, the Russian anarchist. Tannenbaum would spend his time in prison studying the theories of revolution that he had already attempted to put into practice on the streets.
At the same time, his correspondents kept him informed about their progress. “We held a fine meeting at Franklin Square today,” a friend wrote. “At Rutgers Square meetings are being carried on regularly.” After the riot in Union Square, he read that “Gegan and Gildea as usual were on the job. The police bore down and beat up the crowd and arrested O’Carroll … and Caron and several others.” In this way, he also was able to follow the continued violence in the coal regions of Colorado. And he learned of growing tensions between the United States and Mexico. As Tannenbaum’s days passed, however, more and more of his correspondents began excitedly to discuss the next big local event, “a giant protest meeting to be held at Carnegie Hall on April 19.”
* * *
NEW YORKERS WERE by now accustomed to wake each morning and find another headline describing the latest provocations by the Industrial Workers of the World: I.W.W. DEFIES POLICE, I.W.W. FREE SPEECH TO BE INVESTIGATED, I.W.W. SLURS MAYOR: CALLS HIM “BELL HOP.” Considering that the local chapters had been nearly defunct at the start of the year, this could have been seen as a triumph of propaganda. “For two months and over the I.W.W. has kept itself on the front page of the metropolitan dailies, and that surely is going some,” a comrade boasted in a letter to Tannenbaum. “Now, of course, if it were Carnegie’s Peace Society or Rockefeller’s Educational Board, that would be different. Their every meeting, their every proceeding, would be reported if so desired. But the I.W.W., never!”
The publicity had done little, however, to clarify the actual goals or doctrines of the Industrial Workers of the World. Politicians and newspapers were content to affix the I.W.W. label to the unemployed, the anarchists, or any of the city’s other radical leagues and councils. The Wobblies were “credited with the doings of everybody, no matter whom, so long as the doings take on the appearance of the I.W.W. in the editor’s mind,” Tannenbaum’s correspondent wrote, and if trends continued, “the Republicans and the Progressives will yet get to be classed with the I.W.W.s.” It was infuriating to the socialists and trade unionists whose actions were continually attributed to their rivals. And to those who feared that agitators posed a real threat, the willful misidentification seemed to verge on recklessness. “It will be very much to the advantage of the conservative people of this town to learn more than they have yet taken the trouble to learn” about the I.W.W., a Times columnist urged. “It is always to the advantage of a person who is attacked to know why he is attacked, who is attacking him, and where he may expect the next blow. And this is an attack—an attack on the social system. Its aim is nothing less than revolution.”
But it was the radicals themselves who finally took steps to rectify these misperceptions. “We wanted to present our aims to the public dramatically,” an organizer recalled. Assuming “that everybody really wanted to hear the truth about labor,” activists began to promote an educational evening at Carnegie Hall. Unlike the street demonstrations, where multiple speakers competed in issuing contradictory statements, this occasion would offer a single coherent message. There would be no sensationalism or controversy. The biggest difference of all: There would be no scare headlines the next day.
Handbills and posters advertised the topics to be discussed: “The outrages at Union Square … The outrages at Trinidad, Colorado … the severe sentence inflicted upon Tannenbaum.” To afford the theater, and to raise money toward paying Frank’s $500 fine, the organizers had to charge admission. For a quarter, spectators could pack into the gallery; a dollar afforded a box seat. Promoters canvassed Manhattan, selling tickets to chorus girls on Broadway and to officials at City Hall. When Lincoln Steffens suggested peddling some on Wall Street, one of the volunteers borrowed a presentable coat from Mabel Dodge and managed to sell several seats to the J.P. Morgan Company.
By 8:15 P.M. on the evening of April 19, Carnegie Hall had begun to fill with a curious assortment of people. “Although the crowd was small,” a witness observed, “it amply made up for that deficiency in enthusiasm and variety.” Actresses in cerise evening cloaks milled about the lobby while laborers looked starchy in new-bought suits. Steffens and Mrs. O.H.P. Belmont, a noted suffrage advocate, attended, as did “practically everybody in I.W.W. and anarchistic circles.” About one third of the audience was in stylish evening dress, and if some of these had a serious curiosity, most had come on a lark, “obviously hopeful that something would happen, something lively but not too strenuous.” Police Commissioner Woods, who had reserved a prime, first-tier box, casually appraised the scene, laughing when a pretty usher put some radical literature in his hand. Chief Inspector Schmittberger commanded a detail of nearly a hundred men, but the directive to “keep peace with a smile” remained in place, and the police were in gentle temper. Not that they had neglected their preparations; reserves stood ready at the Forty-seventh Street precinct, and “the block would have swarmed with them at the blowing of a whistle.”
Fashionable couples were still filtering in from dinner when Max Eastman, editor of the Masses, called the meeting to order. The stage was crowded with martyrs of the movement, including Joe O’Carroll, Arthur Caron, and Becky Edelsohn. To accurately convey the feeling of an authentic I.W.W. meeting, the program began by putting two resolutions to the vote. The first concerned the injustice of Frank Tannenbaum’s sentence, and it was ratified easily. Only two nays were heard, and both came from occupants of the J.P. Morgan box. The second resolution, opposing the looming war with Mexico, sparked pandemonium. “In a few minutes the hall was in an uproar, men shaking their fists and shouting that there should or should not be war, according to their ideas.” The carefully scripted pageant edged toward disarray, but it was not yet lost. Big Bill Haywood was the next speaker, and the audience quieted while he shambled toward the rostrum.
No one else was so identified with the I.W.W. in the public mind. Haywood, a journalist for Metropolitan magazine had written, was the “prophet of Industrial Unionism, leader of all poor devils.” A youth spent in the hard-rock mines of Idaho had left him with one eye, “the physical strength of an ox,” and a “face like a scarred mountain.” Now forty-five years old, he still affected a black Stetson and cowboy twang, but he had forsworn his old.38 Colt. If the Big Bill legend persisted, the man himself had mellowed. “Haywood is long on talk, but short on work,” sneered the bulletin of the Western Federation of Miners, a union that had expelled him. The Sun was even less sympathetic. “When bullets are flying in Colorado, Big Bill is in New York,” an editor wrote. “When heads are being broken in Union Square he is detained elsewhere; when anybody starts a fight Big Bill is recorded among the absent.” In labor circles, it was murmured that Haywood had gone soft through spending too much time around the bourgeoisie. The “two-gun man from the West” now kept an apartment down on West Fifteenth Street and was a fixture at Mabel Dodge’s evenings. He preferred discussing poetry to politics, and could sometimes be found sitting on the benches in Washington Square, scribbling out verses of his own.
Big Bill Haywood, the face of the I.W.W
.
At the moment, a lecture on the future of proletarian painting or a rumination about the poetry of work would have entirely satisfied the organizers who had staked so much on the Carnegie Hall meeting being successful. Anything would do, so long as it helped to ease the “undercurrent of feeling” in the theater that had manifested itself as soon as the discussion turned to Mexico, and which now “threatened to break out at any time.” But Haywood chose this opportunity to flash some of his old belligerence. He decided to talk about Mexico.
“Sherman said, ‘War was Hell,’” he bellowed. “Well, then, let the bankers go to war, and let the interest-takers and the dividend-takers go to war with them. If only those parasites were out of the country it would be a pretty decent place to live in.” The laboring classes would never support President Wilson’s imperialism, he continued. “The mine workers of this country will simply fold their arms, and when they fold their arms there will be no war.” Three sentences into his speech, everyone was shouting. From the galleries came cries of encouragement. Derision raged from the boxes. “You may say that this action of the mine workers is traitorous to the country,” he shouted back, “but I tell you it is better to be a traitor to a country than to be a traitor to your class.”
When he lumbered away from the podium, any potential for reconciliation that evening had disappeared. The next morning, New Yorkers would wake to the usual array of panicky headlines: IGNORE CALL TO WAR SAYS BILL HAYWOOD, STRIKE THREAT IF WAR IS DECLARED, HAYWOOD OPENLY STIRS SEDITION.
THE ATTORNEY GENERAL in Washington, D.C., proposed filing an indictment against Big Bill, newspapers demanded reprisals, and even labor leaders rushed to distinguish their positions from his. But Commissioner Woods calmly refused to overreact. He had heard every word spoken at Carnegie Hall, and as far as he was concerned nothing had crossed the boundary separating free speech from sedition.