by John Jakes
He kept cranking.
“Sid, you’re gonna be killed.” Mary’s hysterical voice was faint in the roar of the train and the storm. The Cannonball grew taller and wider, coming on like one of those prairie cyclones he’d read about. He thought of Julie; of all the things he’d left undone in his young life. ONE-TWO, ONE-TWO, ONE-TWO, ONE-TWO, someone should make up a song; sing it at his funeral …
“Now!” Shadow screamed, and jerked the tripod.
Paul jumped to the left, without looking. A great roaring suction of air tore at his shirt and cap. He fell into the cornfield, gasping.
The Cannonball passed.
Shadow stayed on his feet with the camera and tripod on his shoulder, just beside the track. “My God, we got it, I think we got it.” He was nearly as hysterical as Mary.
The mail and freight and passenger cars shuttled by. Paul scrambled to his feet, drenched by the sudden heavy rain. His trembling lessened. He’d stood fast. He’d got the picture.
“Here, cover up, I’ve got a hat,” Shadow said, handing Paul a folded newspaper from his coat pocket. Paul unfolded the paper and started to lay it over his head. He noticed a headline.
MISS VANDERHOFF ENGAGED.
To Wed Prominent Clubman
W. V. Elstree ID.
August Wedding Date Announced
by Parents of Bride-Elect.
Part Seven
Flickers
1896-1898
Such a bustle and a hurry
O’er the “living picture” craze,
Rivals rushing full of worry
In these advertising days.
Each the first and each the only,
Each the others wildly chaff,
All of them proclaiming boldly
Theirs the first A-Kind-O-Graph.
But it is a wonder really,
How the constant flood of life
O’er the screen keeps moving freely,
Full of action, stir and strife.
’Tis far from perfect in its movement,
’Tis very hard upon the eyes;
The jolty wobble’s no improvement,
Smooth-running films a great surprise.
Still successful beyond reason,
’Spite of all its erring ways,
Holding first place in the season
Is the “living picture” craze.
1896
British Journal of Photography
74
Joe Crown
“WHAT ARE YOU READING, Joe?”
He twisted onto his left shoulder to let the glow of the bedside lamp fall on the book’s gold-stamped spine.
“The Red Badge of Courage,” Ilsa said. “You’ve read that before.”
“Twice. It’s a powerful book.”
“Some of my friends say it’s too realistic, they stopped after a few pages.”
“I agree, it isn’t a woman’s book. What of it?” Joe felt testy. The damp, windless night made the house an oven. His linen nightshirt, the lightest he owned, was sweated through. The summer had arrived early; it was only June. Much of the city was sleeping easier now that “Bluebeard” Holmes had been hanged for his crimes in May. Joe Crown wasn’t sleeping easier, and it had nothing to do with Chicago’s infamous mass murderer.
“Young Mr. Crane has never been to war, isn’t that right?” Ilsa said.
“But you might believe so. He has imagination. By God, he does. If we’ve finished the conversation, Ilsa, may I continue to read?”
She wiped her forehead with a crumpled handkerchief; the movement of her hand hid the hurt on her face.
“Yes, Joe, certainly. I wouldn’t disturb you for the world. Good night.” She turned away from him.
Hostile feelings toward Ilsa had been stirring within Joe for over six months. He believed himself to be the one who had been misunderstood. Wronged. So he didn’t take her hand in his and gently suggest, as he might once have, that they search for ways to break down the barrier arising between them.
He read for another hour. Young Crane’s powerful tale called to something in his blood. In memory he heard bugles and drums. The tramp of foot soldiers, the gallop of cavalry, the laughter and singing by the camp fires at night …
For all of war’s dirt and travail, which Crane compellingly captured, a war gave a man an enemy he could attack and defeat according to certain rules. Joe Crown had no such enemy. But he devoutly wished for one.
In this year of 1896 America was demonstrating her new status in the world by asserting her power in the Western hemisphere. Late in December of the preceding year, she’d faced down the mighty British empire.
Great Britain had sent three warships to blockade a port in Nicaragua in response to a quarrel over some debt Britain claimed she was owed. Washington accused Britain of violating the Monroe Doctrine. Congress threatened mobilization. The mighty British empire backed down almost at once.
This left America’s jingo element—politicians whose districts included shipyards or military posts; professors and bureaucrats who worshiped Admiral Alfred Mahan’s writings on naval power; newspaper publishers whose circulation needed a boost; outspoken patriots such as New York City’s young activist police commissioner, Theodore Roosevelt—without a cause.
Then, fortuitously, there came on the scene General Valeriano Weyler y Nicolau, Spain’s newly appointed governor-general of Cuba, charged with putting an end to the outbreaks of rebellion in the back country.
General Weyler’s first tactic was institution of the policy of reconcentrado. Reconcentration. Relocation of the population of the rural provinces into detention camps far from their homes. These were the country people who had sheltered and protected the roving bands of freedom fighters—the rebels who attacked and. destroyed government forts and property, then vanished back into the villages, indistinguishable from peaceful farmers.
Weyler said he was moving the provincial people to commodious cottages with ample food and adequate sanitation. The dispatches of foreign journalists told a darker story. Weyler was crowding hundreds, thousands, into ill-lit barns and warehouses infested with rats and vermin. With no provisions for sanitation, and little or no food. Children began to starve and die. Adults who protested began to disappear. Correspondents in Havana began to hear horror stories of atrocities in the compounds. A new name appeared in their telegraphed stories. Butcher Weyler.
In New York, to fuel their hot circulation war, Mr. W. R. Hearst of the Journal and Mr. Joseph Pulitzer of the World capitalized on the plight of the Cubans. The columns of both papers overflowed with titillating dispatches about “young Cuban amazons” shot down and decapitated, elderly nuns “outraged,” heroic priests “roasted alive” by Weyler’s troops. Reconcentrado gave the yellow press exactly what it wanted.
Joe Crown joined the protest against Spain and Butcher Weyler. He put on his best G.A.R. suit of indigo blue wool flannel and sat with hundreds of his fellow veterans at a rally of four thousand people in Central Music Hall.
An eighty-piece platform band played martial airs by John P. Sousa. Speakers waved the rhetorical flag, denounced the Spanish dictators, and threatened war in retaliation for atrocities. Joe was thrilled. Here was a new cause.
He did recognize that the growing national fervor for Cuba libre wasn’t entirely idealistic. American investors had sunk as much as fifty millions of dollars in railroads and sugar mills on the island. The labor leader Sam Gompers denounced Spanish tyranny in fine-sounding phrases, but you had to remember that he represented the cigar makers’ union. Joe himself had a liking for an occasional cigar of fine Havana leaf, already in short supply.
Still, did it matter that commercial interests were tied up with the new patriotism? Did it matter if America went to war for sugar and tobacco? The Cubans were downtrodden, Spain was in the wrong, Weyler was a beast.
If war came, and it well might, could he take part? How?
Outwardly, Joe Crown’s life had an appearance of calm. The b
rewery was prospering. A new brewmaster, Samuel Ziegler, was proving highly satisfactory. The two children were no more fractious than usual.
Fritzi, fifteen, was doing well in her studies, although she continued to make frequent and annoying references to her coming career as a stage actress. She had discovered Shakespeare and went about constantly with a script, playing Portia or Beatrice, Desdemona or Lady Macbeth.
Carl, home from the Habsburg School, was growing taller, broader in the shoulders. He was a powerful boy. One afternoon he batted a ball from the side yard all the way across Michigan to the front door of the Heindorf mansion. It cost Joe two hundred fifty dollars to replace the stained glass panels.
Joe Junior, fortunately, was no longer a subject of bitter contention between Joe and Ilsa. Every few months Joe brought up his offer to rehire the firm of private detectives. Ilsa always said no, it wasn’t necessary, the wheat stalks in the envelope had convinced her that her boy was safe and well. In December Joe had nodded agreeably and then, on his own, reengaged the detectives for two months. With no results.
He spent a lot of time at White Stockings games, taking Carl with him. He enjoyed the fresh air and excitement but often recalled, with sadness, how pleasurable it had been with young Joe Junior at his side. Or how much Paul had enjoyed his first game. Sometimes Joe would search around the ballpark, hoping he might spy his nephew in the bleachers. He never did.
He found himself willing to leave his desk at the brewery on almost any pretext. Early in July he had a fine excuse when the Democrats convened at the Chicago Coliseum to nominate a presidential candidate. A month before, in St. Louis, Marcus Hanna had maneuvered his forces and called in markers to give the Republican nomination to Governor William McKinley of Ohio.
A lifelong Democrat and contributor to the party, Joe Crown went to the convention. He arrived as the doors of the Coliseum opened in the morning and stayed in the crowded gallery until the day’s session was gaveled to adjournment. Puffing away on Cuban cigars, he disgustedly watched the Illinois delegation down on the floor. Governor John Altgeld was seated there, constantly whispering to his allies in the silver wing. Among them Joe recognized Michael Kenna; Altgeld whispered to him often. Damned conspirators, Joe thought, blowing out the match with which he’d lit a new panatela.
Belatedly, he noticed a woman in a flat-crowned straw hat seated directly in front of him. He tapped her shoulder. “Excuse me, does this cigar bother you?”
“Oh no, I like the aroma.”
“Really. That’s fairly unusual for a woman. Thank you.”
He smiled. She smiled, turning slightly in her seat. She had eyes of deep blue, friendly and intelligent; dark red hair showed under her hat brim. He was aware of a shapely bosom that a prim Gibson girl shirtwaist couldn’t hide. She was a woman of early middle age, not beautiful but certainly handsome. That night, in bed, Ilsa snoring lightly beside him, he pictured the woman’s face for a long time.
Silver was the great issue at the convention. With the value of gold increasing and that of silver declining, farmers continued to suffer under laws that said debts contracted with paper money must be repaid in gold. The agrarian West cried that such treatment was unjust and destructive, while the commercial East continued to fight for the gold standard and control of the money supply. Joe, being a conservative businessman, stood squarely with the gold wing.
But there were powerful and popular men among the opposition. One of the most notable was a former congressman and newspaper editor born in Salem, Illinois, but now a resident of Nebraska, William Jennings Bryan. Bryan, the free-silver Populist, was a reigning star of the Chautauqua.
The Chautauqua institution from upstate New York was the Prometheus of American life. It brought the fire of culture—educational and inspirational speakers, musical performances, lantern-slide lectures—to the backwoods and the prairies. It did so by scheduling its attractions on a circuit of tents and town halls said to number twenty thousand. Bryan was a special favorite of Chautauquas in the Bible Belt and the Cotton Belt, the Cyclone Belt, the Corn Belt—rural America.
Joe often discussed party politics with German business acquaintances who were Democrats. In the past year Bryan’s name had come up often. Following an unsuccessful bid for a Nebraska Senate seat, he had been delivering and polishing one speech on the Chautauqua wheel. It was even referred to as “The Speech.” In the press it was praised for its form and eloquence, if not its content. Joe wanted to hear “the Boy Orator of the Platte,” if only to judge “The Speech,” and the man, for himself.
Already the money issue had caused trouble at the convention. Nebraska had rival delegations, gold and silver. Before the convention opened, officials on the national committee voted to seat the gold delegates. A floor fight reversed that and gave Nebraska’s seats to the silver delegation, which included Bryan. Joe witnessed the floor fight from the gallery. That the wise heads on the national committee were outvoted by a pack of loud, rude farmers made him fume.
On a hell-hot July day, the convention began debate on the currency plank of the platform. Joe stripped off his coat and lit another cigar. In the seat ahead, by herself once again, the handsome woman tilted her head without looking around. Acknowledging the smoke and, perhaps, his presence.
The galleries were packed. So were the aisles. As many as twenty thousand jammed the hall; it had been widely advertised that Bryan would give his free-silver speech during the debate. Joe hoped it would fail to win an enthusiastic response.
Ben Tillman, the wild-eyed politician from South Carolina, was the first proponent of free silver to be recognized by the chair. Senator Hill of New York argued for the gold standard, then Senator Vilas of Wisconsin and former Governor Russell of Massachusetts. Finally the Honorable Mr. Bryan was introduced.
The galleries rocked with prolonged applause and cheering. The leonine young man from Nebraska took the podium with an expression and a stance obviously well rehearsed. The handsome redhead leaned forward expectantly. Joe again found himself noting and admiring the fullness of her bosom. Damned odd behavior for a man my age, he thought with a wry amusement.
Bryan was over six feet tall, with a powerful jaw, dark eyes, and a flow of long dark hair swept back from a high forehead. He was, as best Joe could recall, thirty-six.
“Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the convention,” he began, hushing the hall with a voice deep as the lower organ registers; it could have been the voice of a famous tragedian or a pulpit spellbinder.
After a few words to acknowledge the delegates and guests, Bryan said, “My friends, I would be presumptuous indeed to present myself against the distinguished gentlemen to whom you have listened if this were a mere measuring of abilities. But we are not engaged in a contest between persons. The humblest citizen in the land, when clad in the armor of a righteous cause, is stronger than all the hosts of error. I come forward as a plain person, to speak to you in defense of a cause as holy as the cause of liberty. It is the cause of humanity.”
The huge Coliseum was virtually silent. Bryan knew how to throw his voice to the farthest seat, the highest rafter, without apparent effort.
“We say to you that you have made the definition of a business man too limited in its application. The man who is employed for wages is as much a business man as his employer. The attorney in a country town is as much a business man as the corporation counsel in a great metropolis. The farmer who goes forth in the morning and toils all day is as much a business man as the man with a seat on the board of trade who bets upon the price of grain.”
It was these small businessmen—these pioneers, Bryan called them—for whom he pleaded. Eastern interests had forced these little farmers and merchants into a conflict they didn’t want, but were prepared to fight.
“We do not come as aggressors. Our war is not a war of conquest. We are fighting in the defense of our homes, our families, and posterity. We have petitioned, and our petitions have been scorned. We have entreated, and our en
treaties have been disregarded. We have begged, and they have mocked us. We beg no longer. We entreat no more. We petition no more. We defy them!”
Joe rocked back in bewilderment as a great roar erupted. Floor delegates jumped to their feet. So did men and women throughout the gallery. The handsome woman held her hands over her head as she clapped. Joe glimpsed her ecstatic face as he applauded politely. What the hell is happening here? he thought, both in reference to the demonstration and to himself.
Bryan let the tumult continue for a minute or so. Then he held up his hands. The floor and the galleries began to quiet down at once.
Bryan pitched his voice low, in preparation for what Joe sensed would be a climb to the final peak of the speech. Bryan spoke of McKinley, calling him a decent and well-intentioned man who had enjoyed wide popularity and approval until three months ago. Then there was a shift:
“No personal popularity, however great, can protect from the avenging wrath of an indignant people a man who will declare that he is in favor of fastening the gold standard upon this country.”
Now the volume rose; the tempo quickened:
“You come to us and tell us that the great cities are in favor of the gold standard. We reply that the great cities rest upon our broad and fertile prairies. Burn down your cities and leave our farms, and your cities will spring up again as if by magic. But destroy our farms, and the grass will grow in the streets of every city in the land.”
Another ovation.
“If they dare to come out in the open field and defend the gold standard as a good thing, we will fight them to the uttermost. Having behind us the producing masses of this nation and the world, supported by the commercial interests, the laboring interests and the toilers everywhere, we will answer their demand for a gold standard by saying to them—you shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns. You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.”