by Thai Jones
10–11 Two hundred miles south: Scott Martelle, Blood Passion: The Ludlow Massacre and Class War in the American West (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2007), 144–145; “candies”: “Striking Miners Not Forgotten,” El Paso Herald (Dec. 25, 1913).
11 “Lavish” decorations: “Striking Miners Not Forgotten”; “Saloons in Coal Strike Zone are Ordered Closed,” El Paso Herald (Dec. 26, 1913); “If John D. lives”: “‘Cigarettes Out,’ John D.’s Order to C.F. & I. Men,” Denver Post (Dec. 30, 1913).
12 this gruff and vicious atmosphere: “Troops Take Arms from Strikers,” El Paso Herald (Dec. 31, 1913).
12 “census takers”: “Multitude Dins Welcome to 1914”; “stellar observation”: “1914 Flashed by Wireless,” New York Times (Jan. 1, 1914).
12 “half delirious”: Gerald Mygatt, “Celebrating Nothing on New Year’s Eve,” Evening Post Saturday Magazine (Dec. 27, 1913).
13 “devotee of the dance”: “Dance the ‘Twinkle Step’ with Mayor Mitchel,” the World Magazine (July 5, 1914); “ear to the ground”: “Greenwich Village Gallops.”
13 the accounting began: “One Big City Yawn Amid $250,000 in ‘Dead Soldiers’,” the World (Jan. 2, 1914); Rector, The Girl from Rector’s, 119.
1. So the New Year Opens in Hope
17 “cold and blustery”: “Cold Bothers Rockefeller,” Los Angeles Times (Jan. 2, 1914); Cleveland winter: “The Weather,” Cleveland Plain Dealer (Jan. 2, 1914).
17 “slowest back-swing”: Ron Chernow, Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. (New York: Random House, 1998), 400; “clear gray blue eyes”: “John D. Rockefeller Discusses Big Questions,” New York Sun (Jan. 11, 1914); “finally he arrives”: “The Two John D. Rockefellers,” Current Literature (Nov. 1908).
17 “about the ninth hole”: Chernow, Titan, 365; “constantly hunted”: Frederick T. Gates, quoted in Raymond B. Fosdick, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., A Portrait (New York: Harper, 1956), 94.
18 “drizzly Winter day”: Elbert Hubbard, “A Week Off,” the Fra (Feb. 1914).
18 “as good as eggs”: “John D.’s Wit Well Oiled,” New York Tribune (Jan. 5, 1914); “mad wag”: Franklin Pierce Adams, “The Conning Tower,” New York Tribune (Jan. 5, 1914).
19 “Glorious old John D.”: Chernow, Titan, 412; “A Week Off”; “money-maniac”: Ida Tarbell, “John D. Rockefeller, A Character Study: Part Two,” Mc-Clure’s Magazine (Aug. 1905); A CLAM: Chernow, Titan, 426, 450.
20 “socialists and anarchists”: “John D. Rockefeller Discusses Big Questions,” New York Sun (Jan. 11, 1914); “let the world wag”: Chernow, Titan, 434; John Ensor Harr and Peter J. Johnson, The Rockefeller Century (New York: Scribner, 1988), 60.
20 “Mr. Hyde”: “Persons in the Foreground: The Two John Rockefellers,” Current Literature (Nov. 1908); Chernow, Titan, 412–413; “diabolical”: “Persons in the Foreground: The Two John Rockefellers”; Chernow, Titan, 412–413.
20 “We are all socialists”: “John D. Rockefeller Discusses Big Questions.”
21 “So the new year”: “The New Year’s Greatest Happiness,” New York Times (Jan. 1, 1914).
21 “On the contrary”: “Life’s Little Optimisms,” Life (Jan. 1, 1914); “What 1914 may disclose”: “Hopes of Peace,” New York Post (Dec. 31, 1913). 21 “good hopes of peace”: Ibid.
21 lynched: Booker T. Washington, “A Decrease in Lynchings,” New York Times (Jan. 14, 1914).
22 live poultry: “New York Is Greatest Live Poultry Market,” New York Sun (Jan. 1, 1914); “City’s 1913 Butter Bill Is $64,700,000,” New York Sun (Jan. 1, 1914); Frederick L. Hoffmann, “Pauper Burials and the Interment of the Dead in Large Cities,” An Address Read at the National Conference of Social Work, Atlantic City, N.J., June 4, 1919, 107; “To Be Babies’ Paradise,” New York Tribune (Oct. 27, 1913); “Lower Death Rate in City for 1913,” New York Herald (Jan. 4, 1914); auto deaths: “Motors Kill 302 in City,” Evening Post (Jan. 2, 1914).
22 statistical wonder: “The Foreign Carrying Trade of the Port of New York for the Fiscal Year Ending June 30, 1913,” Chamber of Commerce of New York, Fifty-Sixth Annual Report, Part II, 126; Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1912; “New York and Other Cities,” New York Times (Oct. 8, 1907); “$164,000,000 Earned by the Pennsylvania,” New York Times (March 3, 1908); “Gov. Hughes Cuts Budget $4,488,886,” New York Times (May 24, 1909); “How New York City Spends Its Money Every Year,” New York Times (Oct. 2, 1911); “The Increasing Burden of Taxes,” New York Times (Nov. 19, 1911).
22–23 Municipal government: Henry Bruère, New York City’s Administrative Progress, 1914–1916: A Survey of Various Departments Under the Jurisdiction of the Mayor (New York: M.B. Brown Printing Co., 1916); public workers: Bureau of Municipal Research, Municipal Year Book of the City of New York (New York: Municipal Reference Library, 1917), 35; jails: “Foreign Criminals Crowd Our Prisons,” New York Times (Jan. 24, 1910); “Prison Population Grows,” New York Times (Aug. 27, 1915); police: Foster Ware, “Fusion’s Finest Makes Good: The Regeneration of the New York Police,” the Independent (Aug. 18, 1917).
23 New York has had a history: Sydney Brooks, “New York: A Triumphant Essay on Art of Saving Time and Space,” New York Times (Jan. 25, 1914).
24 long felt inferior: See James Bryce’s influential study of nineteenth-century American institutions, quoted widely, and particularly employed by Richard Hofstadter. James Bryce, The American Commonwealth (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1902), 422; “representative government”: “The Wilson Administration Closes Its First Year,” Current Opinion (April 1914).
24 “Politics today”: “Election Results Send Cheer to the Occupant of the White House,” Current Opinion (Dec. 1913).
24 “American political lexicon”: “The Defeat of Tammany—A National Service,” the Independent (Aug. 7, 1913).
24–25 “terrible ogre”: “Murphy—The Terrible Ogre of American Politics,” Current Opinion (Dec. 1913); “days of Tweed”: “What Are You Going to Do About It?” Outlook (Oct. 25, 1913).
25 “Graft, graft, graft”: “Sulzer Gives Graft Clues,” New York Times (Jan. 22, 1914).
26 “without regard”: “Tammany Versus the People,” Outlook (Oct. 4, 1913).
26 “Spectacularly”: “Mitchel: A Young Man with a Chip on His Shoulder,” New York Times (Aug. 3, 1913); fads and nostrums: “Fusion and Folly,” New York Times (July 31, 1913); “make things easier”: “Republicans Mark Time on Mitchel,” New York Tribune (Aug. 2, 1913); “The Great Duty of Defeating Tammany,” New York Tribune (Aug. 5, 1913).
26 “a smashing statement”: “Mitchel to Stick to ‘Bitter End,’” New York Times (Aug. 31, 1913); strong hands: Henry N. Hall, “The Young Mayor of the Greatest American City,” the World (April 26, 1914). “to hit the ceiling”: Reminiscences of Frances Perkins (1955), Columbia University Oral History Research Collection, 287; “analytical mind”: William B. Ellison, “A Young Man of New York,” Hearst’s Magazine (April 1913).
26–27 “When he sits”: William Hard, “John Mitchel,” Everybody’s (June 1917); “greatest thing”: Hall, “The Young Mayor of the Greatest American City”; “straight stretch”: Statement of Mrs. W.B. Meloney, made to Capt. P.H.B. Frelinghuysen on Sept. 14, 1918. John Purroy Mitchel Papers, box 24, Library of Congress (LOC); “Yes, I dance”: Quoted in Edwin R. Lewinson, John Purroy Mitchel, Symbol of Reform (doctoral thesis, Columbia University, 1961), 147.
27 Gaelic hands: Lewinson, Symbol of Reform, 5; “great capacity”: “Death of H.D. Purroy,” New York Times (Aug. 23, 1903).
27 “hatred of expediency”: “John Purroy Mitchel,” National Municipal Review (Sept. 1918); “growing interest”: Lewinson, Symbol of Reform, 93; “probably no man”: “John Purroy Mitchel,” A Man Who Eats Up Figures,” Current Opinion (Sept. 1913).
27–28 “Whirlwind”: “Mitchel Makes First ‘Whirlwind’ Tour,” New York Tribune (Oct. 9, 1913); “better-than-thou”: “Fitzgerald Makes New Attack Upon Mitchel,” New York Tribune (Oct. 15, 191
3); simple words: Memorandum, no date. William B. Meloney Papers, box 4. folder “Miscellaneous mss. About Mitchel, including material on the charities controversy,” Columbia University Rare Book & Manuscript Library (RBML); “The issue is Murphy”: “No Secret Pledge, Declares Mitchel,” New York Tribune (Sept. 30, 1913).
28 “flashing eyes”: “No Secret Pledge, Declares Mitchel”; “evidently suffering”: “Mitchel Has Proxy Read His Speech,” New York Tribune (Oct. 15, 1913); “the electorate”: Francis Hackett, “The Sacred Cow,” New Republic (June 3, 1916); “be a ‘fan’”: Theodore A. Bingham to John Purroy Mitchel, Oct. 3, 1913, box 5, folder 3, John Purroy Mitchel Papers, LOC; “that he should ‘Look pleasant’”: “My Dear S.V.,” Memo, Sept. 16, 1913, box 5, folder 3, John Purroy Mitchel Papers, LOC.
28 Fusion’s accounts: Lewinson, Symbol of Reform, 127; “Spent $129,519 to Whip Tammany,” New York Tribune (Nov. 24, 1913).
28–29 Half a million: “Election Throngs in Times Square,” New York Times (Nov. 5, 1913); “one ambition”: Lewinson, Symbol of Reform, 123; “Mitchel and M’Call Vote Early, Then Rest,” New York Tribune (Nov. 5, 1913); “Almost Mob Mitchel to Shake His Hand,” New York Tribune (Nov. 5, 1913).
29 the most overwhelming victory: “Tammany,” Morning Olympian (Nov. 6, 1913); quoted in “The Elections: A Poll of the Press,” Outlook (Nov. 15, 1913); “Mr. Mitchel,” Anaconda Standard (Nov. 5, 1913); “with all my heart”: Woodrow Wilson to John Purroy Mitchel, Nov. 6, 1913, Memorandum, Meloney Papers, box 4, folder “Biographical Notes” (RBML).
30 staggering survivors of the previous night: “Horns and Hymns, Texts and Trots, Are 1914’s Ushers,” the World (Jan. 1, 1914); “Mitchel Takes Office, Advises Silent Policy,” New York Tribune (Jan. 2, 1914).
30–31 he turned to the commissioners: John Purroy Mitchel to Mr. Mullins, Jan. 6, 1914, box 6, folder “January 1914,” John Purroy Mitchel Papers, LOC; the experts: “Mitchel Names 18 and Tells of Efficiency Plan,” the World (Jan. 1, 1914); “Run up and down”: “Mayor Mitchel’s Appointments,” Evening Post (Jan. 2, 1914).
31 importance of teamwork: “Mitchel Slogan Work, Not Talk,” Evening Sun (Jan. 2, 1914).
32 “It’s been hell”: George S. Hellman, Lanes of Memory (New York: Knopf, 1927), 175.
32 Faugh! Stupidity: Alexander Berkman, “Observations and Comments,” Mother Earth (July 1913, Oct. 1913, March 1913, Aug. 1913); “A Message of Optimism,” the World (Jan. 1, 1914).
33 “Wonderful human achievement”: Alexander Berkman, “Observations and Comments,” Mother Earth (Jan. 1914).
33 The holiday season: Alexander Berkman, “Observations and Comments,” Mother Earth (Oct. 1913); “Black Haired Dance,” New York Tribune (Dec. 25, 1909).
33 especially aggravating: Alexander Berkman, “Observations and Comments,” Mother Earth (Oct. 1912, Nov. 1913).
34 bald, bespectacled, and short: Maurice Hollod interview, in Paul Avrich, Anarchist Voices: An Oral History of Anarchism in America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), 206; creating an elaborate taxonomy: Alexander Berkman, “Observations and Comments,” Mother Earth (Sept. 1912, March 1913, April 1913, May 1913, July 1913, Nov. 1913, Dec. 1913, June 1914).
34–35 “friends with somewhat similar aims”: Alexander Berkman, “Reflections,” the Blast (Dec. 15, 1916); “be patient … present ‘victory’”: Alexander Berkman, “Observations and Comments,” Mother Earth (April 1910).
35 “at heart had no faith in himself”: Gabriel Javsicas interview in Avrich, Anarchist Voices, 67; Roger Baldwin interview, Anarchist Voices, 62–63; Alexander Berkman, Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist (New York: Mother Earth Publishing Association, 1912), 7–8.
36 Yet human, too: Candace Falk, Love, Anarchy, and Emma Goldman (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2000), 20–21; Berkman, Prison Memoirs, 201.
36 “There can be no peace”: Berkman, Prison Memoirs, 32.
37 “One such act”: “The Spirit of Revolt,” in Peter Kropotkin, Kropotkin’s Revolutionary Pamphlets (New York: Dover Publications, 1970), 40.
37 The halfway anarchists: Berkman, Prison Memoirs, 7, 32.
37–38 He saw his enemy seated: No two renditions of this scene are identical. Berkman, Prison Memoirs, 33–35; Falk, Love, Anarchy, 24–25; “Shot in His Office,” Washington Post (July 24, 1892); “Henry C. Frick Shot,” New York Tribune (July 24, 1892); “Frick Shot Down by an Anarchist,” Philadelphia Inquirer (July 24, 1892); “Chairman Frick Shot,” New York Times (July 24, 1892).
39 Berkman was sentenced: Alexander Berkman to Emma Goldman, Oct. 1892, reprinted in Candace Falk, ed., Emma Goldman: A Documentary History of the American Years, Vol. I (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 129; Berkman, Prison Memoirs, 263.
39 “I found the world changed”: Alexander Berkman, “A Greeting,” Mother Earth (June 1906); “cold deliberation”: Berkman, Prison Memoirs, 492–493.
39 could still inspire love: Marie Ganz, Rebels: Into Anarchy—and Out Again (New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1920), 231; John J. Most, Jr., in Avrich, Anarchist Voices, 19; “Exploded in Apartment Occupied by Tarrytown Disturbers,” New York Times (July 5, 1914); “Tarrytown Police Rout I.W.W. Forces,” New York Times (June 1, 1914); Hutchins Hapgood, A Victorian in the Modern World (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1939), 204–205.
41 the applied details of utopia: Berkman to Havelock Ellis, 1925, quoted in Linnea Goodwin Burwood, Alexander Berkman: Russian-American Anarchist (doctoral thesis, SUNY Binghamton, 2000), 20–21; “radical the treatment”: Berkman, Prison Memoirs, 7; Berkman’s uncle was Max Nathanson: Paul Avrich, “Berkman’s Uncle,” Freedom (Jan. 17, 1973).
41 “Bombs and anarchists are inseparable”: Guido Bruno, “Anarchists at Close Range,” Current Opinion (Sept. 1916); “When compared”: “For Legislation Against Anarchists,” the Independent (April 16, 1908).
41 “Do we build warships”: Alexander Berkman, “Violence and Anarchism,” Mother Earth (April 1908); “Our whole social life”: Alexander Berkman, “Observations and Comments,” Mother Earth (Aug. 1914); “Of all paradoxes”: Earle Labor and Robert C. Leitz III, “Jack London on Alexander Berkman: An Unpublished Introduction,” American Literature (Oct. 1989).
42 “a man, a complete man”: Berkman, Prison Memoirs, 7–8.
Statistical Abstract
44 Edward Mott Woolley was typical: Edward Mott Woolley, Free-Lancing for Forty Magazines (Cambridge, MA: The Writer Publishing Company, 1927), 241–242.
44–46 Of all the magazines in the United States: Ibid., 166, 243; “existence and supremacy”: Ibid., 166, 147; “money sticking out”: Edward Mott Woolley, “Money Sticking Out: The Story of a Man Who Sold Groceries,” McClure’s Magazine (Jan. 1914); “Every industry”: Edward Mott Woolley, “Buttons: A Romance of American Industry,” McClure’s Magazine (Feb. 1914).
46 believed that his own rise: Gary Scharnhorst with Jack Bales, The Lost Life of Horatio Alger, Jr. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985), 149; “Topics of the Week: Perpetual Best-Sellers,” New York Times (May 28, 1910); Woolley, Free-Lancing, 79; “Runaways Find City Isn’t Like Books Say,” New York Tribune (Jan. 23, 1915).
46–47 Frank Wiegel: Frank Wiegel was photographed by Lewis Hine for the National Child Labor Committee records. Photographs from the records of the National Child Labor Committee (U.S.), Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
2. The Jobless Man and the Manless Job
48 “i wisht they’d hurry up”: Theodore Dreiser, The Color of a Great City (New York: Howard Fertig, 1987), 228–230. In his sketch “The Men in the Storm,” written around 1910, Dreiser describes the men waiting outside a Lower East Side hotel. There were between sixty and one hundred thousand homeless in the city, according to a State Excise Department investigation. Toward the front: “Rehabilitation of the Homeless Man,” John Adams Kingsbury Papers, box 1:34, folder 8, LOC; “Big Crowd of Applicants Gets Work Through New City Bureau,” the World (Feb. 15, 1914); “Yale Slummer
s Seeing the Town,” New York Times (May 13, 1910); “Summary of the Report of William Alberti Whiting on the Investigation of the Homeless Unemployed Which Was Held at the Municipal Lodging House in March, 1914,” Kingsbury Papers, box 1:10, folder 3; “Vagrancy” paper read at the National Conference of Charities and Corrections, May 15, 1914, by Stuart Rice, Confidential Inspector, Department of Public Charities, New York City: Kingsbury Papers, box 1:34, folder 8.
49 Those who made it inside: Dreiser, “The Men in the Snow”; “Isaac Russell to John A. Kingsbury,” Nov. 24, 1917, Kingsbury Papers, box 1:10, folder 2; “New Municipal Lodging House,” New York Tribune (Feb. 28, 1909); “In the matter of a ‘John Doe’ investigation of the Municipal Lodging House,” Kingsbury Papers, box 1:10, folder 3; Memorandum from Miss Mason to Mr. Folks, Dec. 27, 1914, Kingsbury Papers, box 1:10, folder 3; Chief City Magistrate’s Court, First Division, City of New York, The People of the State of New York, Complainant, Against William C. Yorke and Others, April 11, 1914, Kingsbury Papers, box 1:10, folder 3; W. Frank Persons to Kingsbury, April 2, 1914, Kingsbury Papers, box 1:10, folder 2.
50 too many to ignore: “Zero Weather Kills Six Here,” New York Times (Jan. 14, 1914); “The Church and the Unemployed,” the Masses (April 1914); John Purroy Mitchel, “Introductory Address,” American Labor Legislation Review (May 1914); Alexander Berkman, “Observations and Comments,” Mother Earth (Feb. 1914).
50–51 feeling rather homeless himself: John D. Rockefeller, Jr., to Laura Spellman Rockefeller, Oct. 16, 1913, box 4, folder 43, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., Personal series, Record Group 2, OMR, Rockefeller Family Archives, RAC; “We slept”: John D. Rockefeller, Jr., to Laura Spellman Rockefeller, Jan. 7, 1914, box 4, folder 44, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., Personal series, Record Group 2, OMR, Rockefeller Family Archives, RAC.