The American: A Middle Western Legend

by Howard Fast

  So they came from every corner of the land, eager to see him, to put eyes on him and shake his hand, to be able to say to him the words most of them had planned so carefully: “We cried down there when we heard about Haymarket and what you had done.” “You got friends in California, Governor.” “I remember old Abe—he used to say, trust a man whom the rich hate.” “Down our way, they tell it, everyone hates Altgeld but the people.”

  They found a small, tired, bearded man. They heard a low voice that had a file-like quality. When he moved, they realized that he was weak and sick, but that was an impression that didn’t last, and after a day or two they could no longer think of him as a sick man. The most lasting impression was that of the blue eyes, alert, sparkling, two spots of youth in an aging body.

  They came with no united purpose, no formed plan, only the confidence that this was an opportunity for revolt that had not existed before. They met Buck Hinrichsen at the door, and he brought them in and introduced them to the Governor. Those who had been politicians and nothing more than politicians had a new feeling; the job-seekers, for a while at least, thought of other things than their possible spoil; the plain citizens thought about how some day, telling this, they would remember how it had been to meet Pete Altgeld. Altgeld talked to them; he told stories; he dug up mutual acquaintances from their states. Sometimes, he mentioned Dick Bland of Missouri, and hoped they would see their way to supporting him. They all came with local favorite sons, and there was a real danger, which Altgeld recognized, in starting a boom too early. He laid the emphasis on issues they held in common, an anguished need for security, a hatred of monopoly, a dread fear of this new thing that had arisen, government by injunction, or an extension of the power of the court to a point where it could quell revolt by declaring action illegal even before the action had occurred, and the faith in free silver coinage as a cure-all for every kind of evil.

  Emma tried to hoard his failing strength, but from the beginning, it was a losing battle. This was his great moment, the time he had worked for and hoped for; now he was not going to hold back, and nothing on earth could make him hold back. When a delegate asked him, “Have you got a slogan for this convention, Governor?” he answered, sharply and shortly, “No compromise—that’s our only slogan!”

  XII

  A big man came to the hotel suite and told Buck Hinrichsen that he wanted to see the Governor, but he wasn’t a delegate—still he wanted to see the Governor, he thought it was important that he should see the Governor. His name was Mark Woodbridge, six feet and three inches, with the coal dust deep in his pores and in the lines of his hands, saying plainly enough that he was a miner and never would be anything else. He was dressed in a black Sunday suit of clothes that clung to his ankles and his thick wrists, and he kept turning his hat nervously, over and over.

  “What about?”

  “About Peoria. About the strike in the mines down along Peoria way.”

  Well, didn’t he know that the Governor was up to his ears with the delegates and with the business of the campaign, and that this was in the nature of a caucus! And the Governor couldn’t see just anyone, although the Governor would. All this patiently, for Buck Hinrichsen was old-timer enough to know that at convention time you don’t insult anyone, ten voters or one voter.

  “Well, suppose you tell the Governor I’m the brother-in-law of one of the four men he pardoned, up on murder and convicted for killing during the strike. At the Peter Little mines, you remember?”

  “I remember,” Hinrichsen nodded. He did. He had argued the matter with Altgeld, pointing out that this on top of the Haymarket pardon would be insane. “Then I’m insane, because these men are as innocent as you are, Buck, and maybe more so,” Altgeld said, and then had gone ahead and pardoned them.

  Hinrichsen said, “Wait a minute,” and then went in and told the Governor. “I want to see him,” Altgeld said.

  Woodbridge came into the room, and stood there, looking at the little bearded man who was Governor. Two southern delegates were in the parlor, and Bill Dose, who had been taking dictation, and Sam McConnell, standing by the window and smoking a cigar.

  “Glad to meet you, Woodbridge,” Altgeld said.

  Woodbridge nodded, still turning the hat, appearing to fill all the space left in the room. His Adam’s apple moved convulsively, and Altgeld guessed that he was embarrassed and not a little awed.

  “You must have had a good reason to come all the way up here to see me,” Altgeld said, trying to make things easier. “If you came up just for that?”

  “I did.”

  “All right. Don’t worry about these folks here.”

  “Well—”

  “Go ahead and talk, son.”

  Sam McConnell turned to look at the miner, and now the two southern delegates were watching him.

  “Well—we had a meeting down our way. Maybe I ought to start back. My sister would have been left with three kids, if you’d have let them hang him.”

  “Him?”

  “At the Peter Little. I swear to God, Mr. Governor—I saw it happen. They were innocent, all right. Never came near the place-where the men were murdered. My God, our own men were murdered, and by the scabs they brought in from upstate. But then they arrested the union leaders—”

  “I pardoned them, didn’t I?” Altgeld said shortly.

  “Yes, sir. I want you to know you didn’t make no mistake. So we held a meeting and took up a collection to send me up here, to tell you that you and whatever man you’re standing for got three thousand votes down there, just as solid as anything could be. That’s all.”

  “You came up here for that?”

  “Yes—we didn’t know what else to do. They thought they ought to send me.”

  “Thank them for me,” Altgeld said.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I hope you get a good man to vote for, a good man for president.”

  “Yes, sir. The way we feel—well, they told me to say it ought to be you. We don’t know how you do it, but we feel it ought to be you.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I couldn’t go back and say to them that it’ll be you!”

  “No—it won’t be me. It’ll be a good man.”

  “All right. I’ll tell them that. Thank you.” He started for the door, but Altgeld stopped him.

  “Wait a minute. What did it cost you to come up here”

  “Twenty—” Altgeld was digging into his pocket; the miner stopped short, shaking his head to the rhythm of his turning hat. “No, sir,” he said.

  “Expenses, that’s all. You ought to get it back.”

  “No, sir,” the miner said evenly. Then he left. Then Altgeld turned to Judge McConnell and murmured, “Jesus Christ! Oh, Jesus God.”

  “So it’s three thousand votes if he isn’t lying. That doesn’t make anyone anything.”

  “You couldn’t see if something was painted on the wall. Underlined, too.”

  “Maybe.”

  “All right. Then let’s get down to work.”

  XIII

  They drafted a platform, a rough draft scribbled down in pencil, in a smoke-filled, whisky-sodden room, Altgeld, McConnell, Jones the Arkansas Senator, and Tillman of North Carolina, and Bathhouse John of Chicago, and Schilling for part of it, and Darrow called in to lend his acrimonious voice, and Boies, the Governor of Iowa, and a half dozen more, coming in and out, summoned hurriedly, in the middle of the day or the middle of the night—and always it was Altgeld’s flat, probing voice that took the lead, that pulled them out of the morass of generalities back to the fact:

  “I tell you, gentlemen, that you either open your eyes or go back to the tall woods. We’re not living in Jefferson’s day. In Jefferson’s day there wasn’t a factory in this land that employed more than a hundred men, and now how many are there that employ ten thousand or fifty thousand? That’s the fact, the core of it. Are you for the workingman or against him?”

  “Of course, we’re for him! For Christ’s
sake, Pete, stop harping on that.”

  “Then if you’re for him, put it down in black and white. Put it down specific, where he can read it.”

  “Generally—”

  “Oh, my aunt! I am so goddam sick of that!”

  “What are you asking for, Pete? Come out with it? Do you want socialism?”

  “Socialism! Now what in hell is socialism? Suppose you tell me! If we’re against government by injunction, is that socialism? If we’re for arbitration of labor disputes, is that socialism? If we’re for a square deal for labor, is that socialism? Would it be socialism if a workingman could come into a court and know that the damfool on the bench wasn’t a hired hand of Pullman or John D. Rockefeller? If that’s socialism, then you’re a monkey’s uncle!”

  “Now wait a minute, Pete. Now just take it easy. We’ve all agreed that we’re for a general plank on the rights of labor. Nobody’s disputing that with you.”

  “Sure. You’re aware that you’ve kicked over the bucket and the milk’s out. You can’t put it back, you can’t lick Grover’s ass any more, and you either get the farm and labor vote, or this is the biggest defeat the party ever suffered.”

  “If you want to put it that way.”

  “And I tell you you’re not going to get labor’s vote without putting down in black and white just why a workingman should vote for us. We got good intentions and a little gravy to splash around, and the Republicans got twenty million dollars to spend. That’s what a general plank needs—it needs twenty million dollars to make the lies stick.”

  “Governor, be reasonable!”

  Be reasonable, be reasonable—it was a refrain that they threw at him, hour after hour and day after day; and day after day, he fought back, snarling sometimes, spitting, wheedling, pleading, and then snarling again. And sometimes it would appear to him, with a clearness and lucidity he had never experienced before, that all of this was hopeless, that though he had fought Grover Cleveland and the trusts he represented, and defeated Cleveland—through some amazing process the trusts had won, and these too were the trusts’ men; and even his own actions were checked and frustrated on every hand, so that he was as little a master of himself as these men with him, and their evasions, for which he despised them, were not too different from his own evasions.

  And when they brought him to bay and demanded, “Then what are you against, capitalism?”

  He laughed that away. “Go look at the Unity Building,” he told them, and that too was an evasion.

  “Yes or no?”

  “I’m for democracy,” he said. “I’m for justice, that’s plain enough.” But inside, the question lingered, and the answer he gave them was as meaningless as his silver formulations sometimes seemed, and there was less and less sense and reason in the world. But he fought because only by the equation of justice and democracy could he draw strength from his failing body to go on, and the incredible strength of him, the rasping voice out of the huddled body, the sparkling, intense blue eyes, the fury of his attack forced them back, and point by point they yielded.

  One by one, they wrote in his demands, specifically, “… we especially object to government by injunction as a new and highly dangerous form of oppression … we denounce interference by Federal authorities in local affairs as a violation of the Constitution of the United States … labor creates the wealth of the country … we demand the passage of such laws as may be necessary to protect it in all its rights … we demand a Federal income tax, to be graduated …” They argued about form, but Altgeld said, “Put it down. Put it down in black and white, and we’ll shape the form later.”

  They put it down. The platform became his platform. But an undercurrent of rebellion was kindling. When he had finished and won and lay back in his chair in a state of semi-exhaustion, a condition so common of late, Judge McConnell said to him, “Don’t drive them too far, Pete.”

  “I have to.”

  “We lose this chance—”

  “Then we lose all,” Altgeld said flatly.

  XIV

  Altgeld was glad to see Joe Martin. He had been in and out with others, but Emma had begged him into one of the very few quiet dinners she was able to manage. “Joe, make him get hold of himself,” she had said. Martin asked, “Is he bad?” “I don’t know. He lives on nerve. I don’t know, Joe. It would be terrifying if one man thought he could remake a country, a man whom they spat on and ground underfoot and thought they had destroyed—but he’s doing it, do you see, Joe!” “I know he’s doing it.” “But he’s afraid—if one little prop is pulled out. Do you know how shaky it is?” “I know, Emma. I think I know how shaky it is, if I don’t know anything else. I think I know that.” “Well, he can’t get hold of himself—”

  So Joe Martin came, and they talked of old times. Martin drew him into memories bucolic and slow, the corn growing for the harvest, sleepy brown rivers, like the Wabash, how it was for so many of them who had come out of the bottom lands when the first growth of giant timber still stood in some places. And then Martin told his own tales, the way only he could:

  “I never told you that time, Pete, going out to the coast on the old Union, and they had the card tables in the parlor car. There I was comfortable with a newspaper and a cigar, and perfectly willing to let it go that way, but three Texas badmen, real frontier tinhorn gamblers, they couldn’t let it rest, oh no. They had to make their Chicago bunco pay off, and then I had no peace until I got up and sat in their game. Just quiet five-card draw, you understand. Just a simple city game for a simple city boy like myself. Oh, my goodness, Emma, I do not like tinhorn frontier gamblers who like to act like badmen, but very polite after they saw me take out a roll of bills like my fist to pay the waiter. Jack-high at a dollar to open and a dollar to raise, and they were dealing the deck, but polite-like, and just taking ten or fifteen dollars from me now and then. So by the time I was losing a hundred, they knew all about me, that my name was Steve Hennessy, that I was married, two kids, that I just played a little cards, now and then, that I had sold all my Chicago property, my wife’s inheritance, six thousand dollars, and was off to the coast to buy a little piece of land and see if we could go it again. Well, I’m small and I look the part, gentle and quiet, and I figured if they had some decency about a character like I described myself to be, I’d leave them alone and call it quits and figure an evening at the price of a hundred. But no sooner do I open up than they graciously give me the opportunity to recoup and push it to five to open, five to raise, all the time dealing the deck in a way to make a South Side amateur blush with shame. So I drop another hundred and tell myself, like in the Bible, I’ll give them another chance. So I tell them that a loss like this—well I never lost so much before, my wife will never forgive me, how can I explain?”

  By now, the Governor was leaning back, chuckling to himself. He had heard the story before, many years ago, but like all good tales, it grew better and more mellow with time. It was right for him now, as right as anything could be. Emma protested, “Joe, how could you—like the Bible? That’s blasphemous. You mean Lot?”

  “Maybe I do, Emma. I’m not a church-going man, but I think even a bad man should be tried “three times, don’t you, Pete?”

  “I do,” the Governor grinned.

  “But to lie that way—wife, children.”

  “My dear Emma, I was creating a character for their sympathy. They were bad men. They had no sympathy, no love for their own kind. I don’t like men like that. I don’t like men who take from children, and the way I played poker I was like a child. So when they refused to let a little man escape, but assured me that they would double the stakes again, I agreed. Tears in my eyes, but what could I do? Anyway, I had nothing but contempt for them now. I played a half hour more and lost two hundred more, and then I let them suggest a double. I sighed. I remember how I sighed. I said, this is my last chance, gentlemen. Why not a hundred to open, a hundred to raise? Emma, don’t you think that if they had one little bit of conscience, one b
it of human kindness, they would have let me be? No. I win the first hand on two pair, six hundred dollars. I have almost all my losings, but I am greedy; what little man wouldn’t be greedy? I lose three hundred in the next hand, then win it all back. I’ve lost my head now, and they deal to fit. Tinhorn dealing. They deal me four kings pat, the oldest, cheapest dodge known. You see, the feller on my left, he has two aces. First card on the deck is nothing, second and third are aces. Suppose I stand pat, well, this tinhorn draws three with two aces. If I draw one, well he still draws aces on three to four of a kind. And see how safe it is—suppose I lose my head and draw two. Well, he still draws three aces to beat three kings. Well, I play the part, and before the draw I push that pot to where it holds twelve thousand dollars. Twelve thousand dollars, and I’m running sweat and trembling the way a little man should. Everyone in the car is watching now, and that suits me, because even cheap tinhorns can be bad men. But still no sympathy on their part. All right, I say to myself—up. And there’s three thousand more in the pot. And then I ask, not for one, not for two cards—but for three. Three.”

  At that point, Altgeld said, half-choking, “Joe, you’re lying.” Six years ago, when he first heard the story, he had said the same thing.

  “So help me! You see, Emma—now I’m due to draw the aces, both of them. I have aces high. Gent on my left, he just has aces. Well, you could have heard a pin drop when I ask for three cards. Three cards, gentlemen, I say. And very happy that we’re surrounded with rubbernecks. No one moves. Three cards, gentlemen, I repeat.”

  “That was wicked, Joe,” Emma said.