in the meantime i was going about my general work, and an easy task it proved. my city editor, cool, speculative, diplomatic soul, soon instructed me as to the value of news and its limitations here. “we don’t touch on labor conditions except through our labor man,” he told me, “and he knows what to say. there’s nothing to be said about the rich or religious in a derogatory sense: they’re all right in so far as we know. we don’t touch on scandals in high life. the big steel men here just about own the place, so we can’t. some papers out west and down in new york go in for sensationalism, but we don’t. i’d rather have some simple little feature any time, a story about some old fellow with eccentric habits, than any of these scandals or tragedies. of course we do cover them when we have to, but we have to be mighty careful what we say.”
so much for a free press in pittsburgh, a.d. 1893!
and i found that the city itself, possibly by reason of the recent defeat administered to organized labor and the soft pedal of the newspapers, presented a most quiescent and somnolent aspect. there was little local news. suicides, occasional drownings, a wedding or death in high society, a brawl in a saloon, the enlargement of a steel plant, the visit of a celebrity or the remarks of some local pastor, provided the pabulum on which the local readers were fed. sometimes an outside event, such as the organization by general coxey, of canton, ohio, of his “hobo” army, at that time moving toward washington to petition congress against the doings of the trusts; or the dictatorial and impossible doings of grover cleveland, opposition president to the dominant party of the state; or the manner in which the moribund democratic party of this region was attempting to steal an office or share in the spoils—these and the grand comments of gentlemen in high financial positions here and elsewhere as to the outlook for prosperity in the nation or the steel mills or the coal fields, occupied the best places in the newspapers. for a great metropolis as daring, forceful, economically and socially restless as this, it seemed unbelievable that it could be so quiescent or say so little about the colossal ambitions animating the men at the top. but when it came to labor or the unions, their restlessness or unholy anarchistic demands, or the trashy views of a third-rate preacher complaining of looseness in dress or morals, or an actor voicing his views on art, or a politician commenting on some unimportant phase of our life, it was a very different matter. these papers were then free enough to say their say.
i recall that thomas b. reed, then speaker of the house, once passed through the city and stopped off to visit some friendly steel magnate. i was sent to interview him and obtain his views as to “general” coxey’s army, a band of poor mistaken theorists who imagined that by marching to washington and protesting to congress they could compel a trust-dictated american senate and house to take cognizance of their woes. this able statesman—and he was no fool, being at the time in the councils and favor of the money power and looked upon as the probable republican presidential nominee—pretended to me to believe that a vast national menace lay in such a movement and protest.
“why, it’s the same as revolution!” he ranted, washing his face in his suite at the monongahela, his suspenders swaying loosely about his fat thighs. “it’s an unheard-of proceeding. for a hundred years the american people have had a fixed and constitutional and democratic method of procedure. they have their county and state and national conventions, and their power of instructing delegates to the same. they can write any plank they wish into any party platform, and compel its enforcement by their votes. now comes along a man who finds something that doesn’t just suit his views, and instead of waiting and appealing to the regular party councils, he organizes an army and proceeds to march on washington.”
“but he has been able to muster only three or four hundred men all told,” i suggested mildly. “he doesn’t seem to be attracting many followers.”
“the number of his followers isn’t the point,” he insisted. “if one man can gather an army of five hundred, another can gather an army of ten or five hundred thousand. that means revolution.”
“yes,” i ventured. “but what about the thing of which they are complaining?”
“it doesn’t matter what their grievance is,” he said somewhat testily. “this is a government of law and prescribed political procedure. our people must abide by that.”
i was ready to agree, only i was thinking of the easy manner in which delegates and elected representatives everywhere were ignoring the interests if not the mandates of the body politic at large and listening to the advice and needs of financiers and trust-builders. already the air was full of complaints against monopoly. trusts and combinations of every kind were being organized, and the people were being taxed accordingly. all property, however come by, was sacred in america. the least protest of the mass anywhere was revolutionary, or at least the upwellings of worthless and never-to-be-countenanced malcontents. i could not believe this. i firmly believed then, as i do now, that the chains wherewith a rapidly developing financial oligarchy or autocracy meant to bind a liberty-deluded mass were then and there being forged. i felt then, as i do now, that the people of that day should have been more alive to their interests, that they should have compelled, at washington or elsewhere, by peaceable political means if possible, by dire and threatening uprisings if necessary, a more careful concern for their interests than any congressman or senator or governor or president, at that time or since, was giving them. as i talked to this noble chairman of the house my heart was full of these sentiments, only i did not deem it of any avail to argue with him. i was a mere cub reporter and he was the speaker of the house of representatives, but i had a keen contempt for the enthusiasm he manifested for law. when it came to what the money barons wished, the manufacturers and trust organizers hiding behind a huge and extortionate tariff wall, he was one of their chief guards and political and congressional advocates. if you doubt it look up his record.
but it was owing to this very careful interpretation of what was and what was not news that i experienced some of the most delightful newspaper hours of my life. large features being scarce, i was assigned to do “city hall and police, allegheny,” as the assignment book used to read, and with this mild task ahead of me i was in the habit of crossing the allegheny river into the city of allegheny, where, ensconced in a chair in the reporters’ room of the combined city hall and central police station or in the carnegie public library over the way, or in the cool, central, shaded court of the allegheny general hospital, with the head interne of which i soon made friends, i waited for something to turn up. as is usual with all city and police and hospital officials everywhere, the hope of favorable and often manufactured publicity animating them, i was received most cordially. all i had to do was to announce that i was from the dispatch and assigned to this bailiwick, and i was informed as to anything of importance that had come to the surface during the last ten or twelve hours. if there was nothing—and usually there was not—i sat about with several other reporters or with the head interne of the hospital, or, having no especial inquiry to make, i crossed the street to squire daniels, whose office was in the tree-shaded square facing this civic center, and here (a squire being the equivalent of a petty police magistrate), inquired if anything had come to his notice.
squire daniels, a large, bald, pink-faced individual of three hundredweight, used of a sunny afternoon these warm spring days to sit out in front of his office, his chair tilted against his office wall or a tree, and, with three or four cronies, retail the most delicious stories of old-time political characters and incidents. he was a mine of this sort of thing and an immense favorite in consequence with all the newspaper men and politicians. i was introduced to him on my third or fourth day in allegheny as he was sitting out on his tilted chair, and he surveyed me with a smile.
“from the dispatch, eh? well, take a chair if you can find one; if you can’t, sit on the curb or in the doorway. many’s the man i seen from the dispatch in my time. your boss, harry gaither, used to come around here before he got to be city editor. so did your sunday man, funger. there ain’t much news i can give you, but whatever there is you’re welcome to it. i always treat all the boys alike,” and he smiled. then he proceeded with his tale, something about an old alderman or politician who had painted a pig once in order to bring it up to certain prize specifications and so won the prize, only to be found out later because the “specifications” wore off. he had such a zestful way of telling his stories as to compel laughter.
and then directly across the street to the east from the city hall was the allegheny carnegie library, a very handsome building which contained, in addition to the library, an auditorium in which had been placed the usual “one of the largest” if not “the largest” pipe organ in the world. this organ had one advantage: it was supplied with a paid city organist, who on sundays, wednesdays and saturdays entertained the public with free recitals, and so capable was he that seats were at a premium and standing-room only the rule unless one arrived far ahead of time. this manifestation of interest on the part of the public pleased me greatly and somehow qualified, if it did not atone for, mr. carnegie’s indifference to the welfare of his employees.
but i was most impressed with the forty or fifty thousand volumes so conveniently arranged that one could walk from stack to stack, looking at the labels and satisfying one’s interest by browsing in the books. the place had most comfortable window-nooks and chairs between stacks and in alcoves. one afternoon, having nothing else to do, i came here and by the merest chance picked up a volume entitled the wild ass’s skin by the writer who so fascinated wandell—honoré de balzac. i examined it curiously, reading a preface which shimmered with his praise. he was the great master of france. his comédie humaine covered every aspect of the human welter. his interpretations of character were exhaustive and exact. his backgrounds were abundant, picturesque, gorgeous. in paris his home had been turned into a museum, and contained his effects as they were at the time of his death.
i turned to the first page and began reading, and from then on until dusk i sat in this charming alcove reading. a new and inviting door to life had been suddenly thrown open to me. here was one who saw, thought, felt. through him i saw a prospect so wide that it left me breathless—all paris, all france, all life through french eyes. here was one who had a tremendous and sensitive grasp of life, philosophic, tolerant, patient, amused. at once i was personally identified with his raphael, his rastignac, his bixiou, his bianchon. with raphael i entered the gaming-house in the palais royal, looked despairingly down into the waters of the seine from the pont royal, turned from it to the shop of the dealer in antiques, was ignored by the perfect young lady before the shop of the print-seller, attended the taillefer banquet, suffered horrors over the shrinking skin. the lady without a heart was all too real. it was for me a literary revolution. not only for the brilliant and incisive manner with which balzac grasped life and invented themes whereby to present it, but for the fact that the types he handled with most enthusiasm and skill—the brooding, seeking, ambitious beginner in life’s social, political, artistic and commercial affairs (rastignac, raphael, de rubempre, bianchon)—were, i thought, so much like myself. indeed, later taking up and consuming almost at a sitting the great man from the provinces, père goriot, cousin pons, cousin bette, it was so easy to identify myself with the young and seeking aspirants. the brilliant and intimate pictures of parisian life, the exact flavor of its politics, arts, sciences, religions, social goings to and fro impressed me so as to accomplish for me what his imaginary magic skin had done for his raphael: transfer me bodily and without defect or lack to the center as well as the circumference of the world which he was describing. i knew his characters as well as he did, so magical was his skill. his grand and somewhat pompous philosophical deductions, his easy and offhand disposition of all manner of critical, social, political, historical, religious problems, the manner in which he assumed as by right of genius intimate and irrefutable knowledge of all subjects, fascinated and captured me as the true method of the seer and the genius. oh, to possess an insight such as this! to know and be a part of such a cosmos as paris, to be able to go there, to work, to study, suffer, rise, and even end in defeat if need be, so fascinatingly alive were all the journeys of his puppets! what was pittsburgh, what st. louis, what chicago?—and yet, in spite of myself, while i adored his paris, still i was obtaining a new and more dramatic light on the world in which i found myself. pittsburgh was not paris, america was not france, but in truth they were something, and pittsburgh at least had aspects which somehow suggested paris. these charming rivers, these many little bridges, the sharp contrasts presented by the east end and the mill regions, the huge industries here and their importance to the world at large, impressed me more vividly than before. i was in a workaday, begrimed, and yet vivid paris. taillefer, nucingen, valentin were no different from some of the immense money magnets here, in their case, luxury, power, at least the possibilities which they possessed.
coming out of the library this day, and day after day thereafter, the while i rendered as little reportorial service as was consistent with even a show of effort, i marveled at the physical similarity of the two cities as i conceived it, at the chance for pictures here as well as there. american pictures here, as opposed to french pictures there. and all the while i was riding with lucien to paris, with his mistress, courting madame nucingen with rastignac, brooding over the horror of the automatically contracting skin with raphael, poring over his miseries with goriot, practicing the horrible art of prostitution with madame marneffe. for a period of four or five months i ate, slept, dreamed, lived him and his characters and his views and his city. i cannot imagine a greater joy and inspiration than i had in balzac these spring and summer days in pittsburgh. idyllic days, dreamy days, poetic days, wonderful days, the while i ostensibly did “police and city hall” in allegheny.
