Flags. A Dramatic Novel.
by
Alfons Paquet

Originally published 1923
by Drei Masken Verlag A.-G., Munich
Printed by Das Bibliographische Institut, Leipzig
Germany

Translated by CR Edmonston, 30 Aug 2008

This English translation is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 171 Second Street, Suite 300, San Francisco, California, 94105, USA.




P R E L U D E   O N   T H E   P U P P E T   S T A G E
The characters, from both sides of the stage, encounter one another and shake one another’s hands.


THE STRINGPULLER

We’ve here, dear people, in this puppet play	
Nearly too many characters to say,
Characters possessing living people’s features,	
Some with rosy cheeks, the other half dead creatures,
May they be presented to you by name,
Hero, worker, judge, man of business fame.
Now see what in them meets with your acclaim. 

Look at Cyrus, here, the man with strong physique, 
While from giving birth his mother was still weak,
He read newspapers, he memorized the times table
And his grasp of mine and yours was brashly unstable,
And he took all he was able.
That figures, he was likely an attorney’s son.
He’s long time now ruling Chicagoan,
His were the railroad, the factories, the soil and ground,
He’d like to send down to Hell each man he found
Who should ever dare to get in his way,
He makes laws say what he wants them to say,
He knows for certain, knows to throw round his weight,
Understands how to harry and agitate,
It bothers him not when others go without food,
No reason to alter his business-like mood
Or for him to feign a less miserly attitude.       
His head is like a full bottle, long and high,
Of bad wine.  In his pockets dollars just multiply.

Look here at Spies.  His tie betrays a man gifted and vain,	
Both his mouth and his eye make his speaking gift plain, 
He hates Cyrus much and knows who he is,
He loves the people’s cause and still more he loves his,
He loves the ladies, salary’s not poor
As the labor newspaper editor,
Toil and distress were all his parents could afford,	
A leader thanks to his swift mind and word.
When the rabble is roused by thoughts they can feel,
Then he comes to meet them filled with his own zeal,
Believes what he says, preferably twice, takes pride	
And an hour later the memory’s almost died. 
 
Lingg is the name of the boy wearing the defiant frown.
He’s from Baden, Schwetzingen was his town,
Yet driven early abroad, this mother’s son,
A young idealist, he’s another one
Of those men holding their new bibles brooding
Much about Marx and Lassalle and Bakunin.
It’s said of him he descends from a princely sire.
This I don’t know, yet his eyes’ glowing fire,
His dark hair and his dark mustache can make many a heart pause,	
He’s poor himself and friend to the poor man’s cause.
 
Judge Gary here, already well on in years, quite lean,
Through experience of plots and scams made keen,                 
With all that white hair his distinction can plainly be seen, 
Dangerous indeed to any man one brings,
A Calvinist who psalms on Sunday sings,
A Moloch who devours living things.
Whence has he this head full of razor-sharp teeth, you ask?
What?  So dispensing God’s gifts is now my task?
 
Here strolls Nina pretty and proud, although a bit flighty,
A good kid, like a true woman she’s mighty,
With all of her heart she’s either a sinner or saint,
Her sense of family greatness not grown faint,
Plagued by curiosity, love’s quick with distress,
Ostrich feather hat and red velvet dress.
Never the type to take careful measure,
Just as he is she’s made Spies her treasure,
Though he’s half-way up the gallows, ready to die,
To march straight ahead she is not too shy,
Nor to look her former friend Cyrus in the eye.	
 
The other men here dressed in working clothes so coarse,
With calluses on their hands, each strong as a horse,
Cast into a harsh, a furious world    
As pillars or bearers of flags waving unfurled,
Workers in metal, in paint, in carpentry,
Spoils of bitter days, this grey infantry,
Their faces slashed, their clothes a crumpled mess, 
Their hearts filled up with much bitterness,—
What more could you want once it’s all begun,
Each man knows his gathering place and knows his gun.
 
Here with his brown bride, then, we have Parsons there,
She a mulatto and he a cotton planter’s heir,—
Just like Fielden, a diamond in the rough is he,
He couldn’t possibly a traitor be,
He’s not like others who are without their own homeland,
He’s a Southern man and he loves the U.S.A.,
He loves the people, at play like a child, and,
Schoolboy himself, with heart and soul he lights the way,
Where others have buried their hopes in the sand.
In his life a man driven harshly about,
He’s gifted in both speaking and writing,
Though often it’s Bible words he’s citing, 
One must have love for a heart so stout.
 
Then these blue ones here, they do what they have been told,
They have sturdy fists, their brains aren’t so bold,
They have been well schooled about anarchist and criminal,
With brass stars on theirs chests they’re adorned one and all,
Trainable hounds who with one sniff of his hat
Can track the fugitive to where he’s at
Once they’ve been loosed, urged on to take to the street,
To question the people with honesty and deceit,
That’s their job, that’s why their paycheck comes through,
Possibly even a marble monument, too,
Where others have been more truly deserving,
They run strong and sure like on tracks unswerving.
Take a look at Shaak, a crude peasant from the Ardennes, 
He plays at Yankee bourgeois, born Luxembourgian,
Law and order is his favorite phrase,
Is his business, his bedstead and the center of his maze.
 
Now set the dice in play and let them fly from the cup,
Some will be brought down in death while others are raised up;
That is only the first in true trinity:
The path of fools to the realm of liberty,
The path from blood to the fire, from word to the light,
The path of the flags in judicial fight.
Toss them, wave, up high from the bottom floor,
Cast downward whom you will, through the dark door,
Make idiots, the proud still more insolent,
Transform the crime victims into the violent:
You only make saints through great suffering,  
Idea:  you create, destroy everything.
Behold, dear people, these respectable men:
You’ll never see them as young as this again!
The room’s free, the family is starting to stir,
In Quadrille and Polonaise they meet one another,
They extend this once each other their hand
And quickly greeting those whom they won’t understand,
Each one then goes off to his own fate’s land.





C H A R A C T E R S

Cyrus McClure          Mrs. McClure
Drinkwater	       Nina van Zandt
Jordan		       Mrs. Parsons
Spies		       Frau Seliger
Engel		       Settchen
Fischer		       Ebersold
Lingg		       Shaak
Parsons		       Mariechen Engel
Fielden		       Miss Richmond
Seliger		       Ogleby
Müntzenberger	       Wilkinson
Young Thielen	       Rev. Bolton
Hermann		       Judge Gary
Dietzgen	       Jailor Volz
Jebolinski	       A Chef
Malkoff		       A Doctor
          A Prisoner

Jurors, Lawyers, Businessmen, Members of the Citizens’ Club,
Working Men, Working Women and Girls, Police, People on the street.
     Chicago at the time of the labor unrest of 1886.





F I R S T    A C T





F I R S T    S C E N E

Grassy field, in background McClure’s factory and shipping yard.
	Lake Michigan.  Crowd of people set upon by the police.

A BOHEMIAN WORKER
Holy Mother of God and Nepomuk.  I’m hit.  What have I done?

SECOND WORKER
There’s a body.  We are strangers here.   What can we do?  Let’s beat it!

THIRD WORKER
They won’t shoot me dead.  (He runs away.)

A GERMAN WORKER
Stay, pal.  There’s some bricks.  Toss ’em in the blues’ kissers.  Cross over to the freight cars.  There’s the barricade.  Hey, brother.  Are you an anarchist?  Why are you running away?

ANOTHER WORKER
Give it up.  They’re coming.

POLICEMAN
They’re lying there in the grass.  Lazy trash.—Ah, you won’t be standing up again.  (A stone is tossed.)  What?  Haven’t drunk enough blood yet?  Haven’t choked on enough dust?  Get to work.  Otherwise— (Raises his revolver.)  Whoever tosses a stone at me!  You’ll raise your hand again—?  This is America, mark you.  Learn your lesson, all you foreign trash.

A WOUNDED WORKER
Thirsty.

POLICEMAN
No beer here.  Make tracks.  You’re one of ’em, too.

WORKER
Help!  Oh, the lake!  They’re snapping at me like whales, oh hell, out here in the beautiful, open air.  Oh, how strict!  Mother!  (He dies.)

ANOTHER WORKER
Officer, sir.  How long will it be until we become citizens?  Oh, if only we were citizens.

POLICEMAN
What do you know about citizens.  Come here,—off to the hotel.  (He leads him away.)

A WORKER (returns).
You can have him, it’s Heinek.  He was a painter.  We painted harvesting machines, the wooden parts red, the wheels yellow.  This here is a rich country that shoots its workers dead as thanks.

OTHER WORKER
Spies spoke.  He stood over there on the truck-wagon.  Someday soon things will be different, he said.

THE FIRST WORKER
The foulest factory in Chicago.  Reeks of sweat and iron, of sulfur, dust and glue.

(Factory bell.)

WORKER
There, you hear that.
 
THE OTHER
It’s our bell.  It’s calling the strike breakers.   I’d like to kick them in the guts.  They’re taking away our bread.  That’s our situation now.   Let’s head back home, something must happen.

WORKER (with threatening fist)
Wait!

OTHER WORKERS
Wait!

ONE OF THEM
Oh!





S E C O N D    S C E N E

Third Avenue.  Editorial offices of the labor newspaper.  Windows open.  Noise from the streets.  Doors half-open.  Telephone ringing.  Against the wall bookshelves with a few books and newspaper volumes.   Rifles, lead pipes.  On the writing desk a bottle of water.  Spies, in shirtsleeves, hat on his head, writing.  Fischer.  Jebolinski.  Engel.  Later, Nina.  Wilkinson.

FISCHER
We’re not holding a parade.  Is your gun working?  Leave the flags.  Tomorrow, when the city is ours, take the flags and have a shooting match.

JEBLONSKI
The people want their flags.

FISCHER
We’re no bowling club.  The Avenue is full of people.  They’re tearing the leaflets from one another’s hands.  The city is a pressure cooker.
 
ENGEL
In ’70 I was a gunner.  There!  (He opens his coat.  A bandolier and a military jacket become visible.)  My section is like me.  But listen, Spies, have orders been issued?

JEBLONSKI
You must play general all alone, Engel.  If people fall, what will become of the families?

ENGEL
Is Chicago a poor city?  Is there food to eat in there, yes or no?

JEBOLINSKI
What bank do you have your account at?

FISCHER
Our account will be everywhere, when we’ve won.

ENGEL
The police stations are marked on the map.  Toss in incendiary bombs.  On the street corners our shooters lie in wait and gun down whatever comes out.  We occupy the post office.  We’ll cut the telegraph lines, break the train tracks outside the city.  Chicago vanishes from the earth.  On the second day we’ll have reinforcements from the mining region.  On the third day America will know that Chicago is in the hands of the reds.

JEBOLINSKI
The police have been warned.  You know the patrol wagons.

ENGEL
Shot on their horses.  No prisoners.

JEBOLINSKI
For that you’ll need a thousand guys like you and like young Lingg maybe. 
  
ENGEL
The International Carpenters Union has four hundred men.  Fielden and Parsons are no liars.  We also have a couple of Swedes and the Swiss, good shots.  We'll open the prisons.  We have confederates.  The police will come over to our side.  They're proletarians just like us.  We don't want anything unjust.

JEBOLINSKI
I've got a bad feeling, Engel.

ENGEL
Jebolinski, in your Letter-Box stands the word rest.  Yes or no?  The word rest.

JEBOLINSKI
That's right.

ENGEL
Alright, there we have it.  The word rest will awaken all sections.

JEBOLINSKI
Spies, do you hear what the word rest means?

SPIES (writing)
My flyer is finished.  A hemp rope in words for McClure.

FISCHER
Finally, street fighting.

ENGEL
Whoever reads the word "rest" and understands, will do as I do.  (He takes his shotgun.)  We'll all be in position this evening.  Now listen, Spies.

SPIES
We're not starting from the end.  Who inserted the word "rest"?
 
JEBOLINSKI
The courier brought the slip, as always.

SPIES
And you don't tell me?  You want me to rip you apart?  Stop the presses, man.  The word will be taken out.

(Jebolinski hurries out.)

ENGEL
Spies, there's no going back.

SPIES
Three days of massive demonstrations.  Then we'll see.  Tonight in the market place.  First come and have a look at the people.

ENGEL
Before your meetings are finished, the boys in blue will be finished with you.

FISCHER
Marketplace?  Mousetrap.

SPIES
At the Haymarket there's room for twenty-five thousand.  If chaos breaks out, then into the side streets.  Not a shot from our side.  But telegrams to Pittsburg, East Saint Louis, Buffalo, to all workers' cities.

JEBOLINSKI (from outside)
The printing is on the streets.

SPIES
It can cost us our necks.  I'm running hot and cold.

ENGEL
There were eight dead.  And you say we should remain silent?
 
FISCHER
These Bohemians.  They let the strikebreakers in instead of turning the factory into an inferno.

Nina.  Wilkinson.

ENGEL
It wouldn't have happened to us.  I will come tonight, Spies, with the whole German section.

SPIES
No, stay home.  Let me do my work.  We'll call you.

ENGEL
And in three days?

SPIES
Chicago will belong to us.

FISCHER
And in eight days?

SPIES
America.

ENGEL
Then get to it.  There must be discipline.  I obey.

(He goes away.)

NINA
You are very busy, Mr. Spies.  Are we going to get a revolution?

SPIES
Who are you?

NINA
Miss van Zandt.  Is there revolution?  Please tell me.

SPIES
I don’t know you, Miss.  I have never seen such an elegant lady in these rooms.  Well:  America will experience something.
 
WILKINSON
I brought her with me, Spies.  Pardon.  Miss Nina van Zandt, Milwaukee Avenue.

SPIES
Ask the people in the street.  Tomorrow there will be forty thousand locked out.  If they can’t tell you what revolution is, wait until they’ve gone hungry for ten days.  Then ask Cyrus McClure.  He’ll be taking his phone calls from the lamp post.

WILKINSON
It’s come to hanging?  It won’t exactly be Cyrus.  You gave a fiery speech, Spies.  Where were you when the police moved in?

NINA
You are an excellent speaker.  One sees it in your mouth, in your forehead, in your hands.  Speak once more, Mr. Spies.  Oh, do it.  The crowd is waiting.  I love public speeches.  There’s nothing more beautiful than an energized crowd of people.

SPIES
I’ve spoken enough.  I’m hoarse.

WILKINSON
Is it true, Spies, that in this past night the reds placed an infernal machine at Mr. Lambert Tree’s door?

SPIES
What foolishness!

WILKINSON
Don’t you folks have any bombs?

SPIES
Are you a socialist, man?
 
WILKINSON
I don’t know what that is.  I’m for social life, but not exactly a socialist.  I’m an Americano.

SPIES
Then it’s time that you changed.  In three times twenty-four hours, in every quarter of the city where workers live, a socialist will step out of every house door with a shotgun on his arm and a number on his shoulder.  Whoever is not wearing a number is consigned to death.

NINA
Oh, tell me more about the reds.  Do you people believe in God?

SPIES
My audience out there on the prairie were Bohemians, Poles, poor humble people, devoted church goers, no atheists, materialists or anarchists.  They are nonetheless on the warpath.  It’s workers’ business.

NINA
Why do you folks hate the orderly people?  No one hates you.

WILKINSON
Spies, will we really have unrest?

SPIES (laughs)
We’ll have excitement.  You can write that in your paper, or my name isn’t Gust Spies.

WILKINSON
And the police?

SPIES
Did you read Sheridan’s “The Tactics of Street Fighting”?  Too bad.  These matches here.  That’s the market place.  You only need a very few people to defend this intersection against the entire Chicago militia.  The tunnel, here, is a good shelter for women and children.  We have three thousand people.  Each one throws a five pound bomb fifty feet.

WILKINSON
Interesting.  If only the half of it is true.

(Noise.)

NINA
Listen to how they’re calling!  A few words, Mr. Spies, please!

SPIES
But I’m hoarse.  (He goes to the window.  Great noise.  He leans back.)  Workers!  Brothers!  (Silence.)  The police have given answer to your just demands.  (Terrible clamor.)  I’ve come from McClure’s factory.  Two thousand workers had gathered.  When the bell sounded, in came the strike breakers.  There was a rush.  Patrol wagons roared through the defenseless crowd like the war chariots of the blessed Alexander.  On each of these war chariots sat a couple dozen of these well-fed blue jackets.  They shot to the right and to the left.  The wounded rolled on the ground.  Workers!  The signal has been given.  Including women and children you comprise more than half this city of eight hundred thousand.  Hear what I am saying.  The city is for us.  The women of the city are in sympathy with your women and children.  Show up tonight at the Haymarket.  Long live anarchy!  (Noise.  Wilkinson departs.)

NINA
He looks good.  Where is Wilkinson?—Have you no family, Mr. Spies?

SPIES
Fischer has four children.  He’s married.  I’m not.

NINA
Listen.  (Grabs the telephone.)  McClure line.
 
SPIES
What do you think you’re doing, Miss?

NINA
I know Cyrus.  I’ll speak with him.  Here’s the situation.

SPIES
No!  No conversation with McClure from this room.

NINA
Cyrus is the strongest man in Chicago.  He doesn’t desire any spilling of blood.  You have influence over hundreds of thousands of workers.  Therefore, also over McClure.  You’re the man for Chicago.  What kind of house is this for you?  You should have a larger paper.  Hello!  (Answer from the other end of the line.)  Nina van Zandt speaking.  (Person on the other end is speaking.)  Wait, Mr. Spies.  It’s Drinkwater, the secretary.  I demand Cyrus himself.

SPIES (rips the telephone out of her hand)
Damn it!

NINA (rises up)

SPIES (shows her the door)





T H I R D   S C E N E

Seliger’s apartment.  Small, dark room with bed, table and stools.  The door to the kitchen is ajar.  A small furnace with fading embers.
Seliger.  Lingg.  Müntzenberger.  Hermann.  Young Thielen.  Settchen.  Later, Frau Seliger.

MÜNTZENBERGER (singing)
Ah, Tyrolean maiden, your youth, your pure virtue,
Your beautiful manner and style have lured me here to you.
You said that it doesn’t matter— 
 
SETTCHEN
Shut your trap, you naughty fellow.—What should I do with the leftovers?  There’s two cigar boxes full.

LINGG
Take them with you and bury them.

YOUNG THIELEN
Alright.—Thirty of them are finished.

LINGG
Quitting time.  Everyone take his share.  Then all of us out the door.

SELIGER
No one stays at my place overnight.  The old lady won’t have it.

LINGG
Give me the handbag, John.  We’re going to Greif’s Hall, after that to Zepf’s Hall and to Florus.

MÜNTZENBERGER
The stupid Bohemians ran like sheep into the line of fire.

LINGG
These Bohemians know nothing of the world they’re in.  We’ll show them how the world is.

SELIGER
Whoever has a wife and child is in a bad way.

LINGG
Be contented, father Seliger.  Mind the till, leave the rest to us.

SELIGER
Eighteen guns sold.  That makes a hundred eighty dollars.  Plus four Remington revolvers at seven a piece.  Yes, if only the money belonged to me.—Here’s the receipt from the Aetna Powder Company.  Six pounds of dynamite at a half-dollar a pound.  Trouble enough.

HERMANN
If only it’ll go off.

LINGG
You won’t have long to wait.

MÜNTENBERGER
Not so loud.

SELIGER
She’s gone out.

SETTCHEN
There’ll be an end to the sewing room.

MÜNTZENBERGER
That’ll be a happy day for you, then, Settchen.

SETTCHEN
What’s with these small ones here, Lingg?  What’re they for?

LINGG
Those?  For the ladies.  Be my guest, my dear.

SETTCHEN
They’re like a child’s ball.  I saw them being made.  So they’re no longer scary, right?

LINGG
I tried them out at the Lake View shooting park.  Foot-and-a-half lead pipe, ten-inch fuse, a match, hoof it.  Only forty paces, then bang.  I stuck one in a tree.  That hunk of wood vanished before my eyes, it rained splinters, like a stone tossed into the water.
 
HERMANN
In Vienna they executed Stellmacher for such a thing.

LINGG
I knew Reinsdorf personally.  It was in Zurich, at the Unity club.

MÜNTENBERGER
Stellmacher broke into the banker Eifert’s apartment because, he claimed, he needed to get some money.  The children were home.  He killed them.

SETTCHEN
That’s vile.

LINGG
Reinsdorf made the assassination attempt at the Niederwald monument.  The fuse was made wet by the rain.  Reinsdorf said in court:  “If for the Revolution we had a couple of brigades at our disposal I wouldn’t be standing here.  Do with me what you will.  Our cause is good.  Robbing and stealing is nothing if it’s for the cause.”

HERMANN
I would like to see John Most some day.  His little book of recipes is pretty good.

MÜNTENBERGER
That rat hound.  He wears his mouth like a slap to the face.  He can curse like only the Augsbergers can.

HERMANN
What do you have against the killing of capitalist children?

MÜNTEZBERGER
The children can be left in peace.

LINGG
The rich children also live at the cost of the poor.
 
MÜNTEZBERGER
I say their elders first.  That’s work enough.  What’s the signal?

LINGG
You’ll see the sky growing red.  Then you’ll know what’s to be done.

HERMANN
To toss this thing from the very depths of one’s heart into a freshly washed house.

MÜNTEZBERGER (sits down on a chest)
On your suitcase it says:  Le Havre.  Do you remember how we left?

LINGG
Your pants still have the look of the Heidelberg Haspelgasse.

MÜNTZENBERGER
You’re still thin as ever, like a Schwetzingen asparagus.  When I look at us now, ah, how things have changed.

SELIGER
Any bachelor can earn enough money to buy what he needs.

FRAU SELIGER (from the kitchen)
Dinner.

SELIGER
Mother?  I thought you were over there with the child.

FRAU SELIGER
What are you talking about again.  A person starts to get a terrible feeling.  Go home.  Get those things there off from around my neck.  You watch out.

MÜNTZENBERGER (Packs up his tools.)
(sings) Now, please, Mistress, with your blessing, 
Give my conduct your assessing 
In my guild’s journeyman book,
Have your say, take one last look.
Now free on my own two feet
I’ll often my handiwork greet. 
Metalworker, new here, hey,
And I’ll receive better pay.

FRAU SELIGER
There’re more chains than raving dogs.

SELIGER
Let it go, mother.  You don’t mean it like that.  Things will get better for us.

FRAU SELIGER
Think about your families, you loafers.  The child is crying.
(She leaves the room.)

MÜNTZENBERGER
When hammer’s head can’t be put back
And file handle starts to crack
And turnscrew grip will not mend,
Then begins my journey’s end.—
Aren’t you coming, Settchen?  Have the honor.

(Müntzenberger and Settchen leave.)

SELIGER
She’s in a bad mood.  She doesn’t believe anymore that we’ll finally do something.  She was eager in the beginning.

LINGG
That elixir there in the cigar box, it will reshape the world.  We have our magic cup just like Dr. Faust.  We’re going to cure the capitalist tooth ache.

HERMANN
Come on, Thielen.
 
YOUNG THIELEN
I must still go to father.  Then to Wicker Park.

LINGG
You be there at ten thirty.

YOUNG THIELEN
Ten thirty, Lingg.

(Hermann and Thielen leave.)

SELIGER
The oven is out.  Open the window, Ludwig.

LINGG
You’re always badmouthing the new homeland.  If you were so happy in the old one, why did you come over here?

SELIGER
There’s better beer over there.  We’re poor devils here, too.  No relatives, not a soul here in this country, my wife throws it my face anyhow.  We’re a broken branch.  We’re drying out here or we must burn.

LINGG
Your wife is not so keen on talking to me anymore.

SELIGER
Since the child is sick now, too.

LINGG
I’ll look for a new apartment.

SELIGER
If it can’t be otherwise, Ludwig.  Our things here, they get the poor gal so worked up.  I tell her:  if Lingg goes, who will we have left to talk with.  But it’s no good.  So don’t take it bad.  Yeah, the way we shoved off from over there two years ago.  We thought to ourselves:  a little piece of land, a peaceful life in America.  Now here we sit.

LINGG
The proletarian has no homeland.  He must first create it.  My home is called the Internationale.





F O U R T H   S C E N E

Office.  Cyrus McClure.  Drinkwater.  Then Shaak.  Later, Jordan and Mrs. McClure.

DRINKWATER
Miss Nina telephoned.  From the labor newspaper.  Asked whether you wished to see Mr. Spies.  A conversation would set everything straight, she said.  Suddenly, a rough voice interrupts.  It was Spies himself, I think.

CYRUS
That’s one of her eccentric pranks.  I’ll see Spies for myself when he’s hanging from the gallows, no sooner.

DRINKWATER
The papers write in favor of the workers.  The city is in chaos.

CYRUS
I’ve decided to put an end to this mob.  The scene in front of the factory was enough.  I’ve won the battle before it’s been fought, Drinkwater.

DRINKWATER
A man in a police uniform is outside.  He came through the back door.  He asked for a bucket of water and washed the dirt from his face.
 
CYRUS
Shaak.  I’ve called for him.

DRINKWATER
The man from the German government has arrived.  He came straight from the train station.

CYRUS
Shaak first.  I’m traveling with Mrs. McClure to the country.  As soon as I’ve spoken with Shaak and this foreigner.  Were you in the worker’s quarter?

DRINKWATER
On the North Side.  The Germans smell like beer and sauerkraut, as always.  But they’re talking dynamite.  It would be an excellent endeavor to put some more care into America there.  Moderate reduction in rents would make a pay raise unnecessary.

CYRUS
Who’s been in Chicago longer, you or me?  In thirty years I’ve never heard about anyone lowering the rent.  Whoever can’t pay, moves out.  There’s enough people coming through Ellis Island.  Go ask the brewery what it costs to make the beer stronger without raising the sales price.    Beer brings thoughts to the tongue.  We’ll send more people there to listen.  Bring in Shaak.

(Drinkwater goes out.)

CYRUS
They should punch each other’s eyes out and leave me in peace.  Who’s going to tell me that I breed anarchists in this quarter like gnats on raspberry jam?  What’s anarchy?  The worm rebels because the apple’s eaten.  The people sit in a pond.  They have no other perspective than the frog’s perspective.  They’re no Americans.  That’s their fault not mine.  When they overthrow me, do they have another Cyrus in my place?

(Sets the arm of a metronome in motion.)

This metronome slices up the minutes like a butcher’s knife.  Twenty cents per second, seven hundred twenty dollars per hour.  A river of gold flows towards me.

(Shaak and Drinkwater enter.)

Hello, detective.  Your business is thriving.

SHAAK
The mob is bringing out their flags like they did before in front of the Chamber of Commerce.

CYRUS
Tomorrow, Deering’s locomotive factory and Pullman will be closed.  How are things with the police, if I may ask?

SHAAK
The mayor stands by the view that there are grounds for intervention only in cases of plundering and murder.

CYRUS
The mayor and these Democrats in the administration are making nonsense out of the matter.  If there’s a heap of rubble in Chicago they telegraph to Washington for help.               

SHAAK
Spies speaks to the people from his window.

CYRUS
Shut these foreigners’ mouths.

SHAAK
Spies is a citizen.  Parsons and Fielden speak in the other streets.  The people listen like they’re in church.  The eight-hour movement is making anarchism popular.
 
CYRUS
I would like to know what the Chicago police are worth.

SHAAK
We stand for law and order.

CYRUS
But?

SHAAK
My colleagues say the movement isn’t against Illinois law.

CYRUS
Who says that?

SHAAK
My Chief Ebersold, for example. 

CYRUS
Who else?

SHAAK
The officials say it’s dangerous to go to war for McClure.  There can be widows and orphans.  Who will pay the pensions?

CYRUS
Look here, Shaak.  I do not wish any unrest in connection with my name.  I will take on a third of the pensions.  I have no desire to speak with Mayor Harrison or with this idiot Ebersold.  That’s why I speak with Shaak.  I need a Napoleon by my side. 

SHAAK
No Napoleon without a war chest.

CYRUS
Here’s the check.  What can you do for me this evening, Captain?
 
SHAAK
First, I’ll brush off from my coat the dirt that the McClure’s workers pelted me with today.

CYRUS
Speak to your colleagues.  It’s necessary that they are all of one mind.

SHAAK
At nine a mass demonstration will be starting at the Haymarket.  That is my precinct, I will direct the police.  We cannot intervene if there is no unrest.  I think that everything will remain calm.

CYRUS
I think we will have unrest.

SHAAK
I know these tree-stump speakers better.  In the afternoon exciting, in the evening calming.

CYRUS
I should wait until it’s left to these people to create unrest?

SHAAK
(Sticks the check into his breast pocket.)
Mr. McClure, your word that you will double this check in the event that the unrest costs any so-called casualties.

CYRUS
You are tedious.  My Word.  Act swiftly.  Give it a cold shower.  I’ll handle the rest.

SHAAK
Good.  (Exits.)
 
CYRUS (to Drinkwater)
I’m surprised this boy hasn’t already made it farther than Captain.

DRINKWATER
His face is holding him back.

CYRUS
For the dark his face is good enough.  He’s worth his pay for today.

Mrs. McClure (enters.)
Cyrus, the wagon is waiting.

CYRUS
Just another moment.  It won’t be long.

(Jordan is lead in.)

CYRUS
I’ve kept you waiting.  Sorry.  You have a rather long title, Mr. Jordan.

JORDAN
True Governmental Privy Councillor.

CYRUS
Have a seat.  Speak with me privately and I will see if I can use your counsel and what it has to do with the government.

JORDAN
My letter of introduction is in your hands?

CYRUS
It is as if Kaiser William himself were sitting in this chair.
 
JORDAN
My government has decided to take part in the World Exposition.  It desires a role in the choice of location, a free hand in the choice of industries.

CYRUS
Many of your industries are of interest to us here.  Others are not.  How are you to know which ones interest us?  It is too big a bill for you.

JORDAN
Our export to America is too small for two such great nations.

CYRUS
You export anarchists.  Is that nothing?  Send us Emperor William or Prince Bismarck.  But none of these rotten fish.

JORDAN
These rotten fish work cheaply for you, Mr. McClure.

CYRUS
From year to year the police become more expensive.

JORDAN
My government is as little responsible for the behavior of these emigrants as it is for Mr. McClure’s behavior towards these same people.  These people have given up their country of their own free will.  We have a Socialist Law.  Why don’t you have a Socialist Law?  Getting back to the Exposition.  It would please certain foreign governments if participation remained limited to a personal representation only.

CYRUS
You appeal too much to the German element.
 
JORDAN
It is the most peaceful element in the population.

CYRUS
Why are you so set on coming to Chicago?

JORDAN
The German government will be the first to receive you, Mr. McClure, if you, as the future president of this Exhibition, travel to Europe.

MRS. MCCLURE
Oh, it would be interesting to be presented to the Kaiser.  I want to see Prince Bismarck.  How old are these two gentlemen?  There are few such old people in America.

JORDAN
His Majesty is 89 years old.  The Prince is in his early seventies.  Both gentlemen are very youthful.

CYRUS
No one could use such old people in any business.

JORDAN
A few things may have changed before the Exposition takes place.  The future Kaiser is interested in Chicago.

CYRUS
Send him on over.  Whoever comes first can stay in my country house on the Lake Michigan coast.  We’ll invite even more princes.  Do you know what I heard?  There’s a descendant of Christopher Columbus.

MRS. MCCLURE
I didn’t know, Cyrus, that Columbus was married.  I thought he had enough to do discovering America.  It must have cost him years and years, half his life.

CYRUS
There are living descendants.  He’s a Spanish duke.  I will invite him.

JORDAN
The ground in Chicago is a bit hot at the moment.

CYRUS
Hot, but totally safe.

JORDAN
I saw red flags, many unemployed.

CYRUS
We’re making this unemployment ourselves, sir, in order to keep the work up to pace.  We’ve closed a couple of factories.  Yes.  The market is glutted with sowing machines.  I’m going into the railroad business.  That means new lines, new rails, telegraph machines and wires, new harbors on the Pacific, new steam ships and docks.  We’re building steel works in the West.  The people only need to travel there.  Why should I pay for the trip?  We need our money so that the Congress votes for warships now, and not in five years.  We make loans to Cuba and Mexico.  Cuba is ordering guns, canons, armor plating for its independence.  Unemployment in Chicago?  Revolution?  People who can’t get used to this country are the scum of Europe.

JORDAN (gets up)
I want to send a telegraph.  You have accepted my proposal?  Washington is putting the decision into your hands.

CYRUS
Understood.  Too bad I can’t invite you over to our place tonight.  We’re going away for a couple of days.  
 
JORDAN
I’ll be departing, too.

CYRUS
No, stay here.  I will show you this city in couple of days; it will be clean as your grandma’s parlor, sir.  Look out the window.  That is Lake Michigan.  A giant coal deposit.  The ground underneath it belongs to me.  There in two years the snow white palaces of the Exhibition will rise up, a model city with grassy lawns, fountains, bushes, halls and towers together with the flags of all the countries between the North Pole and the South Pole.

JORDAN
The Exhibition must be greater than the Paris Exhibition.  I have brought an architect with me.

CYRUS
Refer him to my secretary.





F I F T H    S C E N E

Lincoln Park.  At the Schiller monument.  Night.  Lanterns.  Wandering people.

A MAN
Here it is.  Here.  I’d prefer a beer garden to this park.  This is rainy weather.  Holy Schiller!  It was not so long ago when I knew Homer in Greek by heart.  How many gallons of beer must have already flowed through this tin can before it found its measure, filled up with such a concoction, one half gun powder, the other half benzene.  According to the official recipe of this crook-mouthed John.  My beloved bottle.  As if there wasn’t anything else.  It is a victim of my determination.  Yes.  One hardly dares light a pipe near it.

ANOTHER MAN (walks up)
Go ahead and light up.

FIRST MAN
Dear brother.  Did you come alone?  What’s your number?

THE OTHER MAN
Sixteen.

FIRST MAN
My number is eight, and you ask me for a light.  So I’m your better half then.  Do you see the monument?  This tall marble man is Schiller.  There is Lake Michigan.  Here, on this spot fourteen days ago or twenty years ago the Comanche Indians still roamed.  Ha!  This man of stone is standing on deep, deep water.  Who can know how deep it is.  If he could fall in, he would sink for deep woe down to the bottom and never surface again.  Hear, oh man, the voice of nature.  Are you an anarchist, dear brother?

THE OTHER MAN
Yes.

FIRST MAN
Pericles was an anarchist, too.  A fellow in silks and satins.  His girlfriend was called Aspasia.  She was beautiful as a doe, sharp as a snake.  She would make a parrot out of an eagle, out of an eagle a parrot.  He hesitated to wage wars, gobbled up the war chest, established the dictatorship of the proletariat and made himself beloved by posterity.  Through expenditure of gold, ivory and high wages he built the Athens acropolis.  There aren’t rulers like that any more.
 
THE OTHER MAN
Drivel.  Are you a shooter?

FIRST MAN
If I was I wouldn’t be standing here with the tin can.  I think we’re the signal committee or some such thing.  Aren’t you the ambusher?

THE OTHER MAN
Yeah, that’s me, damn it, and now I recognize you.  You were the bath attendant at the central hospital.

FIRST MAN
I lost that sweet job, mind you.  I’m not feeling terribly at ease.  Who sent you here?

THE OTHER MAN
Little Thielen came running up.  He said:  You guys should wait until the fire lights up the sky.  Then come on into the city.  When you hear it booming, blast open the church doors.  Barricade yourselves in the churches.

FIRST MAN
By God, that will do us good.  I haven’t been in a church in ages.  With God nothing is impossible, said Hooligan—as he locked himself in the church and shot at the pastor standing outside.  But we shouldn’t just go it all alone by ourselves.  Do you have one of these potatoes on you?

THE OTHER MAN
It’s a turnip.  A piece of lead pipe.  A girl handed them out in Neff’s pub.

FIRST MAN
Can you toss it, then?
 
THE OTHER MAN
Couldn’t be much of an art to it.

FIRST MAN
We’ll be getting hungry.  Do you hear something?  Was that a shot?  Is the sky already turning red?

THE OTHER MAN
Ay, damn it, they’re going ahead without us, they’ve stood us up.

FIRST MAN
Always the same thing.  A fairy sang that to me in the cradle.  Wherever you go, my child, you’ll come too late.  The others, meanwhile, make off like chickens afoot, perfectly silent, behind your back.  And if that sort of thing’s all wrong?  If it goes awry?   

THE OTHER MAN
Light the fuse and hold it to your heart, you’ll feel the effect right away.

THE FIRST MAN
Do you have any whiskey on you?

THE OTHER MAN
Wait a moment.  (Disappears.)

THE FIRST MAN
Dear brother!  Fellow countryman!  He’s beat it.  Now who’s pigheaded, him or me?  I’d like to just go into the first house I come to and say, give me a little warm soup.  I’ve got no more weight in my belly.  You folks can have my bottle.  The signal never came.  Once again, Otto, you’re the fool.  Come away the worse for it!  (He throws the box into the lake.)
 

 


S I X T H    S C E N E

Haymarket.  Darkness.  A crowd of people.  Three men on top of a wagon.

PARSONS
It is time to issue a warning.  There is nothing in the eight-hour movement which need arouse the capitalists.  But did you know that two Gatling guns stand ready to mow you down?

SEVERAL VOICES
Are we in Germany here?  Are we in Russia?

FIRST CITIZEN
The one who spoke before was Spies.  The police shot his brother dead two years ago.  It was at a picnic.  Now Parsons speaks, the lady's dressmaker.  He used to have his shop in Larrabee Street.

SECOND CITIZEN
He will fit the ladies of Lake Front Avenue with spinning dresses.

A BOY
Buy the Manifesto by Karl Marx.  Five cents.  Buy the Pittsburg Proclamation.  Five cents.

THE PREVIOUS CITIZEN
The mines are also restless.

FIRST CITIZEN
I saw him at the head of a procession.  He stood up on a tree stump and spoke of the prophet Habakkuk.—Hey!  Parsons!  Tell us something about the prophet Habakkuk!

PARSONS
If you hold dear your wives and children, and don't want them to die of hunger, arm yourselves.
 
SEVERAL VOICES
We'll do that.

FIRST CITIZEN
What do you intend to do with the small businessmen?

PARSONS
We're only concerned with the owners of the department stores that are ruining the shopkeepers, and with the owners of the factories that are ruining the workers.

FIRST CITIZEN
That's good.  Go on.

PARSONS
The prophet Amos says:  Hear this, how you oppress the poor in the land and ruin the wretched in the land and say, it is time that we gather to us those needy of a pair of shoes and trade chaff for wheat.

SECOND CITIZEN
He was a Sunday school teacher.  You're right.  What?  He's talking about Belshazzar's feast.  I see a kind of gas-writing there on the wall.  But it’s in English and it reads:  Crane Brothers.

PARSONS
Salomon says:  Oh, this race!  Their teeth are like knives, their jaws are like swords.  Of every dollar that is earned in this country, the worker receives fifteen cents, the employer retains eighty five.  Think about that.

SEVERAL VOICES
Down with the bosses.

A WOMAN (to her neighbor)
You are shameless, sir!
 
FIRST CITIZEN
Dear ladies, go home.  Take your children back to the nest.

MRS. PARSONS
My boys will hear what their father is saying.

FIRST CITIZEN
A principle of upbringing.

SECOND CITIZEN
Colored people, colorful upbringing.

MRS. PARSONS
The man standing up there is Mr. Parsons.  He is my husband.

SECOND CITIZEN
That changes things.  But it doesn’t make your skin white.  Eh?  I have never seen so many colored people on the streets of Chicago as I have in recent days.

MRS. PARSONS
The Gospel is not only for white people.

FIRST CITIZEN
No.  This gospel is a gospel for vagrants and mulattoes.

MRS. PARSONS
The time is past when we used to fear you.

FIRST CITIZEN
Are you a prophet, madam?

MRS. PARSONS
Many would do well to listen to Mr. Parsons.  The time is at hand when the high and mighty will be brought low.
 
SECOND CITIZEN
Come around the corner, little nigger.

MRS. PARSONS
How dare you!  I’m from Mexico.  I’m no Negro, I’m Indian.  You killed the Indians, the Cherokees, the Pawnees, the Comanches, the Chickasaws, you’ve ruined the red man.

A WORKER
These scoundrels are insulting a woman.  Whether one comes from the blacks or from a cargo ship makes no difference.  My grandfather was a Senator.  If I’m not mistaken, you yourself came from a cargo ship, sir.

FIRST CITIZEN (to the second)
I say let’s go.

(The citizens depart.)

A VOICE
Quiet, the Englishman!

SEVERAL VOICES
Long live Fielden!

FIELDEN
Do you remember General Ludd?  No, you don’t remember.  It was the working people of Lancashire who smashed the looms to bits.  We are two million poor in this country, but the storehouses are bursting, our prisons are bursting.  Our insane asylums, too, are bursting.  The number of suicides is on the rise.  When Egypt declined, three percent of the population was in possession of ninety seven percent of the wealth.  Babylon flourished.  The greatest city in the world.  When Babylon declined, everything there belonged to two percent of the population.  When Rome collapsed, eighteen hundred people shared between themselves the enormous real-estate of the empire.  The rest starved.  The decline of the civilized peoples was expedited by laws which brought all the riches into the hands of the few.  From these people we have our laws.  Prepare yourselves, the revolution is coming.

SEVERAL VOICES
That’s what we’re waiting for.

FIELDEN
Your lives are at the mercy of a handful of knaves who live off the fruit of your labor.  Do you want to put up with that?

SEVERAL VOICES
No.

FIELDEN
The press says we are Bohemians, Poles, Russians, Germans.  There are no Americans among us.  That is a lie.  All respectable people are on our side.

A VOICE
There come the bloodhounds.  Shaak is coming.  The black Shaak.

A VOICE
Homeward.

A CITIZEN
Let’s see what they want.

SHAAK
(at the head of a crowd of policemen advancing in rows)
In the name of the people:  disperse.

FIELDEN (descends from the wagon)
We are peaceful.

(An explosion in the ranks of the police.  Pistol shots.  The square empties out quickly amidst tremendous noise.)





S E C O N D    A C T





S E V E N T H    S C E N E

Desplaines Street police building.  Shaak.  Wilkinson.  Businessmen.  Later, police officers.  Ebersold.  Arrestees.

SHAAK (a newspaper in his hand)
Is that the thanks for saving the city from being plundered?  The press accuses me of being responsible for the bloodletting.  Do you know that not one of you would still have his head on his shoulders if the plans of Spies and Engel had been carried out?  It was time for me to lead my people into the street.  Do you disavow standing just a few steps behind Spies?

WILKINSON
Absolutely not.  But I saw nothing out of the ordinary.

SHAAK
You want to say it's nothing out of the ordinary if a man in front of you lights a fuse?  Did you not also see how Fielden on top of the wagon fired off his revolver and jumped down?

WILKINSON
I saw him jump down.  Nothing more.

SHAAK
Consider your statements.  I'm making you a witness for the state.  When you appear before the court, I will say to your face, as a sworn official of the state:  This man is a reporter.  Every good reporter has eyes and ears all over his head.  Mr. Wilkinson doubtless had all his eyes and ears with him to hear and see what the people on top of the wagon had to say.  But—this excellent reporter saw nothing.  His brain was out of juice.  Chicago Daily News is the premier paper of the Mid-West.  Let's say a conflagration breaks out, the greatest since the world began.  The paper sends Wilkinson out to see the fire.  Wilkinson positions himself before the fire, as is his duty.  He comes home and has seen nothing.  I tell you, man:  I had eight hundred officials behind me.  All saw that Spies gave a signal.  They heard the crack of the revolver and saw the fire from the muzzle as Fielden shot.  They heard how he shouted:  there come the bloodhounds.  And you alone, Wilkinson, Chicago Daily News, saw nothing!

WILKINSON
It was dark.  There was jostling.

SHAAK
If that's all you have to state before the court, then the auditorium will laugh.  The people will say:  Wilkinson isn't usually so dumb.  He wrote the most exciting reports on the strikes.  He did his part to bring to the public's attention that the eight hour movement is nothing more than a grand opportunity for criminals.—You are probably yourself something of socialist?

WILKINSON
What?  I am a citizen, Captain, like you.  I don't want to bring your personal observations into doubt.  But—
 
SHAAK
What you do with your memory is your business.  You only need to worry about whether you lose your job.  I've heard with my own ears how Fielden said:  You do your duty, I'll do mine.

WILKINSON
Well.  He could have said something like that.

SHAAK
Parsons called on the people to take up arms.

WILKINSON
That I remember.

SHAAK
Your friend Spies was the one who busied himself with the bomb.

WILKINSON
He made a motion.

SHAAK
That is important.  It's dawning on you, Wilkinson.  Now you'll go on inside.  You will meet there a gentleman at a desk.  He is the state attorney.  The gentleman will take down your statements on paper.  He will treat you with all the distinction befitting a state witness.  

(He opens the door and leads Wilkinson out.)

A POLICEMAN
(brings Shaak a note)
There’s a throng of people outside.

SHAAK
Lock down the house, let no one out who I haven’t seen yet.  (Reads the note.)  Ah, we have them.
 
POLICEMAN
There is also a delegation of businessmen.  They wish to speak with the Chief.

SHAAK
I will receive the delegation.

A BUSINESSMAN
(at the head of the delegation)
Captain, the city is in a panic.

SHAAK
The panic is justified.  Two of my people have succumbed to their wounds.  Four are struggling for their lives.  We count forty wounded.

BUSINESSMAN
The name of each of these victims should go on a marble plaque.  The police have done their duty in a wonderful way.

SHAAK
They’ve done more than their duty.  Much more.

BUSINESSMAN
How do you mean?

SHAAK
Persons of stature are not in agreement with our actions, you know.

BUSINESSMAN
I tell you in the name of five thousand business people, who represent the interests of many millions, that we are in agreement with the actions of the police!  How many men fell on the opposing side?
 
SHAAK
The air was thick with pistol fire.  The number of anarchists killed exceeds our losses.  They bury secretly.  At night.

BUSINESSMAN
We hear only rumors.  Why are the most dangerous of these people still roaming free?  This Spies still walks about, as if nothing had happened.  Where is the man who threw the bomb?  Who was it then?

SHAAK
The bomb thrower?  People have left town.  No one is prevented from leaving.

BUSINESSMAN
We want to see a gallows and people on it.

SHAAK
Do you want to go to Mayor Harrison and tell him that.

BUSINESSMAN
Shaak, your personal interest in the matter is of consequence.  A subscription has been opened.  At the top of the list stands twenty thousand dollars.  Take your revenge.  Nab the reds.  Don’t let a single one get away.

SHAAK
They won’t escape the law.

BUSINESSMAN
The law is not for exceptional cases.  We demand our place among the jurors.  The fund is at your personal disposal, Captain.
 
SHAAK
I vouch for law and order.  I will make use of the fund, you can count on it.

BUSINESSMAN (to the others)
What do you say?

THE OTHER TWO
We are satisfied with these statements.

(They take their leave.)

A POLICEMAN
Here is a worker.

(Jebolinski is lead in.)

SHAAK
Step closer, man.  Chief Ebersold is busy.  We have time.  Make yourself perfectly comfortable.

JEBOLINSKI
Your people have occupied the labor newspaper.  Spies and others who were there have been arrested.  Everything was busted up in short order.  The flags were taken away.

SHAAK
What a stroke of bad luck.  What’s your name, dear friend?

JEBOLINSKI
Jebolinski.

SHAAK
Such a red, socialist name.  Was it a large, fire-red flag?  Or one of these medium-sized black ones.  You have different kinds, smoke and fire.

JEBOLINSKI
Damn it, what right do you have to take away our flags?  I demand the flags back.
   
SHAAK
It’s a wonder that you don’t also demand Spies back, even before I’ve had the honor of seeing him.  I haven’t seen even a wisp of your flags and already you’re here, Jebolinski.

JEBOLINSKI
It is unlawful to take away flags.

SHAAK
You have great concern for the law, isn’t that right?  Your flags, that’s something else.  Trouble yourself to go down a floor.  Someone there will hand over your flags with apologies.

JEBOLINSKI
I don’t wish to climb around in your filthy house.

SHAAK
I forgot to ask you what you have to tell me about the manufacture of bombs.  You know, in Seliger’s apartment on Sedgwick Street.  Spill your guts.  We know everything.

JEBOLINSKI
Then make sure you don’t forget.  From me you’ll hear nothing.

SHAAK
Yet you recall that evening at the Haymarket?  You were surprised that only one bomb was thrown instead of twenty.  (He rings.)  Jailor, show this gentleman his accommodations.  Should you have any desires, sir, press the button.  Attentive service.—Into the cooler with him.

JEBOLINSKI
Scoundrel.

(Jebolinski is lead away.)
 
POLICEMAN
This paper was handed over.  One of the people below clamored all night.

SHAAK
Is he ripe?

POLICEMAN
Fit to burst.

SHAAK
Bring him here.  (The jailor goes out.  Shaak leafs through the papers.)  Even more printed material.  Good.  It’s the harvest of four nights’ work.

In through the other door come Ebersold, policemen, curiosity seekers and the arrestees.

EBERSOLD
I will make you talk, vermin.  I’ll break you like billiard balls.  I’ll smash you so hard under the chin that your brains will be splattered on the ceiling.  Didn’t you want to light up the city by all four corners?  I’ll break your teeth.

A CURIOSITY SEEKER
Give it to ’em, Freddy.

DIETZGEN
Why this commotion, Mr. Ebersold.  Tell us what you want from us.

EBERSOLD
That one is Dietzgen.  How have you come into this company of thieves, old man?

DIETZGEN
I am an old socialist.  These men here are young.  I have done my duty and spoken with them, and then we were all arrested together.
 
SPIES (to Dietzgen)
I can certify for you that you’re a coward, even if you’ve traded letters with Karl Marx himself.  You come from Germany, the land of cowards with the great party of cowards.

DIETZGEN
I’ve spent more time in prison than you have so far.  It wasn’t because of the police that I urged you to reason.

SPIES
I protest the arrest, for each and every individual.

SHAAK
Isn’t he Spies, that one?  A charge has been brought against you.  Conspiracy against the state and murder.  Do you recognize this flyer?  The post office keeps an extra letter carrier just for me.  I receive letters.  Some with signatures, some without.  A few contain specific information.  Others are worthless, but not entirely worthless.  I await your confession.

SPIES
I have nothing to confess.

FISCHER
I wasn’t at the Haymarket.

SHAAK
Delighted to see you again, Fielden.  We will talk later.

FIELDEN
What do you want from me?

SHAAK
And you?

MALKOFF
I’m a typesetter.
 
SHAAK
Ah, a Russian, a nihilist.  Very good.

MALKOFF
Just a proletarian.

SHAAK
What is a proletarian, eh?

MALKOFF
Anyone who can’t carry out his ideas is a proletarian.

EBERSOLD
This old man, Shaak, is in the group by mistake.  Do you have anything to do with dynamite, Mr. Dietzgen?  His son is an orderly businessman.

DIETZGEN
Are you not ashamed of yourselves?  You believe you’ve got the goods, conspiracy, murder and who knows what.  You only have circumstances.  Help change them.  This gathering of grown up men is absurd.

EBERSOLD
Let this man go home, Shaak.

AN OLD WOMAN
I am a poor old woman.  I am innocent.  I come every Thursday to do the wash.  My husband is a foreman at the Parkhurst Company.  A quiet, orderly man.

SHAAK
Take down this woman’s address and let her go.  And the others one floor down, the whole lot of them.—Those are my prisoners, Ebersold, and not yours.
 
EBERSOLD
Good luck.  (Exits and slams to door behind himself.  The arrestees are taken away.)

A CURIOSITY SEEKER
Let’s go and see where they’re taking them.

SHAAK
What?  Who are you?

A CURIOSITY SEEKER
Chief Ebersold is my friend.  He invited us over to see the anarchists.  We were in the saloon across the way, having a cocktail and a cigar.  Ebersold said:  Come on, boys—

ANOTHER CURIOSITY SEEKER
This is Jim, the prize boxer, Captain.

SHAAK
Are we in a circus here?  Beat it, and quick.

(They disappear.  Hermann is lead in.)

SHAAK
Now what?  Make it quick!

HERMANN
Is it true that I’m being taken to prison?  Hear me out, for God’s sake.

SHAAK
I don’t have much time.  Many people want to speak with me.  Out with it, or else you’re going back down below.

HERMANN
There are fifteen of us in a cellar room.  It’s terrible.  Let me out.  I’ll bring you four buried bombs.
 
SHAAK
Great.  Make yourself useful.  I will send someone with you.

HERMANN
I’m without a job.  I’ve got to live.

SHAAK
You’ll get your meals paid.  Report what you see.  Out.

(Hermann and the policeman exit.  Shaak opens the door to the next room.  Ebersold idle on the telephone.)

SHAAK
Good news, Chief?

EBERSOLD
Why are you arresting these people when there’s nothing to be learned from them?  The whole city is on their side.  Dietzgen has many voters behind him.  The disgrace.

SHAAK
You don’t want to.  Fine.  I’ll take care of it.





E I G H T H    S C E N E

West side of Chicago.  A squalid room.  Seliger.  Frau Seliger.

FRAU SELIGER
So there you are.  Hard one to find.  On the outskirts of the city.  You don’t ask about me.  For a week you’ve disappeared, for a week I’ve been without sleep, for a week I’ve gone without food or drink.  They were starting to think you’d killed yourself.  Why did you leave me, Wilhelm?
 
SELIGER
Damn your tears, Berta.  What do you women understand about what goes through a man’s mind.  On Wednesday morning, on the way to the police, one of them came up to me.  I don’t know him.  You are Seliger, he said.  If you don’t turn around on the spot, if you let yourself be seen one more time at the station, you’ll be laid out cold, you and the old lady.

FRAU SELIGER
And you left without saying a word.  And now?

SELIGER
No one’s to know that I’m here.

FRAU SELIGER
Oh, God.  You must come with me, Wilhelm, otherwise we’re done for.  It’s all good.  They have made a promise and won’t do anything to you.  You regret everything anyhow.

SELIGER
I was with Neubert three days, in Nelson Street.  Then at night I ran to Gustav Delz.  After two days he said:  Get yourself out of Chicago.  Yes.  Where to?  As soon as it got dark I had to move on.  You must follow after me, Berta.  I’ll write to you where I am.

FRAU SELIGER
I’m in the hands of the police.  The wagon is waiting at the street corner.  Shaak let me out on the condition that I bring you with me.

SELIGER
That’s a trap.  I’m not going back.

FRAU SELIGER
They mean us no harm, Wilhelm.  The two of us are important to them.  Do you want to make us suffer?  I have not seen our child in fourteen days.  The child is lying in the hospital.  I can hardly stay on my feet.

SELIGER
I don’t know which way’s up, mother.

FRAU SELIGER
I’m in good standing with Captain Shaak.  He’s a Luxembourger.  He’s a family man.  Captain, I say, my husband will testify in court.  But my husband needs protection.  Lock us up in the police station.  Help us later to get out of Chicago when it’s all over.  That is the condition.  My husband will take no concern for Lingg.  Lingg destroyed our home.  Lingg was not at the Haymarket.  But he bears the guilt for the blood letting.  Now.  Here is my husband.  Let him keep his life, for Christ’ sake.

SELIGER
The workshop was in my home.  In our oven we melted the lead.  It’s my neck, one way or another.  My limbs are going numb as I watch.  Yesterday I stood at the lake in the dark.  The water was in my boots.

FRAU SELIGER
That’s just what we need.  We haven’t come to that yet.  You won’t leave me alone in the hands of these devils, these bloodhounds!  Pay attention.  When they ask you why you fled, then you’ll tell them about that evening, you know, when you went out, you and Lingg, with a full suitcase.  And you say:  Lingg was waiting downstairs.  My wife took me aside.  She fell about my neck, and tears were running down her face, and if you still have a spark of love left for me, husband, she said, then listen to what I’m telling you now.  I can’t restrain you, she said, go with him and make sure he doesn’t hurt anyone.  I’ll get down on my knees before you if you do that.  Keep an eye on Lingg, my wife said, tell them, and that’s why nothing happened.

SELIGER
You’re crazy, Berta.

FRAU SELIGER
That’s what you say.  If you don’t say that, you’ll be on the gallows.  You must say:  If it weren’t for my wife, something terrible definitely would have happened.  If she hadn’t grabbed hold of me, then a hundred lives certainly would have been lost, and millions in property besides.

SELIGER
I can’t ever look another person in the face.

FRAU SELIGER
You can’t ever look another person in the face if you save yourself and your wife and your child from the executioner and from shame?  I’ll have you taken from here on the spot and I’ll tell the captain:  He is one of these murderers.  Do with him what you will.  Have you not already long ago begun to betray the others?  What is there that you haven’t already betrayed?

SELIGER
That’s what you’ve brought me to.

FRAU SELIGER
Wilhelm, it’s no use.  We’re going together.  Here is my husband, Captain, I’ll say.  Here.  Our child will not lose his father.  People won’t be pointing at me, I know what the law is.  Let them curse, the drunkards, the dynamite makers.  They’ve lost the game.  My father was a forester.  I am an orderly woman.  It will all pass.  We’ll move to another city.  I’ll endure any misery.  Captain Shaak will help us.  Now you know what you have to do.  March!





N I N T H    S C E N E

Prison cell.  Lingg.  Settchen.

LINGG
Who’s there?

SETTCHEN
Ludwig.

LINGG
It’s dark here.  Where’d you come from, Settchen?  And Müntzenberger?

SETTCHEN
Got a postcard from him.  He is in Omaha.

LINGG
The blockhead’s gotten soft.

SETTCHEN
He writes you should draft an appeal for clemency.  Then you should come to him.  There’s good work there.

LINGG
You’ll come along, huh?

SETTCHEN
I would stay here.  (She cries.)

LINGG
That was mean of Müntzenberger.

SETTCHEN
I’ve brought you apples, Ludwig.  It’s summer.
 
LINGG
Yeah, it’s cold here.  So it goes for those who’ve been betrayed.  Everyone saves their own neck.  Seliger, Hermann, they’ve all given statements against me.  I’ve got a letter from Reinsdorf with me.  It’s from the prison in Halle.  It’s addressed to his parents.  Before he laid down his head.  You should have the letter.  Also a letter from my mother.  You can write to her when it’s all over.

SETTCHEN
Ludwig, your hair is so wild, you’ve got a beard, I hardly recognize you.  You’ll get free.  Don’t have bad thoughts.

LINGG
It was night on the sea.  I stood on the deck and looked to the sky.  If I sail once more over the ocean now, I couldn’t dream it again, Settchen.  What went through my heart back then!  Now I know that there’s no freedom on this side of the ocean either.  What they’ve done with me now.  I’ll never forget it.

SETTCHEN
Has the defense attorney been to see you?

LINGG
Yesterday.  He’s sniffing out tricks.

SETTCHEN
A hundred thousand stand behind you.  All the workers of Chicago.

LINGG
I feel none of it.  They might.  They sense what’s at stake.  In court I will speak for myself.  I don’t want them to sentence me to imprisonment.  Freedom or death!
 
SETTCHEN
You are the youngest.  That’s to your advantage.  Don’t hang your head.

LINGG
Whatever, it’ll hang soon.

SETTCHEN
I’ve spoken with the guard.  Should I bring you something?  Mrs. Fischer, Mrs. Fielden, all of them are allowed to their husbands.  Spies receives a bouquet of flowers everyday from a rich lady.

LINGG
You’ve got nice apples there.—Ah, American apples taste like rain water.  So.  Spies receives a bouquet of flowers.  What use to him are flowers that have no fragrance.  Have you noticed that nothing in this country brings real joy?  Settchen, there’s a favor you can do for me.  Where have you put the things we filled up back then?  They were iron.  Müntzenberger made the screws.  The little iron apples.

SETTCHEN
You gave me one, too, Ludwig.  I’ve got it with me.

LINGG
Warmly stored away, I must say.  Give it here.  A man needs hope up until the very end.  They’re not going to get me alive.

SETTCHEN
Ludwig, what do you plan to do with that?

LINGG
Shush.  Such a thing, at the right moment, does wonders.  The walls are shaking, there’s a commotion, shoo, it’s the bird outside.  Dear little apple.  Where to?  That’s good.  Come again soon. 

SETTCHEN
Seliger has disappeared.  They say that they’ve killed him.

LINGG
I’m sorry for him.  What’s one to do when he has such a scornful wife.  Such people must be left in peace.  Proletarian-free.  For five dollars they would murder their own brother.

SETTCHEN
The detectives are paying a lot of money.

LINGG
I hid for ten days.  I was with good people.  Then it was up.  Two guys stood in the room, a third at the front door.  I knocked the revolver away from one, the other grabbed me from behind.  On the street the people took my side.  It was a workers’ street.  They whistled at the patrol wagon, and I sat inside it.—You know the informants?  Hear tell a proper story there.  What are you telling them?

SETTCHEN
You shouldn’t ridicule me, Ludwig.

LINGG
You poor things.  Are you back to sewing?  If we had succeeded, it wouldn’t have been your misfortune.  Now the rubbish is swept away.

SETTCHEN
Put that thing away.  I’m worried you’ll play with it.

LINGG
One needs to have a match first.  The jailor, Settchen.
 
SETTCHEN
I’ll come again.  (She goes away.)

LINGG
That’s Eve and her little apple.  (He holds the grenade to his mouth and hides it quickly.)  Alas!—Desolation!





T E N T H    S C E N E

Lake View.  A grassy field.  Workers’ party.

FIRST WORKER
No.  I’ve looked into it.  According to the Constitution they have no right to hang someone because he stands up for the eight-hour work day.

SECOND WORKER
Just don’t make another racket now all over again.  The lock-out is over.  We’re making money.  They’ll let Spies and all the others walk.  And all is forgotten.

THIRD WORKER
You machinists are no workers.  You are aristocrats.  Don’t play yourselves off any baser than you already are.

THE FIRST WORKER
A good lawyer is the main thing.  Spies must have a good lawyer.

THE THIRD WORKER
The laws are made for the rich and not for the poor.

THE SECOND WORKER
Look around.  Have we ever had a picnic like this?  Even the Bohemians are in full force.  The American Group is represented, a couple of Mazzinis are there.  The glee club, the shooting association, the carpenters, the cornice makers, the stair builders, all in parade.  Pretty girls with red ribbons.

THE FIRST WORKER
Too bad about Lingg.  He was a carpenter and in the trade union.  He said:  With a couple hundred dollars, put to the right use, we will make America into a free country.

THE THIRD WORKER
You’re strong in beer drinking and pretzel munching.  I’ve been in the country longer than you.  Do you imagine you will transform the States?  For that you’d have to get up earlier than Cyrus McClure.

THE FIRST WORKER
The people are greater.

A BOHEMIAN WORKER
We have collected money for Lingg.  All Bohemians have contributed.

THE THIRD WORKER
There are too many Goliaths.  Immigration changes from year to year.  Whoever has been here longer behaves peacefully.

THE SECOND WORKER
Lingg was a greenhorn.

THE THIRD WORKER
See to it that you get him out again.  They’ll try him in short order.  They learn that damned fast.  Waiter, a round of beer, whatever’s on tap.

THE WAITER
The balance goes for the defense fund.
 
A FOURTH WORKER (joins them)
I saw you practicing behind Shofield’s factory.  You guys lay opposite us on the field.  Every other one of us had a rifle.

THE THIRD WORKER
Old times.  Have a drink and shut your trap.

THE FOURTH WORKER
If only all had been on hand like angels.

THE FIRST WORKER
If the dog hadn’t took a shit, he’d ’a caught the rabbit.
(He goes away.)

THE SECOND MAN
The beer makes the stomach cold.  A gin in between.

THE THIRD WORKER
If you like.

THE SECOND WORKER
To better times.

AN UNFAMILIAR WORKER (joins them)
It’s enough to make you cry.  In March seventy one I was on the barricades, Rue Tivoli.  I saw Delescluze.  What a man!  I’ve been through a lot.  I’ve come to Chicago to witness the advance of freedom.  I am an old fellow.  All my hopes are destroyed.

(The previous men go.  Others join in.)

ANOTHER WORKER
Only misery, only chaos!

THE THIRD WORKER
There.  Look at this hand.
 
BOHEMIAN WORKER
Thumb’s missing.

ANOTHER WORKER
On the right hand the thumb’s gone.

THE THIRD WORKER
I will tell you.  It went when we were testing the brown powder.  It was in Spring Valley, on a Sunday.  But Shaak from the Chicago police, with this hand I was still able to hit him over the head so hard he was seeing stars.

THE UNFAMILIAR WORKER
I was hoping for a new Commune.  I’m a Luxembourger.  Russians, Americans battled in the ranks of the National Guard.

A WORKER
Shaak is also a Luxembourger.  The rascal.  Watch out he doesn’t have his tracking dogs here.  You could get one over on him.  Go to your countryman.

THE UNFAMILIAR WORKER
That’d be the day.  (He goes away.)

ANOTHER WORKER
No one comes to our meetings.  We crawl on our stomachs through a hole in the cellar.—The ladies are coming.  Good day, Settchen.

SETTCHEN
Give money for the comrades in jail.  Give for the wives.  Mrs. Engel is sick.

A WORKER
The women have a double burden to bear.
 
A GIRL
We’re collecting.  Please.  Meanwhile there’s dancing.

THE WORKER
What pretty eyes.  I’m going along.  Listen up, the music.

SETTCHEN
Give money for the comrades in prison.

THE WORKER
Where’s your darling, Settchen?

SETTCHEN
In prison. 





E L E V E N T H    S C E N E

Blue Island Avenue.  A cellar pub.  Kegs, boxes, a candle.  Armed workers.  A worker from outside.  A detective.

A WORKER
Philosophy finds its material weapons in the proletariat.  The proletariat finds in philosophy its intellectual weapons.  Philosophy cannot be realized without the uprising of the proletariat.  The proletariat cannot rise up without the realization of philosophy.  I demand a unified action.  Turn the factories into fortresses.  Arming is to be continued.

ANOTHER WORKER
Seconded.  We'll present our conditions to the court.  Immediate release of the prisoners.  Otherwise, Chicago explodes piece by piece.

LEADER
If I didn't know you people.  Engel has been caught.  Waller, Hübner and others have resigned.  Help hasn't arrived.

THIRD WORKER
Let's put the guns aside.  Let’s watch with folded hands what they do with the prisoners.  There's two hundred thousand of us, but we're weak as a child.  We need to stop playing at the comedy of a revolution.

THE FIRST WORKER
Old Dietzgen has been working you over.

LEADER
Let's put it to the vote.  Who is for fighting, hands up!—Defeated.  We come to the point:  Workers' newspaper.  The printer is again functional.  But no one has the courage to write the paper.  The big newspapers go on lying.  Should the workers' newspaper appear again?

A WORKER
Spies is lost.  Old Dietzgen is free again.

ANOTHER WORKER
This morning old Dietzgen appeared at the typesetter's.  He wants to do it.  If you agree, the paper will appear again tomorrow morning.

LEADER
Vote.—You will tell Dietzgen that we accept his offer.  The Education and Defense Society is on the agenda.

A WORKER
I demand to speak.  Why have exercises stopped?  Where are the guns?  I demand that dynamite be obtained.

(A knock on the door.)
 
ANOTHER WORKER
Who's there?

VOICE FROM OUTSIDE
Do you have a match?

LEADER
Let him in.

THE NEW ARRIVAL
Comrades, stop the meeting.  Let me catch my breath.  I am Hagemann.  I've run the whole way on foot.  There's an informant among you.  He was described to me.

THE LEADER
Close the door.  Remove the key.

THE NEW ARRIVAL (to the detective)
You there.  Who are you?

THE DETECTIVE
Everyone knows me.  I saw this man come out of the Pinkerton office just a little while ago.  Hands up or I'll shoot you down like a rat!

THE LEADER
Quiet!  Get out of here, both of you.  You first.  Get a move on, boy.  Then the other one.





T W E L F T H    S C E N E

Court room.  The judge's bench is empty.  A few policemen.  The lawyers and the prisoners in the dock speak with one another.  Seliger and Frau Seliger on the witness stand.  A flurry of voices.

A VOICE
I'll put my money on the looks of the witnesses.  I wouldn't believe Wilkinson even under oath.  He says he took down the speeches in his jacket sleeve.  The defense attorney had a good reputation.  They'll be acquitted.

ANOTHER VOICE
Ten dollars to one.  These five men will be hung, all in a row.

THIRD VOICE
Why is Seliger not in the dock like the others?  Didn't he do the same thing?  Stand up, Seliger!

SELIGER
They put me over here.

FRAU SELIGER
Be quiet, or I’ll claw your eyes out.  (Amusement.)

THE PREVIOUS VOICE
Parsons was the smartest.  He’s gone.

ANOTHER VOICE
He’s gone down where the reds don’t hang on gallows but on trees.

A LAWYER
Gentlemen, decorum forbids making wagers in the courtroom.

A FEMALE VOICE
Six human lives are at stake.

HARSH VOICE
That’s the jurors’ business.  Why are they taking so long.  Gambling’s not prohibited.  I could polish off at one sitting the lunch I’ve skipped and the dinner I’m hungry for.

(Silence.)
 
SPIES
They’re taking long, like in a sick room.

FIELDEN
The patient doesn’t want to die.

(A flurry of voices.)

NINA VAN ZANDT
Will no one call these people to order?  It’s an outrage.

A VOICE
Calm down, Miss.  Everyone who’s wagered on acquittal is going to lose their money.

A WOMAN
What a get up.

A VOICE
Revolution is a bum deal in Chicago, Spies.

SPIES
You’ve buried us under flowers, my ladies, as if we were already lying in the coffin.

FISCHER
Feel my pulse.  It beats like normal.

(Parsons and Mrs. Parsons appear in the door.  Silence.)

ENGEL
Is that Parsons?

A FEW VOICES
Look at the mulatto!

PARSONS
(Looks around.  Then walks toward the bench, offers each of the defendants his hand and sits down with them.)
I am he.
 
MRS. PARSONS
(Huddles at his feet.)

A POLICEMAN
There is your place, madam.  With the women.

MRS. PARSONS
(Stays put.)

PARSONS
Ladies and gentlemen.  You see a difference between my sunburned face and the pale cheeks of my comrades.  I was just in Waukesha, Wisconsin.  I read in the newspapers that today the verdict is to be read and considered it self-evident that I should come.  I am one of the accused.  Every one of these men is innocent.  I spoke that evening at the Haymarket.  My wife was in the middle of the crowd.  Would I have brought my wife and children along had I known that all hell was going to break loose?  I’ve come to participate in the triumph of innocence.  I trust in the justice and the good sense of the American people.

(Scattered applause.)

ENGEL
Inconceivable.  He doesn’t know what’s taken place here.—The people have sworn our death, Parsons.

FISCHER
New hope for our cause.

NINA
Mrs. Parsons, come to our side.  Take these roses.
 
LINGG
The jurors will laugh at him.

A VOICE
You scoundrels have six policemen on your conscience.

A LAWYER
A train accident costs more lives than the misfortune at the Haymarket.  Accidents recur on Mr. McClure’s train lines on a monthly basis, and no one asks any questions.  I must speak with you a moment, Mr. Parsons.  (Speaks with him.)

LINGG
We spoke in the name of two million unemployed in the United States.  Don’t forget that.

A VOICE
That’s the one who said:  Kill the police, set the city on fire.

LINGG
The police belong on our side.  They’re workers like us.

(The jurors enter the gallery.)

JUDGE GARY
The jurors have reached a consensus.

CLERK
The accused August Spies, Samuel Fielden, Albert Parsons, George Engel, Louis Lingg are guilty of premeditated murder.  The jurors impose the death penalty.

MRS. PARSONS
(Rises, hisses like a cat and collapses.  Commotion.)

GARY
The condemned are to say whether they accept the verdict.
 
LINGG
If you arrest me, who made bombs, why do you arrest under the same accusation others who have made none?  If you condemn those who made none, who instead gave peaceful speeches, why do you place others who weren’t even on hand to hear these speeches under accusation?  Each was arrested for different reasons, but all under the same pretext.  We have not been convicted of murder, but of enmity toward your society.  You have accused me of despising your laws and your order.  I declare myself in favor of their removal by force.  You laugh:  He won’t be throwing any more bombs.  I will die peacefully.  I despise your laws, your order, your authority bristling with power.  Hang me for it.

GARY
Adolf Fisher.

FISCHER
Through your verdict you’re murdering the freedom of thought in this country.  The people will become aware of this.

SPIES (oratorically)
It is true, it cost men their lives.  A couple of people were wounded.  If I had thrown the bombs, or if I had prompted their throwing, or if I had known about it, then I would not for a moment hesitate to say so.  You treat us like some breed of cannibals.  You don’t say the truth.  Namely, that on the evening of the fourth of May two hundred men armed to the teeth under the direction of a notorious rogue undertook an assault on a peaceful crowd of people.  The patricians wished to teach the plebeians a lesson.  I don’t deny having said to the individual who here testified against me as a witness for the state:  I am for force.  You could stomp out the sparks, but the flames will break out from the ground.  A sacrifice must be made.  I’m tired of always declaring my innocence.  However, one man’s life may suffice.  Take mine.  I beg you to sate your thirst for blood and save the lives of my comrades.

GARY
George Engel.

ENGEL
I have thoroughly studied the question of labor.  Can a worker in this country live respectably, yes or no?  I have lost my respect for the American laws.  On the evening of May fourth I was sitting at home playing cards.  I don’t deny having said that it’ll soon be over for the capitalists, when the workers go on the march like soldiers.  Among those who passed sentence there’s not a single worker.

PARSONS
My defense is the right of the worker to take the steps necessary for his liberation.  If this defense fails them, if one denies them this right, then their misfortune is mine.  The shot that killed the policeman on that evening is the work of those who ascribe the deed to us.  I do not accept the verdict.  I appeal for a retrial.

A WOMAN
A man, this Parsons.  A handsome man.

GARY
Court is adjourned.

ANOTHER WOMAN
His wife is this mulatto.  You see what he’s worth.





T H I R D    A C T





T H I R T E E N T H    S C E N E

Citizens’ Club.  Partygoers.  Cyrus McClure.  Drinkwater.  Jordan.  Judge Gary.  The chef.  Later, Nina.

A PARTYGOER
One would have to be able to put out twenty five million bushels of wheat.  One would have to be able to put out the fifteen thousand mowers that are produced in Chicago daily in order to mill these twenty five million bushels of grain.  That would make quite a sight.  Our Exhibition will be the world’s greatest.

ANOTHER
The newspapers are jammed full with illustrations of the palaces we’re going to build.  The public’s no longer interested in the other sensation of the day, the trial.

THE FIRST
We celebrate a very beautiful victory.

(A door is pushed shut.)

THE OTHER
And in a very pleasant way.  There’s a surprise in store.

THE FIRST
Girls?

THE OTHER
No.  A new concierge.  He is refined.  He used to serve a duke who lost his fortune in the French Revolution.
 
THE FIRST
The jurors have done their duty.

THE OTHER
No wonder.  A few school principals, a few clerks.  You can’t tell me that Cyrus is the richest man of us all just because he’s especially skilled in engineering.  He’s skilled in remuneration and information.  An avalanche of riches rolls constantly towards him.  He is the model for this generation.

(Cyrus enters.  At his side Judge Gary and Jordan.)

THE CHAIRMAN
Gentlemen, it seems to me the right moment to drink, in this select circle, to the triumph of our good cause.  In raising our glasses we pay deserved homage to the energy and vigilance of our member Mr. McClure.  (Applause.)

CYRUS
Mr. Chairman.  Gentlemen.  It is said that great deeds do themselves.  But evil deeds also do themselves.  The difference is that one must crush them at the right time.  That is my opinion.  That is what I always do.  That gives me a strong feeling for the significance of my class, that of the businesspeople of America.  Mr. Chairman.  Gentlemen.  The Chicago World Exposition is no longer a question.  It is as little a question as the irreversible conclusion of the matter which has been ended in these last days under the wise direction of our highly honored guest.

CRIES
A cheer for Gary!

CYRUS
It is said in some circles which have no sense of American feeling that the judgment was directed against the foreign elements.  The governments of Europe, gentlemen, have promised their participation in the great endeavor which will lavish our city in splendor.  They would have withdrawn this participation if we had not understood how to keep our city in order.  The Kaiser’s government was the first.  It pulled the others after itself.  I have the honor to present to you Mr. Jordan, an ambassador of Germany.  Mr. Jordan.  I have told you that in this city you will not discover any instances of disorder.  We have lawfulness, gentlemen.  We will see a crowd of princes as our guests.  Among them a living descendant of Christopher Columbus and a small yellow prince form China.  (Applause.)  Gentlemen, I hope you won’t reproach those who have kept these preparations a secret until the moment when our city’s reputation was assured through the example of lawfulness and strictness that it gave today against a band of robbers.  (Applause.)

A PARTYGOER
That was the longest speech that Cyrus has ever given.

ANOTHER
His best.

THE CHAIRMAN
Gentlemen, to the table.

(The door is opened again.  Waiters in hunting costumes.  A buffalo decorated with leaves on a hunting litter.  The chef with a white hat.)

A PARTYGOER
A stunning idea.

THE CHAIRMAN
After the custom of refined society in Europe, I direct your attention to a ceremony to introduce our meal.  The master chef has the floor.

THE CHEF
This trophy, Gentlemen, marks the high point of triumph after a successful hunt.  I ask you to please point out to me the piece that you would like to have prepared.  The orderer’s name will be attached.  I recommend the animal’s tender loins.  They are finely perfused with blood.  In his loins the buffalo carries the sensations that are especially his own, the tender and the ferocious.  When he is gripped by rage or impatience, then he whips his loins and prepares them into excellent steaks.  This young buffalo certainly loved his girlfriends in the herd just as any buffalo loves his woman.

A PARTYGOER
Hold me.  I’m laughing tears.

ANOTHER
Ha!  A tender buffalo.  A playboy.  Like Spies.

THE CHEF
Look at the haunches.  A piece from the strongest muscle of this animal which is stronger than any other animal in the Old World.  On these legs the noble beast rushed over the prairie.  It raced against the Illinois Central Railroad, against the Baltimore and Ohio, the Atchison Topeka, against the Burlington and Quincy.  In a word:  It raced against Mr. McClure, Mr. Goslet, Mr. Harriman, Mr. Vanderbilt and the three other gentlemen to whom all the railroads in the state of Illinois belong.

A PARTYGOER
Well said.  We’ve slain this buffalo without leaving Chicago.

THE CHEF
This buffalo was a master swimmer without webbed feet.  He knew all the shallow spots of the Mississippi.  His travels guided the engineers who now build the bridges.

ANOTHER
Give me a piece of the rail road haunches.  But first club it thoroughly.

THE CHEF
Try the heart.  A novelty from my kitchen.  It beat for the freedom of the forests and of the whole world.  It is prepared sour, seasoned with cloves and unfading bay leaves.  In the Tyrolean style.

A PARTYGOER
Give it here.  In the Tyrolean style.

THE CHEF
Who prefers the brain?  Consider that it once rested beneath the ornamentation of the strongest horns, like the brain of a king under his crown, like the brain of a businessman beneath his top hat, like the brain of a fool beneath his red or white cap.  It makes one think.

(Nina van Zandt enters the room.)

A PARTYGOER
A lady!  I told you all the surprise of the evening would be ladies.

THE CHAIRMAN
Madam, you must be lost.  This here is a private affair.

NINA
I’m hardly interested in the ridiculous laws of your club of spendthrifts and fools.  I knew that I would run into a pair of the richest and most triumphant people in Chicago here.  I admire at the side of my former friend Mr. McClure the very honorable, wise judge who’s troubled himself to join this merry circle even though on this same day he had six equally honorable men condemned to death by a gang of bought-off flunkies.

THE CHAIRMAN
That is outrageous.  I don’t have the honor of knowing you, madam, and still less honor of having invited you.  I ask you to leave the room.

A PARTYGOER
That is too harsh.  It’s Nina.

ANOTHER
We will hear out Miss van Zandt.

NINA
You have shown the world that you can do what you want.  You have shown that it is possible, contrary to the expectations of all intellectually sound people, through money, influence and the press, through threats and promises, to transform white into black and to condemn some of your own workers to death.  If they really deserve death, then they have earned it just as much as all of your other workers.  I think that’s enough.  Your power will suffice to correct the mistake.  I ask each of the gentlemen present to put a sum of money into my hands.  This sum of money is intended to cover the costs that arise from a new trial for Spies and his comrades.  The next trial will have a different outcome.
 
THE CHAIRMAN
That is out of the ordinary.  I ask the members to say something.

A PARTYGOER
This interruption is shameful.

NINA
This interruption is to save some people their lives.

ANOTHER PARTYGOER
I take no interest in Spies.

ANOTHER
I take no interest against him.  My checkbook.  I don’t mind.

CYRUS
Wasted money.

NINA
Cyrus!  Be satisfied with the triumph you’ve come away with and leave these people their lives.

CYRUS
I’ve had enough of being made into a target for insults which are meant to infuriate the whole country against me.  It’s a matter of my honor.  I’m not giving a cent.  I don’t understand you, Miss Nina van Zandt.  I was accustomed to favoring all your wishes.  Your father was my boss.  I’ve heard much cleverness come from your lips.  But I am under no obligation to bow to your eccentric vagaries in matters of business.

GARY
It would strike a blow to the authority of the State were one to bow to the sophistic reasoning that is mustered by every manner of person in favor of these innocent lambs.

THE CHAIRMAN
Madam, the fire on your cheeks is likely the same fire with which the people on the defendants’ bench have threatened us.  I’m sorry for you.

A PARTYGOER
This lady’s motives are noble.

CYRUS
I regard each one of you who permits himself to support this lady’s behavior as my personal enemy.

DRINKWATER
Then I regret, Mr. McClure, that I must part from you.  You were just about to send me to Manila.  But I already told you before that I wish to leave behind me a clean city.  I declare now and repeat what I’ve already said to you in private, that certain things which I, as your secretary, have had to carry out in your behalf over the last few weeks I have done only with inner reluctance.  Now is the moment to atone for that.

CYRUS
You wretch!

DRINKWATER
Insults on your part, Mr. McClure, would only result in worse, and better founded, insults on mine.  Miss van Zandt, your list, please.
 




F O U R T E E N T H    S C E N E

State House in Springfield.  Governor Ogleby.  In sequence:  A lawyer.  A pale gentleman.  Miss Richmond.  An old gentleman.  A fat, red-headed gentleman.  Nina.  A small blond man.

THE LAWYER
A pardon would be justified, Governor.  The petition sets out the reasons.  Along with the signatures of the family members, the judges’ recommendations are included.

OGELBY
Earlier Crucify, now Hosanna.  Public opinion received the verdict positively.

THE PALE GENTLEMAN
Since the motion for retrial was rejected, an amnesty committee has been formed.  The Ethical Society fights against the death penalty.

OGLEBY
One would have to amend solemnly sworn laws.

MISS RICHMOND
This memorandum, Governor, bears one hundred forty thousand signatures.  Mass demonstrations assure me that the impression of the execution on the present generation will certainly be terrible.  A hundred years will not suffice to erase this impression.

OGLEBY
That is my view, as well.

MISS RICHMOND
It would make a barbaric impression.  I am a medium.  It has been revealed to me what a strong impression such an event would make even on those who in the afterworld follow the events of this one with a pounding heart.

OGLEBY
This shall definitely be taken into consideration.

AN OLD GENTLEMAN
I have only come to remind your Excellency of the incorrectness of the court proceedings.  In the name of Abraham Lincoln the Martyr, I demand that you exercise leniency.  Add your name to the shining ranks of those who've shown humanity where the courts believed it must be denied.  What could you base yourself on so far?

OGELBY
On the record, General, and on common sense.

A FAT RED-HAIRED GENTLEMAN
This document, Governor, bears the signatures of thirty two construction firms.  They are Samuel Fielden's previous employers.  My name is Samuel Andersson.  All of them depict Samuel Fielden as a sober, industrious, reliable employee, as a man without brutal instinct.  His failing was an uncommon gift for speaking and an excessive susceptibility to applause.

OGLEBY
Should this not be taken into consideration?

THE FAT RED-HAIRED GENTLEMAN
Fielden confirms in this letter that in his whole life he has never carried a weapon.  On that evening as well he was not bearing arms.  He requests consideration of extenuating circumstances for himself and his companions.

OGLEBY
How's that?  His companions have declared that they will not accept any clemency.  Fielden is breaking ranks.

NINA
The wives and children of the condemned have submitted their requests.  I had myself today wed to the condemned August Spies.  My brother took the place of the groom before the official.  This is lawful.  I am making use of my right to be heard just like any other of these poor souls.

OGLEBY
This, though lawful, is yet peculiar, madam.  I knew your father.  It was bold, but wrong of you. 

A SMALL BLOND MAN
In the name of twenty five labor unions in Chicago, Detroit, Saint Louis, Cincinnati, New York and Pittsburg I beg your Excellency for mercy for our fellow countrymen.  Their only fault was the profession of a political conviction which is not shared by the overwhelming majority of other people.

OGLEBY
It's sad, certainly.  No one but them alone has to bear the consequences for it.





F I F T E E N T H    S C E N E

In front of Cook County Jail.  A mass of people.

A WOMAN
They will die this hour.

A LADY
The pardon was submitted tonight.  There were a million signatures on the petition.
 
ANOTHER WOMAN
The Governor will be hanged, but not our people.

THE FIRST WOMAN
I had a card reading done.  The black ones were on top.  That's bad.

A WORKER
Storm the Bastille!

ANOTHER
The jurors received five million dollars.  Judge Gary is bought.  Governor Ogleby and the Illinois senate are bought.

A WOMAN
Go and tell them in person.

THE WORKER
I'll tell each one to his face.  And it's six-fold, cold murder.

ANOTHER WORKER
Do you have a match on you?  Where are the bombs?  There's work to do.  Damn it!

PREVIOUS WORKER
Against a battalion of militia?  The roofs are dotted with armed men.

A LADY
Cora Richmond said at a meeting:  They will not die but live.  For in them is life.

SECOND LADY
Cora Richmond has never spoken untruly.  She is the most famous spiritualist medium.  She is the greatest woman in the world.
 
PREVIOUS LADY
General Trumbull is on our side.  I saw his picture in the newspaper.  He's traveling to the Governor.

A WORKER
They had me for two days.  They didn't get a word out of me.

ANOTHER WORKER
Who tied the noose for them?  Proletarians handed them over to the hangman.

SELIGER
Make way!  I have business in there.

WORKER
That must be the hangman?  Then stay here!

OTHER WORKER
It's Seliger.

THIRD WORKER
Down with the scoundrel!  Let him drag his bones back home in a sackcloth.

SELIGER
I'm just as innocent as any of them inside there.

WORKER
You innocent!  Go hang!  Forward!

SELIGER
Those inside will not be touched without me.

FRAU SELIGER
Wilhelm!
 
SELIGER
What are you running after me for?  Witches are for burning.  March home!  (To the police officer.)  Let me through, officer!

POLICEMAN
Go away!

SELIGER
I'm not asking for anything anymore.  Up with anarchy!

POLICEMAN
Watch it, mister.

SELIGER
I want to see the judge.  I'm a witness.

POLICEMAN
Hands off!

SELIGER
Let me see him.

POLICEMAN
There.  (Strikes him down.)

FRAU SELIGER
Wilhelm!  Oh!  There's no pity left.

SOME WOMEN
Tear the rags off her body!

MRS. PARSONS
I'd like to see how they murder my husband.  Officer, I'm Mrs. Parsons.

SETTCHEN
Break the door down!  What are you doing in there!  Murder!  Murder!  Murder!  To their aid!

POLICEMAN
Break it up, people.

(Tumult.  A whistle blows a signal.)
 




S I X T E E N T H    S C E N E

Prison cell.

LINGG (a letter in his hand)
My dear child.  Finally, they have given me the birth certificate.  Now everything is in order, now you can’t reproach me any more.  You can show this certificate to anyone.  Before we married, my husband had you registered as his legitimate child.  Lieschen was confirmed yesterday.  As she came out of the church, her first question was whether there was still no greeting from her brother, no post card.  She cannot understand that you have not thought of her.  We are healthy and busy.  I’ve had worries with you for eighteen years.  One can do anything to a mother.  You don’t answer my letters.—Ha!  Who would make worries for such a mom.  It wasn’t any fun at all when my true dear father unbuttoned his golden officer’s collar to be worthy of a poor girl’s love.  The logic is like my mother.  She proves down to a hair’s breadth that I am responsible for it all.  A carpenter is on hand to make good nature’s oversight; a carpenter of all things.  My fathers are forgetful people.  The same thing makes the one forgetful of his clan, the other of his honest name.  What’s the boy called?  Lingg.  No, a bastard he is not.  He has never been one.  A fitting present for this beautiful day, this swindle on official paper!  Come, my kindling.





S E V E N T E E N T H    S C E N E

Cook County Jail.  Spies.  Parsons.  Engel.  Fischer.  Jailor Volz.  Bolton.  Nina.  One hears Parsons singing.

SPIES
A fortunate nature.  The nature of a lamb.  He has adopted from this mulatto a kind of gaiety, one could think it stupidity.  He’s taking it lightly.  He howls about his own magnanimity, and it’s settled.  Oh, dear.  Diamonds in his eyes.

PARSONS
Oh, my friends, my heart is light.  It is like evening sunshine.  After a wearisome day.  I felt as if I was leaping around like a boy again and looking over the green hills of Alabama.  My father’s farm lay on the Choctawhatchee River.  A white-haired Negro mammy used to rock me on her knee.  From her I learned to sing.  My life was full of love and hard labor like yours.  Now it’s over.  We’re going to our rest.  I feel gratitude to God.

SPIES
When five do the same thing, Parsons, it is not the same thing.

PARSONS
It’s difficult for you.  Your soul has no peace.  Does your heart not beat for the cause, the only good cause that there is?  It beats like mine in this moment.  You couldn’t do any more for our cause than you have done, Spies.  We can die for our cause.  We are brothers.

SPIES
It is easy to die on the soil which has given one birth.  I am from Friedwald, Kurhessen.  You don’t even know the name.  I can’t escape the thought that I had deserved a different fate.  My parents brought me over here as a child.  I feel nothing of catharsis.  For many people death means a unification with God.  They lay themselves into a bed already made.  One must be right old in the head to look forward to a sleep without dreams.  Sometimes I feel as if I were not yet even born.  I am restless, as if I should be born today.

(A bang is heard.)

FISCHER
They're slamming the doors.  Can't keep the house quiet.  Damn it.

ENGEL
Parsons, we haven't had much to do with one another.  Let's shake hands, man.

FISCHER
It's good to see you.  Thank you, Parsons.

PARSONS
Fare well, all.  (He embraces Spies, Engel and Fischer and returns to his cell.)

FISCHER
That was my last hand of cards, Volz.  Here, a memento for you.  Do you know what I'm feeling.  We're not at all scapegoats just for appearance sake.  We really are scapegoats.  We lived in a poison atmosphere.  It began to stink around us.  I feel sometimes like I'm totally burdened by the filth out there.  Now a bath has been made for us.  That's almost pleasant to think about.

VOLZ
You've always said you are innocent.

FISCHER
Nevertheless.  I feel guilty.  That hardly means that the others who condemn us are any better.  Through us the judgment is postponed.  Understand me?  I believe the air will be better for a while once we're gone.  A war in which there were no deaths would be worse than the bloodiest slaughter.
 
VOLZ
Fischer, you need a glass of beer.  I'll bring something to drink.  Is that a visitor for Engel?  (Goes out.)

MARIECHEN ENGEL
Papa!

ENGEL
Come here, Mariechen.

MARIECHEN
Mother is sick.  Mother sent me.  She sends you a butter bread and our new portrait.

ENGEL
Yes, child, I'm going on a trip.  Your papa will think of you.  I dreamed of Germany last night.  I was on the sand at Mainz.  There was a parade.  You stood under a tree.  Isn't that funny?  I felt odd.  Actually, it was beautiful.  Silly dreams.  What do you remember of Germany, child.  My parents were peasants.  You've been my favorite, Mariechen.  How often you accompanied me to the meetings.  Whether in sunny weather or in rain.  You put your arm in mine, and we went merrily through the streets.

MARIECHEN
Yes, papa.

ENGEL
Mind you, I have never spoken an idle word.  Do I have anything to regret, yes or no?  When it came down to it, I said:  We shall do it in military style.  I was in the war.  If there is no one else there, I said, put me at the front.  No blood should flow in vain.  But there must be a plan.  Nothing will happen by itself.  Your father stayed honest.  But I was not smart, Mariechen.  I should have known that with workers like the ones here nothing could be done.  They still need drilling.  It will take a while before we have a workers’ army.

MARIECHEN
I’m in the youth league now, papa.

ENGEL
Ah, yes.  You won’t be any Louise Michel, Mariechen.  I’ve often spoken of Michel.  I admired her.  Don’t think that you must be at the front just because I was at the front.  Become a good woman and more fortunate than your mother.  Now go home, my child.

(She puts her arm around his neck and gives him a kiss and goes quickly.)

ENGEL
Yes.  I want to lie down for a bit.

(He goes into his cell.)

REVEREND BOLTON
Mr. Spies?

SPIES
Hello, sir?

BOLTON
The Lord commanded his disciples to visit the prisoners.  It is my prerogative to direct you in this dire hour to the gospel.

SPIES
Alright.  Have a seat.

FISCHER
Well, Spies, I still have another letter to write.  (Goes as well.)

BOLTON
Now, have you done penance, Mr. Spies?
 
SPIES
Ask me in an hour.

BOLTON
I don’t mean the earthly judgment.

SPIES
Perhaps you want to go out there and tell how I’ve become a different man?

BOLTON
Don’t push away the hand of God, friend.

SPIES
I never push away anything good.  I am dying.  I’m barely forty.  Totally healthy.  Would you like to be in my place?

BOLTON
You don’t need any surrogate other than Christ.  Wash your soul in the blood of the lamb.

SPIES
You can’t save the soul when you don’t save the mind.  For that you don’t do the slightest thing.  Perhaps you’ll claim the mind is the same as the soul.  How is that possible?  Tell me about quickly, if you know.

BOLTON
The striving of man is evil from youth on.

SPIES
It is too late now to determine how it came about that soul, mind and body are so interwoven that we don’t even know what really gets hung when the noose is placed around the neck.  You speak of the soul as if it is superfluous to ask about its origin.  What paltry notions.  You will likely visit many more prisoners yet.

BOLTON
Have you no one to ask for forgiveness.  Not even God, for blasphemies, discordant words and thoughts?

SPIES
I have never seen God.  How can I insult such a huge entity?  I know an old man.  His name is Dietzgen.  I once spoke very harshly about him.  He is now the editor of the labor newspaper.  I did him an injustice.  Go to him.  Tell him that.  He will forgive me.

BOLTON
I must limit myself to my churchly duty, Mr. Spies.

SPIES
I though you were a Christian.  Does nothing occur to you concerning the connection between Christianity and—shall we say—anarchy?

BOLTON
No, indeed.  What does God have to do with Satan?  I will write to Mr. Dietzgen.

SPIES
You don’t have very much interest in my wishes, sir, and I don’t have very much interest in your wares.  Let’s be honest.  Let’s end this discussion.

BOLTON
Jesus preached to the poor.  But he didn’t give anything away to them, Mr. Spies.

SPIES
We’re attempting the opposite.  He had to die because he couldn’t help.  Maybe it’s his fault that it took so long until the poor began to help themselves.  That is the reason why it’s now our turn to die.  I don’t claim to be a lamb.  But that’s my affair.  Who pays you, actually?

BOLTON (getting up)
My congregation.

SPIES
What congregation?

BOLTON
Ninth Methodist Congregation, Dearborn Street.

SPIES
The popular edition of the high church.  Fifteen million adherents in America, right?  Fifteen million people with religious ideals.  The death penalty is the seal under their ideals.  Are you from Chicago?

BOLTON
I’ve been in the West for twenty years.

SPIES
I’ve lived in Chicago for just eight years now.  Cyrus McClure already thirty.  I would like to know how he imagines the future of Chicago without the triumph of the working class.  What do you think about that?  What is the city actually saying about our trial?

BOLTON
Mr. Spies, I came to give you spiritual comfort.  I am ready to administer the sacrament to you, as long as you have been baptized a Christian.  This is my business, and I hold myself to it.

SPIES
It would give me comfort if you would answer my questions.  They are questions which occupy me incessantly.  Rebuke me for it.  But why don’t you give me an answer?  Don’t you have the time?  Straight out with it:  What is the city saying about today?

(Bolton sits back down.)

SPIES
Man, naturally you know what’s happening in Chicago.  Can you tell me why McClure really locked the workers out for weeks and let them starve until everything became disorganized?  Why we had to constantly battle in our ranks with drunks and traitors?  McClure would have even sold us the dynamite we wanted to blow him up with.  It was damned clever of him to open an ale house on every corner.

BOLTON
You have the wrong idea.  What does McClure have to do with it.  McClure’s business acumen is just as proverbial as his technical genius and his generosity for public causes.  McClure gave our church its building site ten years ago now.  Our church stands on his ground.  He is among the honorary members of our congregation.

SPIES
With the same generosity he sliced out, from the enormous real estate which he possesses in this city, parcels of land for the construction of Roman Catholic churches and synagogues.

BOLTON
He thereby pacifies whole city quarters.

SPIES
He raised the rents.  A church makes even the dirt that lies next to it respectable.  McClure bought the farmers’ land, he bought up bonanzas in order to close them as soon it amused him.  Is he not buying China and Mexico, too?

BOLTON
I am really amazed, Mr. Spies, that your thoughts at this hour are not directed toward any loftier objects.

SPIES
My thoughts circle the problem relentlessly.  Excuse me.  Nothing is as interesting as Chicago.  The clash must come.  Our movement was not accidental.  Only premature.  There will be wars.  People will be blown up on a massive scale.

BOLTON
Dear Mr. Spies.  Still with the dynamite?  Christ will direct all of these things according to his will.

SPIES
I’m anxious to hear what the man from Nazareth would say if he came to Chicago.  What would he say about the fact that the occupants of Dora Claplin’s boarding school without exception have come from the department stores, whose chief stockholder is Mr. McClure?

BOLTON
If that were so then the public would have already heard about it long ago through the newspapers.

SPIES
How would the newspapers come to write that the department stores, which they depict as the pride of Chicago and which buy tens of thousands of dollars in advertisements, are driving their female employees into the arms of prostitution.
 
BOLTON
That is an impossible subject, Mr. Spies.  I must excuse myself.  I honestly forgot that I still have more prisoners to visit.

SPIES
I’ll give you the address to take with you:  Dora Claplin, Madam, 416 West Larrabee Street.  Go there and ask for yourself where her recruits come from.

BOLTON
Mr. Spies, I would like in parting to pray the pater noster with you.

SPIES
I won’t buy even your cheapest ware, pastor.

(Fischer and Parsons approach.)

BOLTON
I am the chaplain.  What can I do for you?

FISCHER
Nothing.  (He withdraws.)

BOLTON (to Parsons)
A word, Mr. Parsons.  Your brother came to see me.  He spoke with me.  He couldn't do anything more for you.  Oh, how could you, an American from one of the oldest Southern families, get yourself involved in such an affair?  Did you not earn enough?  I feel sorry for you.

PARSONS
We don't understand one another, sir.  My ancestors immigrated to this country a century or more ago, just like all of these people are doing now.  These people, too, can't be faulted for coming.  Many of them were conned by agents.  My wife is colored.  I love in her all the races of this glorious earth.  I hope you're not an agent for a better heaven.

BOLTON
You have been made sick by ideas.  Let me speak with you alone.

PARSONS
Oh brother, in these black clothes you won't have anything good to say to me.

FISCHER (returns)
Did you hear the bang earlier, Spies?  It was Lingg.

SPIES
Yeah, where is Lingg?  That was a bomb?  Did he break out?

FISCHER
The doctors are in there.  Blood is flowing out of his cell.

(He goes away again.  Volz.  Nina.)

VOLZ
You know I'm not allowed to.  Especially after this incident.  We've become hardened.  The lady insists on seeing you, Spies.  Lingg is dead.  Half an hour ago Lingg set off a grenade in his mouth.  A little bomb.  No bigger than an apple.—I must stay close.

SPIES
Nina?

NINA
It's me.  Oh!

SPIES
How festive.  Still in elegant attire?
 
NINA
It was foolish.  I should have known.  How awful.  I stepped over a stream of blood.

(She falls into his arms.  Spies pushes her away.)

SPIES
Miss van Zandt.  I should have written to you.  I could have spared you this.

NINA
I'll be brave.

SPIES
You are the only one, Miss Nina van Zandt, who knows nothing of my stupid peculiarities.  I am an average person.

NINA
For me you are greater than General Grant.

SPIES
One shouldn't learn anything by memory.  But I, too, owe you a compliment, Nina.  Why have I not written you.  It was my duty to thank you.  It made a stir that a society lady appeared so regularly at the hearings.  Always in expensive attire, with flowers.  It made an impression on all.  It was a comedy that almost saved us.  You don't know what you have done.  It was not in the interest of your class.

NINA
It happened without reflection.  I felt drawn to you from the first moment.  I sought the acquaintance of Wilkinson the reporter because he knew you personally.  Wilkinson brought me to you.  From that moment on I tried to save you.
 
SPIES
From the fate that's been written on my forehead ever since I breathed this country's air?  Didn't you ever inquire about me?

NINA
I heard only good things about you.  Whoever spoke badly came to regret it.

SPIES
Spies cavorts with actresses.  Spies frequents houses of ill repute.  Spies is not to be taken seriously.  Have you read the newspapers that repeat that day after day?  All the papers report on my vanity.  Now I believe it myself.

NINA
Why are you torturing me, Spies.  I carry your name.  Is there a stronger proof that I love you?

SPIES
I don't understand anything anymore, Nina.  Somebody told me that.  I didn't want to believe it.  It's true, I gave my written consent when my brother came by with that.  There is, admittedly, no stronger proof that until recently you must have believed in my liberation.  But what a mistake.  If you had asked me I would have told you so.  I set you completely free.  Maybe it's only that you want?  In writing.  Yes, of course.  Right away.

NINA
He doesn't believe in love anymore!  Oh, why did I adorn myself with roses?  I adorned myself as if for my wedding.  I came to stay here with you in this room until the final moment.
 
SPIES
That would be hideous beyond all measure.  You are too beautiful for that, Nina.

NINA
I want to be an angel of beauty to bring you joy.  I want to have the voice of an angel to call to you:  believe!

SPIES
You lack nothing of an angel's radiance, Nina.  Your voice is like my mother's voice.  And yet:  Even at this moment I can't escape the thought that you are playing with me.  You don't even know yourself.

NINA
Your brother Henry told me that your mother, too, was tall, and she had dark hair.  Lay your head on my heart.

SPIES
What a puppet play.  No, Nina.  I will kiss this hand.  A long, white hand.

NINA
I was meant for you.  Kiss me!

SPIES
This fragrance until the final moment!  To cross over with the thought that you—To die with this sensation of a woman’s closeness!  It’s fiendish, Nina.  Please go.  I wish you a happy old age.  A long twilight of life.

NINA
All for nothing.  No animal is more ungrateful.

SPIES
Excellent.

VOLZ
(Appears at the door.  He leads Nina out.)
 
SPIES (collapses)
Ungrateful.  Good.  She’s cured.  (He lifts up the roses, kisses them and lays them to the side.)  Nothing is more painful.  Fielden has broken ranks.  The boy Lingg is dead.  We’re down to four men.  It is good.





E I G H T E E N T H   S C E N E

Corridor in the prison.  Two witnesses.  A policeman.  Later, a doctor.  Shaak.  A prisoner.

FIRST JUROR
It's good that the business is coming to an end.  Awkward.  We have to be here.

SECOND JUROR
We're going to Faust afterwards, for breakfast.

FIRST JUROR
I feel the excitement in the city.  The pastor came earlier out of a cell.  He looked at me without knowing who I am.  He was damned pale.

(Distant screaming can be heard.)

SECOND JUROR
What can happen to us?  Buffoonery!

FIRST JUROR
We are on an island.  It's the shore break outside.

(A policeman passes by.)

SECOND JUROR
Officer, how are things outside?
 
POLICEMAN
The horde of people is growing.  Excitement prevails.  The Bohemians are down on their knees and praying.  It's a sight to behold.  Come along up to the roof.  They wanted to blow up the water works.

FIRST JUROR
I feel uneasy.  We are in a trap.  Are we under siege?

POLICEMAN
All the beer establishments are empty.  A few hot heads are saying that they want to storm the Bastille.

SECOND JUROR
Can the Bastille hold up?

POLICEMAN
We have three hundred men in all the window openings, on the roof and in the cellars.  Let them come.  (He moves on.)

FIRST JUROR
It will pass.  (They go.)

A doctor.  Shaak.

A DOCTOR
I am a doctor.  What do I have to do with your affairs?  Spare me.  I’m busy enough with Lingg.
 
SHAAK
Why did you have me called?  What do I have to do with your medical affairs?  Lingg is lying in bed.  When he sees me he waves with his hand for me to leave.  I've been around, but I'm not used to such a scene.  You will fulfill my wishes concerning the others.
 
DOCTOR
I'll vouch for nothing.  My business is to care for dead bodies, not live ones.
 
SHAAK
Don't you have something that could prevent them from talking?
 
DOCTOR
Nothing prohibits them from speaking.

(They go away.  Shaak returns.)
 
SHAAK
I must see things through all the way to the end.  Damn it!
 
A PRISONER
(Brought by two guards.)
 
GUARD
This is Mulky, Captain.
 
SHAAK
You don't like the food, Mulky?  You'll earn yourself something better.  I have a job for you.  Pay attention.  You will be placed inside a sentry box, the box stands on a platform.  You won’t see what’s outside.  There will be a knock on your wall.  You will cut through a rope with this little knife.  Do you understand?

THE PRISONER
I’m not going on any platform.  I know what that is.

SHAAK
It’s the gallows from which you will hang if I don’t intervene for your reprieve.  

PRISONER
Have mercy, Colonel!
 
SHAAK
Do what I tell you.

PRISONER
Yes, I’ll cut through it.  Who will knock?

SHAAK
Someone will knock.  At that very second—cut.

PRISONER
A cut through the rope.  At that very second.  I must get a reprieve.





N I N E T E E N T H    S C E N E

Cook County Jail.  Hall.  Cell doors.  Walkway with an iron landing.  Barred windows.  In the foreground benches.  On the back wall, with a high platform, the gallows.  The witnesses, jurors, lawyers, businessmen, policemen have their backs to the audience.  They take their places.  Several cover their faces.
The sheriff, from afar, reads out a paper.  Distant raging screams, several shots.  Long silence.  Slow, measured step on a hollow bridge.  The sheriff leads Spies, Fischer, Engel, Parsons, who are dressed in long, sleeveless shirts, to the platform.  Preparations.  Silence.

SPIES
You can extinguish this voice.  But my silence will be more terrible than words.

(Pause.)

FISCHER
This is the happiest moment of my life.  Freedom or death!

(Pause.)
 
ENGEL
Hurray for freedom!

(Pause.)

PARSONS
Oh men of America!

(Pause.)

Hear the voice of the people!

(A signal-knock.)





T W E N T I E T H    S C E N E

Waldheim Cemetery.  Funeral procession with red, black and yellow flags, wreaths and coffins.

DIETZGEN
Cry, beaten people.  They were taken from us.  They were given back in these coffins.

VOICES
Our best men die.

DIETZGEN
Great is the number of your fallen, people.

SEVERAL VOICES
Let us take revenge.

DIETZGEN
We, too, are guilty.

SEVERAL VOICES
The Old World gave us its good sons.

SEVERAL VOICES
A curse on this world over here.
 
DIETZGEN
You firstlings in the open ground of this country.  This land is ours from now on.

MANY VOICES
This ground is sacred.

DIETZGEN
Seeds, deeply sowed.

VOICES
Blessed seed.

DIETZGEN
Oh, brotherhood of all corners of the earth.  Flags over all countries.  The people of the cities see the flags.  The people of the nameless mountain ranges see the flags dragged through the blood of the murdered, the casualties, too early deceased.

VOICES
Scarlet flag of silk, adorned with golden images, with hammer and sickle.  Holy, precious flag.

DIETZIGEN
People stand about us unseen in great hordes.

WOMEN’S VOICES
Hear the voice of the people.

MANY VOICES
People of peoples!

DIETZGEN
Who sings first the song of freedom?

SEVERAL VOICES
Triumphal song.  In the golden realm.
 
DIETZGEN
The good fighter has peace in the midst of conflict.  Lower the flags.  Commemorate freedom.

ALL
We commemorate.

VOICES
Freedom!





(Curtain)




[---END OF TEXT---]

Translated by CR Edmonston, 30 Aug 2008