CHAPTER IX

In due course of time, I having performed my portion of the contract, it became the duty of the two editors to fulfill their agreement with me. Every day for ten days I had been turning in the cash for from five to fifteen books, thereby establishing my reputation for industry and sobriety. Mr. Gissel was very anxious to know at the end of each day whom I had seen and how the mention of his name was received. Instead of telling him of the many who laughed or sniffed or bought to get rid of me gracefully, I gave him flattering reports. Lately, by way of reward I presume, he had taken to reading to me the cleverest passages in his editorials. Mr. Sullivan, the city editor, confided to me one day that he was from a small town in central Illinois not unlike the Warsaw from which I hailed, and which I then roughly and jestingly sketched to him, and from then on we were on fairly good terms. He dug up a number of poems and granted me the favor of reading them. Some of them were almost as good as similar ones by Whittier and Bryant, after whom they were obviously modeled. Today I know them to be bad, or mediocre; then I thought they were excellent and grieved to think that any one should be going to make a reputation as a great poet, while I, the only real poet extant (although I had done nothing as yet to prove it), remained unrecognized.

I did not know until later that I might not have secured a place even now, so numerous were the applications of clever and experienced newspaper men, had it not been for the influence of my friend Maxwell. For one reason or another, my errant youth perhaps, my crazy persistence and general ignorance of things journalistic, he had become interested in me and seemed fairly anxious to see me get a start. Out of the tail of his eye he had been watching. When I arrived of an evening and there was no one present he sometimes inquired what I was doing, and by degrees, although I had been cautioned not to tell, he extracted the whole story of Gissel’s book. I even loaned him a copy of the book, which he read and pronounced rot, adding: “They ought to be ashamed of themselves, sending you out on a job of this kind. You’re better than that.”

As the end of my task drew near and I was dreading another uncertain wait, he put in a good word for me. But even then I doubt if I should have had a trial had it not been for the convention which was rapidly drawing near. On the day the newspapers were beginning to chronicle the advance arrival of various leaders from all parts of the country, I was taken on at fifteen dollars a week, for a week or two anyhow, and assigned to watch the committee rooms in the hotels Palmer, Grand Pacific, Auditorium and Richelieu. There was another youth who was set to work with me on this, and he gave me some slight instruction. Over us was the political man, who commanded other men in different hotels and whose presence I had only noted when the convention was nearly over.

If ever a youth was cast adrift and made to realize that he knew nothing at all about the thing he was so eager to do, that youth was I. “Cover the hotels for political news,” were my complete instructions, but what the devil was political news? What did they want me to do, say, write? At once I was thoroughly terrified by this opportunity which I had so eagerly sought, for now that I had it I did not know how to make anything clear.

For the first day or two or three therefore I wandered like a lost soul about the corridors and parlor floors and “committee rooms” of these hotels which I was supposed to cover, trying to find out where the committee rooms were, who and what were the men in them, what they were trying to do. No one seemed to want to tell me anything, and, as dull as it may seem, I really could not guess. I had no clear idea of what was meant by the word “politics” as locally used. Various country congressmen and politicians brushed past me in a most secretive manner; when I hailed them with the information that I was from the Globe they waved me off with: “I am only a delegate; you can’t get anything out of me. See the chairman.” Well, what was a chairman? I didn’t know. I did not even know that there had been lists published in all the papers, my own included, giving the information which I was so anxiously seeking!

I had no real understanding of politics or party doings or organization. I doubt if I knew how men came to be nominated, let alone elected. I did not know who were the various State leaders, who the prospective candidates, why one candidate might be preferred to another. The machinations of such an institution as Tammany Hall, or the things called property interests, were as yet beyond me. My mind was too much concerned with the poetry of life to busy itself with such minor things as politics. However, I did know that there was a bitter feud on between David Bennett Hill, governor of New York, and Grover Cleveland, ex-President of the United States, both candidates for nomination on the Democratic ticket, and that the Tammany organization of New York City was for Hill and bitterly opposed to Cleveland. I also knew that the South was for any good Southerner as opposed to Cleveland or Hill, and that a new element in the party was for Richard Bland, better known as “Silver Dick,” of Missouri. I also knew by reputation many of the men who had been in the first Cleveland administration.

Imagine a raw youth with no knowledge of the political subtleties of America trying to gather even an inkling of what was going on! The nation and the city were full of dark political trafficking, but of it all I was as innocent as a baby. The bars and lobbies were full of inconsequential spouting delegates, who drank, swore, sang and orated at the top of their lungs. Swinging Southerners and Westerners in their long frockcoats and wide-brimmed hats amused me. They were forever pulling their whiskers or mustachios, drinking, smoking, talking or looking solemn or desperate. In many cases they knew no more of what was going on than I did. I was told to watch the movements of Benjamin Ryan Tillman, senator from South Carolina, and report any conclusions or rumors of conclusions as to how his delegation would vote. I had a hard time finding where his committee was located, and where and when if ever it deliberated, but once I identified my man I never left him. I dogged his steps so persistently that he turned on me one afternoon as he was going out of the Palmer House, fixed me with his one fiery eye and said:

“Young man, what do you want of me anyhow?”

“Well, you’re Senator Tillman, aren’t you?”

“Yes, sir. I’m Senator Tillman.”

“Well, I’m a reporter from the Globe. I’ve been told to learn what conclusions your delegation has reached as to how it will vote.”

“You and your editor of the Globe be damned!” he replied irritably. “And I want you to quit following me wherever I go. Just now I’m going for my laundry, and I have some rights to privacy. The committee will decide when it’s good and ready, and it won’t tell the Globe or any other paper. Now you let me alone. Follow somebody else.”

I went back to the office the first evening at five-thirty and sat down to write, with the wild impression in my mind that I must describe the whole political situation not only in Chicago but in the nation. I had no notion that there was a supervising political man who, in conjunction with the managing editor and editor-in-chief, understood all about current political conditions.

“The political pot,” I began exuberantly, “was already beginning to seethe yesterday. About the lobbies and corridors of the various hotels hundreds upon hundreds of the vanguard of American Democracy—etc, etc.”

I had not scrawled more than eight or nine pages of this mush before the city editor, curious as to what I had discovered and wondering why I had not reported it to him, came over and picked up the many sheets which I had turned face down.

“No, no, no!” he exclaimed. “You mustn’t write on both sides of the paper! Don’t you know that? For heaven’s sake. And all this stuff about the political pot boiling is as old as the hills. Why, every country jake paper for thousands of miles East and West has used it for years and years. You’re not to write the general stuff. Here, Maxwell, see if you can’t find out what Dreiser has discovered and show him what to do with it. I haven’t got time.” And he turned me over to my gold-spectacled mentor, who eyed me very severely. He sat down and examined my copy with knitted brows. He had a round, meaty, cherubic face which seemed all the more ominous because he could scowl fiercely, and his eyes could blaze with a cold, examining, mandatory glance.

“This is awful stuff!” he said as he read the first page. “He’s quite right. You want to try and remember that you’re not the editor of this paper and just consider yourself a plain reporter sent out to cover some hotels. Now where’d you go today?”

I told him.

“What’d you see?”

I described as best I could the whirling world in which I had been.

“No, no! I don’t mean that! That might be good for a book or something but it’s not news. Did you see any particular man? Did you find out anything in connection with any particular committee?”

I confessed that I had tried and failed.

“Very good!” he said. “You haven’t anything to write,” and he tore up my precious nine pages and threw them into the waste basket. “You’d better sit around here now until the city editor calls you,” he added. “He may have something special he wants you to do. If not, watch the hotels for celebrities—Democratic celebrities—or committee meetings, and if you find any try to find out what’s going on. The great thing is to discover beforehand who’s going to be nominated—see? You can’t tell from talking to four or five people, but what you find out may help some one else to piece out what is to happen. When you come back, see me. And unless you get other orders, come back by eleven. And call up two or three times between the time you go and eleven.”

Because of these specific instructions I felt somewhat encouraged, although my first attempt at writing had been thrown into the waste basket. I sat about until nearly seven, when I was given an address and told to find John G. Carlisle, ex-Secretary of the Treasury, and see if I could get an interview with him. Failing this, I was to “cover” the Grand Pacific, Palmer House and Auditorium, and report all important arrivals and delegations.

Even if I had secured the desired interview I am sure I should have made an awful botch of it, but fortunately I could not get it. Only one thing of importance developed for me during the evening, and that was the presence of a Democratic United States Supreme Court Justice at the Grand Pacific who, upon being intercepted by me as he was going to his room for the night and told that I was from the Globe, eyed me genially and whimsically.

“My boy,” he said, “you’re just a young new reporter, I can see that. Otherwise you wouldn’t waste your time on me. But I like reporters: I was one myself years ago. Now this hotel and every other is full of leaders and statesmen discussing this question of who’s to be President. I’m not discussing it, first of all because it wouldn’t become a Justice of the United States Supreme Court to do so, and in the next place because I don’t have to: my position is for life. I’m just stopping here for one day on my way to Denver. You’d better go around to these committee rooms and see if they can’t tell you something,” and, smiling and laying one hand on my shoulder in a fatherly way, he dismissed me.

“My!” I thought. “What a fine thing it is to be a reporter! All I have to do is to say I’m from the Globe and even a Justice of the United States Supreme Court is smiling and agreeable to me!”

I hurried to a phone to tell Maxwell, and he said: “He don’t count. Write a stick of it if you want to, and I’ll look it over.”

“How much is a stick?” I asked eagerly and curiously.

“About a hundred and fifty words.”

So much for a United States Supreme Court Justice in election days.