More Powerful Than Dynamite

by Thai Jones

  51 He had hated working here: Fosdick Research Notebooks, vol. 26, box 57, folder 503, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., Personal series, Record Group 2, OMR, Rockefeller Family Archives, RAC; Raymond B. Fosdick, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., A Portrait (New York: Harper, 1956), 84.

  51 his focus had shifted to philanthropy: William H. Allen to Frederick T. Gates, April 1, 1912, box 2, folder 6, Civic Interests series, Record Group 2, OMR, Rockefeller Family Archives, RAC.

  52 “a much more important man”: Current Literature, quoted in Fosdick, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., 142; “you poor dear”: Abby Aldrich Rockefeller to John D. Rockefeller, Jr., probably Oct. 4, 1914, box 1, folder 7, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., Personal series, Record Group 2, OMR, Rockefeller Family Archives, RAC; Chase, Mary Ellen, Abby Aldrich Rockefeller (New York: Macmillan, 1950), 32.

  52–53 the incoming administration: John D. Rockefeller, Jr., to John Purroy Mitchel, Dec. 15, 1913, box 92, folder 694, Friends and Services series, Record Group 2, OMR, Rockefeller Family Archives, RAC; too many of his own: “May Retain Waldo; Few Want His Place,” New York Times (Dec. 24, 1913); “Mitchel Faces Row Over Spoils,” New York Tribune (Dec. 24, 1913); “a known large fund”: R. Fulton Cutting to Starr J. Murphy, Jan 12, 1914, box 2, folder 6, Civic Interests series, Record Group 2, OMR, Rockefeller Family Archives, RAC.

  53 the Colorado Fuel & Iron Company: Research Notebooks, vol. 26, box 57, folder 503, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., Personal series, Record Group 2, OMR, Rockefeller Family Archives, RAC; Charles O. Heydt to John E. Sykes, May 30, 1914, box 20, folder 173, Business Interests series, Record Group 2, OMR, Rockefeller Family Archives, RAC.

  53–54 Lamont Montgomery Bowers: Raymond B. Fosdick conversation with John D. Rockefeller, Jr., Oct. 28, 1953, vol. “Biographical Works,” box 57, folder 503, Record Group 2, OMR, Rockefeller Family Archives, RAC; Final Report and Testimony Submitted to Congress by the Commission on Industrial Relations, Vol. 9 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1916), 8428.

  54 “Mother” Jones was back: Scott Martelle, Blood Passion: The Ludlow Massacre and Class War in the American West (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2007), 152; “Colorado Troops Oust Mother Jones,” New York Times (Jan. 5, 1914).

  54–56 the business of the antiques: John D. Rockefeller, Jr., to Thomas B. Clarke, Jan. 12, 1914, box 132, folder 1309, Homes series, Record Group 2, OMR, Rockefeller Family Archives, RAC; surely he was justified: Fosdick Research Notebooks, vol. 26, box 57, folder 503, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., Personal series, Record Group 2, OMR, Rockefeller Family Archives, RAC.

  56 An infinitesimal movement: William Morris Davis, Elementary Meteorology (New York: Ginn and Company, 1894), 58–59; Willis Isbister Milham, Meteorology: A Text-Book on the Weather, the Causes of Its Changes, and Weather Forecasting for the Student and General Reader (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1918), 359; “Keeping Tabs on Gales That Buffet New Yorkers,” New York Tribune (March 7, 1915); “Bitter Cold Here on Wings of Gale,” New York Times (Jan. 13, 1914); Ernest Harvier, “What Daybreak Means in the City,” New York Times (Nov. 11, 1923); “Shipping and Mails,” New York Times (Jan. 12, 1914); Horatio Alvah Foster, Electrical Engineer’s Pocket-Book: A Hand-Book of Useful Data for Electricians and Electrical Engineers (New York: D. Van Nostrand Company, 1903), 415. Foster lists New York City’s streetlight illumination and extinguishment schedule. In January, as of 1903, the lights would have been switched off approximately half an hour before sunrise; on Jan. 12, that would have corresponded to 6:52 a.m. “Dark City Streets Make Crime Easy,” New York Times (July 25, 1915); “375,037 Buildings in Greater City,” New York Tribune (Nov. 29, 1914). This article reports that the greater city’s 102,400 houses contained 919,000 individual apartments. Vance Thompson, “Women of New York’s Smart Set Live in Limelight of Publicity, Says Vance Thompson,” Evening Sun (Feb. 1, 1914).

  56–57 Above their heads: “Bitter Cold Here”; “Bear Panic Hits Weather Market,” New York Tribune (Jan. 13, 1914); Milham, Meteorology, 155; By sundown: “The Bowery Cleared of Idle Hosts,” New York Call (Feb. 12, 1914).

  57–58 after everyone else was settled: “Zero Weather Kills Six Here,” New York Times (Jan. 14, 1914); “His good faith”: Reminiscences of Robert Binkerd, Columbia University Oral History Collection, 51–52; “One Time ‘Hobo’ Plans Big Reforms to Help City’s Needy,” New York Times (Feb. 1, 1914).

  58–59 Abuses tainted every division: “Children Infected in City Hospitals,” Evening Sun (Jan. 17, 1914); Letter from Kingsbury to Dr. Ray Nelson, May 9, 1914, Kingsbury Papers, box 1:9, folder 1, LOC; Letter from Mr. Percy R. Pine to Kingsbury, Jan. 24, 1917, Kingsbury Papers, box 1:9, folder 8; “Memorandum of Visit to City Home,” Dec. 14, 1914, Kingsbury Papers, box 1:9, folder 8. These particular thefts were committed during the month of Sept. 1914. “Conditions Reported on Blackwell’s Island by Joseph H. Stoltzenburg, Steward, City Home,” Nov. 6, 1914, Kingsbury Papers, box 1:9, folder 8; In the morgue: Letter from John W. Armstrong to Kingsbury, Oct. 15, 1915. The note reads: “I hereby recommend the dismissal of Frank Idane + ? Kelly helpers at Mortuary caught with a woman in exposed state 1:30 am. Idane brings woman in I caught Kelly on top of woman.” Kingsbury Papers, box 1:9, folder 2.

  59 the largest social welfare system: Dorothy Marie Brown, The Poor Belong to Us: Catholic Charities and American Welfare (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997), 49; Winthrop D. Lane, “Children and the City’s Purse-Strings,” the Survey (Jan. 1, 1915); “in the dead of night”: “The Care of the City’s Poor,” speech by Kingsbury, Kingsbury Papers, box 1:34, folder 8, LOC; Frances Perkins, Columbia University Oral History Collection, interview 1, session 1, 260.

  59 falling toward zero: “Six Perish in Intense Cold,” Evening Sun (Jan. 14, 1914); “prostrate forms”: “The Care of the City’s Poor.”

  60–61 a tour of the Municipal Lodging House: “Mayor Visits City Shelters to Aid in Care of Homeless,” the World (Jan. 17, 1914); “become panicky”: “Mayor Appeals for Work for the Idle,” Evening Sun (Feb. 11, 1914).

  61 A condition of “industrial leanness”: H.N. Gardner, “Democratic Prosperity,” Outlook (Oct. 18, 1916); Roger W. Babson, “The Ups and Downs of Wall Street,” New York Times (Dec. 31, 1916); Henry Litchfield West, “American Politics: Business Depression and the Popular Mind,” Forum (Oct. 1908); John B. Andrews, “Introductory Note: Organization to Combat Unemployment,” American Labor Legislation Review, vol. IV, no. 2 (May 1914): 209–220; “Nation Faces Panic,” Appeal to Reason (Dec. 27, 1913).

  61–62 made for a charming diversion: John D. Rockefeller, Jr., to Laura Spellman Rockefeller, Jan. 19, 1914, box 4, folder 44, “Personal Correspondence, Rockefeller, Laura Spellman, 1914–1915. Rockefeller Family JDR, Jr. Personal,” Record Group III2Z, RAC.

  62 an opportune crisis: Marie Ganz, Rebels: Into Anarchy—and Out Again (New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1920), 154; “Six Perish in Intense Cold”; “Two Ice Maidens Dance with Gale,” New York Tribune (Jan. 13, 1914); “Frozen Bodies Are Found in Streets—Mercury Falls to Four Below,” New York Times (Jan. 14, 1914); “The Cry Has Meaning,” Appeal to Reason (Jan. 17, 1914); Fred D. Warren, “Things as I See Them,” Appeal to Reason (Jan. 17, 1914); Alexander Berkman, “Observations and Comments,” Mother Earth (Feb. 1914).

  63 Mitchel appealed to the public: Mayor John Purroy Mitchel Records, box 49, folder 439, “Subject Files—Unemployment,” New York City Municipal Archives.

  63 everyone was dictating to the unemployed: Helen Marot, American Labor Unions (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1914), 255–260; Melvyn Dubof-sky, We Shall Be All: A History of the Industrial Workers of the World (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1969), 64, 115, 155, 164.

  64 the Industrial Workers of the World: Marot, Labor Unions, 263; Henri Hand-wirth, “What IS to Be Done for the I.W.W. in New York City?” Solidarity (March 21, 1914). The I.W.W. meeting halls are described in a letter from Estelle to Frank Tannenbaum, April 12, 1914. Of Grand Street, she wrote, “Gee what a place, but the place in
West St. has that beat.” Frank Tannenbaum Papers, box 5, RBML; Thomas Flynn and John Sandgren, “New York City and the I.W.W.,” Solidarity (Feb. 7, 1914); Joe Ettor, “New York City and the I.W.W.,” Solidarity (Jan. 24, 1914); New Yorker, “Big Meeting in New York City,” Solidarity (Nov. 22, 1913); “191 I.W.W. Raiders Arrested in Church; Court Holds Tannenbaum in $5,000 Bail,” the World (March 5, 1914).

  65 many chose to be optimistic: “I.W.W. War on Waiters,” New York Tribune (Nov. 9, 1913); “The New Year,” Solidarity (Jan. 10, 1914); Frank Tannenbaum’s faith: “Unemployed ‘Army’ of 100 Decline Places at $3 a Day; Demand Turkey and Wine,” New York Herald (March 4, 1914); Estelle to Frank Tannenbaum, April 11, 1915, Tannenbaum Papers, box 5, RBML; Frank Tannenbaum, The Labor Movement: Its Conservative Functions and Social Consequences (New York: Putnam, 1921), 21, 50–51; “The $1,000 Fund,” Solidarity (Feb. 7, 1914); Frank Tannenbaum to Dr. Grant, April 21, 1914, Tannenbaum Papers, box 3, RBML; Mary Heaton Vorse, “The Case of Adolf,” Outlook (May 2, 1914), 30.

  65–67 He had been born in Austrian Galicia: There is a unanimous uncertainty concerning the early years of Frank Tannenbaum’s life. Every source offers a different version of events. These dates are based on census and military records. The newspapers reported that he was twenty-one in the spring of 1914, but his birthday was Nov. 23, 1894. Tannenbaum, The Labor Movement, 50; Estelle to Frank Tannenbaum, Sept. 25, 1914, Nov. 1, 1914, Oct. 17, 1914, Tannenbaum Papers, box 5, RBML; Joseph Maier and Richard W. Weatherhead, Frank Tannenbaum: A Biographical Essay (New York: Columbia University, 1974); “restless, dissatisfied”: Tannenbaum, The Labor Movement, 51–52, 96–97; “Tannenbaum’s Speech,” the Masses (April 1914); Emma Goldman, Living My Life, Volume II (New York: Dover Publications, 1970), 523; Harry (?) to Tannenbaum, July 9, 1914, Tannenbaum Papers, box 4, RBML; “inarticulate hunger”: George Palmer Putnam, “The New Tannenbaum,” New York Times (June 26, 1921); his ordinariness was agony: “Tannenbaum’s Speech”; Tannenbaum, The Labor Movement, 4; Estelle to Frank Tannenbaum, April 11, 1915, Tannenbaum Papers, box 5, RBML; “The $1,000 Fund,” Solidarity (Feb. 7, 1914); Violet Maxwell to Frank Tannenbaum, March 29, 1914, Tannenbaum Papers, box 3, RBML; Charles Willis Thompson, “So Called I.W.W. Raids Really Hatched by Schoolboys,” New York Times (March 29, 1914).

  67–68 The next storm rolled up along the tracks: “8 Die in Icy Blast with Storm Near,” New York Tribune (Feb. 13, 1914); “Snow Falls Thick as Cold Departs Heavy Storm Spreads Over Country and Gas Pressure Grows,” Cleveland Plain Dealer (Feb. 14, 1914); “Snow 20 Inches Deep in Scranton,” Philadelphia Inquirer (Feb. 15, 1914); “Cincinnati Recovers from Storm,” Philadelphia Inquirer (Feb. 15, 1914); “Worst Since Blizzard of 1888,” Philadelphia Inquirer (Feb. 15, 1914); “City in Snow Storm Grip Traffic Held Up While Business Is Paralyzed,” Wilkes-Barre Times Leader (Feb. 14, 1914); “East Snow-Swept; Two Ships Ashore,” New York Times (Feb. 14, 1914); “City Snow-Bound and Eight Perish in 75-Mile Gale,” New York Times (Feb. 15, 1914); “Below-Zero Cold Kills Four in City; Thousands Suffer,” the World (Feb. 13, 1914); “Much Suffering, Tho’ Snow Comes After Zero Spell,” the World (Feb. 14, 1914); “Ten Inches of ‘Dry Sleet’ Cover City; 6 Deaths in Storm,” the World (Feb. 15, 1914); “Trains Snowed Up; Many Commuters Fail to Reach City,” the World (Feb. 15, 1914).

  68 the city’s first municipal employment bureau: 320 of the city’s private job agencies reported 27,062 jobs available, but only 11,268 filled. The Evening Sun says the bureau opened from seven A.M. to seven P.M. “Mayor Hunts Jobs for Unemployed,” New York Tribune (Feb. 11, 1914); “Big Crowd of Applicants Gets Work Through New City Bureau,” the World (Feb. 15, 1914); “16,000 Only Lift Corner of City’s Mantle of Snow,” the World (Feb. 16, 1914); “City Finds Jobs for 570 on First Day,” Evening Sun (Feb. 15, 1914).

  68–69 Ten inches of snow: The full-time sanitation employees were the “white wings,” named after the snowy uniforms that cost each man a dollar a week to keep clean. “Mayor Hunts Jobs for Unemployed”; “Big Crowd of Applicants Gets Work Through New City Bureau”; “16,000 Only Lift Corner of City’s Mantle of Snow”; Up in Tarrytown: “Rockefeller Plies Shovel,” New York Times (Feb. 18, 1914).

  70 “a comedy of inefficiency”: “New Snowstorm Clogs City; 4 Die, 5 Hurt, As Result,” the World (Feb. 17, 1914); “Snow-Bound New York,” the World (Feb. 17, 1914); “Mitchel Himself Takes a Hand in Heavy Snow Job,” the World (Feb. 18, 1914); “The Snow-Removal Problem,” the World (Feb. 18, 1914); Roy L. M’Cardell, “Snow Shoveling as Homeless ‘Chowder’ O’Brien Sees It,” the World (March 8, 1914).

  70–71 “The Jobless Man and the Manless Job”: “1,000 Jobless Seek Shelter in Church,” New York Times (Feb. 28, 1914); “To Bring the Jobless Man to the Manless Job,” New York Times (Feb. 22, 1914).

  The Social Evil

  72 Wickedness had specialized: Rev. Edwin Whittier Caswell, “The Right Use of Wealth,” New York Observer and Chronicle (Jan. 27, 1910).

  72 “a wave of moral house cleaning”: “Progress,” New York Tribune (March 1, 1913); “Everything is”: “Reforming the Republican Party,” Palladium (Nov. 21, 1913); catalogue the eighty-seven: “Introducing ‘The Society for Improving the Condition of the Rich,’” the World (Feb. 22, 1914).

  73 the catchword … “social hygiene”: Havelock Ellis, The Task of Social Hygiene (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1912), 2; “Books and Authors,” Living Age (Nov. 2, 1912).

  73 A geography of uplift: Harry P. Kraus, The Settlement House Movement in New York City, 1886–1914 (New York: Arno Press, 1980); 34; Theodore Dreiser, The Color of a Great City (New York: Howard Fertig, 1987), 129; Karl K. Kitchen, “Why Not Join the Uplift Movement,” the World (May 3, 1914).

  74 it was necessary to advertise: “The Spectator,” Outlook (Feb. 26, 1910); charities trust: “The Spectator,” Outlook (Feb. 26, 1910). The couplet is from the 1886 poem “In Bohemia,” by John Boyle O’Reilly; it was quoted by Walter Lippmann. Lippmann, Drift and Mastery (New York: Mitchell Kennerley, 1914), 290.

  74–75 The proliferation … was baffling: “Union of Reform Societies Needed,” New York Tribune (Jan. 4, 1912).

  75 Down that road lay madness: “Is ‘Reform’ Sensationalism Responsible for the Apparent Increase of Insanity?” New York Times (May 13, 1906); Tom P. Morgan, “The After Effects,” Puck (Feb. 9, 1910); “Cult of the Half-baked,” New York Tribune (Feb. 11, 1913); Lippmann, Drift and Mastery, 184–185.

  75–76 when The Charity Girl premiered: “‘The Charity Girl’ Is Disappointing,” New York Times (Oct. 3, 1912); “‘The Charity Girl’ Sung,” New York Tribune (Oct. 3, 1912).

  3. A New Gospel

  77 “If the ladies will form in line”: Lew Quinn, “Teaching the Tango to John D. Rockefeller, Jr.,” the World Magazine (Feb. 22, 1914); became merely details: Fosdick Research Notebooks, vol. 26, box 57, folder 503, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., Personal series, Record Group 2, OMR, Rockefeller Family Archives, RAC.

  78–79 The latest revelations: John D. Rockefeller, Jr., to Laura Spellman Rockefeller, Jan. 24, 1914, box 4, folder 44, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., Personal series, Record Group 2, OMR, Rockefeller Family Archives, RAC; John D. Rockefeller, Jr., to James Bronson Reynolds, Dec. 24, 1913, box 6, folder 30, Rockefeller Boards series, Record Group 2, OMR, Rockefeller Family Archives, RAC; John D. Rockefeller, Jr., to George J. Kneeland, Feb. 13, 1914, box 6, folder 30, Rockefeller Boards series, Record Group 2, OMR, Rockefeller Family Archives, RAC; John D. Rockefeller, Jr., to John Purroy Mitchel, Jan. 16, 1914, John Purroy Mitchel Papers, box 6, folder 1, LOC.

  79 the Young Men’s Bible Class: “Bible Class Prays for Rockefeller, Jr.,” New York Times (May 22, 1905); pass along his insights: Albert F. Schenkel, The Rich Man and the Kingdom: John D. Rockefeller, Jr., and the Protestant Establishment (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995), 22–29; “Fixing Life’s Standards,” box 1, folder 38, Speeches series, Record Group 2, OMR, Rockefeller Family Archives, RAC; “‘Young Men Who Try to Win Don’t Drink,�
�” the Sun (Jan. 19, 1914); Under his leadership: Ron Chernow, Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. (New York: Random House, 1998), 509, 510; Raymond B. Fosdick, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., A Portrait (New York: Harper, 1956), 126.

  80 yet another … blizzard: Robert S. MacArthur, History of Calvary Baptist Church, New York (New York: E. Scott, 1890); “Rockefellers Face Storm,” New York Tribune (March 2, 1914); “Mob Threat for Calvary Church Brings Out Police,” New York Herald (March 2, 1914); “The Calvary Baptist Church,” New York Times (Dec. 24, 1883); “Snow Can’t Keep John D. from Church,” the World (March 2, 1914).

  80–81 the old First Presbyterian Church: “Unemployed Invade Fifth Av. Church,” New York Times (March 2, 1914); they had chosen his church: The newspaper accounts of the interaction between Tannenbaum and the Rev. Duffield vary, but this version, from the World, is most in keeping with the tendencies of the participants. Other papers, particularly the Times and the Herald, depict a more hostile conversation. “Invading Church, I.W.W. Mob Gets Money by Threat,” the World (March 2, 1914); “Mob in Church in Fifth Avenue Assails Pastor,” New York Herald (March 2, 1914). This was the third straight evening that Tan-nenbaum had descended on a place of worship, demanding food and rest. First, he and a few score of others had attempted to storm the Old Baptist Tabernacle on the East Side, but a beat cop had happened by and moved them along. Then, on Saturday, February 28, he had brought hundreds of unemployed men to the Labor Temple, a mission church on Fourteenth Street, where they had crept in during a movie screening. When the lights came up and the rector ordered them out, Frank had declared, “We are honest men. We have come here to sleep and eat. If you attempt to force us from this hall, the floor of the Labor Temple will be covered with blood.” Scuffles sparked up between some of the men and the church workers. The police had come, and it looked like trouble. As a last resort, the pastor asked all those who truly had no place to stay to make themselves known. Sixty or so hands went up, and he agreed to let them sleep in the basement. The cops shooed the rest back into the streets.