The childhood of our joy
—Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet
Fourth of July, Michael Sweeney thinks. And New Year’s Eve and a saint’s day, all rolled together.
Leaning against a sandstone wall, he balances his big box camera against his shoulder and wraps a long, bony leg around the tripod to keep it from toppling. Hands free, he scribbles notes for the article he’ll try to sell with the pictures.
15,000 on strike? Ask CM.
Slogans: No to the widow-maker! Yes to the union! A fair share for labor!
Songs, brass band. Giddy laughter. Children shrieking.
The smell: fresh popcorn and roasted peanuts sold in little paper cones.
Giggling girls hang on to one another, slyly watching boys who scramble up light poles they hang on like circus acrobats.
Strikers as far as the eye can see, filling the streets. Everyone thrilled by their own daring, amazed by their own numbers.
He himself is thrilled by the poetry of it. Men who work bent over in hard darkness are marching in bright sunshine, their full height unfurled. Half-grown sons, who’ll soon go down into the mines, linking arms with fathers and uncles, with a soft breeze on their scrubbed faces. Women with children—mothers, sisters, wives, daughters—lining the parade route, laughing at the squealing toddlers who ride the shoulders of crippled grandfathers. All of them dreaming of a better life for the next generation.
I can tell this story, Michael Sweeney decides, and he asks God to bless Charlie Miller for inviting him, even if the man does persist in calling him Martin, despite three corrections. It’s going to fail in the long run, Charlie wrote, but maybe we can salvage some publicity from it. You can room with me.
Charlie even got the union to pay the train fare from Denver to Chicago to Milwaukee, and then north. And north, and north. Michael half-expected to see polar bears by the time he got to Calumet, but there were no icebergs on Lake Superior, no glaciers carving rocky valleys. Just a small impressive city owned by the most powerful mining corporation in the world.
He stuffs the steno pad and stubby pencil into a pocket, grips the camera protectively, and wades into the exuberant crush, looking for the woman Charlie wrote about. Tall himself, he can easily see over the heads of little immigrant women and their children, and it’s not long before he spots her. Big Annie Clements, and no mistake about it. “Six foot three if she’s an inch,” Charlie told him. Built like the statue of Lady Liberty in New York Harbor and five times prettier, is Michael Sweeney’s judgment.
“Sweet Jesus,” he whispers. Yes. Oh, yes. I can sell this story.
* * *
The air throbs with gusts of song in thousands of voices. If the working class could only see / What power labor has . . . Annie herself stands alone in front of the Italian Hall, solitary in the midst of many, her face still. Watching. Naming each man, each boy in her heart.
Behind her, Eva Savicki has eyes for only one. All vibrating electricity, she stands a few steps up the steep stairway. Hopping a little with excitement, and hoping to see Jack Kivisto among the strikers. Annie glances back at her. “Be careful, Eva! You’ll fall and break your neck!”
The girl jumps down and comes to her side. “You’re crying! Annie, why are you crying?”
“Union” is not just a word anymore, Annie Clements is thinking. It’s something real. They can feel it now. They can hear it. They can see their power.
With a quick motion, she palms her damp cheeks. “Go on. Go march with the Auxiliary.” Go find Jack, she means, but she doesn’t want to embarrass the girl.
“What about you, Annie?”
Organize, you toilers! Organize your might!
“I’m going to stay here. I want to see every single one of them.”
Nine thousand men voted for the strike, including all the trammers. Those who’d like to ignore the shutdown have discovered that shaft house entrances are blocked by widows armed with brooms and buckets of slops: angry, grieving women who fling filth and curses at anyone who tries to break the strike. Nobody works until the operators recognize the union. Nobody.
We will sing one song . . .
“Excuse me, ma’am. You would be Mrs. Clements, would you not?”
She turns, automatically looking down. Apart from Joe, everyone she’s ever met is shorter than she is. This man is nearly as tall as Joe, though more a beanpole than a giant. She glances at his feet to see if he is standing on tiptoe to gain some inches, but he’s on the level, just as she is.
And he’s sizing her up the same way. Balancing a big camera on its bundled tripod, he reaches around it to offer his hand. “Michael Sweeney,” he says. “I’m second-generation—like you, right?” He sweeps a hand down the length of him. “This, y’see, is what happens when you quit trying to grow Irishmen on nothing but rotten potatoes.”
She laughs at that. He shakes his head in wonderment. “Perfect,” he murmurs. “You have a lovely smile,” he informs her. “Charlie Miller told me you were tall, but the poor blind man didn’t think to mention that you are a beauty as well.”
Startled, she looks away for a moment before narrowing her eyes at him. “That’s what they call blarney, isn’t it.”
“Mrs. Clements, it is God’s honest truth. And here’s some more truth,” he says before she can interrupt. “You’ve made a lot of men very angry, and not just the big bugs who run Calumet & Hecla.”
She turns back to the parade. “I’ve heard it all before, Mr. Sweeney.”
“Well, hear it again, this time from one who means you well. I’ve come straight from Denver. The Federation’s got a big strike working in Wyoming right now, and they are not best pleased you’ve gone off on your own and done all this.” He turns to watch the crowd marching past. “Mind you, it’s a grand thing when a young lady like yourself cries, ‘Lay down your tools,’ and twenty mines go idle. But you know what comes next, don’t you?”
“You’re going to tell me.”
“Troops, missy. They send in the troops. They send in the bully boys from Chicago and New York. And if that doesn’t break you, the winter will, for there’ll be no money from the Federation.”
He goes on, repeating Charles Miller’s warnings. Nine thousand miners voted for the strike, but five thousand were against it—her own husband among them. She is mortally tired of men trying to discourage her. Before she can tell Sweeney to go away, however, he produces an easy, confident smile.
“So, I am here to get America on your side, Mrs. Clements, and I’m going to do it with pictures. People know unfairness and injustice—when they see it. They saw the Lawrence mill workers and their hungry children last year, and that brought a twenty percent raise. They saw the burnt, broken bodies of young women on the sidewalk in front of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, and the laws for garment factories changed. There are plenty of others who’ve died for their rights, but if nobody’s there to take the pictures and tell the story, those poor souls die in vain.”
He comes closer, so that the both of them can look out at the parade. Gesturing toward the beautiful architecture of Calumet, he says, “Nice people don’t want to see a bunch of filthy, starving West Virginia hillbillies at breakfast. They may feel bad, sure, but they just turn the page. So I’m going to show America a town they’d like to live in—not a muddy mining camp. I’m going to show them hardworking, respectable families, just like their own. People who want a decent life for themselves and their children.” He lifts his chin toward the marchers. “They should be carrying flags, by the way, not just banners. A nice big flag looks good in the photos, and it says, ‘We are Americans.’ ”
“Not some invading horde of barbarians?”
“Exactly.” He turns back toward her. Tousled dirty-blond hair mashed beneath a straw boater that’s seen better days. Blue eyes shining with go-getter spirit. A determination to match her own. “And that’s the very nub of the problem! Labor leaders like to talk about the working class, but that just scares readers. You have to tell one person’s story and let that one person stand for the rest. America needs someone to help them understand, Mrs. Clements. They need someone who’ll help them believe that if they pay attention, if they care, things can change and this country will become a better place—”
“Who in hell are you?”
Startled, Annie steps back. Her fingers go to her mouth and she says, “Joe, no! He was just—”
Unintimidated, the photographer holds his ground and offers his hand as friendly, fluent words breeze out. “Say, now, you must be Mr. Clements! I’ve heard of you, sir, and it’s a pleasure to meet you. Mike Sweeney’s the name. I cover labor relations freelance—I sell photographs and articles to all the big newspapers and magazines. Perhaps you’ll allow me to photograph you and your wife for a piece I’m preparing to send out on the A.P. wire?”
Annie can see it on Joe’s face: he’s not entirely sure what the A.P. wire is, but he doesn’t want to ask, either. So he shrugs and nods.
Sweeney moves into a position that will put the Clements in the foreground with the strikers behind them. Eyes a little vague with drink, Joe watches the photographer flip the tripod legs apart, extend the camera bellows, adjust the focus. When he’s ready to duck under the dark cloth, the photographer’s brows rise in a mute, respectful question: May I?
Joe likes the swift, sure moves of a man who knows his own tools. He nods again and does not notice when Sweeney shifts the camera—just a tick—cropping the husband out of the picture.