by Thai Jones
81–83 This was the third straight night: “Homeless Army Lodged and Fed in Old St. Mark’s,” the World (March 3, 1914); “Urges Workless on to Anarchy,” New York Times (March 3, 1914); “Unemployed Mob of 200 March to St. Mark’s Church,” New York Herald (March 3, 1914); “‘We Will Work if You Wake Us at 9,’” New York Tribune (March 3, 1914); in the headlines every morning: Tan-nenbaum and his friends provided the inspiration and leadership for the tactic of church invasions. Although more prominent I.W.W. leaders, including Bill Hay-wood, Carlo Tresca, and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, were in New York and offered their support, Frank angrily denied receiving any funds or direct instruction from the national office. In Footnote to Folly, her memoir of New York City life, Mary Heaton Vorse wrote, “The shifting mass of unemployed workers was run by a Committee of Ten, the ablest of the group. This committee consulted daily with Haywood and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn.” This was not the case. Tannen-baum himself identified the leaders as Henry Landwirth, Frank Strawn Hamilton, Sam Hartman, Moses Bell, Sam Wallace, Frank Shafer, Joseph Secunda. “Shall It Be Capitalist Bread Line or Socialist Voting Line?” Appeal to Reason (March 14, 1914); “500 Jobless Spend Night in St. Paul’s,” the Call (March 4, 1914); “Unemployed ‘Army’ of 100 Decline Places at $3 a Day; Demand Turkey and Wine,” New York Herald (March 4, 1914); Wilson’s cabinet: “Tells Unemployed to Adopt Force,” New York Times (March 4, 1914); “Mutiny in Ranks of I.W.W. Army at Old St. Paul’s,” the World (March 4, 1914).
83 inside the Willard Hotel: “President Wilson Guest of His Cabinet Officers,” Washington Post (March 7, 1914).
84 end-of-year retrospectives: “The Administration’s First Year,” New York Tribune (March 3, 1914); “The First Year of the Wilson Administration: A Review,” Outlook (March 7, 1914); heightened the conviviality: “President Wilson Guest of His Cabinet Officers”; Edwin A. Weinstein, Woodrow Wilson: A Medical and Psychological Biography (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981), 255; Arthur S. Link, Wilson: The New Freedom (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1956), 460; Arthur S. Link, ed., The Papers of Woodrow Wilson: Volume 29 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979), 347.
85 a diplomatic quandary: James Creelman, “Armed Intervention in Riven Mexico by United States Alone Can Stop Savage Battle for Power and Plunder, Says James Creelman in Message from Huerta’s Capital,” Washington Post (March 1, 1914); Wilson chose to remain aloof: “Says Wilson Policy is ‘Deadly Drifting,’” New York Times (Feb. 26, 1914); the president relaxed his position: “Carranza Plays for Recognition,” New York Times (March 3, 1914); “United States May Abandon Benton Inquiry,” New York Tribune (March 3, 1914).
86 the longed-for thaw: “With Old Sol Chief Aid, 20,687 Do Big Day’s Work,” the World (March 4, 1914); “City Freed by Thaw from Snow Fetters,” New York Tribune (March 4, 1914).
86–87 “Get in the real breadline”: The newspapers were oddly contradictory about the number of men who left the breadline to join the march. Some said none at all left the queue, but the Tribune, normally the most hostile to Tannenbaum’s movement, reported a mass exodus. “500 Jobless Spend Night in St. Paul’s”; arrived at the parish house: It is not clear whether Frank made this speech in the parish house at St. Paul’s, or earlier in the evening. “Unemployed ‘Army’ of 100 Decline Places at $3 a Day”; “I.W.W. Mob Splits on Leaders; Ranks Dwindle,” New York Herald (March 4, 1914); “Tells Unemployed to Adopt Force”; “The Unemployed Raid St. Paul’s”; “Mutiny in Ranks of I.W.W. Army at Old St. Paul’s.”
87 Vacationing in the Adirondacks: “Governor and Mayor Snowbound,” New York Herald (March 3, 1914); “Mayor Among Snowbound,” New York Tribune (March 3, 1914).
87–89 the administration’s voice on unemployment: “Lest We Forget,” New York Times (Dec. 22, 1913); John A. Kingsbury, “Our Army of the Unemployed,” reprinted in Julia E. Johnson, ed., Selected Articles on Unemployment (New York: H.W. Wilson Company, 1921), 8; “the basement of any church”: “Unemployed Invade the Labor Temple,” New York Times (March 1, 1914); “Mitchel Will Deal with Work Problem,” the World (March 1, 1914); “The great man”: “Jail Them All, Mayor Mitchel,” the Call (March 6, 1914); “Homeless Army Lodged and Fed in Old St. Mark’s”; “Help to Salvation Army,” Evening Post (March 5, 1914); “Tells Unemployed to Adopt Force.”
89 In public he downplayed the Tannenbaum issue: “What the Authorities Should Do,” the Sun (March 3, 1914); “A Criminal Menace,” the World (March 3, 1914); “Women Scout for I.W.W.,” Evening Post (March 4, 1914); “Tannenbaum’s Idle ‘Army’ Trapped in a Church Raid; 190 Men, 1 Woman, Seized,” New York Herald (March 5, 1914); “Tells Unemployed to Adopt Force.”
90–93 St. Alphonsus’ Catholic Church: There were several detectives assigned to keep watch on the unemployed activists. But the two most prominent were Detective Sergeant Gegan (sometimes spelled Geoghegan) and Detective Lieutenant Gildea. At the time, Tannenbaum claimed that he had chosen St. Alphonsus’ on a whim, but during his trial Charles Plunkett, anarchist and future husband to Becky Edelsohn, testified that he had suggested the church for the night’s destination, having heard—incorrectly, as the events showed—that the unemployed had been offered sanctuary there. “the best meeting I’ve had yet”: For a description of the Night Court, see “A Taste of Justice,” in John Reed. John Reed: Adventures of a Young Man: Short Stories from Life (San Francisco: City Lights, 1975), 32; “Tannenbaum’s Speech,” the Masses (May 1914); “I.W.W. Invaders Seized in Church,” New York Times (March 5, 1914); “Unemployed Storm Church; 190 Arrested,” New York Tribune (March 5, 1914); “Tannenbaum’s Idle ‘Army’ Trapped in a Church Raid”; “191 I.W.W. Raiders Arrested in Church; Court Holds Tannenbaum in $5,000 Bail,” the World (March 5, 1914); “Army of Jobless Arrested After It Is Denied Shelter at St. Alphonsus Church,” the Call (March 5, 1914); “Big Bail for Unemployed,” Evening Post (March 5, 1914).
93 a late evening for … McKay: “191 I.W.W. Raiders Arrested in Church.”
94 in no mood for anniversaries: “Observations and Comments,” Mother Earth (March 1914); “severest struggle”: Mabel Dodge Luhan, Intimate Memories, Vol. 3: Movers and Shakers (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1936), 61. For Berkman’s vision of the ideal revolutionist, see Alexander Berkman Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist (New York: Mother Earth Publishing Association, 1912), 73.
96 had witnessed this all unfold before: “I.W.W. Slurs Mayor; Calls Him ‘Bell Hop,’” New York Times (March 7, 1914); “Shocking Abuse by Police, He Says,” the World (March 16, 1914); Alexander Berkman, “The Movement of the Unemployed,” Mother Earth (April 1914).
96 a rally at Union Square: Berkman “The Movement of the Unemployed”; “Anarchists Spread Alarm in 5th Ave.,” New York Times (March 22, 1914); “Anarchists Rout Fifth Ave. Throng,” New York Tribune (March 22, 1914); “Bearing Black Flag, Mob Raids Fifth Ave.,” the World (March 22, 1914); “Those Signs of Spring,” New York Times (March 18, 1914); “The Weather,” New York Times (March 23, 1914).
96 the slightest indication of unrest: “Police Awe Orators at I.W.W. Meeting,” New York Times (March 24, 1914); “Mitchel Warns the I.W.W.,” New York Times (March 25, 1914); “Mayor Doesn’t Fear I.W.W. Outbreak,” the World (March 25, 1914); “damned nonsense”: “Anarchists Spread Alarm in 5th Ave.”
99–100 cell number 813 of the Tombs: For details about the prison in the 1910s, see Carlos Furnaro, A Modern Purgatory (New York: Mitchell Kennerley, 1917), 5–28. Officials had refused to allow known sympathizers into the courtroom. never wanted to submit: “Tannenbaum’s Speech,” “Lawyers’ Wrangles Mark Opening of Tannenbaum Trial,” the Call (March 25, 1914); “Tannenbaum Fails to Draw a Crowd as Trial Begins,” the World (March 25, 1914); “Says I.W.W. Leader Expected Violence,” New York Times (March 25, 1914); “Tannenbaum Trial for Church Attack,” New York Tribune (March 25, 1914); “Women Flock to Trial of Tannenbaum, Curious to See Leader of Church Raid,” New York Herald (March 25, 1914); justice would prevail: Max Eastman, “The Tan
nenbaum Crime,” the Masses (May 1914); “Priests Accuse Young Leader of I.W.W. at Trial,” the World (March 26, 1914); “Priests Testify to Idle Mob Raid at St. Alphonsus’,” New York Herald (March 26, 1914); “Tannenbaum’s Side to Be Heard To-day,” New York Tribune (March 26, 1914); “I.W.W. Mob Forced Church Door Lock,” New York Times (March 26, 1914); “Reporters Spring Sensations at the Tannenbaum Trial,” the Call (March 27, 1914); “Tannenbaum Was Lured into Church, His Witnesses Say,” the World (March 27, 1914); “Church Riot Laid to Police, Not I.W.W. Men,” New York Sun (March 27, 1914); “German Reporter Aids Tannenbaum,” New York Herald (March 27, 1914); “Tannenbaum’s Men Testify for Him,” New York Times (March 27, 1914); “Tannenbaum Is Guilty; Gets Year and Fine of $500,” the World (March 28, 1914); “Tannenbaum Guilty: Gets a Year in Jail,” New York Times (March 28, 1914); “Tannenbaum Guilty; Year in Prison and $500 Fine,” New York Herald (March 28, 1914); “Tannenbaum Guilty Is Jury’s Verdict,” the Call (March 28, 1914).
The Possibility of a Revolution
103 mussed white linens: Mabel Dodge Luhan, Intimate Memories, Vol. 3: Movers and Shakers (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1936), 4, 44, 80–81, 83; “their passions”: Ronald Steel, Walter Lippmann and the American Century (Boston: Little, Brown, 1980), 50.
103–4 Insurrections were everywhere: Luhan, Movers and Shakers, 55–75; John Reed, Adventures of a Young Man: Short Stories from Life (San Francisco: City Lights, 1975), 139; “bourgeois pigs”: The cook was Hippolyte Havel. Gerald W. McFarland, Inside Greenwich Village: A New York City Neighborhood, 1898–1918 (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2005), 197.
104–5 The Francisco Ferrer Center: Leonard Abbott, quoted in Avrich, Modern School, 70, 114; portraits and speakers: Florence Tager, “Politics and Culture in Anarchist Education: The Modern School of New York and Stelton, 1911–1915,” Curriculum Inquiry (Winter 1986); the Modern School: Paul Avrich, The Modern School Movement: Anarchism and Education in America (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2006).
105–6 the devilish Walter Lippmann: Luhan, Movers and Shakers, 103; “expects to be president”: Letter from Mabel Dodge to Gertrude Stein, May 18, 1914, Patricia R. Everett, ed., A History of Having a Great Many Times not Continued to be Friends: The Correspondence Between Mabel Dodge and Gertrude Stein, 1911–1934. (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1996); “cleanest strokes”: “Confidential Book Guide,” Life (Sept. 25, 1913); Tenderloin: Walter Lippmann, “The Taboo in Politics,” Forum (Feb. 1913); Lincoln Steffens, The Autobiography of Lincoln Steffens (Berkeley, CA: Heyday Books; Santa Clara: Santa Clara University, 2005), 655; “categories,” “a fine poise”: Quoted in Steel, Walter Lippmann, 50, 51, 53.
106 devoting herself to political pursuits: Luhan, Movers and Shakers, 57–58, 110.
108 inviting them to her apartment: Steel, Walter Lippmann, 51, 53.
108–9 “As rulers of American industry”: Walter Lippmann, “Dynamite Versus Revolution,” the International (January 1912); “Wilson doesn’t really fight”: Lippmann, Drift and Mastery, 137–138; “wild in … deeds”: Ibid., 180; “weak unions … weakness”: Ibid., 89; “heated powder mine”: “Dynamite Versus Revolution”; “his second book”: Letter from Mabel Dodge to Gertrude Stein, May 18, 1914, Patricia R. Everett, ed., A History of Having a Great Many Times.
109–10 Dodge and Berkman just could not communicate: Luhan, Movers and Shakers, 40, 58–61.
4. “Three Cheers for the Cops!”
111–15 Saturday … in Union Square: Details of Caron’s beating come from his testimony in Magistrates Court, which is reprinted in Mary Heaton Vorse, A Footnote to Folly (New York: Farrar & Rinehart Inc., 1935), 71; “Police Battle with I.W.W. in Union Sq. Riots,” New York Tribune (April 5, 1914); “Police Use Clubs on I.W.W. Rioters,” New York Times (April 5, 1914); “Police Clubs, Fists and Horses Rout I.W.W. Rioters in Fierce Battle at Union Square,” the World (April 5, 1914); “Mounted Policemen Ride Down I.W.W. Rioters in Union Square, Club Leaders, Arrest O’Carroll and Eight Others,” New York Herald (April 5, 1914); “Police Club Big Anarchist Mob,” the Sun (April 5, 1914); Alexander Berkman, “The Movement of the Unemployed,” Mother Earth (April 1914); “Police Called Off I.W.W. by Mayor,” New York Herald (April 8, 1914); “Writer Once Jailed with I.W.W. Describes Meeting,” the World (April 12, 1914).
115–18 the telegram from Washington: Telegram from M.D. Foster to John D. Rockefeller, Jr., March 31, 1914, and the reply, April 2, in Rockefeller Family, OMR, Business Interests, Record Group III2C, box 21, folder 196, RAC; John D. Rockefeller, Jr., to John D. Rockefeller, April 3, 1914, quoted in Joseph W. Ernst, ed.,“Dear Father”/“Dear Son” (New York: Fordham University Press, 1994), 51; “the word ‘satisfaction’”: Industrial Relations Committee, Vol. 9, 8441; “happy day for the business man”: Bowers to Charles M. Cabot, April 8, 1912, quoted in Scott Martelle, Blood Passion: The Ludlow Massacre and Class War in the American West (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2007), 41; “society in general”: Casualty figures and quotations are from ibid., 156–157, Appendix B; “You may give your name and residence”: Conditions in the Coal Mines of Colorado: Hearings Before a Subcommittee of the Committee on Mines and Mining, House of Representatives, Sixty-Third Congress, Second Session, Pursuant to H. res. 387, A Resolution Authorizing and Directing the Committee on Mines and Mining to Make an Investigation of Conditions in the Coal Mines of Colorado (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1914); how all the family operations worked: Welborn to John D. Rockefeller, Jr., Aug. 20, 1914, “Colorado Memorandum,” 18, Rockefeller Family, OMR, Business Interests, Record Group III2Z, Series V, Biographical Works, box 54, folder 484, RAC.
120 If Junior was concerned: Charles M. Schwab to John D. Rockefeller, Jr., April 9, 1914; “exceedingly amusing”: J. P. Morgan, Jr., to John D. Rockefeller, Jr., April 7, 1914. Rockefeller Family, OMR, Business Interests, Record Group III2C, box 21, folder 196, RAC; “a bugle note”: Laura Spellman Rockefeller to John D. Rockefeller, Jr., April 7, 1914; John D. Rockefeller, Jr., to Laura Spellman Rockefeller, April 7, 1914, Rockefeller Family, JDR, Jr. Personal—Record Group III2Z, box 4, folder 44, RAC; John D. Rockefeller to E. B. Thomas, April 11, 1914, Rockefeller Family, OMR, Business Interests, Record Group III2C, box 10, folder 103, RAC.
121 Perhaps he had delegated too much: L. M. Bowers to John D. Rockefeller, Jr., April 7, 1914: “You have rendered a service for the entire country in your testimony before the Congressional Committee, that cannot be over estimated for its value just at this period in our industrial history: As the writer anticipated, these biased political wire pullers utterly failed in their attempt to trip you and every word you said simply brought out clearer and clearer your genuine American loyalty to stand against all comers, to protect every man who seeks employment in the enterprises in which you have a commanding interest in the enjoyment under the stars and stripes, of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. I believe that the hours you gave to the committee and the position you so ruggedly maintained … will do more for the cause of the millions of laboring men, than all the efforts of social reformers in as many years … I cannot put into words my satisfaction, I will say boundless delight with your magnificent and unshaken stand for principle, whatever the cost may be. Now for an aggressive warfare to 1916 and beyond for the open shop.” Rockefeller Family, OMR, Business Interests, Record Group III2C, box 21, folder 190, RAC; THINK IT IMPORTANT: John D. Rockefeller, Jr. (telegram) to L.M.. Bowers, April 11, 1914, Rockefeller Family, OMR, Business Interests, Record Group III2C, box 20, folder 182, RAC.
122 And then Arthur Caron took the stand: “Caron on Trial in I.W.W. Case,” Globe and Commercial Advertiser (April 7, 1914); “Mitchel Watching the Rioters’ Trials,” New York Times (April 8, 1914); “I.W.W. Rebellion Drives Out Chiefs,” New York Times (April 10, 1914).
122 McKay had … watched the burnish fade: “Arthur Woods Police Commissioner,” Outlook (April 18, 1914); “Investigate the I.W.W. Clubbing,” New York Tribune (April 8, 1914); “M
agistrates and the Police,” New York Times (April 8, 1914); “no unnecessary clubbing”: “Police Called Off I.W.W. by Mayor,” New York Herald (April 8, 1914).
123–24 “the hardest job in the entire city”: Mayor John Purroy Mitchel to Douglas McKay, April 1, 1914, John Purroy Mitchel Papers, “Police Department Received,” box 69, folder 723, Municipal Archives; “The surest way”: “Police,” in Kenneth T. Jackson, ed., The Encyclopedia of New York City, 2nd edition (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010), 1008. Mitchel also approached two of John D. Rockefeller, Jr.’s close associates, Raymond B. Fosdick, a criminologist for Rockefeller’s Bureau of Social Hygiene, and Henry Bruère, director of the Bureau of Municipal Research. London’s Scotland Yard, by contrast, had replaced its commissioner five times in the previous eighty-five years. Reminiscences of Henry Bruère, Columbia University Oral History Collection, 88; Foster Ware, “Fusion’s Finest Make Good,” the Independent (Aug. 18, 1917); “The New Police Commissioner,” the World (April 8, 1914); Police (noun): Campbell MacCulloch, “Commissioner Woods and the New Police Power,” Outlook (Feb. 10, 1915); “The Cleanest Big City in the World,” Outlook (Jan. 26, 1916); Gregory Mason, “The City or the System?” Outlook (March 7, 1914); “The New Police Commissioner,” New York Tribune (April 8, 1914); “Once more”: William Brown Meloney, “Our Police Disease,” Outlook (Oct. 5, 1912).
124 six times as many murders: Raymond B. Fosdick, American Police Systems (New York: The Century Co., 1921), 11, 20; “collusion between exploiters of vice”: “The Cleanest Big City in the World”; “clean streets”: Clinton Rogers Woodruff, ed. Proceedings of the Chicago Conference for Good City Government and the Tenth Annual Meeting of the National Municipal League (Philadelphia: National Municipal League, 1904), 385; “The police ‘system’ in New York”: “The City or the System?”