by Thai Jones
272–73 Berkman had been right: Alexander Berkman, “Observations and Comments,” Mother Earth (Aug. 1914); “The War in Photographs: Indian Troops Encamped in France,” Manchester Guardian (Oct. 8, 1914); “You Anarchists”: “The Reckoning,” Mother Earth (Sept. 1914); Two bullets: “Heir to Austria’s Throne Is Slain with His Wife by a Bosnian Youth to Avenge Seizure of His Country,” New York Times (June 29, 1914); “Vain is the hope”: Alexander Berkman, “Observations and Comments,” Mother Earth (Aug. 1914); “Prussian militarism”: Alexander Berkman, “Observations and Comments,” Mother Earth (Oct. 1914); “great danger”: Alexander Berkman, “War on War,” Mother Earth (Aug. 1914); “Blushing in our shame”: “The Reckoning,” Mother Earth (Sept. 1914); “I am sick of appeals”: Alexander Berkman, “Observations and Comments,” Mother Earth (Aug. 1914).
10. Who’s Who Against America
274–75 the coal war had entered its eleventh month: L.M. Bowers to John D. Rockefeller, Jr., Aug. 16, 1914, Industrial Relations Committee, Vol. 9, 8441; Bowers and his intransigent colleagues: John A. Fitch, “Law and Order the Issue in Colorado,” the Survey (Dec. 5, 1914); employees voted to end the strike: Scott Martelle, Blood Passion: The Ludlow Massacre and Class War in the American West (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2007), Appendix B; “Miners’ Board Ends Colorado Strike,” New York Times (Dec. 9, 1914); “satisfaction … discouraging”: L.M. Bowers to John D. Rockefeller, Jr., Dec. 11, 1914, Industrial Relations Committee, Vol. 9, 8444; “rugged stand”: L.M. Bowers to John D. Rockefeller, Jr., Dec. 11, 1914, Industrial Relations Committee, Vol. 9, 8442.
275 Bowers did not have long to gloat: “Memorandum of talk with Mr. Bowers in my office, Dec. 28, 1914,” Rockefeller Family Papers, Record Group 2, OMR, Friends and Services, box 49, folder 359; “turned out to pasture”: John D. Rockefeller, Jr., to Bowers, Jan. 20, 1915, Rockefeller Family Papers, Record Group 2, OMR, Friends and Services, box 49, folder 359.
275–76 discarded one troubled employee: “Lee Wrote ‘Colorado Facts,’” New York Times (Dec. 9, 1914); “The strike bulletins”: “The End of the Colorado Coal Strike,” the Survey (Dec. 19, 1914); Industrial Relations Committee, Vol. 8, 7903; Jonathan Rees, Representation and Rebellion: The Rockefeller Plan at the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company, 1914–1942 (Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2010), 23; “Letter to Wilson Rockefeller’s Idea,” New York Times (May 17, 1915); “systematic and perverse”: Herbert J. Seligmann, “A Skilled Publicity Man,” the Masses (Aug. 1915).
276–77 Rockefeller and Lee were called: Kirk Hallahan, “Ivy Lee and the Rockefellers’ Response to the 1913–1914 Colorado Coal Strike,” Journal of Public Relations Research, vol. 14, issue 4 (2002); “Rockefeller, Jr., Wary and Bland,” New York Times (Jan. 26, 1915); “he is indeed a victim”: Walter Lippmann, “Mr. Rockefeller on the Stand,” New Republic (Jan. 30, 1915).
278 he had long planned to visit: “Conference at Mr. Rockefeller’s Apartment January 7, 1953,” Rockefeller Family Papers, Record Group II, OMR, series V, Biographical Works, box 57, folder 502, RAC; “He did not dig very much”: “Rockefeller Plies Pick in Coal Mine,” New York Times (Sept. 22, 1915); Rees, Representation and Rebellion, 28–36; Raymond B. Fosdick, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., A Portrait (New York: Harper, 1956), 160–165; There had been no way to predict: Fosdick, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., 160; “Had Mr. Rockefeller”: William Lyon Mackenzie King to Abby Rockefeller, Oct. 6, 1915, Rockefeller Family Papers, Record Group 2, OMR, Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, box 3, folder 38, RAC; ROCKEFELLER WINS OVER MINERS: Headlines quoted in Rees, Representation and Rebellion, 32; “good-will”: William Lyon Mackenzie King to Abby Rockefeller, Oct. 6, 1915; “practically every point”: Rees, Representation and Rebellion, 33; “this table is square”: Rees, Representation and Rebellion, 37; “I cannot but feel”: William Lyon Mackenzie King to Abby Rockefeller, Oct. 6, 1915.
280 after the Lexington Avenue explosion: Jennifer Fronc, “I Led Him On”: Undercover Investigation and the Politics of Social Reform in New York City, 1900–1919 (doctrial thesis, Columbia University, 2005), 230, 231; “Quick Results Follow Detective Squad Change,” New York Herald (Aug. 2, 1914); “New Detective Branches,” New York Times (July 30, 1914); “Detectives were carefully instructed”: From an untitled report in the National Civic Federation records, Manuscripts and Archives Division at the New York Public Library, series X, “Subversive Activities Files, c. 1907–1942,” reel 405: 1; Despite this specialized instruction: Paul Avrich, Sacco and Vanzetti: The Anarchist Background (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), 100–101; Fronc, “I Led Him On,” 223–224; “Lighted Bomb Put in Tombs Court,” New York Times (Nov. 15, 1914).
280–81 made their impact in other ways: Thomas J, Tunney and Paul Merrick Hollister, Throttled! The Detection of the German and Anarchist Bomb Plotters in the United States (Boston: Small, Maynard, 1919), 39–69; “Many Explosions Since War Began,” New York Times (July 31, 1916); “Detective Lit Bomb, Abarno Tells Court,” New York Times (April 3, 1915); “Bomb Plotters Get 6 to 12 Years,” New York Times (April 20, 1915); revealed themselves: Emma Goldman, “The Barnum and Bailey Staging of the ‘Anarchist Plot,’” Mother Earth (April 1915); Avrich, The Modern School, 231–232; Emma Goldman, Living My Life, Volume II (New York: Dover Publications, 1970), 550–551.
281–82 draft riots: “Arthur Woods Urges Man-to-Man Contact,” New York Times (June 21, 1920); “The Prussian, the Bolshevik, and the Anarchist:” Edward Mott Wooley, “The Inner Story of New York,” McClure’s Magazine (Nov. 1917); James Lardner and Thomas Reppetto, NYPD: A City and Its Police (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 2000), 177.
282–83 While overseeing these infiltrations: Melvyn Dubofsky, When Workers Organize: New York City in the Progressive Era (Amherst: The University of Massachusetts Press, 1968), 130–147; Arthur Woods, Policeman and Public (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1919), 71–72; “too much sappy talk”: State of New York, Minutes and Testimony, 109–110. 283 “It’s Frank!”: “Jail Ban on Goethe Enrages Tannenbaum,” New York Tribune (March 10, 1915); “Tannenbaum, Church Raider, Fine Remitted, Is Free Today,” New York Tribune (March 9, 1915).
284–85 Frank went to work for the Masses: “State Investigates Blackwell’s Prison,” New York Times (July 15, 1915); “until he behaves”: “Warden Hayes Quits Blackwell’s Island,” New York Times (July 23, 1915); three cheers for Tannenbaum: “Katharine B. Davis’ Little Hell,” the Masses (Sept. 1915); “Am glad you are ready”: Jane Roulston to Frank Tannenbaum, March 12, 1915, Frank Tannenbaum Papers, box 4, RBML; “I.W.W. that I knew”: Frank Tannenbaum to Dr. Grant, April 21, 1917, Frank Tannenbaum Papers, box 3, RBML; “much to accomplish”: “Jail Ban on Goethe Enrages Tannenbaum,” New York Tribune (March 10, 1915).
285 time as a revolutionist was over: Frank Tannenbaum’s Columbia University Transcript, 1915–1916, Frank Tannenbaum Papers, box 5, RBML; Columbia University in the City of New York Catalogue, 1915–1916 (New York: Columbia University, 1916).
285–87 “I think you have the town with you”: Theodore Rousseau to Katharine B. Davis, Aug. 6, 1914, John Purroy Mitchel Papers, box 6, folder 10, New York Municipal Archives; “Penitentiary Cells Called Dangerous,” New York Times (April 26, 1915); “Warden Hayes Quits Blackwell’s Island”; “I shouted until I was hoarse”: “Warden Hayes Quits Blackwell’s Island”; “Admirable women, put in places of authority”: E.S.M., “Are Women Despots?” Life (July 29, 1915); “One Woman’s Fight,” Woman Rebel (Aug. 1914); ended in failure: “Miss Davis Heads New Parole Board,” New York Times (Dec. 29, 1915).
287–88 a perpetual headache to the mayor: Lyman Beecher Stowe, “Waifs Now Well Treated in City’s Institutions,” New York Tribune (Nov. 4, 1917); Reminiscences of Frances Perkins; Reminiscences of Robert Binkerd, 51; “Beds were alive with vermin”: Quoted in Francis Hackett, “The Sacred Cow,” New Republic (June 3, 1916); Winthrop D. Lane, “Children and the City’s Purse-Strings,” the Survey (Jan. 1, 1915); Edwin R. Lewinson, John Purroy Mitchel, Sym
bol of Reform (doctoral thesis, Columbia University, 1961), 247; “Oliver Twist”: “A Campaign of Calumny: The New York Charities Investigation” (New York: The America Press, 1916), 29; “agency of paganism”: Ibid., 6; Lewinson, Symbol of Reform, Chapter X; “Father Blakely States the Issue,” New Republic (July 29, 1916); “arbitrary and unlawful”: Quoted in Lewinson, Symbol of Reform, 262; “A Campaign of Calumny,” 56; role in wiretaps: “Appendix,” 14, box 4, Meloney Papers, RBML.
288–89 Alexander Berkman was restless: Alexander Berkman, “An Innocent Abroad,” Mother Earth (Jan. 1915); “The poor boy”: Quoted in Beverly Gage, The Day Wall Street Exploded: A Story of America in Its First Age of Terror (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 107; “Kansas City is depressing”: Alexander Berkman, “An Innocent Abroad II,” Mother Earth (Feb. 1915); “dear old Gotham”: Alexander Berkman, “Anniversary Musings,” Mother Earth (March 1915); “Time tempers”: Alexander Berkman, “Anniversary Musings,” Mother Earth (March 1915); “something more definite”: Alexander Berkman, “In Reply to Kropotkin,” Mother Earth (Nov. 1914).
289 He was in California: Richard Drinnon, ed., The Blast: Volumes 1–2 (New York: Greenwood Reprint Corporation, 1968).
290–92 Washington, D.C., prepared for battle: Inez Haynes Irwin, The Story of the Woman’s Party (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co. 1921), 205; “Pacifists in Riots; Lodge Is Assaulted,” Washington Post (April 3, 1917); “Must Exert All Our Power,” New York Times (April 3, 1917); Wilson’s speech was prepared: Arthur S. Link, Wilson: Confusions and Crises: 1915–1916 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1964), 233; John Milton Cooper, Woodrow Wilson: A Biography (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2009), 287; Afternoon turned to evening: “Pacifists in Riots; Lodge Is Assaulted”; “Wilson’s Plea Provides for Full Warfare,” New York Tribune (April 3, 1917); Wilson held his speech: “Wilson’s Plea Provides for Full Warfare”; “Must Exert All Our Power”; “The President Calls for War Without Hate,” New York Tribune (April 3, 1917); Word of the president’s decision: “Call for War Stirs All City,” New York Times (April 3, 1917); “Fight in Rectors; Diner Refuses to Sing U. S. Anthem,” New York Tribune (April 7, 1917).
292 rushed to outdo its European peers: “Who’s Who Against America: News Garbler Hearst,” New York Tribune (Oct. 21, 1917); “Who’s Who Against America: Victor L. Berger, of Milwaukee,” New York Tribune (Nov. 4, 1917); Quoted in Ronald Steel, Walter Lippmann in the American Century (Boston: Little, Brown, 1980), 124.
293 Upton and Craig Sinclair: Anthony Arthur, Radical Innocent: Upton Sinclair (New York: Random House, 2006), 163–171; “agitation isn’t my job”: Steel, Walter Lippmann, 74, 116, 125–126.
294–96 police arrested Berkman: “Anarchists and Socialists,” New York Times (July 11, 1917); Berkman spent the next two years: Charles H. McCormick, Hopeless Cases: The Hunt for the Red Scare Terrorist Bombers (Lanham: University Press of America, 2005), 36, 41; Alexander Berkman, “The Boylsheviki Spirit and History,” Mother Earth (Nov. 1917); “Now reaction is in full swing”: Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman, “Deportation, Its Meaning and Menace: Last Message to the People of America by Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman”; “Slowly the big city receded”: Alexander Berkman, The Bolshevik Myth (New York: Boni and Liveright, 1925); “deported by God”: Goldman, Living My Life, 709.
296 Two pairs of boots: John Garry Clifford, The Citizen Soldiers: The Plattsburg Training Camp Movement, 1913–1920 (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1972), 63, 45; “Mayor Joins Camp for Military Drill,” New York Times (Aug. 9, 1915).
297 So Mitchel went to Plattsburg: Lewinson, Symbol of Reform, 271; “City Rookies Make Good Rifle Score,” New York Times (Aug. 17, 1915); Michael Pearlman, To Make Democracy Safe for America: Patricians and Preparedness in the Progressive Era (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1984), 58.
297–99 1917 municipal election: Pearlman, To Make Democracy Safe, 125;
“chafed”: Lewinson, Symbol of Reform, 354; “The whole Nation”: “A Final Blow at Tammany Hall,” World’s Work (Feb. 1917); A VOTE FOR MAYOR MITCHEL … Hearst: Lewinson, Symbol of Reform, 329; “ear-at-the-telephone”: Lewinson, Symbol of Reform, 341; “control of the city”: “‘Billionaire Band’ in Fusion Ranks Assailed by Hylan,” New York Tribune (Oct. 10, 1917); “all the reform”: Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1974), 84; “an autocracy of experts”: “The Obstacle to Fusion Success,” New Republic (Aug. 17, 1921).
299–301 private soldier: “Gen. Wood Reveals Mitchel Wanted to Enlist as a Private,” New York Tribune (July 12, 1918); “Don’t break your silly neck”: Frank Polk to John Purroy Mitchel, Meloney Papers, box 4, folder “Biographical Notes,” RBML; “a damnable style of uniform”: Memorandum on Mayor Mitchel, April 18, 1922, Meloney Papers, box 4, folder “Biographical Notes,” RBML; “resolute courage … better than I had expected”: Lewinson, Symbol of Reform, 358–359; “keep your head”: John Purroy Mitchel to Mrs. Mitchel (mother), no date, c. May or June 1918, John Purroy Mitchel Papers, box 24, LOC; “succesfully executed”: “Ex-Mayor Mitchel in Air Stunts,” New York Times (April 19, 1918); “flying is really pretty good fun”: John Purroy Mitchel to Mr. Hedge, May 20, 1918, Meloney Papers, box 4, folder “Biographical Notes”; “I thought they wanted flyers”: John Purroy Mitchel to Mr. Hedge, May 20, 1918, Meloney Papers, box 4, folder “Biographical Notes”; “Girls Can Help Soldiers,” New York Times (May 29, 1918); “Arthur Woods Flies Higher Than Mitchel,” New York Tribune (March 3, 1918); “God protect me”: John Purroy Mitchel to Robert Adamson, June 3, 1918, John Purroy Mitchel Papers, box 22, folder “June 1918.”
301 directed him to Gerstner Field: Aircraft Production: Hearings, Sixty-fifth Congress, Second Session, Parts 1–2. By United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Military Affairs (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1918), 560; “unmitigated hell”: John Purroy Mitchel to Samuel L. Martin, no date, received June 26, 1918, John Purroy Mitchel Papers, box 22, folder “June 1918”; deep in debt: Memorandum for Colonel Arthur Woods, Dec. 13, 1918, John Purroy Mitchel Papers, box 24; “If I live through”: Mitchel to Samuel L. Martin, June 28, 1918, John Purroy Mitchel Papers, box 22, folder “June 1918.”
301–3 a few minutes after seven A.M.: Lewinson, Symbol of Reform, 362; all over now: “Mitchel Killed by Fall from Aero; Safety Belt Loose,” New York Tribune (July 7, 1918); Testimony of Lt. Myers, Gerstner Field, Lake Charles, LA, Feb. 3, 1919, John Purroy Mitchel Papers, box 24, folder “General Correspondence Relating to the Death of JPM and Memorials to Mitchel”; “exceptionally poor … not sure of himself”: Memorandum for Colonel Arthur Woods, Dec. 13, 1918, John Purroy Mitchel Papers, box 24, LOC; “he was a bunch of nerves”: Untitled note, possibly from a biography that William Brown Meloney wrote of Mitchel but never published, no date, Meloney Papers, box 4, RBML; transfer to the army: John Purroy Mitchel to General Leonard Wood, June 13, 1918, John Purroy Mitchel Papers, box 22, folder “June 1918,” LOC.
303 he had forgotten to fasten his safety belt: For obvious reasons, this explanation of Mitchel’s death did not satisfy his family and friends. At the urging of his wife and mother, successive investigations into the accident lasted for well over a year. The first one, conducted by Captain P.H.B. Frelinghuysen, interviewed Mitchel’s close associates but was stymied by the fact that Gerstner Field had suffered first a dysentery outbreak and quarantine and then a hurricane in the months since the crash. Everyone who had actually known Mitchel there—or had witnessed his death—had been reassigned. The second inquiry, coordinated by Arthur Woods, had more success. Its agents were able to interview several witnesses, including the flight instructor who had given Mitchel his final commands.
The main question being disputed concerned the explanation for why Mitchel’s safety harness was unfastened. His wife believed that German saboteurs were to blame. One suggestion argued that the plane had caught fire shortly after takeoff and that Mitchel had unfastened his belt
in order to fight the flames. This theory was supported by the fact that the fire extinguisher was not with the plane where it crashed, but landed at a distance from the wreckage. Furthermore, Mitchel’s mother had heard that there were burn marks on her son’s body. However, other reports denied this fact. And there were no signs of fire found on the airplane. Fire extinguishers were intentionally fastened loosely—so as to be easily accessible in an emergency—and it was not unusual for them to come free during a reverse tailspin. Others suggested that Mitchel had experienced a headache inflight and had unhooked his safety harness for relief—something he is said to have done on previous occasions—but since the entire flight lasted less than five minutes it seems unlikely that he was suddenly struck with a migraine in that time. The most likely explanation, and the one that multiple investigations finally, and reluctantly, accepted, is that Mitchel merely forgot to attach his harness. Then, noticing this, he had turned to land. But because he was in an unfamiliar plane, and panicking about the safety belt, he worked the controls too rapidly and was thrown clear by a sudden jolt.
The conductors of the inquiry were sympathetic with the family’s desires. But nevertheless they came finally to accept that it was Mitchel’s carelessness that cost his life. “On concluding my investigation,” the army’s agent wrote, “it is my personal opinion that Major Mitchel came to his death by falling out of his plane, on account of having failed to fasten his safety belt, and I made every effort in conducting this investigation in the hopes of finding that his death was caused by some other reason.” (Lewinson, Symbol of Reform, 363–364.) In February 1919, having reviewed the findings of a second inquiry, Arthur Woods came to the same conclusion. “This is the last report on Major Mitchel’s death,” he wrote. “I know of nothing further to be done.”