Too rude, too boisterous
—Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet
Mary MacNaughton and the girls had been back from the summer house for only a few days when James began to show signs of distress.
When the girls were younger, their father’s stern presence and their mother’s moderating guidance were enough to keep the morning rituals moving with smooth efficiency. Martha and Molly were awakened eighteen minutes apart. Bathroom time was allotted accordingly. Teeth were brushed, faces and nails scrubbed, hair attended to, dresses donned. By then James was downstairs at the table, ready to inspect their hands. And even now, when she was very nearly a grown woman, Martha’s are given particular attention.
“I cannot understand why you persist in this habit,” James says irritably. “You managed to stop biting your nails this summer. Why have you started it up again?”
“Perhaps it has something to do with being treated like a child again,” Martha mutters.
“Martha . . .” her mother warns.
James pretends that he has not heard the remark, choosing instead to remind his eldest, “The condition of a lady’s hands are a sign of her position in society.”
Before things can get out of hand, so to speak, Mary makes a small sign to the kitchen, and the maid brings in their breakfasts. Loretta Devlin’s appearance with the tray is the signal for silence to descend, though Martha is sullen and Molly smirks. When the girls finish their oatmeal, they ask to be excused. Calm returns as their parents read the papers. When James leaves for the office, normal household noise can be tolerated again. This autumn, however, the mines have been half-idled, and James MacNaughton along with them.
He does not share business affairs with his family, but Mary can read her husband’s demeanor as well as the newspapers. He has been forced to explain to the stockholders why confident projections about a quick return to work have repeatedly proved inaccurate. The strikers remain intransigent, stirred up and given false hope by that awful Jones woman’s radical rhetoric. Their funds have been replenished with money from other unions, along with donations from foolish, interfering do-gooders all over the country. And in the meantime, open-pit copper mines out west are capturing more and more of the market.
Worst of all—for the MacNaughton household, at least—the paterfamilias has found himself adrift. He cannot plan. He is forced to waste time, and this disruption of productive activity makes him peevish. He cannot be seen to have nothing to do at the office—and does not wish to be subjected to hours of chanted abuse when the strikers surround the headquarters—so he stays at home until after lunch, only to find the girls’ squabbling infuriating. An ankle is maliciously kicked. Milk is spilled deliberately into a lap. Sugar has been replaced with salt, simply to get a rise out of a sister.
“Why can’t you control them?” he asks his wife when hostilities break out. “What they argue about is so—so trivial !”
“Mother, she stole my blouse!” was a typical complaint.
“I did not! Mother! She called me a thief! Besides, it’s the maid’s fault. She put that blouse in my closet! I thought it was mine.”
“Likely story, you little sneak! Take it off, Molly. Mother, make her give it back!”
“You’re worse than Daddy, Martha! You’re not the boss of the world, you know!”
That particular remark was undoubtedly hurtful, though James chose to focus on the laundry as the argument devolved into more strident accusations and outraged weeping. “Why does this keep happening?” James demanded. “What is wrong with that Irish girl? If she can’t do something as simple as keep their clothing organized, Mary, you should find someone who can!”
Mary MacNaughton settled that particular argument by offering to take both girls shopping in Chicago. The promise of a trip to Marshall Field’s dried the tears, but James was still rattled fifteen minutes later. “More clothing will not address the recurring problem. Fire that maid and get someone competent.”
Mary MacNaughton does not wish to lose Loretta Devlin or any of the other servants. These days, keeping them from quitting en masse takes all the oil she can spread on troubled waters, for without secretaries, accountants, and copper mines to supervise, James uses his half-days away from his office to follow the domestic staff around with his stopwatch. After taking notes and analyzing each motion, he leaves typed notes labeled “Revised Schedule” tacked to their duty boards.
The cook, in particular, is near the breaking point, having been informed that “Food particles are best dislodged from cooking pots and dirty dishes with a series of three clockwise swirls of the scrub brush followed by three counter-clockwise swirls, repeated as necessary until the object is free of detritus.”
“Can’t you stop him, Missus?” Mrs. Aiken whispered desperately after bringing that little note to Mary. “Next he’ll be telling me how to boil water!”
Mary suspects that the butler is on the verge of giving his two weeks’ notice as well, and she despairs of finding a good replacement for Mr. Morris. There is so much ill will among the lower classes these days! Only the little Irish maid seems to have escaped the mood of smoldering resentment in the household. Young Loretta has been remarkably patient with Mr. MacNaughton’s notes about how she makes the beds, and cleans the bathroom, and how the linens should be washed, ironed, folded, and stored. Her sunny disposition would be sorely missed, so later—and in private—Mrs. MacNaughton approaches the girl with a suggestion.
“Loretta, dear, now that Molly is almost grown, she’s wearing the same size as Martha, and I imagine it must be difficult to keep their things sorted correctly. I think it might help if the girls’ clothing were marked the way a Chinese laundry might do. Perhaps a small X embroidered on an inside seam in a different color for each. Pink for Molly, green for Martha?”
“Do you know what she said then?” Mary asks James that night in bed.
“Of course I don’t,” he snaps. Unnecessary questions with obvious answers always annoy him.
“She said, ‘I think Mr. MacNaughton would say that it is more efficient to mark only one girl’s things. Molly’s things would be marked, and Martha’s are whatever has no mark.’ You see, dear? You’ve made a time-and-motion convert, darling! She has learned your methods.”
James grunts, “Well, she should have taken it on herself to implement the improvement without being told.”
That requires no response. Mary lets him lie there silently for a while before making a suggestion she’s been working on all day. “You know, I think we might do better for the girls than a shopping trip to Marshall Field’s. At her age, Martha should be engaged at least, but there is precious little opportunity to meet an appropriate young gentleman here in Calumet,” she points out. “I think this might be an opportune time to take the girls to Europe, don’t you? Molly’s not paying much attention to her tutor anyway. She would learn a great deal more from travel. And it’s so unpleasant here in the winter, especially with all this ugliness over the strike.”
“Yes,” James says after a time. “Yes. Perhaps you’re right.”
* * *
With characteristic alacrity, James makes the arrangements for the trip. The voyage must be sooner rather than later, for autumn storms can make an Atlantic crossing dangerous. Much thought is given to their route upon arrival as well. Paris first, to buy new clothes that Europeans will not sneer at. Berlin and Vienna next, before the weather deteriorates. Rome and Florence over the winter, and London in the spring.
Packing and planning are a splendid distraction for the girls, and whenever they begin to argue, their squabble can be silenced with a question. “If you two can’t get along here at home, how can we expect you to comport yourselves as ladies in Europe?”
At last, the day of departure arrives. The staff lines up outside to see them off: the butler in an impeccable suit, the cook and maid spruce in their starched uniforms. All three are doing their best to look as though they are sorry to see the girls go, although Mary MacNaughton suspects that they will welcome the restoration of order as devoutly as her husband.
The girls are hardly able to contain themselves as the chauffeur loads their steamer trunks into the back of the Pierce-Arrow. Martha behaves herself, though Molly bounces on her toes waiting for the driver to finish with the luggage and come around to open the automobile’s doors for them.
“Write to me every day,” James calls as the car rolls off toward the train depot at a stately fifteen miles an hour.
Waving and blowing kisses to their father, they promise they will, and while they chatter and argue, Mary MacNaughton allows herself to relax into the leather upholstery. James likes to call Calumet the Paris of the North, but she knows it doesn’t hold a candle to the real thing.
* * *
Two days after his family’s departure, a telegram awaits, laid atop the neatly ironed newspapers, just beneath his polished spectacles. JOURNEY WELL BEGUN, it reads. LEAVING CHICAGO ON TIME STOP MISS YOU ALREADY FULL STOP.
The actions of others often bewilder James MacNaughton. If Mary and the girls had missed a connection and required him to make different travel arrangements on their behalf, he would have seen the point of this telegram, whereas this information requires no action on his part and seems a waste of time and money. He has, however, learned over the years that the expected response is to reply in time for his wife and daughters’ arrival at their hotel in New York: Travel safely. You are missed as well.
Breakfast the next morning feels strangely quiet. Probing his own mind, he finds that he does miss Mary and the girls, at least this early in their absence. Sometimes, watching that Clements woman lead parades of union brats, he wonders if perhaps he and his wife shouldn’t have had more children. It is a thought he has had before. The Italians, Irish, Slavs, and Jews are breeding like rabbits, while well-educated Americans of good stock are hardly replacing themselves in the population. Surely that is racial suicide. Even Martha has spoken of wishing to become a modern woman “with a career.” She wanted to study business, of all things. Of course, he stopped that nonsense in its tracks. “The most useful role for an upper-class woman is not to imitate men,” he told her. “Your duty is to marry well and raise racially superior children.”
The maid appears with his oatmeal then. He wonders how many brats this Irish girl will produce. He has begun to believe that—in the national interest—immigrants should be sterilized. It is a radical idea, but it might be necessary—at least until good Americans can replenish their own numbers.
Difficult to implement, he thinks, tucking into his oatmeal gloomily. Too difficult for feckless politicians to implement. Not enough doctors to perform the procedures, they’ll say. Too expensive. So no one will do anything about the problem, and everything real Americans have accomplished will disappear into the next dark age.
Communists believe that history is a river that carries mankind to a utopia: a golden age of liberté, égalité, fraternité. History, however, teaches a different lesson to men like James MacNaughton. To live in harmony—to maintain order and productivity—people must know their place. They must submit to tradition and to God and to their employers, as children submit to their fathers. The French rejected this truth, and what was the result? A bloodbath. An orgy of killing. The destruction of their civilization. Centuries of cultural and intellectual development, swept away.
It can happen here, too, he thinks with a strangely exhilarating despair. It will happen here, unless men like me are willing to do what is necessary to stop the rot—
“Mr. MacNaughton?” the butler says softly. “I’m sorry to disturb you, sir, but there is a . . . gentleman here to see you. A Mr. Fisher. He wishes to speak to you about your contract with Waddell-Mahon and claims he has an appointment. I told him to go to your office downtown this afternoon, but he said it couldn’t wait. He is very insistent.”
James MacNaughton hesitates, shocked by his own lackadaisical response, which is to think, Why not? It’s something to pass the time.
Horrified by how quickly his work ethic has been eroded by leisure, he makes a snap decision. “Tell him to wait in the study. I’ll join him in seventeen minutes.”
* * *
Thomas Fisher puts a good deal of thought into the conveyance of his own importance to big shots like MacNaughton. He knows that he is not impressive at first glance. A redhead as a kid, he was glad when his freckles faded, but not when his hair thinned. He is short and running to fat in his late thirties, though still solidly built, so he wears an expensive suit tailored to cover a developing paunch.
He displays his attitude with a chin that juts upward at the same angle as the cigar he chews with a blithe indifference as to where the ash might fall. Cock of the walk, you are invited to think. A man who gives orders to the likes of Kid Libby, Tommy Stone, Weasel Jack Eller, Stinkfoot McVey, Punk Brady, and Hump Perry. A man who is obeyed by murderers and boxers and street toughs of all kinds. They are happy to do as he tells them, for Tommy Fisher is the rising star of the strikebreaking industry, and they hope to cash in on his climb to power.
MacNaughton stands in the doorway, his eyes as cold and steady as Fisher’s. Without rising, Fisher lets a moment pass before unbuttoning his suit coat to pull a heavy gold watch from the pocket of a brocade vest. “Seventeen minutes—on the dot!” He returns the watch to its place and half-stands to offer his hand. “Tommy Fisher,” he says. “Pleasure to meet you, Mr. MacNaughton.”
MacNaughton looks at the short, thick fingers and turns away, moving behind a huge rosewood desk. Unhurried, he sits before he asks, “You come to my home wearing a pistol?”
Fisher’s smile quickly becomes ingratiating, and he pats the gun in his shoulder holster. “I figured I’d be going to work right after our little conflab.”
“Confab.”
Fisher frowns.
“It’s ‘confabulation,’ ” MacNaughton informs him. “Hence: confab, not conflab.”
Fisher’s lips pull downward into the sneer of a small-mouth bass. “Well, who gives a shit? Confab. Chitchat. Palaver. Business meeting,” Fisher says, enunciating like a college kid.
“Sheriff Cruse is handling personnel issues. Why have you come to me?”
“Cruse is a tool. I always go to the top when I’m dealing with clients.”
“Clients,” MacNaughton repeats. “Mr. Fisher, my company’s contract was negotiated with Waddell-Mahon and the Ascher Detective Agency.”
Fisher makes a noise with his lips. “They’re finished. Too soft. Them, and all those old guys.”
“And you are . . . ?”
“The best goddamn strikebreaker in the goddamn country, and make no mistake,” he says around the well-chewed end of the cigar between his teeth. He sits back, making himself more comfortable. “Seventeen minutes. On the dot!” he repeats. “I like that. I like doing business with men who keep their word. It’s important. Do what you say you’ll do. That’s my policy. And that’s why I hate these union bastards. You say you’re going to work for a dollar a day? Well, that’s what you by-God do. None of this bullshit about—” His voice becomes high and whiny. “Oh, it’s too hard. Oh, I’m too tired. Oh, my kids are hungry.” He snorts and waves the cigar in the general direction of Detroit. “You don’t like it? Ford’s hiring. Get lost, you lazy bastard. Fucking immigrants—those foreign sons of bitches want everything handed to them on a golden platter. Americans gotta draw the line somewhere, and I’m the man to do it!”
He stands then and buttons his coat, pulling himself to his full height. “Mr. MacNaughton, I fear neither God nor man. I serve America and American industry. I’ve broken railroad strikes, dock strikes, transit strikes, and textile strikes. I’ve broken unions in New York, Chicago, and Cuba. My men don’t waste time pussyfooting around, and there’s plenty of demand for my services. So shit or get off the pot. You in or you out?”
MacNaughton sits back in his chair, arms crossed over his chest, eyes narrowed and considering. “Calumet & Hecla’s contract,” he repeats, “is with Waddell-Mahon and the Ascher Detective Agency.”
“Did you sign anything with them or only negotiate the rate?”
MacNaughton says nothing.
Fisher grins and lets out a satisfied chuckle, sitting down again and sprawling in the chair. “Stupid bastards never nail anything down. Well, sir, you show me their terms and I will cut their rate by five percent and you will have my word: I will break the union and have those lazy damn foreigners back to work before the end of the year.”
The negotiations are swiftly concluded. Fisher stands once more, offering a thick, scarred hand.
This time MacNaughton appears to consider shaking it, but he pauses. “There is a photographer. An Irish anarchist.”
“Making you look bad, eh?” Fisher chuckles and with heavy irony says, “It’ll be a pity about his camera . . .”
“And a storekeeper. A Jew. Give him an opportunity to join the Citizens’ Alliance first.”
Fisher grins. “And if he doesn’t?”
James MacNaughton’s voice is light. “People have to learn. There is a price to pay when you bite the hand that feeds you.”
“Count on me,” Fisher says, offering his hand once more.
This time James MacNaughton takes it.