Big Money (67 page)

After Ed had gone Dick found on his desk a big lavender envelope marked Personal. A whiff of strong perfume came out when he opened it. It was an invitation from Myra Bingham to come to the housewarming of her studio on Central Park South. He was still reading it when Miss Hilles' voice came out of the interoffice phone. “There's Mr. Henry B. Furness of the Furness Corporation says he must speak to Mr. Moorehouse at once.” “Put him on my phone, Miss Hilles. I'll talk to him . . . and, by the way, put a social engagement on my engagement pad . . . January fifteen that five o'clock . . . reception Miss Myra Bingham, 36 Central Park South.”

WALL STREET STUNNED

 

This is not Thirty-eight but it's old Ninety-seven

    
You must put her in Center on time

 

MARKET SURE TO RECOVER FROM SLUMP

 

Decline in Contracts

 

POLICE TURN MACHINE GUNS
ON COLORADO MINE STRIKERS
KILL
5
WOUND
40

 

sympathizers appeared on the scene just as thousands of office workers were pouring out of the buildings at the lunch hour. As they raised their placard high and started an indefinite march from one side to the other, they were jeered and hooted not only by the office workers but also by workmen on a building under construction

 

NEW METHODS OF SELLING SEEN

 

Rescue Crews Try To Upend Ill-fated Craft While Waiting For Pontoons

 

He looked 'round an' said to his black greasy fireman

    
Jus' shovel in a little more coal

And when we cross that White Oak Mountain

    
You can watch your Ninety-seven roll

 

I find your column interesting and need advice. I have saved four thousand dollars which I want to invest for a better income. Do you think I might buy stocks?

 

POLICE KILLER FLICKS CIGARETTE AS
HE GOES TREMBLING TO DOOM

 

PLAY AGENCIES IN RING OF SLAVE GIRL MARTS

 

Maker of Love Disbarred as Lawyer

 

Oh the right wing clothesmakers

And the Socialist fakers

They make by the workers
. . .

Double cross

 

They preach Social-ism

But practice Fasc-ism

To keep capitalism

By the boss

 

MOSCOW CONGRESS OUSTS OPPOSITION

 

It's a mighty rough road from Lynchburg to Danville

    
An' a line on a three mile grade

It was on that grade he lost his average

    
An' you see what a jump he made

 

MILL THUGS IN MURDER RAID

 

here is the most dangerous example of how at the decisive moment the bourgeois ideology liquidates class solidarity and turns a friend of the workingclass of yesterday into a most miserable propagandist for imperialism today

 

RED PICKETS FINED FOR PROTEST HERE

 

We leave our home in the morning

    
We kiss our children goodby

 

OFFICIALS STILL HOPE FOR RESCUE OF MEN

 

He was goin' downgrade makin' ninety miles an hour

    
When his whistle broke into a scream

He was found in the wreck with his hand on the throttle

    
An' was scalded to death with the steam

 

RADICALS FIGHT WITH CHAIRS AT UNITY MEETING

 

PATROLMEN PROTECT REDS

 

U.S. CHAMBER OF COMMERCE URGES CONFIDENCE

 

REAL VALUES UNHARMED

 

While we slave for the bosses

    
Our children scream an' cry

But when we draw our money

    
Our grocery bills to pay

 

PRESIDENT SEES PROSPERITY NEAR

 

Not a cent to spend for clothing

    
Not a cent to lay away

 

STEAMROLLER IN ACTION AGAINST MILITANTS

 

MINERS BATTLE SCABS

 

But we cannot buy for our children

    
Our wages are too low

Now listen to me you workers

    
Both you women and men

Let us win for them the victory

    
I'm sure it ain't no sin

 

CARILLON PEALS IN SINGING TOWER

 

the President declared it was impossible to view the increased advantages for the many without smiling at those who a short time ago expressed so much fear lest our country might come under the control of a few individuals of great wealth

 

HAPPY CROWDS THRONG CEREMONY

 

on a tiny island nestling like a green jewel in the lake that mirrors the singing tower, the President today participated in the dedication of a bird sanctuary and its pealing carillon, fulfilling the dream of an immigrant boy

at the head of the valley in the dark of the hills on the broken floor of a lurchedover cabin a man halfsits halflies propped up by an old woman two wrinkled girls that might be young      chunks of coal flare in the hearth flicker in his face white and sagging as dough      blacken the cavedin mouth the taut throat the belly swelled enormous with the wound he got working on the minetipple

the barefoot girl brings him a tincup of water      the woman wipes sweat off his streaming face with a dirty denim sleeve      the firelight flares in his eyes stretched big with fever in the women's scared eyes and in the blanched faces of the foreigners

without help in the valley hemmed by dark strike-silent hills the man will die (my father died we know what it is like to see a man die) the women will lay him out on the rickety cot the miners will bury him

 

in the jail it's light too hot the steamheat hisses we talk through the greenpainted iron bars to a tall white mustachioed old man some smiling miners in shirtsleeves a boy      faces white from mining have already the tallowy look of jailfaces

foreigners what can we say to the dead?      foreigners what can we say to the jailed?      the representative of the political party talks fast through the bars join up with us and no other union we'll send you tobacco candy solidarity our lawyers will write briefs speakers will shout your names at meetings they'll carry your names on cardboard on picketlines      the men in jail shrug their shoulders smile thinly our eyes look in their eyes through the bars      what can I say?      (in another continent I have seen the faces looking out through the barred basement windows behind the ragged sentry's boots I have seen before day the straggling footsore prisoners herded through the streets limping between bayonets      heard the volley

I have seen the dead lying out in those distant deeper valleys)      what can we say to the jailed?

 

in the law's office we stand against the wall the law is a big man with eyes angry in a big pumpkinface who sits and stares at us meddling foreigners through the door the deputies crane with their guns      they stand guard at the mines      they blockade the miners' soupkitchens      they've cut off the road up the valley      the hiredmen with guns stand ready to shoot (they have made us foreigners in the land where we were born they are the conquering army that has filtered into the country unnoticed they have taken the hilltops by stealth they levy toll they stand at the minehead      they stand at the polls      they stand by when the bailiffs carry the furniture of the family evicted from the city tenement out on the sidewalk they are there when the bankers foreclose on a farm they are ambushed and ready to shoot down the strikers marching behind the flag up the switchback road to the mine those that the guns spare they jail)

the law stares across the desk out of angry eyes his face reddens in splotches like a gobbler's neck with the strut of the power of submachineguns sawedoffshotguns teargas and vomitinggas the power that can feed you or leave you to starve

sits easy at his desk his back is covered he feels strong behind him he feels the prosecutingattorney the judge an owner himself the political boss the minesuperintendent the board of directors      the president of the utility the manipulator of the holdingcompany

he lifts his hand towards the telephone

the deputies crowd in the door

we have only words against

In eighteen eighty when Thomas Edison's agent was hooking up the first telephone in London, he put an ad in the paper for a secretary and stenographer. The eager young cockney with sprouting muttonchop whiskers who answered it

had recently lost his job as officeboy. In his spare time he had been learning shorthand and bookkeeping and taking dictation from the editor of the English
Vanity Fair
at night and jotting down the speeches in Parliament for the papers. He came of temperance smallshopkeeper stock; already he was butting his bullethead against the harsh structure of caste that doomed boys of his class to a life of alpaca jackets, penmanship, subordination. To get a job with an
American firm was to put a foot on the rung of a ladder that led up into the blue.

He did his best to make himself indispensable; they let him operate the switchboard for the first halfhour when the telephone service was opened. Edison noticed his weekly reports on the electrical situation in England

and sent for him to be his personal secretary.

Samuel Insull landed in America on a raw March day in eighty-one. Immediately he was taken out to Menlo Park, shown about the little group of laboratories, saw the strings of electriclightbulbs shining at intervals across the snowy lots, all lit from the world's first central electric station. Edison put him right to work and he wasn't through till midnight. Next morning at six he was on the job; Edison had no use for any nonsense about hours or vacations. Insull worked from that time on until he was seventy without a break; no nonsense about hours or vacations. Electric power turned the ladder into an elevator.

Young Insull made himself indispensable to Edison and took more and more charge of Edison's business deals. He was tireless, ruthless, reliable as the tides, Edison used to say, and fiercely determined to rise.

 

In ninetytwo he induced Edison to send him to Chicago and put him in as president of the Chicago Edison Company. Now he was on his own.
My engineering
, he said once in a speech, when he was sufficiently czar of Chicago to allow himself the luxury of plain speaking,
has been largely concerned with engineering all I could out of the dollar
.

He was a stiffly arrogant redfaced man with a close-cropped mustache; he lived on Lake Shore Drive and was at the office at 7:10 every morning. It took him fifteen years to merge the five electrical companies into the Commonwealth Edison Company.
Very early I discovered that the first essential, as in other public utility business, was that it should be operated as a monopoly
.

When his power was firm in electricity he captured gas, spread out into the surrounding townships in northern Illinois. When politicians got in his way, he bought them, when laborleaders got in his way he bought them. Incredibly his power grew. He was scornful of
bankers, lawyers were his hired men. He put his own lawyer in as corporation counsel and through him ran Chicago. When he found to his amazement that there were men (even a couple of young lawyers, Richberg and Ickes) in Chicago that he couldn't buy, he decided he'd better put on a show for the public;

Big Bill Thompson, the Builder:

punch King George in the nose
,

the hunt for the treeclimbing fish,

the Chicago Opera.

It was too easy; the public had money, there was one of them born every minute, with the founding of Middlewest Utilities in nineteen twelve Insull began to use the public's money to spread his empire. His companies began to have open stockholders' meetings, to ballyhoo service, the small investor could sit there all day hearing the bigwigs talk. It's fun to be fooled. Companyunions hypnotized his employees; everybody had to buy stock in his companies, employees had to go out and sell stock, officeboys, linemen, trolleyconductors. Even Owen D. Young was afraid of him.
My experience is that the greatest aid in the efficiency of labor is a long line of men waiting at the gate
.

 

War shut up the progressives (no more nonsense about trust-busting, controlling monopoly, the public good) and raised Samuel Insull to the peak.

He was head of the Illinois State Council of Defense.
Now
, he said delightedly,
I can do anything I like
. With it came the perpetual spotlight, the purple taste of empire. If anybody didn't like what Samuel Insull did he was a traitor. Chicago damn well kept its mouth shut.