by Howard Fast
“If you don’t mind,” the Judge said.
XIV
Not long before this day Judge Altgeld and his friend, Judge Lambert Tree, had lunched with Phil Armour, the great pork and beef king. Though both Altgeld and Tree were persons of note in Chicago, Armour maintained an attitude of amused condescension all during the meal. Altgeld, with all his innate dignity, found himself cringing under Armour’s patronage, and when he tried to hit back, with wit, with sarcasm, with knowledge, he found Armour’s bulk impervious to attack of that sort. In this fashion, Armour spoke of Altgeld’s book, Our Penal Machinery and its Victims:
“I hear you been writing, Altgeld. Got a book out.”
“That’s so,” Altgeld said.
“No harm in writing. I suppose you’ve done some writing too, Tree,”
“Very little,” Judge Tree said.
“I don’t mind you boys writing,” Armour said. “As a matter of fact, the ladies are kind of impressed by your book, Altgeld. We like a judge to show some brains—after the kind King Mike McDonald dropped on us. A judge isn’t just a cheap ward politician; you boys got to get up there and show your faces each day.”
“I see,” Altgeld said. He was incapable of saying anything more.
“But there’s a time-and place,” Armour continued. “We have some very bad elements here in Chicago.”
“Yes, I guess we have.”
“Nothing else to do but to make a decent, law-abiding city out of it. A place where a workingman can do a fair day’s work for a fair day’s wages, without worrying about having his throat cut.”
Altgeld could only nod.
“And for that, we need a police force,” Armour went on. “Pretty fine fellers on the force. They’re not helped by psalm-singing for the poor, abused criminal. Jesus God, Altgeld, there’s no point in attacking jails. It won’t help your career to become a damned reformer. Charity is one thing; you could live five years on what I give charity in one; but when you attack the very foundation of society, then you sound damn like a communist.”
“And you consider jails to be the foundation of society?” Altgeld asked lamely.
“Law and order. That’s what I refer to, law and order. When we make a judge, we expect him to stand for law and order. When we break him, it’s because he doesn’t stand for those things. There’s a lot of talk about you being a radical. We don’t like that kind of talk.”
“Whom do you mean by ‘we’?” Altgeld asked.
Armour spread his hands and smiled. “You know what I say—I say, no hard feelings. Have your secretary send me a bill; I’ll buy a few hundred copies of the book myself. Maybe your next book will be about honest, hard-working citizens. I don’t want to discourage you, young man. Now how about a brandy?”
And Altgeld, raging inside, sat there, impotent; now he recalled that luncheon and mixed thoughts of it with thoughts of the four men who were about to die. Schilling had come and spoken and gone, and now Altgeld wondered how much truth there was in Schilling’s contention that he, one man, at this eleventh hour, could reverse the course of the law, or even halt it. Much of what Schilling had said he agreed with. Judge Gary, who tried the case of the Haymarket defendants, had been flagrantly partisan. The question of who threw the bomb had been crudely moved aside, and eight men were condemned to death, not because they were murderers, but because they were militant leaders of labor and therefore enemies of one part of society; so it was put up to him, Pete Altgeld, whether they were his enemies too. Even if he could truthfully tell himself that anything he might have attempted would have been futile—as futile as the attempts of his friend, Judge Tree, to gain mercy for the condemned men—he still faced the question of how he would have acted had he been in another positon, as for example in the position of Governor Oglesby. That was the question which stirred a hundred doubts inside of him, mixing so curiously with his recollection of Phil Armour, and what Armour had said, and the matter-of-fact disposal of democracy, which contends that servants of the people are elected by the people, not made by a handful of men. And while cynicism was easy in the normal course of things, and taken for granted in the normal course of things, so that one never raised one’s voice against the pattern in which one lived, the pattern of adultery mixed with respectability, of graft mixed with the time-worn democratic slogans, of vice supporting charity and religion, and religion by inaction condoning vice, of filth and suffering and death turned into profits and men turned into beasts; while these matters and a hundred more like them were accepted easily and naturally day in and day out, today they became symbols of four men close to death: and thereby they stuck in a man’s craw rather than sliding easily down his throat. They stuck in Judge Altgeld’s craw, and what had been only a few hours ago a lovely fall day now turned sour and uncomfortable.
He could not deny that he was a success, nor could he tell himself that he did not enjoy the very practical fruits of success. All of his life, until now, he had fought for these things; born with nothing, raised with a lash, he had broken through; he was here. He was in his stone house, secure and comfortable. There were beautiful things in his house; there was food, many kinds of food, all of it very good to eat, and if he should want other food, he had only to say so. There was warmth in the house; there was comfort too. There was his wife, so very good-looking and well bred, and there were the many friends she had made for him, also well bred, people of substance if in some cases tedious, and they accepted him and did not remind him of his origins, and played cards with him and gave him their legal business. Nor did his wife resent his having friends of another kind, like Joe Martin, the gambler, or Schilling, the labor leader, or Bro Kelly, the ward-heeler who was a political genius; and all of his friends, even Schilling, paid tribute to his success and position. What if he had memories! All men had memories and memories were as impractical as abstract justice. Why did he resent Armour’s bluntly pointing out that these things he had were retained by the grace of certain individuals, and that his compact with those same individuals must be a real one, not an illusory one?
Yet, in the essence of it, he hated not so much Armour as what Armour stood for; and now this hatred burned through all his thoughts. Reason he might—but in the end what came out? He was a dirty, cheap political climber. He had to tell himself, “Accept that, Altgeld, accept it!” He stood up and paced back and forth, watching the clock. Then he sat down in his chair, still watching the clock. The minutes ticked off, and during one of those minutes, four men died.
His wife called him to lunch, but he ate only a few mouthfuls. Then he went back to his study.
XV
Joe Martin stretched out his feet to the fire and lit a cigar. As he took the first few puffs, he watched Altgeld shrewdly. Then it was a little after two o’clock.”
“What time did they die?” Altgeld asked.
“About noon.”
“Was it bad?”
“The first time I saw an execution. The last too.”
“It was that bad?”
“Well, that’s a peculiar way to put it. I don’t like executions. I can see men die, but not after they’ve known about it for months, and also know just when the trap’s going to be sprung.”
“What about Parsons?”
“He died game. They all did.”
“Did he say anything?”
“Last words? I don’t know. There were about two hundred people in there, watching. I was in back with Kelly. Just about that time, Kelly was asking me if I thought any of them was Catholic; I didn’t know. Afterward someone said that Parsons demanded that they let him speak, and then they sprung the trap. But I heard Spies. He sounded off right across the yard. Do you know what he said?”
“What?”
“He said, there will come a time when our silence will be more powerful than the voices you strangle today. You know, funny thing about those damn reds, they got a kind of guts I never seen. Take Parsons; I went into his cell this morning with Wertzer of the Tribune
. Wertzer said he was going to sketch him today, come hell or high water. I felt funny about it, but Wertzer said, you want to see this character, don’t you, you want to be able to tell your grandchildren you seen him. There was also the little matter that Wertzer couldn’t get in without me pulling the strings. So we come in there, and this Parsons—he could go on the stage with that face of his—is sitting there at a little table, dressed, shaved, wearing slippers, and writing. Al, the guard says, Al, there’s a guy here from the Tribune to draw you. Meanwhile, the guard nudges me. Pete, I felt mad, so damn mad I could have laid out him and Wertzer, right there. I never liked Wertzer; he’s a little snotnose, and I felt like a damn fool for being pulled into this. But Parsons isn’t disturbed. He puts down his pen, turns to face us, smiles a little, and begins to roll a cigarette. I feel you can tell a lot from the way a man rolls; Parsons does it carefully and slowly; doesn’t lose any tobacco, seals it with one swipe, and lights it on one match. I want to sketch you, Mr. Parsons, Wertzer says. This is the last chance to break the news—the little son of a bitch! But Parsons takes it calmly. I have some work to do, he says, and not much time. Wertzer says, It’s a living, Mr. Parsons. I got to come in with my assignment, or I’ll be out of a job too. So Parsons nods and says, all right. I know what it is to have to take an assignment. And all the time Wertzer sketches him, I’m standing there—my God, Pete, I never felt like that before. Once Parsons looks at me kind of peculiar and says, You’re Joe Martin? I say, Right. I met you once, he says, but I guess you don’t remember. But I swear to God, Pete, he was not afraid. Look, I don’t like a communist any better than the next man, but I wouldn’t have the guts to sit there and know that I was going to die in a few hours, and then carry it off the way he did.”
“You’re a gambler—”
“Sure, but you’re not playing for a break when you got a rope around your neck.”
Altgeld rose, went to the fire, and poked it alive. Then, still crouched, he faced Martin, as if the thought had just occurred to him. “Joe, I want you to tell me the truth. You know it, if any man does. Did the police murder Lingg?”
Martin leaned back and puffed on his cigar. Altgeld straightened up and stood there, one arm on the mantel, looking at the sheeplike features of Augustus.
“Well?”
“That’s a hell of a question, Pete. What do you think?”
“I know what I think. I know what anyone with any brains in this city thinks. I know what happened too. But when you’ve sat on a. bench for even a month, you know what circumstantial evidence is worth. There were eight so-called anarchists tried and condemned to death to begin with. The public opinion began to be felt; it’s as amusing as hell that we still have something left in this country which is called public opinion and which can be felt, but we have. So the sentences of three of these men, Fielden, Schwab, and Neebe are commuted. They can rot in jail, but jail is one thing and legal murder is another, and public opinion is appeased—just a little. And no harm is done, since the two they want to get, Parsons and Spies, are still on their way to the gallows. But then, there’s more of this public opinion, mass meetings, petitions, pleas, messages from other countries. And then, very suddenly, Louis Lingg is found dying in his cell, half his face blown off by a dynamite fuse, and little bombs are cached all over his cell. So public opinion is diverted, and it is proved that once a bomb-thrower always a bomb-thrower, even if he throws them into his own mouth and closes it forever. Don’t smile. I’m a judge; and I say this man committed suicide until it is proved otherwise.”
“What do you want, a signed statement?” Martin asked softly.
“I asked you a question.”
“It’s still one hell of a question. Suppose I knew. Suppose I even knew who threw the bomb. Would I tell you, Pete? I like you; I’ve said it and I’ll say it to your face—there’s only one politician in Illinois I trust, and that’s Pete Altgeld; but I don’t trust you that much. I play my cards, you see, but I hold them close. My. big stake is down there in City Hall; I never ratted on anyone, Pete.”
“That’s all?”
“No. I’ll tell you what I think; I think that before a man killed himself by putting a dynamite charge in his mouth, you’d have to club him quiet and pry his jaws open. All right. These four gents are dead. I watched them die. And in the past year, I heard a lot of loose talk about them. But I don’t talk loose; I found it pays off to keep your mouth shut. A lot of big operators will sleep sound tonight. I may hate their guts, but I got no quarrel with them. I’m just a gambler—a tinhorn gambler.”
“And I’m a tinhorn politician.”
“Some might say that,” Martin agreed softly.
For a while, Martin smoked placidly and quietly, Altgeld watching him from his place by the mantel. Then the Judge walked to a chair, sat down, and said, very precisely:
“Joe, what kind of a stake would you play me for?”
“A damn big one.”
“How far do you think I’ll go?”
“If you keep your head and play it level, a long way.”
“How far?”
“How far do you want to go? If you were born in this country, I’d say maybe to the White House. As it is, the Senate, if you want that, or the governor’s mansion.”
“How do I play it?”
“You play it for all it’s worth, that’s all. Or you play it safe. Sometimes they play it safe, and the big operators like that better.”
“But either way, it’s the big operators?”
“What do you think?” Joe Martin said.
XVI
This took place on Friday; the next day, newspapers, in addition to detailed accounts of the execution and many editorials on the men who had died, law and order, democracy, the Constitution and its many amendments—some of which are called the Bill of Rights—the Revolution, the Founding Fathers, and the War Between the States, carried notices of the funeral. The city authorities had allowed relatives and friends to reclaim the bodies of the five dead men, Lingg, who had died in his cell, Parsons, Spies, Engel, and Fischer. The city permitted these same friends and relatives to hold a public funeral, if they so pleased. Mayor Roche named a series of streets along which the funeral procession might proceed on its way to Waldheim Cemetery. The hours were from twelve to two o’clock. No music except funeral dirges might be played; no arms were to be borne; no signs or banners were to be displayed. It was to be expected, the newspapers said, that even though these men were the proven enemies of society, criminals, murderers, a few hundred people might well turn out to witness the last rites. And in accordance with that part of the Constitution which guarantees freedom of religion, it was only just to allow those rites to take place.
On Sunday, the Judge told his wife that he was going out for a stroll; and though Emma suspected where the stroll would take him, she said nothing, nor did she remark that it was curious, his wanting to go out alone on a Sunday morning. As a matter of fact, it was not so curious; making for the line of march, he realized that he was only one of many, many thousands of Chicago citizens; and presently it seemed that nearly half the city would be lined up along the drab, dirty streets, waiting for the procession.
It was a cold morning; that and the fact that he had little desire to be seen made him turn up the collar of his coat and pull his hat down. He jammed his hands into his pockets, shifted from one chilled foot to another, and waited.
Presently, the funeral procession came into sight. It was not what he might have expected; certainly not what the city authorities expected when they granted permission for the funeral to be held. There was no music, no sound other than the slow tread of feet and the soft sobbing of women. And with that, all other sounds, all other noises appeared to die away, as if a great and woeful pall of silence overhung the whole city.
First, there came a man with a flag, the only flag in the whole procession, a worn and faded. Stars and Stripes that had marched proudly at the head of a regiment in the Civil War; and the
man who carried it was a veteran, a middle-aged man with a face like gray stone.
Then came the hearses and the caskets; then the carriages in which the families rode. They were old, open carriages. In one of them Altgeld saw Lucy Parsons, sitting with her two children, staring straight ahead of her.
Then came the close friends, the comrades of those who had died. They walked four abreast, and their faces too were gray, like the face of the Civil War veteran.
Then came a group of well-dressed men and women, many of whom Altgeld knew and recognized. They were lawyers, judges, doctors, teachers, small businessmen, and many others who had come into the fight to save the five dead men.
Then came the workers, and to them, apparently, there was no end. They were from the packing houses, the lumber yards, the McCormick plant, and the Pullman plant; they were from the mills, the fertilizer pits, the railyards, and the canneries; they were from the flophouses of the unemployed, from the road, from the wheatfields, from the streets of Chicago and a dozen other cities. Many were in their best, the one good suit, the black suit in which they were married; many had their wives with them; children walked with them too, and some carried children in their arms. But there were enough who had no other clothes than the clothes they worked in, and they wore their overalls, their blue jeans, and their flannel shirts. There were cowhands who had ridden five hundred miles and more to Chicago, thinking that where men believed and willed, this thing could be stopped; and when it had not been stopped, they stayed to walk in the procession in their awkward, highheeled boots. There were red-faced farmers from the prairies about the city, there were locomotive engineers, and there were sailors from the Great Lakes.