Читать книгу The Story of my Life - Clarence Darrow - Страница 15

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During his period of prosperity Altgeld had erected a building sixteen stories high; one of the most expensive and elaborate of the time. It was one of the first of the "sky-scrapers" within what is now "the Loop" in Chicago. He had put into this building all his assets, around six or seven hundred thousand dollars; and had encumbered it by a mortgage of two millions or more. He was always charitable and generous, and saw and did things in a big way. When he became governor and went to Springfield, Ill., the capital of the State, he was not able to give much time to his financial affairs. When he pardoned the anarchists many of his best tenants of the big "Unity" left the building, and it was refilled by young lawyers, radicals and idealists, many of whom could not pay their rent. Any one not able to pay office rent moved to the Unity Building. So Altgeld was obliged to default in his interest, and the bondholders showed him no mercy. In fact, they wanted him to fail. It would be a fine lesson in showing the punishment of evil and the triumph of virtue.

At that time Charles T. Yerkes was in control and practically the owner of the surface lines and one of the elevated roads of Chicago. He was formerly a resident of Philadelphia. He acquired the street-car property soon after reaching Chicago. Also he had succeeded in getting control of the city gas company, and was regarded with doubt and suspicion by the established financial men of Chicago. The laws of Illinois did not permit a street-car franchise to be issued for a longer term than thirty years. During Altgeld's administration, and after the pardoning of the anarchists, Mr. Yerkes applied to the legislature of the State for a law extending the franchises to fifty years, and permitting future grants for that length of time. All the newspapers of Chicago opposed him. It might not be amiss to remark that recently, in 1930, the same papers and interests that defeated Yerkes' fifty-year franchise voted the Traction Company a perpetual one. Thus the world moves forward. Mr. Yerkes was a man of iron will, and as bold as any buckaneer who ever sailed the financial seas. He and his family have long been dead, or I might not like to make these very moderate statements of fact. For all sentient organisms feel pain, and I always have tried to avoid causing it.

The State legislature was none too good. I have never known the representatives to be any different excepting at a time of some great moral crusade, and then they were always worse. They were worse, because the reformer is lacking in humaneness. He is cold and hard and self-righteous. He does not suffer and does not pity. Suffering for or with others means putting oneself in the place of the other fellow, and the reformer has not the imagination for this. Pity means an imagination so sensitive that one suffers what and when others suffer. You are cold when your fellow man is cold, and hungry when he is hungry, and you are inside the jail when the doors close on him.

Of course Mr. Yerkes had competent lawyers, as all rich people have. He employed the best and most skilful lobbyists to work for his bill. He managed to get control of the House and the Senate, the bills were passed, and up to the governor for veto or approval. Every one wondered what Altgeld would do. No one ever doubted his integrity, but his enemies hated him the more for that. Altgeld owed nothing to the forces that were against Mr. Yerkes. The campaign had made him virtually a bankrupt. The Unity Building, his pride, had been mortgaged for two million dollars, the interest was long in default, and, by the terms of the mortgage, the principal was due. All that was necessary was to file a bill of foreclosure and appoint a receiver, and then that part of the fruits of his labors and luck would vanish. Every one knew that Altgeld could easily get the money to pay the mortgage, or any other sum that he would be willing to take. He would not need to ask for it; only take it. He did not pass the bill; it was a legislative enactment; all that was required was to withhold a veto and let it become a law. I knew all of Altgeld's most trusted friends; we often discussed the matter among ourselves. So far as was known, he never asked advice of any one, and I, at least, never volunteered any.

The days went by and the suspense increased. Altgeld sat silent and pensive, gazing out beyond the petty affairs of men. He could even have vetoed the bill in a perfunctory way, and enough votes could have been gathered to pass it over his head. That would have done as well, and his record would have been consistent and clear. But Altgeld never did anything in a perfunctory way. At the last moment he sent his veto message to the legislature. It was a state document that could not be answered or avoided. No member of the Senate or the House could afterward support the bill without every one knowing the reason why.

After the veto was sent in an effort was made to pass it over his head, but this failed. In a short time the Unity Building passed out of Altgeld's control. He was about fifty-four years old at that time. In 1896, after his defeat for re-election for the governorship, he returned to Chicago. He seemed dazed and lifeless for a time. He said he was too old to begin a new career, that he had lived his life, and must stand by the record as it was. He once told me that he would be content to crawl under a sidewalk and die, if need be; all stricken animals have that desire. He did not want to go back to the bar to practice law; he had come to rather despise that profession; he felt that its strongest men sold themselves to destroy people, to perpetuate and intensify the poverty of the oppressed, and enlarge their burdens.

He sat in his office, day after day, receiving visits from the poor, the dreamers, the unadjusted and unadjustable, who were not only of Chicago but from all parts of the land. For several years the pathetic idealists, with their haunted and far-away gaze, came to his office, as the devout anchorite would visit a shrine. And it was a shrine. Hidden away in the consciousness of every man, whether he knows it or not, is some shrine where he burns incense and does homage.

We managed, at one time, to arouse Altgeld sufficiently to enter the race for mayor as an independent candidate. His petitions were circulated and he was placed on the ticket. He felt that the Democratic party was returning to its old idols and leaving the people in the lurch; for there is in every man and every organization a strong urge to leave the hard path of duty and self-sacrifice and return to the flesh-pots whose savory odor always lures with its promise of the pleasanter things in life.

"Altgeld for Mayor" was a slogan that gathered from the highways and byways the old guard that had frantically followed him and Bryan to defeat. Day after day his headquarters were crowded with weird-looking idealists and worshippers--the poorly clad, the ill-fed, the unemployed, the visionaries gazing off toward the rainbow espying something farther on than the very stars themselves. Governor Altgeld spoke at great meetings all over the city. Never were political quarters more crowded, never were audiences more enthusiastic. I remember one meeting in a large hall or armory that ran for twenty-four hours, and the "Amens" were as vigorous at the end as at the start.

Revealed religion is not the only magic that awakens zeal and devotion; or, perhaps our personal allegiance and political creed was a sort of religion of its own kind. Whatever one may think, it was a sort of zeal, the same sort of gazing into the future, the same sublimation of self into a strong emotion and a distant dream. But our great crowds were deceptive. For the same footsore and weary would travel from one end of the city to another and attend meetings night after night. The gospel was ever new each time the devoted heard it. Altgeld cared nothing for being mayor; he simply wanted to place the control of the city with the people; where he believed it belonged. He was too ethereal-minded to know that "the people" are also a myth, the figment of an illusion, a spectral cohort that only eyes of faith can see. When the votes were counted he was beaten. Altgeld was disappointed. He dwelt in the clouds; and this was some consolation for all the devotion that he wasted on an unwilling world.

After this he was often asked to give addresses in various cities. Wherever he went the auditoriums were crowded. The poor eagerly drank of his words of wisdom, and these are everywhere in great numbers. Aside from the poor, there was always a large proportion of students, lawyers, scientists, who appreciated what he had to say, and knew that he was right. He really belonged to the aristocracy of intellect. He wrote two fairly good books. His little volume, "Oratory," is the best that I have ever seen of its class. Usually a speaker is better off if he never reads books on this subject, especially one who has anything to say, for most speakers put the manner of talking above substance; and while the manner is of considerable importance the content is really of the first concern.

After Mr. Altgeld's property had disappeared I finally persuaded him to come into my office and resume the practice of law, although he felt that he could never be of any value in this field, either to clients or the cause that would always claim his allegiance. In spite of his fears he was able to take up that activity almost as if he had never been absent from the bar, and no doubt would have made a success of it if he had lived. But he died within six months after that last venture.

One new great emotion came into his life toward the end. This was the Boer War. All his friends were for the Boers. Although I had never been an enemy of England, I felt that this war waged by them was without excuse. Then, too, it presented the picture of a great nation trampling a small one into the earth. Both Altgeld and I held a large number of meetings for the purpose of awakening the sympathy of our country for the Boers.

On the 12th day of March, 1902, Governor Altgeld went down to Joliet, about forty miles from Chicago. For many years his heart had not been good. He had never seemed strong. Before going to Joliet he had been in court all day and was very tired that night; as I remember it, he had eaten no lunch; he went into the dining car and ate a hearty meal. He went directly from the train into a crowded hall and immediately began his plea for the Boers. He had gone but a little way when he was seized with an acute attack of indigestion. He fell and was removed from the stage; and for several hours his frail body was wracked with vomiting and pain. About midnight he was dead. I was called up, by long-distance, that night, and the next morning went to Joliet, attended to everything and brought him back in his casket.

He lay in state in the Public Library Building. All day long the people filed past and lavished their loving looks upon their great and brave champion, John P. Altgeld. It was the same throng that had so often hung upon his courageous words from many a forum; the same inarticulate mass for whose cause he had given his voice and his life. Men and women with sad faces and tearful eyes gazed into the now still white face of their friend as though all hope would be buried in his grave.

For the funeral, two invitations were sent to clergymen, supposed to be liberal-minded, asking them to conduct the farewell ceremony, but both found reasons for not being able to come. So Miss Jane Addams, of Hull House, a woman of rare ideals and intelligence, was asked to speak. Governor Altgeld had long admired Miss Addams, and was often a visitor at Hull House, and she had always understood and appreciated the fearlessness and unselfishness of the man. Her words were simple and sensible, such as she always uses. I also had the rare privilege of saying a few words of the many that welled from my heart, overflowing with admiration and affection and pain for a lost idol. Then we laid him in his grave.

His death was in keeping with his life. Had he been able to choose, he could not have made it more fitting to the man that he was. He died while speaking for the weak and oppressed who were struggling for liberty. He died as he had lived, fighting for freedom.

Whether it is good form or not, I have inserted in an appendix my heartfelt tribute to my dead friend, spoken at his grave, on March 14th, 1902.