Haymarket (11 page)

Of late, I’ve become in demand as a speaker. People want to hear what the Workingmen’s Party stands for and are kind enough to say I have an oratorical gift, that I’m able to explain complicated issues in a way they understand. I suspect the prime reason I’m beginning to be pushed front and center is because there are so few American-born speakers in the Chicago section of the
WP
, other than John McAuliffe, Philip Van Patten, and myself. The concern is that the party will be stigmatized as “foreign-run” and that native-born workers will shun it on that account.

I’ve already been as far east as Philadelphia and have seen a lot. Enough to know that Spies is right: many of our fellow wage-earners are ignorant
of their own best interests and blind to the value of organizing. Their employers encourage this by misrepresenting the
WP
’s purposes. The capitalist press is starting to label me a “labor agitator.” So be it—though I wouldn’t like to lose my job at the paper.

May 4

I should set down some facts about the Workingmen’s Party. There are about 2,500 members in Illinois alone. Our basic aim is to appeal to all workers, no matter their national or religious backgrounds. In this, we’re like the Knights, but we’re more politically minded. Most of the
WP
’s fifteen Chicago sections are German speaking, plus three Bohemian, two Polish, and one Scandinavian. We had an Irish club, too, but that disbanded. The Irish decided that the
WP
is godless. They prefer the Knights, with its mystical rituals and the secrecy that reduces the risk of getting fired. The Knights, unlike the
WP
, is almost wholly dominated by Irish-, British-, and American-born workers.

I suppose the Irish are right—most of us in the Workingmen’s Party are godless. I like the way Spies summarized our attitude the other day. “The church,” he said, “serves the oppressor. It keeps the masses in line with talk of a Natural Order and with the promise of a better life in the hereafter.” Sam Fielden confessed that as a young man in England he had been a Methodist preacher and prominent at revival meetings—“caught in the snares of superstition” is how he put it.

But I’m losing track of my point. Maybe that’s what diary-keeping is, letting oneself wander from thought to thought. It makes me uneasy, though, as if I’m not fulfilling my purpose.

To continue, the
WP
’s leading paper is
Der Vorbote
. It does a fine job of gathering news about labor activities around the country and has a circulation of some 3,300. That’s pretty good considering that trade union membership—which just five years ago was at three hundred thousand—is now down to about fifty thousand. How can an unemployed man pay dues to help a union bargain for jobs that don’t exist?

Der Vorbote
’s office is a small second-story space on the west side of Market Street. It’s become a gathering place for many of us “labor agitators.” The mainstream press loves to portray it as a den of thieves and revolutionaries. I’m not exaggerating. The
Times
described it the other day as “a dingy little den, a narrow, dirty stairway leading to the hive, a
constant stream of idle drones buzzing and snarling in their various languages. Not one of them bore the marks of a decent workingman. Sallow Bohemians and Poles, dirty and ragged renegade Frenchmen, stupefied by idleness, and Germans, outcasts from the society of their own nation, mingled in a filthy, snarling crowd.” That is what they think of us, and what they want the world to think of us.

Der Vorbote
’s editor somehow heard that I’d worked as a reporter in Texas and asked me to write for them. Oh, how I’d love to! But right now I don’t have a moment to spare. On top of everything else, the
Times
is making its typesetters put in extra hours (at no extra pay) to learn the new point system of printing. Now that the Marder-Luse foundry has adopted it and patented the first type cast, it’s generally assumed that within a few years the point system will become universal. Well, at least the typesetting industry is undergoing a revolution even if society isn’t! Anyway, I need to master the new system, and quickly, to hold on to my job—already threatened by my politics.

May 5

I’m going to run for public office! I’m as surprised as anyone. It happened last night. I went to the
WP
meeting at Odd Fellows Hall to discuss the upcoming local election, and the idea somehow took hold that despite the lateness of the hour, we ought to test the political waters by running a few candidates of our own. I was one of three chosen to run for alderman. I’ll stand from the Fifteenth Ward, where Lucy and I live. I didn’t feel I could say no to the fellows, so great was their ardor. But the decision was made in such a rush of enthusiasm, we never did talk through all the implications. I did say flat out that, in my view, running for office might not be the best way to use our limited resources.

Our friends are much divided on the issue. Those who follow Ferdinand Lassalle (at Lizzie’s urging, I’ve started to read him—it’s arduous) insist that success at the ballot-box is all-important. But others are just as adamant that politics is a waste of time. Everybody argues about it. At a recent Knights meeting—I still go as often as my schedule allows—I heard one speaker eloquently insist that middle-class Americans will side with us once they learn the truth about working conditions, and that together we will become the political majority.

Among our closest friends, Spies is the most skeptical. He’s not
against taking part in politics, but thinks it’s useful solely as a means for propaganda, a way to educate the public about the harshness of working conditions. The electoral process by itself, Spies insists, will never bring about fundamental change. That, he says, can only come through economic struggle, with the general strike our best weapon and the Paris Commune our best model. The more I come to know Spies, the more outspoken and radical he seems. I guess his “study” phase is over. I’m not far behind him, but am moving at a slower (southern?) pace.

June 14

So much for my good intentions about keeping a daily record. More than a month has gone by since I last wrote. The election used up every minute. Canvassers came to help from all over the city; the
Tribune
called them “carpetbaggers” and “imported foreigners.” Lucy did the work of a dozen, knocking on doors, passing out leaflets. She’s got twice my energy, and I have plenty. During the campaign we mostly stressed local issues, like the need to have open bidding on city projects, and shorter work hours. It was an exhilarating few weeks, to tell the truth. So much fervor. Also, I learned a lot about our ward, and met many new people.

Oh, I forgot the results! I didn’t win. But then nobody thought I would, not even Lucy. I did get some four hundred votes, about 15 percent of the total, which everyone says is amazingly fine for a new party and a last-minute campaign. Spies, in his ironical way, said, “And don’t ever expect a better showing.” Sometimes I think he’s too cynical. Maybe with more time for organizing and education, we could actually win enough political offices to make a real difference.

June 15

While the election was consuming all my time, the larger world refused to stand still. A railroad crisis is brewing. Railroad stocks started to sink a few months ago. The owners tried to recoup their losses on the backs of their employees. The Boston & Maine cut wages 10 percent—then turned around and paid its usual 6 percent dividend
and
raised the salaries of its president and superintendent. That woke up even the stodgy Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, which has been spending more of its treasury on the temperance cause than on helping the unemployed.
The Brotherhood went out on strike and asked for a raise of ten cents a day for the engineers. The B&M only has sixty-seven engineers, so the total cost per day to the owners would have been $6.70. Yet they rejected the increase. So the Brotherhood stopped the trains. But management was too smart for them. Within hours the B&M had replaced the engineers with nonunion standbys, and now, just four months later, the trains are running on schedule. The Brotherhood, meantime, is still out on strike, but its treasury is running low. Some of the railroad bigwigs have decided that now is the time to break the union altogether. Charles Francis Adams II—yes, of “the” Adams family—claims that the Brotherhood “has become a mere common nuisance … a standing public menace,” and must be destroyed. A
menace
—because they asked for
ten cents
more pay per day.

Meanwhile here in Chicago, hotel owner John B. Drake is staging his annual Game Dinner. At staggering cost, he imports, slaughters, and serves up hundreds of wild animals from around the world. The Dinner is always oversubscribed. Today’s
Tribune
hails the upcoming event as “a high point in the social calendar of the city’s polite classes and a mark of Chicago’s growing sophistication as a metropolis.” If we become any more sophisticated we’ll be killing and serving up each other.

June 16

Reports are coming in from the eastern states about “wealthy gentlemen” forming vigilance committees, hiring mounted police, and, in Pennsylvania, issuing every “respectable” resident a horn and a watchman’s rattle and a club to promote a “war on the tramps.” An easier way to get rid of tramps would be to find work for them.

June 17

Some of the railroads are hiring private detectives to “protect property.” Meaning, Lucy says, “to protect any working person from ever owning any.” The Allan Pinkerton Agency, having exposed what it claims is “a secret band of labor terrorists”—the so-called Molly Maguires—is now so well known that all private detectives are being called Pinkertons. Nobody I know ever heard of a group called the Molly Maguires, though ten of their number—coal miners who protested working conditions in the Pennsylvania pits—are now awaiting the gallows.

June 20

Lucy got Spies to agree with her—he’s trying hard to earn her good opinion—that I’ve been working too hard of late and needed to take all day Saturday off. She cajoled me so prettily that I said yes. Her first choice was for us to try out the new “roller-skating” craze. Spies went along with that, but asked that later on he be allowed to take us to a Turnverein; he thinks we need to take better care of our health through regular exercise. My suggestion, since the day was beastly hot, was that we go for a swim in the lake off Gutchow’s beach at the foot of Erie Street. Lucy said we’d get arrested, since Gutchow’s is a private beach. Spies agreed. He said we’d be getting arrested soon enough and should save it for something important. I let them have their way, but a swim would have surely been nice. I remember back in ’73, the year we arrived here, the health department asked the Lincoln Park commissioners to create a public beach for the poor; the park board insisted that the health department pay for it—and that was the last we heard of the beach.

We didn’t last long with the roller-skating. It’s an amusement for the rich. We had to pay twenty-five cents each just to gain admission to the rink, and then another twenty-five cents to rent wooden-wheeled skates. And to do what? To go dumbly around and around in a circle on a hard maple floor that, when you land on it, hurts like the dickens. I fell twice, much to Lucy’s merriment. “Got to trot before you can canter!” she yelled as I lay flat on my back.

Then we had to go to Spies’s Turnverein. The one he attends is among the few that admit women.
Turnverein
sounds fancy, but it was just a big exercise room. There were odd items all over the place, and Spies insisted on demonstrating most of them—hoops, rings, rowing devices, pulley weights, and something called the Indian club, which looks like a bowling pin (Lucy thought it was great fun to swing it around her head). Spies says many physical fitness devotees also have strict notions about diet—no alcohol or tobacco, regular mineral water purges—all to avoid the dangers of something called “autointoxication.” “What a word!” Lucy said, “sounds like someone pouring liquor down their throat!” Spies told us he sticks to the exercises and forgets about the diet part. “Glad to hear it,” I told him, “I wouldn’t want a friend
that
well-disciplined.” Spies does have a fine physique, but if it takes this much pushing and sweating to get one, I’ll keep to waxing my moustache.

June 21

Sam Fielden’s just returned from Pittsburgh with news of a newly formed Trainmen’s Union. Its ranks are open to all who work the railroads—engineers, conductors, firemen, brakemen, switchmen. Members pledge that during a strike no worker will agree to fill in for another. And when men are working on a line that isn’t on strike, they will refuse to handle struck equipment. This is great news! The railroad owners have combined to defeat worker demands; now the trainmen have shown that two can play that game.

Fielden also reports that Robert Ammon, a brakeman, has been elected the
TU
’s “grand organizer” and will be traveling the country to propagate the faith and sign up new union members. He’s got the gift of gab, Fielden says, and trainmen are already rushing to join up. Fielden warns me that Ammon has a mixed reputation. He fought in the cavalry against the Blackfeet, has a strong taste for bonded rye, is rumored to have taken part in a swindle involving a diamond mine in Arizona. Stubborn, sure of himself, and doesn’t take kindly to contradiction. Sounds like everybody I ever knew in Texas, I said. I expect we’ll get along just fine.

June 22

The ten Molly Maguires were hanged in Pottsville, Pennsylvania yesterday morning. The state militia patrolled the streets with loaded guns the whole night because of rumors that there’d be an attempt to rescue the men by force. Nothing came of it, and just as well—we don’t need any more dead workers. Thousands of miners and their families gathered quietly in the rain as the traps were sprung. Spies angrily pointed out the contrast between the State’s unhesitating use of violence and the way it screams bloody murder if workingmen so much as puncture the ground with unloaded weapons.