CHAPTER XIV

Taken up by this man in this way and with Maxwell as my literary guide and mentor still, I could not help but prosper to an extent at this task, and I did. I cannot recall now all the things that I was called upon to do, but one of the things that shortly after the arrival of McEnnis was assigned to me and that eventually brought my Chicago newspaper career to a close in a sort of blaze of glory as I saw it, at least, was a series of articles or rather a campaign to close a group of fake auction shops which were daily fleecing hundreds by selling bogus watches, jewelry, diamonds and the like, yet which were licensed by the city and from which the police were deriving a very handsome revenue. Although so new at this work the task was placed in my hands as a regular daily assignment by Mr. McEnnis with the comment that I must make something out of it, whether or not I thought I could put a news punch in it and close these places. That would be a real newspaper victory and ought to do me some good with my chief the managing editor. Campaigns of this kind are undertaken not in a spirit of righteousness as a rule but because of public pressure or a wish to increase circulation and popularity; yet in this case no such laudable or excusable intent could be alleged.

This paper was controlled by John B. MacDonald, an Irish politician, gambler, racer of horses, and the owner of a string of local houses of prostitution, saloons and gambling dens, all of which brought him a large income and made him influential politically. Recently he had fallen on comparatively difficult days. His reputation as a shady character had become too widespread. The pharisees and influential men generally who had formerly profited by his favor now found it expedient to pass by on the other side. Public sentiment against him had been aroused by political attacks on the part of one newspaper and another that did not belong to his party. The last election having been lost to him, the police and other departments of the city were now supposed to work in harmony to root out his vile though profitable vice privileges.

Everybody knows how these things work. Some administration attacks were made upon his privileges, whereupon, not finding suitable support in the papers of his own party in the city, they having axes of their own to grind, he had started a paper of his own, the Globe. He had brought on a capable newspaper man from New York, who was doing his best to make of the paper something which would satisfy MacDonald’s desire for circulation and influence while he lined his own pockets against a rainy day. For this reason, no doubt, our general staff was underpaid, though fairly capable. During my stay the police and other departments, under the guidance of Republican politicians and newspapers, were making an attack on Mr. MacDonald’s preserves; to which he replied by attacking through the medium of the Globe anything and everything he thought would do his rivals harm. Among these were a large number of these same mock auction shops in the downtown section. Evidently the police were deriving a direct revenue from these places, for they let them severely alone but since the administration was now anti-MacDonald and these were not Mr. MacDonald’s property nothing was left undone by us to stop this traffic. We charged, and it was true, that though victims daily appeared before the police to complain that they had been swindled and to ask for restitution, nothing was done by the police.

I cannot now recall what it was about my treatment of these institutions that aroused so much interest in the office and made me into a kind of Globe hero. I was innocent of all knowledge of the above complications which I have just described when I started, and almost as innocent when I concluded. Nevertheless now daily at ten in the morning and again in the afternoon I went to one or another of these shops, listened to the harangue of the noisy barkers, saw tin-gilt jewelry knocked down to unsuspecting yokels from the South and West who stood open-mouthed watching the hypnotizing movements of the auctioneer’s hands as he waved a glistering gem or watch in front of them and expatiated on the beauties and perfections of the article he was compelled to part from for a song. These places were not only deceptions and frauds in what they pretended to sell but also gathering-places for thieves, pick-pockets, footpads who, finding some deluded bystander to be possessed of a watch, pin or roll of money other than that from which he was parted by the auctioneer or his associates, either then and there by some legerdemain robbed him or followed him into a dark street and knocked him down and did the same. At this time Chicago was notorious for this sort of thing, and it was openly charged in the Globe and elsewhere that the police connived at and thrived by the transactions.

My descriptions of what was going on, innocent and matter of fact as they were at first and devoid of guile or make-believe, so pleased Mr. McEnnis beyond anything I had previously done that he was actually fulsome and yet at the same time mandatory and restraining in his compliments. I have no desire to praise myself at this time. Such things and so much that seemed so important then have since become trivial beyond words but it is only fair to state that he was seemingly immensely pleased and amused as was Maxwell.

“Upon my word,” I once heard him exclaim, as he read one of my daily effusions. “The rascals. Who would think that such scamps would be allowed to run at large in a city like this! They certainly ought to be in jail. Every one of them. And the police along with them.” Then he chuckled, slapped his knee and finally came over and made some inquiries in regard to a certain dealer whom I had chanced to picture. I was cautioned against overstating anything; also against detection and being beaten up by those whom I was offending. For I noticed after the first day or two that the barkers of some of the shops occasionally studied me curiously or ceased their more shameful effronteries in my presence and produced something of more value. The facts which my articles presented, however, finally began to attract a little attention to the paper. Either because the paper sold better or because this was an excellent club wherewith to belabor his enemies, the publisher now decided to call the attention of the public via the billboards, to what was going on in our columns, and McEnnis himself undertook to frighten the police into action by swearing out warrants against the different owners of the shops and thus compelling them to take action.

I became the center of a semi-literary, semi-public reform hubbub. The principal members of the staff assured me that the articles were forceful in fact and color and highly amusing. One day, by way of the license bureau and with the aid of McEnnis, I secured the names of the alleged owners and managers of nearly all of these shops and thereafter attacked them by name, describing them just as they were, where they lived, how they made their money, etc. In company with a private detective and several times with McEnnis, I personally served warrants of arrest, accompanied the sharpers to police headquarters, where they were immediately released on bail, and then ran to the office to write out my impressions of all I had seen, repeating conversations as nearly as I could remember, describing uncouth faces and bodies of crooks, policemen and detectives, and by sly innuendo indicating what a farce and sham was the whole seeming interest of the police.

One day McEnnis and I called on the chief of police, demanding to know why he was so indifferent to our crusade and the facts we put before him. To my youthful amazement and enlightenment he shook his fist in our faces and exclaimed: “You can go to the devil, and so can the Globe! I know who’s back of this campaign, and why. Well, go on and play your little game! Shout all you want to. Who’s going to listen to you? You haven’t any circulation. You’re not going to make a mark of me, and you’re not going to get me fired out of here for not performing my duty. Your paper is only a dirty political rag without any influence.”

“Is it!” taunted McEnnis. “Well, you just wait and see. I think you’ll change your mind as to that,” and we stalked solemnly out.

And in the course of time he did change his mind. Some of the fakers had to be arrested and fined and their places closed up, and the longer we talked and exposed the worse it became for them. Finally a dealer approached me one morning and offered me an eighteen-carat gold watch, to be selected by me from any jewelry store in the city and paid for by him, if I would let his store alone. I refused. Another, a dark, dusty, most amusing little Jew, offered me a diamond pin, insisting upon sticking it in my cravat, and said: “Go see! Go see! Ask any jeweler what he thinks, if that ain’t a real stone! If it ain’t—if he says no—bring it back to me and I’ll give you a hundred dollars in cash for it. Don’t you mention me no more now. Be a nice young feller now. I’m a hard-workin’ man just like anybody else. I run a honest place.”

I carried the pin back to the office and gave it to McEnnis. He stared at me in amazement.

“Why did you do this?” he exclaimed. “You shouldn’t have taken this, at all. It may get the paper in trouble. They may have had witnesses to this—but maybe not. Perhaps this fellow is just trying to protect himself. Anyway, we’re going to take this thing back to him and don’t take anything more, do you hear, money or anything. You can’t do that sort of thing. If I didn’t think you were honest I’d fire you right now.”

He took me into the office of the editor-in-chief, who looked at me with still, gray-blue eyes and listened to my story. He dismissed me and talked with McEnnis for a while. When the latter came out he exclaimed triumphantly: “He sees that you’re honest, all right, and he’s tickled to death. Now we’ll take this pin back, and then you’ll write out the whole story just as it happened.”

On the way we went to a magistrate to swear out a charge of attempted bribery against this man, and later in the same day I went with the detective to serve the warrant. To myself I seemed to be swimming in a delicious sea of life. “What a fine thing life is!” I thought. “Here I am getting along famously because I can write. Soon I will get more money, and maybe some day people will begin to hear of me. I will get a fine reputation in the newspaper world.”

Thanks to this vigorous campaign, of which McEnnis was the inspiration and guiding spirit, all these auction shops were eventually closed. In so much at least John B. MacDonald had achieved a revenge.

As for myself, I felt that there must be some serious and favorable change impending for me; and true enough, within a fortnight after this the change came. I had noticed that McEnnis had become more and more friendly. He introduced me to his wife one day when she was in the office and told her in my presence what splendid work I was doing. Often he would take me to lunch or to a saloon for drinks (for which I would pay), and would then borrow a dollar or two or three, no part of which he ever returned. He lectured me on the subject of study, urging me to give myself a general education by reading, attending lectures and the like. He wanted me to look into painting, music, sculpture. As he talked the blood would swirl in my head, and I kept thinking what a brilliant career must be awaiting me. One thing he did was to secure me a place on the St. Louis Globe-Democrat.

Just at this time a man whose name I have forgotten—Leland, I think—the Washington correspondent of the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, came to Chicago to report the preliminary preparations for the great World’s Fair which was to open the following spring. Already the construction of a number of great buildings in Jackson Park had been begun, and the newspapers throughout the country were on the alert as to its progress. Leland, as I may as well call him, a cool, capable observer and writer, was an old friend of McEnnis. McEnnis introduced me to him and made an impassioned plea in my behalf for an opportunity for me to do some writing for the Globe-Democrat in St. Louis under his direction. The idea was to get this man to allow me to do some World’s Fair work for him, on the side, in addition to my work on the Globe, and then later to persuade Joseph B. McCullagh of the former paper to make a place for me in St. Louis.

“As you see,” he said when he introduced me, “he’s a mere boy without any experience, but he has the makings of a first-rate newspaper man. I’m sure of it. Now, Henry, as a favor to me, I want you to help him. You’re close to Mac” (Joseph B. McCullagh, editor-in-chief of the St. Louis Globe-Democrat), “and he’s just the man this boy ought to go to to get his training. Dreiser has just completed a fine piece of journalistic work for me. He’s closed up the fake auction shops here, and I want to reward him. He only gets fifteen a week here, and I can’t do anything for him in Chicago just now. You write and ask Mac to take him on down there, and I’ll write also and tell him how I feel about it.”

The upshot of this was that I was immediately taken into the favor of Mr. Leland, given some easy gossip writing to do, which netted me sixteen dollars the week for three weeks in addition to the fifteen I earned on the Globe. At the end of that time, some correspondence having ensued between the editor of the Globe-Democrat and his two Chicago admirers, I one day received a telegram which read:

“You may have reportorial position on this paper at twenty dollars a week, beginning next Monday. Wire reply.”

I stood in the dusty little Globe office and stared at this, wondering what so great an opportunity portended. Only six months before I had been jobless and hanging about this back door; here I was tonight with as much as fifty dollars in my pocket, a suit of good clothes on my back, good shoes, a good hat and overcoat. I had learned how to write and was already classed here as a star reporter. I felt as though life were going to do wonderful and beautiful things for me. I thought of Alice, that now I should have to leave her and this familiar and now comfortable Chicago atmosphere, and then I went over to McEnnis to ask him what I ought to do.

When he read the telegram he said: “This is the best chance that could possibly come to you. You will be working on one of the greatest papers and under one of the greatest editors that ever lived. Make the most of your chance. Go? Of course go! Let’s see—it’s Tuesday; our regular week ends Friday. You hand in your resignation now, to take effect then, and go Sunday. I’ll give you some letters that will help you,” and he at once turned to his desk and wrote out a series of instructions and recommendations.

That night, and for four days after, until I took the train for St. Louis, I walked on air. I was going away. I was going out in the world to make my fortune. Withal I was touched by the pathos of the fact that life and youth and everything which now glimmered about me so hopefully was, for me as well as for every other living individual, insensibly slipping away.