by John Jakes
His headwaiter, Mickelmeyer, came out of the service pantry. Tapping the register, Joe asked, “How is this working?”
“She’s a beauty, Joe, just wonderful,” Mickelmeyer said. “I have something wonderful of my own to report. Peter is accepted for the fall.”
“Oh, that’s splendid. When did you learn?”
“Letter came yesterday.” Mickelmeyer beamed. “I never thought the boy would finish Gymnasium, let alone enter a fine university.” The University of Chicago was fine only in the eyes of Chicagoans; it had no record to speak of. It was new, built in large part with money donated by John D. Rockefeller.
“Maybe Peter will have time to play football for that new coach, Stagg.”
“I’d like it,” Mickelmeyer said. “His mama’s against it.”
“Women can sometimes be persuaded. I want Peter to have fifty dollars with my congratulations. Stop by the office later, I’ll write you a draft.”
“Typically generous of you, Joe. God bless you.”
Joe waved and went out. Mickelmeyer had been grateful, but not particularly surprised. He probably expected some such gesture from the head of the firm. Like Joe, Mickelmeyer was an old-timer in the business. At Imbrey’s in Cincinnati where Joe had apprenticed, the owner and his men had always eaten together at trestle tables, and shared each other’s lives as fully as they shared the daily work. Mickelmeyer had had similar experiences. It was typical of the business years ago, and one aspect of the past that Joe tried to preserve. The socialists and anarchists made it hard, sowing suspicion and hostility.
In the Biergarten, the first noontime customers were beginning to fill the tables under the oak and elm trees. The air was heavy and damp, but full of the aroma he’d loved since boyhood: the smell of grain and water, yeast and hops mingling to create the sweet hearty odor of a brewery.
He counted the remaining empty tables, as was his habit. One table caught his eye. He studied it, then signaled a waiter, the newest, whose table it was. Joe showed him the cutlery laid out in a haphazard way.
“This piece goes here, so. The fork goes so.” Joe demonstrated. “All neat and square, that’s how it should be. See that you do it from now on.”
“Ja, Herr Crown,” said the sheepish waiter. He knew what would happen if he didn’t heed the owner.
“We speak English here, unless the customer doesn’t. Good morning.”
He stepped through the gate to the splashing fountain dominated by a six-foot statue of Gambrinus, the legendary Flemish king and patron saint of brewers. King Gambrinus had supposedly gained his fame from his capacity to drink up to a hundred and fifty pints of beer on any occasion.
How satisfying to be Gambrinus, Joe thought. He looked calm and happy. Perhaps from all that good beer …
He heard wheels rattling and checked his watch as a team of handsome bays pulled the carriage to a stop. It was an English-quarter landau; a rich man’s carriage. Black moldings, boot, and a horizontal accent stripe provided discreet decoration. The interior seats were leather dyed to match the outside finish. Even the driver’s seat was fancy, dark red cloth with black leather welting. On each door, a small golden crown was displayed. The front and back top sections were raised because of the threatening weather.
“Five minutes late, Nick,” Joe said, snapping shut the cover of his watch.
“Truly sorry, Mr. Crown,” said Nicky Speers, the robust and ruddy driver-groom employed by the family. Nicky was a middle-aged Englishman; British drivers were highly prized among Chicago’s gentry. “Big smash-up of drays on the Clark Street bridge. Couldn’t turn around for near twenty minutes.”
Joe Crown gave a quick nod to say the explanation was accepted, though not appreciated. He stepped into the carriage and it sped away under the ominous sky.
Joe settled against the cushion and thought about the luncheon meeting.
What lay behind it was the great fair scheduled to open, for one season only, on May 1 the following year. The World’s Columbian Exposition would be a mammoth exhibition of arts and industry, commemorating the four hundredth anniversary of the discovery of America. International in nature, it would focus global attention on Chicago.
To house all the exhibits, enormous pavilions were being rushed to completion in Jackson Park on the South Side. Congress had chosen Chicago for the fair over competing cities, and mandated that the new buildings be dedicated “with appropriate ceremony.” This led to immediate complications, because the obvious date, October 12, was ruled out when President Harrison insisted he must attend the parade honoring Columbus in New York.
The alternate day chosen was the following Friday, October 21. Dedication would be preceded by a full week of civic celebration, including a gala ball sponsored by Armour, Field, Pullman and General Nelson Miles, among others.
A great parade would take place on Thursday; President Harrison would review it. That evening, he and other dignitaries would be entertained at a dinner arranged and paid for by selected guests.
Friday would be the capstone. Every business proprietor save the most Scrooge-like would close his doors to celebrate the dedication. The morning would include a second parade to the Exposition grounds, then a dedication ceremony inside the cavernous Manufactures and Liberal Arts Building, already being promoted as “the largest building in the known world.” All night long, Chicago’s parks would be lit by fireworks.
The entire week had been planned by the Exposition Corporation’s Committee on Ceremonies, which included every rich or important person in Chicago, and dozens who pretended to that status. Joe Crown’s subcommittee was responsible for arrangements for the Thursday night presidential reception and dinner. On that subject, Joe was now bearing bad news.
He opened his folder, perused the menu written in a flowing hand. Thirty-five different items. Oysters. Eggs “Florentine.” Roast of Woodchuck. Veal Chops, Castillan Sauce. Strawberry Shortcake, Kirsch. Cognacs. Beers. Crown’s would provide three kinds of beer, at no cost. Other suppliers weren’t so generous; their avarice had necessitated the emergency meeting. Joe closed the folder. He didn’t need to look at the dismal numbers again; he knew them by heart.
Despite the favorable attention the Exposition would generate, the millions of tourist dollars it would bring in, the fair was at the same time unleashing a floodtide of greed and venality. Even a quasi-respectable personage such as the mayor, Carter Harrison, Sr., had enthusiastically endorsed “progress and a wide open city” during the fair’s run.
The mayor’s cheerful callousness was typical of the town, but Joe thought it typical of the times as well. The tide of greed and venality had been rising in his adopted country for twenty-five years, ever since the administration of U. S. Grant, the war hero and avowed political innocent. Grant’s advisers and cronies had used their positions to enrich themselves illegally, most notably in the Whiskey Ring that defrauded the government of millions in distillery taxes.
After that, Jay Gould and Jim Fisk had tried to corner the nation’s gold supply and nearly wrecked the economy. The Tweed Ring in New York had looted millions from the city treasury before they were stopped. Four shareholders of the Union Pacific and the Central Pacific railroads had built personal fortunes by siphoning off government subsidies during construction of the transcontinental railroad. John D. Rockefeller of Cleveland had organized Standard Oil and ruthlessly used the corporation to drive competitors to the wall; now he went about wearing the purifying garments of a philanthropist.
For every one of these great scandals there were a thousand lesser ones. Stock manipulation, land fraud, stuffing of ballot boxes, fixing of prices, consolidation of industries in the hands of a few men who conspired together—all were commonplace. Children were hired illegally to work in factories that were dirty and unsafe, and some of those children became diseased or maimed for life. In Chicago, the votes of a majority of the aldermen—the notorious “gray wolves”—were openly for sale. Even today’s meeting was the direct resul
t of naked greed. There seemed to be very little idealism left in America, only a cynical belief in the almighty dollar. Get it honestly or dishonestly—by graft at city hall or sharp dealing in the boardroom—but get it.
The sensational press boosted circulation with stories about “robber barons” and “trusts,” crooked bosses and slum landlords, and the stories were wearily shrugged off by a majority of decent folk who presumed themselves helpless. Obscure authors wrote books demanding reform but few read them save women, preachers, and impressionable young men such as Joe’s older son.
A few public figures cried out against the worship of money and the attendant corruption. Joe’s close friend Carl Schurz was one. Unfortunately such men were lonely prophets in a wilderness of apathy. The rich got richer by circumventing the law and the poor starved or died in submissive silence. The glory of the American business system—the freedom it allowed—was also its curse, for it virtually invited the wolves to enter the fold, to kill and plunder without hindrance. Reform was desperately needed. But where would it start? What man of good character would rise to lead it?
Joe still believed in the fundamental rightness of the American system. He believed in the opportunity it gave a man willing to work hard. He didn’t fancy himself a saint or, praise God, a radical. But neither did he think himself as stupid as some of his peers. Businessmen with utter disregard for the human side of commerce. Gus Swift and Pork Vanderhoff, for example; two packing house tycoons who blandly said that if one of their workers hurt or crippled himself at one of their plants, it was not their fault or responsibility, but rather the injured man’s—he knew and accepted the risks when he took the job. When such unfortunates fell on the human scrap heap, Swift and Vanderhoff looked the other way.
George Pullman was hardly any better. He’d built his model workers’ town, Pullman, twelve miles south of the city. On the surface it seemed a wonderful and humane experiment. But he packed the town with company spies to prevent labor agitation, and he charged his tenants three times the normal rate for gas and light and water.
Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind, Joe thought. What the Pullmans, Swifts, Vanderhoffs ignored was a growing number of Bennos around the world. Men dedicated to “propaganda of the deed.” Which could include arson, dynamiting, even murder.
He chastised himself for letting his thoughts flow into such morbid channels. It was probably the sum of many things, including the sinister dark sky. And a pervasive worry about his nephew from Germany.
In the basement of the Palmer House, Joe took the waiting chair in the barbershop. He greeted a couple of acquaintances—the shop was a haven for the city’s business leaders—and apologized to the barber, Antonio, for being five minutes late. Antonio’s smile and shrug said it didn’t matter; Mr. Crown had his regular time each week, and he tipped generously.
The Palmer House barbershop was equipped with huge chrome-trimmed chairs and decorated with potted palms and dozens of silver dollars imbedded in precise rows in the floor. Important patrons had their own shaving mugs and brushes in racks on the wall. Joe Crown’s mug was brightly enameled with a picture of a merry king wearing an enormous crown and lolling on a throne. Above the picture, in gold, was the word CROWN. Below, likewise gold, the word REX.
Antonio stropped his razor and lathered Joe’s cheeks just above his beard. Joe usually enjoyed these tonsorial visits, but this morning his mood didn’t allow it. The sight of the painted mug brought memories of the great war, his Union Army service that had exerted such a profound influence on the course of his life. In the war, a vague predisposition toward neatness and order had changed to a ruling passion, reaching deep into his German soul and enslaving him to Ordnung forever.
The mug. There had been another like it, on a tragic night when—
No, he didn’t want to relive that now. Things were quite grim enough without it. He leaned back in the chair and closed his eyes while Antonio brushed sweet-smelling soap onto his cheeks.
The handsome red sandstone clubhouse of the Union League was at the corner of West Jackson and Custom House Streets. Formed in 1862 as a patriotic organization whose members swore an oath to preserve and defend the Union, the Union League had spread through the North, and social clubs had sprung from it after the war.
Joe’s subcommittee members were waiting for him in the spacious main lounge. The two men were a sharply contrasting pair. Both were in their middle fifties. Charles Yerkes, of German descent, was a pallid, dark-eyed man with a luxuriant handlebar mustache and leonine hair turning white. Someone who didn’t know his reputation as a piratical businessman might have guessed he was a professor, with a professor’s reserve and palpable aura of superiority—although no professor could have afforded his English suits and handmade shirts. Congressman Joe Cannon’s appearance was also deceptive. He gave a first impression of rubelike sloppiness, with his crushed felt hat and sloppy clothes and a chin beard badly in need of trimming. Joe Crown had noticed, however, that Cannon’s suits were not cheap, merely worn carelessly. Cannon often joked about it:
“My noble constituents down in Vermilion County, they’re just a bunch of good old dirt farmers, how’d it look if I high-hatted them dressed up like a dude? Poor old Chester Arthur, he couldn’t get renominated in ’84 because he dressed fancy. I always say Chester was beat by his pants.”
Cannon’s hayseed act concealed a dictatorial nature, a shrewd mind and an awesome strength of will.
Chatting, the three repaired to the two-story main dining room, and the table Yerkes had reserved in a quiet corner. Behind an ornate screen in a small musicians’ gallery, an unseen entertainer softly plucked a mandolin.
During the heavy meal, they discussed the uneasy state of the country. Yes, Americans considered the monopolistic trusts obscene, symbols of an evil and crushing influence on humble lives. By extension, all businessmen were suspect. There were political consequences. In the West and the South, farmers and workingmen were organizing a third party, called Populist. The gulf between rich and poor, capital and labor, was growing ever wider, ever more divisive. Witness Joe’s problems with Benno Strauss, which he mentioned. Yerkes brought up the violence at the Carnegie Steel plant in Homestead, Pennsylvania, last July. State troops had been called in to quell a strike; men had died in a hail of gunfire.
If Joe’s outlook on all this tended to be a little bleak, that of Yerkes was dismal:
“I have thousands of shares of Philadelphia & Reading in my portfolio, and they’re practically worthless. All the railroads are teetering on the brink of bankruptcy. In New York last week I had dinner with Belmont and Morgan. They’re both certain that we’re headed for disaster. They’ve tried to warn Washington. No one there seems to give a damn,” he said with a sidelong look at Cannon.
Uncle Joe scratched his nose. “Don’t exactly know what we can do, Charlie. ’Tisn’t up to the government to regulate a free market. You’re right about the mess, though. I have some grain and cotton shares. Sky high one day, lower than a whore’s reputation the next. You need a swami with a God damn crystal ball to predict what’s going to happen.” He signaled the waiter for more coffee. To Joe he said, “Your business all right?”
“Yes, always. Sales may dip a little in bad times, but they never dip too far. Beer is a cheap balm for the soul.” He wasn’t making a joke, but Yerkes snickered, as if he thought the statement contemptible.
When each man had more coffee, Joe opened his folder and showed them the final revised menu. “Charles, do you approve?”
Yerkes shrugged. “Why not? If we have a crash between now and next Thursday, we can serve the President stale rolls and water.”
“Uncle Joe?”
“I’d say it’s fine. I like you two fellas all right, but if you dragged me onto a C. & E. I. car from Danville, bumping my ass on a bad roadbed for a hundred miles just to okay a God damn menu—” With his foot he moved the spittoon closer under the table. He leaned over and expectorated noisily. “Then look
out. You may think you’ve heard me cuss, but here comes a blue norther.”
He pulled out one of his cheap cigars and lit up. Joe said, “No, there’s something much more important to discuss. The two houses supplying our wild game and our liqueurs have arbitrarily increased their estimates. By very substantial amounts.”
“Well, hell, just dump ’em and find new ones,” Cannon said, waving.
“It can’t be done, we’re out of time. I’m damned angry but at this point anger is futile. Nor will it solve the problem. Even sold out—which we are—we will not take in enough money to cover our costs. Here, look.”
He showed them his sheet with the numbers.
“Our subcommittee is responsible for keeping the menu within the budget. The Committee on Ceremonies will hang the three of us if we’re in the red.”
Cannon reared back in his high velvet chair. “Don’t look at me, boys, my pockets got nothing in ’em but lint and small change. How much do you think a country lawyer makes when one shitkicker drags another into court over some pissant property dispute? I’ll tell you what I make: chicken feed.” He leaned over for another emphatic spit.
Looking put upon, Charles Yerkes sighed and said, “All right, I’ll subscribe enough to make up the difference. I presume that’s the reason I’m on the committee in the first place.”
Greatly relieved, Joe said, “I was hoping you’d offer. If you’ll be responsible for half of the deficit, I’ll make up the other half.”
“Done,” Yerkes said, looking happier.
“Now that it’s settled, suppose I can get another God damn drink?” Uncle Joe said, looking bored.