by Howard Fast
“He can’t be disturbed,” but from inside the room, “Joe! Who’s there? Will you stop being such a damned old woman!”
“A newspaperman.”
“All right, send him in. Stop that damned whispering.”
The editor came in, and Altgeld sat up, leaning on one elbow. “Make yourself comfortable,” he said, “and fire away. It’s got to be short. I’m due at the theatre in half an hour. Why don’t you come there and listen, and when it’s over, we can have a chat.”
“Just one or two questions. You condemn England’s action in South Africa?”
“As I condemn ours in the Philippines. As I condemn imperialism, whether it be British or American or German wherever it shows its ugly head.”
“And you believe the Boers are fighting a just fight?”
“The man who fights for his native soil, for his home and for his family against a foreign invader—he fights a just fight. You don’t have to look any deeper than that.”
“And you’re going to speak about the Boer War tonight?”
“That’s right.”
“You’ll be outspoken, I suppose?”
Smiling, Altgeld said, “I haven’t minced words since the last time I rah on the Democratic ticket.”
VI
They stood in the wings, peering out at the house. The hall was jammed, and there was a line of people standing in the rear. In the wings behind them, the men and women of the Choral Society were clearing their throats and softly going, ah, ah, ah. Ex-Mayor Haley, officiating, bustled back to Altgeld and said:
“I think we’ll sit on the stage. I think that’s better, don’t you? Then the Choral Society can line up in front of us, and we can slip out behind them, if you want to.”
“Any way you say.”
The director of the Choral Society, standing behind Altgeld, said, “But, mayor, we were to sing first.”
“Let me get it over with,” Altgeld whispered.
“Only it seems funny, the main speaker starting a program instead of finishing it.”
“Just let me get it over with,” Altgeld said.
“It doesn’t matter,” Haley shrugged. “Of course, it’s customary for the main speaker to finish a program instead of beginning it. But if you want to speak first, I don’t suppose it matters.”
Altgeld followed Haley out onto the stage. The audience, impassive at first, broke into applause when they recognized him. A few in front rose, then a few more, then a wave until the whole hall was on its feet, clapping in tribute. Joe Martin stood in the wings, smiling with pleasure. A man could have a brother, or he could have a friend like Pete Altgeld; or a man could have half of the world and not know Pete Altgeld. The audience stood there, clapping, for almost a full five minutes.
Haley said, “Here, I think, is a man I don’t have to introduce to you. You know him. Illinois knows him. America knows him. I give you John Peter Altgeld.”
He began to speak softly. He put both his arms on the rostrum, leaning forward, talking to them, sometimes from the script he had in front of him, sometimes without looking at the script. For about half an hour he spoke to them, simply and straightforwardly, about imperialism, what it meant in human terms, what it meant when you stripped away the cheap glitter of Rudyard Kipling, and left the broken bodies of men and women and children. He told them of the concentration camps the British had built in South Africa.
He paused, beads of sweat running down his brow. Reaching for his handkerchief, he almost fell. He gripped the rostrum again and mopped his brow. Then, the handkerchief still in his hand, he sought for words:
“I told you about concentration camps. They solve nothing. Put a thousand or ten thousand men into them; they solve nothing. You don’t break men by torturing them. You don’t break man’s spirit—”
He hesitated and stared at his script, as if he were seeing it for the first time. By now the audience was aware, that something was wrong, and he could hear the murmur passing from person to person. He made an effort, smiled, and said:
“It’s all right, all right. Sometimes, we get tired. That’s natural, that’s only natural. We are filled with despair. We ask ourselves, what is the good of such meetings as these? But there is some good out of them.” He spoke slowly and forcefully, not looking at his script at all. “There is always good when men gather together for liberty—good when any man puts his shoulder alongside his neighbor’s—”
His voice trailed away. He continued to smile for a moment, then shook his head, as if he were puzzled. He turned back to his script and read, his tone low and labored:
“I am not discouraged. Things will right themselves. The pendulum swings one way and then another. But the steady pull of gravitation is toward the center of the earth. Any structure must be plumb if it is to endure, or the building will fall. So it is with nations. Wrong may seem to triumph. Right may seem to be defeated—”
His voice trailed off and the last few words came out in a whisper that was barely or not at all heard. He smiled again and picked up his papers. He turned, walked back to his chair, and dropped into it. Haley rose and waited for the applause to finish. But hardly had he begun to speak when the audience saw Altgeld stagger to his feet and shuffle painfully toward the wings. Two members of the chorus caught him as he almost fell, and Joe Martin came running out to help him off the stage. Haley followed. Altgeld put his arm around Joe Martin and Haley supported him on the other side.
“Where can he lie down?” Joe Martin cried.
Altgeld shook his head. Then he began to vomit. The two men supported him as long spasms racked him, through and through.
Some blankets were found, and Joe Martin persuaded him to lie down. He lay there on the blankets, his eyes closed. Joe Martin took off his shoes, loosened his clothes, and then covered him with another blanket.
Meanwhile, the meeting had broken up. People were gathered in knots, through the theatre and on the street outside. Haley was trying frantically to find a doctor, but it so happened that there was none in the audience. Then Haley realized that the state medical society was holding its banquet here, and that all the doctors would be there. He sent a messenger over there, and three doctors came back to the theatre. One of them was Cushing, an old friend of Altgeld’s. He knelt down beside him, taking his wrist and feeling his pulse.
Altgeld had lost consciousness now. Mutely, Joe Martin stood over him, watching for a reaction on the doctor’s face. But Cushing shook his head, shrugged as he rose.
“What is it?” Martin asked.
“I don’t know. It looks like a stroke.”
The other doctors agreed. They wrapped Altgeld in the blankets and carried him back to the hotel. There, the doctors worked over him, rubbing his wrists and ankles, using smelling salts. He opened his eyes very suddenly, like a man waked out of sleep. For a moment, he appeared puzzled, then said, “Hello, Cushing,” just as if nothing at all had happened.
“How do you feel?”
“Fine. Just tired. Did I get through the talk?”
“You got through it,” Joe Martin said. “It was a good talk.”
“I must have fainted.”
“You’re going to get into bed and rest,” Cushing said. He and Joe Martin helped him off with his clothes. Martin fumbled around in back of him until he demanded, “Joe, what in the name of Heaven do you want?”
“Shirt buttons.”
“Well, mine button in front. And stop trembling. I told you I was all right.”
“Sure, sure, I know, Pete.”
Suddenly, Altgeld sat up, glaring at his friend accusingly.
“Joe—Joe, you didn’t think I was dying and wire Emma? Joe, you didn’t do any damn fool thing like that!”
“No, no, of course not.”
“Well, don’t. You hear me? I have to be careful of her. It would be insane, frightening her out of her wits.”
“You’d better get some sleep,” Cushing said. “Mr. Martin, I’ll stay with him for a while. Do you
have a room?”
Martin shook his head.
“Well, see about getting one—or are you going back to the city? He can’t be moved tonight.”
Joe Martin walked over to Altgeld’s bed, smiled at him, and then bent over and took his hand.
“Goodnight, Pete.”
“Goodnight.”
He went downstairs to the lobby then. At the desk, he bought a handful of cigars, lit one, and sat in a big leather chair, puffing it silently. Some reporters came in and spoke to the desk clerk. He nodded at Joe Martin, and they walked over and began to question him. He answered the questions, and finally they went away.
It was quite late now, and still neither Cushing nor the two other doctors appeared. Sometime after one, the room clerk said, “Will you want a place to sleep, sir?”
Joe Martin shook his head.
The room clerk locked up his ledger and his cigar cases. He put out all the lights except two. Outside, two drunks staggered by, singing. The night porter, a colored man, stopped by Joe Martin and asked:
“How’s the Governor?”
“I don’t know—”
“Mister, you tell him he’s got the prayers of good people.”
“I’ll tell him,” Joe Martin said.
The clock in the lobby said half past two. The little gambler lit another cigar. There was a long ash on it when one of the doctors came downstairs. Joe Martin stared at him.
“As well as can be expected,” the doctor said.
“Will he live?”
“I don’t think so. You’d better notify his wife.”
“He doesn’t want me to notify his wife unless I’m sure.”
“Then a friend of the family—”
Joe Martin walked down the street until he found a Western Union office. He wrote out a telegram and sent it to Clarence Darrow. Then he walked back to the hotel. The other doctor, James Herrick, was waiting in the lobby. He and Martin stared at each other. Then Cushing appeared.
“He’s dead,” Cushing said.
Joe Martin nodded. He stood there for a little while. Then he walked over to the chair where he had been sitting. He dropped down, his hands hanging limply, and he began to cry. He just sat there crying, and after a moment, the doctors became embarrassed, turned, and went back upstairs.
VII
His body lay in the Public Library building, and all day, from morning until late at night, the doors were open. Only once before in the history of Chicago had there been such a thing as this, and that was when the working people walked after the coffins of Parsons and Spies and Fischer and Engel and Lingg.
Today, it rained. The cold March rain poured down, but they stood there in the rain. It was fifteen years since Albert Parsons had gone to his death, but someone who remembered would have thought that the same people were here, stern-faced, ageless, some in their Sunday best, some in their workclothes, the men coming off the shifts in the factories, the heavy-armed workers from packing-town, the farmers who had driven in, women, children too, who were brought that they might look at Altgeld’s face before he was laid away in the cold earth, shopkeepers, clerks, girls who worked on the looms from morning until night to keep alive, but who could give up a day to look at the face of this man, the striking cab drivers, whose case he had pleaded, well-dressed men and men in rags, the people as broad as the people can be, coming out in their wholeness for one who belonged to them.
Joe Martin was there. Emma Altgeld was there, and there, too, standing in the rain with the others were Bryan and Schilling and Darrow and Debs and Lucy Parsons, too, and many others.
Two by two, all day long, they filed into the building to look at Altgeld. And then they went out into the rain.
A BIOGRAPHY OF
Howard Fast
Howard Fast (1914-2003), one of the most prolific American writers of the twentieth century, was a bestselling author of more than eighty works of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and screenplays. Fast's commitment to championing social justice in his writing was rivaled only by his deftness as a storyteller and his lively cinematic style.
Born on November 11, 1914, in New York City, Fast was the son of two immigrants. His mother, Ida, came from a Jewish family in Britain, while his father, Barney, emigrated from the Ukraine, changing his last name to Fast on arrival at Ellis Island. Fast's mother passed away when he was only eight, and when his father lost steady work in the garment industry, Fast began to take odd jobs to help support the family. One such job was at the New York Public Library, where Fast, surrounded by books, was able to read widely. Among the books that made a mark on him was Jack London's The Iron Heel, containing prescient warnings against fascism that set his course both as a writer and as an advocate for human rights.
Fast began his writing career early, leaving high school to finish his first novel, Two Valleys (1933). His next novels, including Conceived in Liberty (1939) and Citizen Tom Paine (1943), explored the American Revolution and the progressive values that Fast saw as essential to the American experiment. In 1943 Fast joined the American Communist Party, an alliance that came to define—and often encumber—much of his career. His novels during this period advocated freedom against tyranny, bigotry, and oppression by exploring essential moments in American history, as in The American (1946). During this time Fast also started a family of his own. He married Bette Cohen in 1937 and the couple had two children.
Congressional action against the Communist Party began in 1948, and in 1950, Fast, an outspoken opponent of McCarthyism, was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee. Because he refused to provide the names of other members of the Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee, Fast was issued a three-month prison sentence for contempt of Congress. While in prison, he was inspired to write Spartacus (1951), his iconic retelling of a slave revolt during the Roman Empire, and did much of his research for the book during his incarceration. Fast's appearance before Congress also earned him a blacklisting by all major publishers, so he started his own press, Blue Heron, in order to release Spartacus. Other novels published by Blue Heron, including Silas Timberman (1954), directly addressed the persecution of Communists and others during the ongoing Red Scare. Fast continued to associate with the Communist Party until the horrors of Stalin's purges of dissidents and political enemies came to light in the mid-1950s. He left the Party in 1956.
Fast's career changed course in 1960, when he began publishing suspense-mysteries under the pseudonym E. V. Cunningham. He published nineteen books as Cunningham, including the seven-book Masao Masuto mystery series. Also, Spartacus was made into a major film in 1960, breaking the Hollywood blacklist once and for all. The success of Spartacus inspired large publishers to pay renewed attention to Fast's books, and in 1961 he published April Morning, a novel about the battle of Lexington and Concord during the American Revolution. The book became a national bestseller and remains a staple of many literature classes. From 1960 onward Fast produced books at an astonishing pace—almost one book per year—while also contributing to screen adaptations of many of his books. His later works included the autobiography Being Red (1990) and the New York Times bestseller The Immigrants (1977).
Fast died in 2003 at his home in Greenwich, Connecticut.
Fast on a farm in upstate New York during the summer of 1917. Growing up, Fast often spent the summers in the Catskill Mountains with his aunt and uncle from Hunter, New York. These vacations provided a much-needed escape from the poverty and squalor of the Lower East Side's Jewish ghetto, as well as the bigotry his family encountered after they eventually relocated to an Irish and Italian neighborhood in upper Manhattan. However, the beauty and tranquility Fast encountered upstate were often marred by the hostility shown toward him by his aunt and uncle. "They treated us the way Oliver Twist was treated in the orphanage," Fast later recalled. Nevertheless, he "fell in love with the area" and continued to go there until he was in his twenties.
Fast (left) with his older brother, Jerome, in 1935. In his memoir Be
ing Red, Fast wrote that he and his brother "had no childhood." As a result of their mother's death in 1923 and their father's absenteeism, both boys had to fend for themselves early on. At age eleven, alongside his thirteen-year-old brother, Fast began selling copies of a local newspaper called the Bronx Home News. Other odd jobs would follow to make ends meet in violent, Depression-era New York City. Although he resented the hardscrabble nature of his upbringing, Fast acknowledged that the experience helped form a lifelong attachment to his brother. "My brother was like a rock," he wrote, "and without him I surely would have perished."
A copy of Fast's military identification from World War II. During the war Fast worked as a war correspondent in the China-Burma-India theater, writing articles for publications such as PM, Esquire, and Coronet. He also contributed scripts to Voice of America, a radio program developed by Elmer Davis that the United States broadcast throughout occupied Europe.
Here Fast poses for a picture with a fellow inmate at Mill Point prison, where he was sent in 1950 for his refusal to disclose information about other members of the Communist Party. Mill Point was a progressive federal institution made up of a series of army bunkhouses. "Everyone worked at the prison," said Fast during a 1998 interview, "and while I hate prison, I hate the whole concept of prison, I must say this was the most intelligent and humane prison, probably that existed in America." Indeed, Fast felt that his three-month stint there served him well as a writer: "I think a writer should see a little bit of prison and a little bit of war. Neither of these things can be properly invented. So that was my prison."
Fast with his wife Bette and their two children, Jonathan and Rachel, in 1952. The family has a long history of literary achievement. Bette's father founded the Hudson County News Company. Jonathan Fast would go on to become a successful popular novelist, as would his daughter, Molly, whose mother, Erica Jong, is the author of the groundbreaking feminist novel Fear of Flying. (Photo courtesy of Lotte Jacobi.)