More dark and dark are our woes.
—Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet
Four days later, and exactly thirty-seven minutes after rising, when he has left his dressing room and started down to breakfast, the general manager of Calumet & Hecla tarries on the broad staircase landing before descending to the dining room. As is his daily custom, he stands at ease before the large window, hands clasped behind his back, and takes stock of his city.
It is a satisfying exercise, for Calumet is quite likely the best municipality in the world at coping with a massive snowfall. The main streets have already cleared. Downtown, business as usual will resume soon. All evidence of the riot has been removed, apart from boarded-up windows.
When he arrives in the dining room, his step slows imperceptibly. For the first time since the storm began, newspapers have been delivered—four days’ worth of neatly stacked special editions of the Boston Globe, the Detroit News, and the Chicago Tribune, along with this morning’s Calumet News and the Daily Mining Gazette.
He sits, as usual, but to the maid’s silent astonishment, he waves his oatmeal off, places his spectacles on his nose, and pulls the newspapers toward him. Scanning the front pages of all five newspapers before beginning to read, he restacks them, with the latest on the bottom, and begins to read the oldest so he can understand the sequence of events.
Two weather systems combined to create an unprecedented, immense, and deadly snowstorm that covered a third of the continent. The first reports warned that anyone caught outside would be in grave danger. Trolley cars and trains were stopped on their tracks, trapping riders. Tree limbs were bringing down electric lines. Telephone and telegraph wires sagged under the ice, dragged their poles over, and snapped. There was no way to call for help.
Twenty-four hours later, the blizzard had intensified. Ambulances could no longer negotiate the snow-clogged streets. Bodies had to remain where they lay. Not even those sheltering inside could be considered safe. Windows were blown in. Roofs collapsed. Vertical surfaces perpendicular to the gale collected twenty-foot drifts; mortar crumbled under the lateral load, and brick walls toppled.
By the third day, roads and long-haul railways were impassable throughout the Midwest. Cities had become islands in a sea of snow; neither food nor fuel could get through. Candles were lit, and knocked over; houses burned as firemen worked frantically to dig their stations out. In Cleveland and Detroit, tap water turned brown when untreated sewage and lake-bottom sludge were sucked into city intake pipes along the Great Lakes shores. Health officers knew what to recommend: put a pinch of alum in each pint of water; boil all drinking and cooking water. Only there was no way to tell anyone. The death toll was rising. Frantic public health departments advised hospitals and morgues to brace for a spike in typhoid cases.
Messages from the Great Lakes shippers began to come in, reporting hurricane-force winds, torrential rain, a plummeting temperature that quickly broke below zero and kept dropping. Within minutes, ice coated every surface of the vessels, followed by a heavy, wet snow. Even ships built to withstand the worst weather on record have gone down. The Leafield, the Henry B. Smith, the Plymouth, the Argus, the James Carruthers, the Hydrus, the John A. McGean, the Charles S. Price, the Regina, the Isaac M. Scott, the Wexford, and Lightship No. 82, all reported lost. A dozen other vessels have been blown against rocky shores and wrecked. The death toll so far: two hundred and thirty-eight drowned. More still missing.
The worst blizzard in recorded history, was the U.S. Weather Service’s declaration. By the time it is over, the agency predicted, the final tally will be staggering. Many millions of dollars in damage, many thousands of deaths.
Four days after its start, the storm still dominates the latest news, though the threat of famine and food riots has receded. Factual news has devolved into dozens of “human interest” stories. The storm was no respecter of persons. John D. Rockefeller’s estate lost power, so he sent his employees out to buy candles; there were none to be found, so the tycoon went to bed early. Helen Keller, on a lecture tour, was escorted back to her hotel room; blind and deaf, she could nevertheless feel the power of the wind. “The storm waves were not deterred by stone walls and plate glass windows,” she told a reporter. The British comedienne Marie Lloyd and the famous actor Richard Bennett spent uncomfortable days stranded between cities when their trains hit impassable snowdrifts. There are heartwarming tales of valiant nobodies as well. A young man who helped a group of elderly women off a trolley and carried them on his back, one by one, to safety. A nameless person dug an unconscious man out of a snowbank and dragged him to shelter, undoubtedly saving a life. A shivering, howling dog refused to leave the side of his stricken master’s frozen body.
Government buildings, taverns, movie houses, and concert halls are still sheltering anyone who needs a place to stay. Boy Scouts have taken up shovels to clear fire hydrants and city sidewalks. Dairies are beginning to make deliveries as they did in the old days: on sleds pulled by horses. People without children are asked to refrain from buying that milk so that it can be sold to those who need it most . . .
It is only when James MacNaughton gets to the local papers that his heartbeat slows and his inner calm returns, for the only newspaper that mentions the Calumet riot is the Daily Mining Gazette, and even the Gazette’s account is scant on detail. Violent labor demonstration. Union agitators arrested.
With a deep breath of satisfaction, James MacNaughton sets the pile of newspapers aside. Providence, he thinks, and he thanks God for the storm. America’s putative Joan of Arc is in jail, along with all the union officials. And no one outside the Copper Country is any the wiser.
“I’ll have that oatmeal now,” he calls out to the kitchen.
It is the first time any of them have ever heard him speak before his breakfast. And he sounds . . . cheerful.
* * *
His good mood persists even after the butler announces that Tom Fisher is waiting for him in the study.
“Kinda pretty, now,” Fisher remarks, standing at the window. The sky has cleared to a brilliant blue, as it often does in the days after a storm has passed, but the cold remains so intense that moisture in the air freezes into glittering crystals that float like a fog of diamonds. “That was a hell of a storm. Never saw anything like it! Anyways, how’d you like our little party? My boys and I know what we’re doing, eh? Nice touch, having them scatter rocks and bottles around, right? Made it look like the strikers came ready for a brawl!”
MacNaughton inclines his head.
“And now all you have to do is wait for winter to do the rest!” Fisher continues, annoyed by the silence. “Those bastards are gonna get awful hungry before very long. Their little kiddies are gonna be boohooing by the end of the week. Am I right? Am I right?”
“Very likely,” MacNaughton acknowledges neutrally.
“And you’ll be back in business by the end of the year. Just like I promised.”
With a deep breath, MacNaughton moves to his desk and gestures toward the chair on the other side of the polished rosewood expanse. “Sit down, Mr. Fisher. If you please.”
Brows raised at the sudden courtesy, Fisher purses his lips. Then, to establish parity, he inclines his head just as MacNaughton did, and takes a seat.
“Mr. Fisher, this morning Sheriff Cruse received a telegram from Governor Ferris reminding him that Michigan state law requires all deputies to be bona fide residents of the county in which the appointment is made for at least three months prior to their appointment. May I assume that your men do not fulfill that requirement?”
Fisher snorts.
MacNaughton opens a desk drawer, pulls out a check register, and fills out a draft. “This will cover the agreed-upon fee. I included something extra to expedite the departure of your men from the Copper Country.”
Seeing the number, Fisher whistles, genuinely impressed. “Well, that’s very generous of you, sir. My guys will now be happy to leave your fair city in your own good hands.”
“That is the desired effect.”
Something about the tone makes Fisher think MacNaughton is not quite done, so he waits, eyes level.
“Mr. Fisher, I would like you to resign your position as deputy but to stay on in Calumet . . . in an advisory capacity. Perhaps some of your most reliable men could be retained as well for irregular but important projects—ones that require discretion.”
Fisher sits back. He was prepared to be shown the door and told to get out of town. Company men never like to admit that they couldn’t solve a problem on their own. Many’s the time he’s offered his hand at the end of a contract only to have it left in the air by the snobby son of a bitch who just paid him off. “Screw you, too,” he usually says, adding, “Just remember. If the check bounces? I know where you live.”
This time, he merely asks, “What do you have in mind?”
“This strike is, as you know, the first in Calumet & Hecla’s history. I am determined that it shall be the last, as well. The union has brought in anarchist rabble-rousers, so I see no reason why the company should not call upon individuals like yourself who have experience in increasing the pressure on strikers to go back to work. In particular, the Citizens’ Alliance Council could use some guidance from you and your . . . executive committee.”
“How much ‘guidance’ would you like to purchase? I got a dozen guys I’d keep with me. The rest are just muscle.”
“Shall we say five hundred dollars a month?”
Fisher’s eyes warm, but his lips pull down as though he were thinking the proposition over. “Each,” he says.
MacNaughton’s eyes narrow; then he nods. “Sheriff Cruse will have deputies detailed to collect badges from your nonessential employees when they leave. I can have a company train here by four this afternoon. Where would you like us to transport them?”
“Get ’em to Chicago. I’ll give ’em some cash. They’ll make their own way.”
“And the immigrants?”
“Hell, I don’t give a damn. Dump ’em in Milwaukee, I guess.”
“As you wish. This, by the way, will be the last time you and I meet directly. Any further contact will be by proxy only. I will have a member of the Citizens’ Alliance contact you at your hotel.”
MacNaughton’s tone clearly implies that they are done. Fisher, however, is enjoying this and waits for a formal farewell.
“Close the door behind you,” MacNaughton says.
* * *
Deep winter in the Upper Peninsula often lasts for seven or eight months. Even in the best of times—when the men are working, when the summer has been kind—miners’ wives are frugal. Every crumb of bread is saved and added to ground pork; long before the spring thaw, cabbage rolls will have more leaves than meat. As the months pass, pasty dough is rolled thinner. Soups and the children’s milk are watered to fill bellies a little more, a little longer. By the time the weather breaks and new gardens can be put in, almost all the women will be skipping meals. “I’m not hungry,” they’ll tell their husbands and kids. “You eat it.” Nursing mothers will lose weight and their breasts will dry up; babies are nearly always weaned in the spring.
This winter will be the worst in memory for union households all over the Keweenaw, and it will be worst of all in Calumet. MacNaughton’s thugs have seen to that.
In the hours after the riot, union housewives use spoons to scrape the floor, scooping up the contents of broken jars of preserves. Spreading the mess out on baking sheets, setting lamps or candles off to the side, they patiently pull glittering glass shards out of the food they put up for the winter, trying not to bleed into the jams and pickles while their husbands sleep off their beatings. Kids are bundled up and sent outside to search beneath the snow for potatoes and carrots and turnips and cabbages scattered by the strikebreakers. Those vegetables can be scrubbed up and salvaged. And thank God for that small mercy, for the word is going around now: there will be no more credit from Moishe Glass’s store. He, too, was beaten, and his oldest son was arrested for trying to defend him. The store was trashed, and MacNaughton’s bully boys have threatened all of Moishe’s suppliers: Demand cash from the Jew, or your business will get the same treatment.
After a time, company carpenters come around to board up broken windows and doors. They laugh at their own sloppy workmanship, for they have their orders: fix things just enough to keep the company houses from deteriorating but not enough to keep the renters warm. So union men, battered and aching, nail rugs over the gaps in the wood where the snow drifts in, while union women gather every quilt and blanket in the house to heap on the beds. Whole families huddle together to share their bodies’ warmth during the long days and endless nights.
Without Annie’s parades and meetings and dances and projects to bring them together, strikers’ families are isolated in the dark, cold houses. Husbands and brothers and grown sons pass the time with cards, or drink and brood, and shout at babies whose hungry wails grate on everyone’s nerves. Wives try to keep the kids quiet and the house clean. Laundry is the worst of the chores, and the worst of the laundry is scrubbing dirty diapers and menstrual rags in tubs of cold water. Hands freezing, women hang up the rectangles of shamefully stained cloth, shivering as drips run down their arms.
In the attics, the rafters groan and twist alarmingly under the weight of the snow. In the walls, mice skitter and gnaw, darting out at night to snatch any crumb that somehow escaped a housewife’s attention. In the dark, under the piles of quilts and blankets and braided-rag rugs, men whisper of skipping out on the rent, of leaving town, of finding some kind of work somewhere else.
“We can’t win,” they are starting to say. “If we’re going to give up, sooner is better than later.”
At the first general meeting after the riot, nobody can predict how the union vote will go. There is anger, grief, stubbornness, despair, frustration, and no clear way forward. The Federation heard the news about the riot and telegraphed a promise to find more money. For all anybody knows, it’s in the bank now, but all the local union leaders are in jail and the bank officers are so scared of MacNaughton, they won’t let anybody else sign a check.
The argument goes on for hours.
The kids are hungry. The company is going to win.
Blood has been shed. Union men have died in the streets.
Blood has always been shed.
At least those guys died for the future, not for some rich bastard’s greed.
In the end, a bare majority votes to continue. Frank Aaltonen is elected as president pro tem, and a delegation goes with him to the bank, where he demands that the union money be released. Alarmed by the crowd, the bank manager nods to a teller, who counts out the cash. It’s not much, but it will buy them a little time.
* * *
At the end of the week, low and heavy clouds settle over the north like a blanket. The cold moderates from lethal to merely bitter. Desperate to be helpful, children go out with old flour sacks and scavenge along the train tracks for coal now deliberately tossed to them by sympathetic firemen. Sometimes the kids come home with a few pennies and proudly hand them over to their mothers.
They are begging on the streets.
“Don’t tell your father,” the mothers say. “It will break his heart.”
Churches are the last resort. Ministers and priests are writing to congregations outside the Copper Country, asking for donations of clothing and food and money.
“Charity,” the men mutter. Hating themselves. Hating MacNaughton. Hating the union. “I just want to work. I just want to go back to work.”
Annie would know what to do, the wives think, but Annie is in jail with the rest of the union officers. No one says it aloud, though all the women are thinking it now: it will be easier to quit if Annie’s gone.