Make Me a City

by Jonathan Carr

  Mr. Winship’s version of events begins with an accident. In early December 1899, a buildings inspector slips and falls to his death off the top of a tenement block on West Sixtieth Street in the Eighteenth Ward while in the process of carrying out a safety inspection. The coroner records a verdict of accidental death and the case is closed. Some days later, though, the wife of the dead man makes contact with one of those female journalists on whom Mr. Winship dotes. “Mrs. Swanson,” he writes, “presented Mrs. Hunter with a photograph taken on the day of the accident.”

  It was a Kodak snapshot that might have been taken in any of the West Side slums. Pictured was a large tenement building with windows either boarded up or open to the elements. The building was not, though, abandoned. At some of the open windows, there were faces staring out, apparently unaware that a photograph was being taken.

  The snapshot showed that the building was being raised from three stories to six. Two figures were visible on the incomplete top floor. In the foreground stood a slender man, his hat pulled down low, who seemed to be writing in a notebook. That was Mr. Swanson, the buildings inspector. The other man was farther away, his image more grainy and indistinct. What made the photograph striking, what added tension to it, was the fact that—as Mrs. Swanson pointed out to Mrs. Hunter—the second man was in the process of throwing something at her husband. Moments after taking the photograph, she witnessed her husband fall to his death.

  Mrs. Swanson alleged that it was no accident, but a case of murder. Her husband, she said, was experienced in working at heights. He had helped to build some of the most famous skyscrapers in Chicago, and it was only because the Depression forced him out of business that he was hired as an inspector. He would never have slipped of his own accord. The projectile must have struck her husband and knocked him over the edge.

  Readers may be wondering, as was I, how on earth this incident could have any connection with the opening of the Canal. A tenuous link is established a few lines later, with a digression about a column Mrs. Hunter is preparing for the Chicago Daily Tribune. We are told this will not just be her final article of the year, but also of her career. With her sixtieth birthday in the offing, she has decided it is time to retire. The editor has requested that she use the column to make a series of predictions about the twentieth century. Mrs. Hunter, Mr. Winship is keen to point out, dislikes this task because she is a journalist for whom “facts have always been paramount.” That does not, though, spare us from hearing what those predictions are, affording Mr. Winship the opportunity to introduce Mrs. Hunter’s husband into the narrative. He is Mr. Tom Hunter, editor and contributor to an arcane literary magazine called The Dial.

  No doubt, then, Mr. Hunter was behind some of the more fantastical ideas that would find their way into his wife’s column. These include skyscrapers standing one hundred floors high, trains traveling at more than a hundred miles an hour, the establishment of universal women’s suffrage, minimum wages of five dollars an hour, equal health care for all citizens and, believe it or not, the use of fingerprints to solve crimes. Finally, citing the Sanitary and Ship Canal, Mrs. Hunter predicts that the twentieth century will be an era of clean water for all. And so, in the nick of time, we are reminded that this is indeed supposed to be a chapter about the Canal.

  Do not, though, be fooled into thinking that our arrival at that engineering wonder is imminent. You will have gathered by now that Mr. Winship does not write as the crow flies. First, we have to go back to the tenement building from which Mr. Swanson, the buildings inspector, fell to his death. Sadly, another tragedy is about to take place there. Overnight, on December 15, the building collapses. There are eighteen dead, fourteen wounded (details that have been corroborated by a variety of sources). According to Mr. Winship, Mrs. Hunter visits the site and is told that the building was being used as both accommodations and an illegal factory for about eighty recent immigrants, mostly Italian peasants and Russian Jews. When she hears that the building is said to belong to Alderman Oscar “Burner” Brody, she requests an urgent audience with the alderman in his office at City Hall.

  Presumably because Mr. Winship believes it will help bolster his research credentials, he includes a copy of Mrs. Hunter’s private journal entry about that meeting. This hardly furthers his cause. She comes across as a bitter, vindictive woman; the kind of cynical modern reporter—and a female one at that—who, beset by feelings of her own inferiority, casts anyone who has attained a position of power and influence in the worst possible light.

  [The following extract from Chicago: An Alternative History, 1800–1900 was NOT included in this book review but, in the interests of balance, we have chosen to quote it here in full.]

  Burner Brody: Controls the Eighteenth Ward. Protégé of “King Mike” McDonald and J. Patrick O’Cloke. Associates with Boodler Johnny Powers (Nineteenth Ward), Hinky-Dink Kenna, Bathhouse John Coughlin (First Ward). Runs a protection racket, owns saloons, bagnios, tenement buildings, and an elevator. Often accused of running corners, but has always escaped charges. Drinks and gambles with the chief of police, plays golf with the mayor at the Lake Forest Club. Arranges jobs for men in his ward on the streetcars/building sites. Pays for Eighteenth Ward funerals and buys the flowers. Provides turkeys at Christmas. Keeps poorest constituents in coal over the winter (hence, “Burner”).

  Called into the lion’s den, at last. The office is bright with electric lights. The carpet sinks beneath my heels. A stench of cigar smoke and whiskey. The walls are covered in photographs. Burner Brody is in every one of them. Also a massive larger-than-life portrait of him. Crude beyond belief. Reminds me of a giant hard-boiled egg propped up in an egg cup. Eyebrows are almost hairless, bald pate is oval-shaped, bloated florid cheeks, jowls swing smooth and low, and he has no neck.

  The man himself is seated behind a desk the size of a billiards table, wedged into a dark green leather wing chair. He begins talking about the ghastly portrait. The reason he’s depicted wearing a green jacket with an emerald stickpin in his tie and a green sash over one shoulder is “in memory of my dear father and out of respect for his love of the Old Country. Forgive me my maudlin mood this afternoon, Mrs. Hunter,” he says, “but you will understand my grief at such an unforeseeable tragedy.” Was it really unforeseeable, I try to ask, given the poor state of the tenement building…? But he does not let me finish.

  He points to the portrait. “That baseball bat I’m holding,” he says, “was signed by Cap Anson. The greatest player the White Stockings ever had. Only twelve of those bats in the world, and I own every one of them. You do remember Cap Anson, don’t you? I’ll send you the book I wrote about him.” He’s written a book? I rather doubt it. I tell him not to bother sending it because I’m no baseball fan. “No, no, it will be my pleasure. And if it’s not to your taste, I’m sure your husband will like it. He’s a bookish man, I believe. Please sit down.” Why should he know who Tom is, and what he does? Don’t like that. Has he put Pinkertons on us?

  As he drones on about the portrait, I notice that in real life he has a scar running like a worm from the edge of his left eye toward the top of the ear. An authentic touch for a thug. But the scar doesn’t feature in the picture. Obviously not a wound for which the alderman wants to be remembered in these days of respectability.

  Not difficult to understand the appeal of his deep, husky voice and what a soothing effect it must have on a poor immigrant who only half understands what he’s saying. Everything will be all right, its tone seems to imply, as long as you do what I say. I will look after you, I will stand by your side through life’s twists and turns, I will find you work, I will bring you food if you’re desperate and coal in the winter when you’re cold. Just make sure you vote for me at the next election.

  The flattery and lies begin. What a pleasure it is to meet one of the finest journalists of our age, a true child of Chicago and champion of the same just causes for which he has battled throughout his political life. “If only we could persua
de our fellow citizens to believe as we do, that we must eliminate corruption and raise the daily pay of the working man to a fair level and clean up the levee and guarantee equality for all our sisters, we would be the greatest city in America, the greatest city in the world.” How excruciating.

  “Let me tell you about my father.” I’d rather you didn’t, I think. “His story, and what happened last night, are closely connected.” Indeed? The logic escapes me, Alderman. “Do you know what my father had to do, when he first arrived in America? Dig a canal. Fifteen hours a day with his bare hands, at less than a dollar a day, fed on nothing but beans and grits, and forced to sleep in a leaking, mosquito-ridden pine-board shack.” He’s shouting at me now, as though it is my fault. “And why am I telling you this? Because Mochta Bruaideadh, God Bless Him, never lived to see the opening of the Canal he’d dug. And why? Because of an accident, an accident as unexpected and cruel as the one that brought down the building on West Sixtieth Street and robbed those poor people of their closest family and friends. The building in which my father died did not collapse. It caught on fire. That is why, in his honor, I have pledged that nobody in my ward will ever be short of coal in winter. You see why I’m telling you this, Mrs. Hunter?” Because you are trying to cover up what really happened. In your Old Country, Alderman, they’d call it a load of blarney. “I’m telling you because I want you to appreciate that I understand their pain. I have known that very same pain myself. When accidents happen, we must club together.”

  He dabs his eyes with a pressed white handkerchief. “There was a poet from Great Blasket, whom my father revered, called Old Conn. And one of Old Conn’s sayings was this: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” The man’s insufferable. Even trying to pass off a common proverb as the wisdom of an old Irish poet. Now he’s smiling, as if all the bad news is out of the way. “I started out with nothing too, the same as my poor father. But I think you’ll agree I’ve made something of myself, Mrs. Hunter.”

  I point out that for one man to die in a fire, tragic accident though it must have been, is hardly the same as eighteen innocents being crushed to death because an unsafe tenement building collapsed on top of them. His smile vanishes. “The building collapsed because it was illegally occupied by squatters, Mrs. Hunter.” Is he denying, I say, that those “squatters” were employed by him? He laughs. “What a ridiculous idea.”

  I have another go. Mr. Swanson was a highly experienced builder who fell off the top of the very same unsafe tenement block he was investigating. Didn’t that make his so-called accident look suspicious?

  No laughter this time. Brody bristles. Tells me to remember my place (i.e., as a woman) and to mind my tone of voice, or he will make sure I never have access to City Hall again. “Accidents are always happening in a big city,” he says. “It’s a fact of life.”

  I try one last throw of the dice. Show him Mrs. Swanson’s snapshot and tell two white lies. First—the man in the background has been identified as Mr. Dermot O’Leary, his building contractor. Second—Mr. O’Leary has a brick in his hand that he is in the process of throwing at Mr. Swanson.

  Brody claims it’s impossible to see anything clearly in the photograph, and I am wasting his time. “I am disappointed in you, Mrs. Hunter. Do come back if you have something serious to say.” I’m already at the door when he tosses out a warning, dressed up as another homily from Old Conn the Poet. “Neither luck nor good fortune ever came to anything that runs in people’s talk,” he says. “Do bear that in mind. Good day.”

  I have the last word. Tell him I’ve checked the records. I know he’s the owner of that building.

  By now, dear readers, you must feel mightily disoriented. I know I do. Why is Mr. Winship taking us on such an extensive detour? When will he remember we have journeyed to this remote and distant chapter because we want to celebrate the opening of the Sanitary and Ship Canal?

  The story about the tenement building staggers on. In her Chicago Daily Tribune column the next day, Mrs. Hunter writes in a provocative fashion: “According to survivors interviewed by this reporter, the tenement building was used not only for accommodation but also as a factory for manufacturing items of clothing. Conditions were abysmal. There were no drains or fireplaces.” She alleges that just as Chicago has the right to be proud of its magnificent downtown skyscrapers, so too it should be deeply ashamed of buildings such as this one. Finally, she calls for the City Building Inspector’s Office to close off the site and to reopen its investigation. She demands an inquest into the tragedy. Those individuals found responsible, whether willfully or through negligence, should be tried before the chief justice.

  The next day, we hear that a package is delivered at home to Mrs. Hunter. It contains a ceremonial baseball bat signed by the legendary Cap Anson, along with a copy of a book on baseball written by Alderman Brody. The book was not actually written by him, Mr. Winship hastens to point out, but was penned on his behalf. He includes a message that he says Mrs. Hunter found on the flyleaf, allegedly written by the alderman himself. Mrs. Hunter, have you forgoten what Old Conn the Poet says, about what runs in people’s talk? In baseball, if you don’t play by the rules, you can’t stay on the field. Take this as a worning.

  * * *

  Mr. Winship’s plot, I realize, is thickening, but to what end? And how much of what he reports as being “factual” can be verified? Shortly, we will consider this in more detail. Suffice to say that, regarding this particular incident, Mrs. Hunter was indeed found to be in possession of a Cap Anson baseball bat. But because no case would ever reach court, it has never been proven under oath how that baseball bat came into her possession or whether the misspelled flyleaf message is authentic or a fabrication by Mr. Winship.

  The next thing we know, Mrs. Hunter has contrived to meet with Mr. Brody’s building contractor, his employee and boyhood friend, Dermot O’Leary. I suppose one must concede that the lady is persistent. Mr. O’Leary is reluctant to speak out against his boss, which is what she desperately needs him to do so that she can build a story. Frustrated, she decides to fall back on an age-old reporter’s technique. Burner Brody, she says, has alleged that Mr. O’Leary has a professional history of cutting corners to save time and costs. “He has also identified you as the man in the photograph with a brick in your hand.” The article containing these allegations, she tells him, will be published in the next day’s Tribune.

  Mr. O’Leary, though visibly agitated, denies everything. Mrs. Hunter tells him she will postpone publication of the article for one day.

  * * *

  That evening, we are told, Mrs. Hunter discusses the story with her husband. He wants to know how far the “projectile”—brick or otherwise—was thrown. He points out that if it knocked Mr. Swanson over the edge, it must have been thrown hard and on target.

  She shows him Mrs. Swanson’s snapshot.

  “Maybe Burner Brody himself is the second man,” he suggests.

  Mrs. Hunter says that is highly unlikely. She explains that when a buildings inspector carries out a visit, there is never any prior notification. Not even the inspector knows where he is going until the last moment. So it would have been an extraordinary coincidence if Burner Brody had happened to be there.

  “Unless he got a tip-off,” insists her husband.

  “Even if he did, he’s hardly going to murder the inspector. He’s an alderman. If the report is negative, there are people he can talk to in the right places. He’s got time on his side.”

  “Perhaps what happened had nothing to do with the inspection. Or, let me rephrase that, perhaps it had very little to do with it. Have you thought of that?” Mr. Hunter pushes his spectacles up his forehead. “Maybe they knew each other. Maybe there was an old grudge. And if it’s really not an accident and the alderman pushes the inspector over the edge, that means they must have a history.”

  * * *

  Do you see, dear readers, what has happened? Mr. Winship writes not only as if he is prese
nt in the house that evening with Mr. and Mrs. Hunter (he is not), he also pretends that he knows (he cannot possibly know) what they say. And the more we read, the more we find ourselves being drawn into this “Alternative” world where our author suddenly has the ability to read people’s minds and transcribe their conversations. It is not unlike participation in a séance, with Mr. Winship as our medium.

  We must resist the lure of such narrative trickery and remember that this is no parlor game, but our living, breathing history. And what on earth has happened to the Canal?

  * * *

  Mr. O’Leary visits Mrs. Hunter the next day in her office. He looks haggard and, she decides, scared. Nothing like this has ever happened before, he tells her, even if it’s true that—always on the orders of the boss—he’s saved a few cents here and there. Nobody was ever killed, even if there had been the odd accident. This time he told the boss—no, he begged him—not to build that high without putting in more foundations. Nobody should have been allowed inside while they were working on it. An accident was inevitable. She had to believe him, that he tried to persuade the boss to let him make it safer, to put in the proper supports. “But Burner’s a miser and a bully,” complains O’Leary. “And he always makes me take the blame. Same with the elevator. You know I had to do a spell in Joliet once, so O’Cloke could get him off for fixing a corner?” And then he says, in a phrase that puzzles Mrs. Hunter: “He’s got the memory of an elephant, ain’t he, the boss? And Mr. Swanson, it’s true he was a feckin’ Scandi, ain’t it? Excuse the language.”