Murder in Burnt Orange by Jeanne M. Dams Read Free Book Online

after a few sips.
    Hilda smiled. “Thank you. You were telling me about Mr. Debs?”
    â€œOh, yes. The Great Pullman Strike. A terrible affair that was, all those men killed and hurt.”
    As Hilda drank her tea and listened, her mother-in-law recounted the story, and a painful story it was.
    The Pullman Palace Car Company, having lost income during the Panic of 1893, had drastically cut wages in their factory, but had not reduced rents for the houses in the “company town” of Pullman, Illinois. In the summer of 1894 (“and well I remember, for I was carryin’ Brenda at the time”) the Pullman workers walked out, and the strike escalated when members of a union headed by Eugene Debs began to boycott all trains pulling Pullman cars. Rail traffic west of Chicago was paralyzed; the Pullman factory production came to a halt.
    Patrick’s father, alive then, had been a laborer at the Oliver factory in South Bend. Though they made plows and had nothing to do with the railroads, their products were shipped by rail, and the strike hurt them badly. Mr. Cavanaugh, along with the rest of the work force, went on short hours, and the lost money was a hardship to the large family. “Mind you, we had some money put by. Mr. Cavanaugh was never a spendthrift. But there were already eight children to feed, and if it had been winter, I don’t know as we’d’ve had enough to eat.”
    â€œBut that is dreadful! With you expecting a baby, too. And you said people died?”
    â€œThat was when the soldiers came in, shootin’ folk left and right. That only made things worse, as anyone with as much sense as a spalpeen could have told ’em. By the time it was all over, the blessed saints only know how much harm’d been done, what with the dead and the maimed, the wages lost, and railroad lines all over the country tore up. And that Eugene Debs, he went to jail for it all.”
    â€œBut—but he has tried to become president. A man who has been in jail?”
    â€œHe wouldn’t be the first crooked politician in this country, would he now? Nor he wasn’t the only one to blame for the strike, neither. It was all of ’em, seems to me, from the company men right on up to President Cleveland. But that Debs—he’s a Socialist, you know. And that’s the next thing to an anarchist, and look what they get up to!”
    Hilda knew a good deal about that. It had been nearly four years since McKinley’s assassination, and Hilda had been deeply enmeshed in an offshoot of that tragedy. She profoundly hoped that anarchists were not behind the present series of calamities, for her acquaintance with their methods still caused her the occasional nightmare.
    â€œIt is odd, Mother Cavanaugh,” she said thoughtfully. “A union is meant to help the workers, but so often a strike causes terrible things to happen to everyone.”
    â€œAh, well, that’s the way of the world, isn’t it? When the big bosses want to stomp on the poor folk, there’s goin’ to be explosions. And you listen to me, girl.” Her belligerent manner returned. “There’s already been explosions with this railroad business, and I don’t want my grandchild blown up in another one. So just you keep your nose out of it!”
    Hilda gritted her teeth. “I promise I will not harm myself or the baby. Would you like some more tea?”
    * * *
    Well, that wasn’t as bad as it might have been, thought Hilda, waking after a short nap. Her mother-in-law hadn’t actually insulted her, and she had provided some useful information. Eugene Debs was a person of great interest. Connected with the railroads, a Socialist... Hilda got up from the couch, straightened her rumpled skirts, and went to the telephone in the hall. Before she picked up the handset, however, she had second thoughts.
    She wanted, needed to talk to John Bolton, but a telephone call to