Fingy Conners & The New Century Read online

  “Yes.”

  Mayor Diehl then rustled around in his pile of papers and pulled out the latest issue of the New York Commercial.

  “This article in the New York paper is interesting,” understated the Mayor. “It quotes your friend James Hill of the Great Northern Railroad regarding ‘The Montréal Conners Contract, Recently Signed.’ Allow me read an excerpt to you:

  “President Hill says ‘That agreement will kill Buffalo as a commercial centre and prove disastrous to the same interests at New York, Boston, Newport News, Baltimore, Galveston and Portland. The diversion has begun and cannot be checked. There is no remedy that I can discover at this time because a point has been reached when the men who carry the scheme through have stolen a march on the interests that have been concentrated so long at the lakes and seaboard, and have felt too secure in their longtime prestige.’”

  Conners planned to divert all the lake ships into the Welland Canal before ever reaching Buffalo and ship instead through Lake Ontario to the St. Lawrence, completely bypassing the United States and all the interests that thrive there on the grain and freight trade.

  “His plan apparently was to corner the market, as they say,” explained Willie, “to try and control the very bread of life, literally. The grain that Conners’ had his eyes on isn’t just that from America’s heartland, remember. A good portion comes from the Canadian prairie provinces, and Canadians—especially we of the Canadian Pacific Railroad in particular—never had any intention of allowing this usurper to steal our harvest or the shipping business that goes along with it. Conners believed that in Canada he would be safely out of the reach and the eyes and the examinations of the likes of Teddy Roosevelt and his enemies in Congress.”

  Van Horne, the American Hero of the Canadian Pacific Railroad, went on to recite the astonishing statistics.

  “The contract as I learned about it some time ago called for the expenditure on Conners’ part of close to 4 million dollars at Montréal for grain elevators and warehouses, with a capacity of 9 million bushels. The operations of his company will involve the employment of a large fleet of vessels of the special canal type, for which construction has already begun.

  “There are already contracts to construct two steamers of canal size at the plant of the Bertram Engine Works in Toronto, and the construction in England of four steamers and four tow barges.

  “The contract with the Montréal Harbor Commission grants him three pieces of property which are, needless to say, among the choicest in the harbor at Montréal, affording ample space for the transfer of millions of tons of freight. The contract also calls for new elevators at Port Colburn on Lake Erie, which as you know is the western terminus of the Welland Canal, as well as the deepening of the harbor at that point so that large lake vessels unsuited to canal trade can transfer grain and other freight there to be carried down to Montréal by the smaller craft. These latter would engage in either through-traffic from Chicago and Duluth to Montréal, or simply in Port Colburn to Montréal trade as conditions may warrant.

  “In return for these grants, Conners agreed that after the harbor at Port Colburn has been deepened, at least 25 million bushels of wheat the first season, and in every season thereafter 35 million bushels or the equivalent in freight will be transported to Montréal and handled through his facilities there, employing over a thousand men initially, and many more once all the facilities are up and running.”

  “Jesus Christ!” whistled the Mayor. “Lord knows, this could entirely sink the Pan-American Exposition.”

  The Alderman said, “I sent my brother this morning to deliver a report to John Milburn at his home, Conrad, addressing how all this might affect the Exposition. I’ll hear from Milburn by morning tomorrow at the latest I’m sure, if not this very evening. I did not mince words. I told him that this was a catastrophe in progress. He may have some insight on how to stop Conners.”

  “Well, Gentlemen, it sounds like you two are ready to call out the troops…but you don’t have to. I assure you—it’s not going to happen. We’ve been following Conners’ plotting for months. He thinks because he enjoys Canadian citizenship that he’s a real Canadian. We don’t quite agree. His contracts aren’t legal.”

  The Alderman had initially called this meeting with Willie and the Mayor to propose some ways to stop Fingy, not realizing that Willie was quite a few steps ahead of him already. JP had had no intention of allowing Fingy’s venture to move forward without a battle and he believed his ace in the hole was Willie Van Horne. And he knew that Willie Van Horne’s ace in the hole was Canadian Prime Minister Sir Wilfred Laurier, a close friend, confidant, wily former attorney, and an unwavering champion of the expanding Canadian Pacific Railway.

  Laurier may have had his hands full supporting the war in South Africa and gathering his political forces to bring the Yukon, Alberta and Saskatchewan into the Confederation, but the threat of Conners was so audacious and presumptive that Laurier relished participating in the opportunity to dispose of the little wharf turd once Willie had informed him about what was transpiring.

  “This Conners person has no friends here,” Prime Minister Laurier told Willie, “No one he can buy, no one he can threaten. He’s out.”

  Willie Van Horne had been looking forward to meeting with the Mayor and the Alderman in order to calm them and to fill them in on what he had accomplished thus far…and perhaps to help them draft their own plan for revenge, turning the tables on Fingy Conners for once. After years of hearing tales about the ogre, Willie wanted to participate in helping topple him from his pedestal.

  “Megalomaniac.” Willie laughed. “Yes. That’s the precise word I was searching for. Megalomaniac!” snorted the international rail tycoon, describing Conners with amused disgust. “That man’s sick.”

  “Yep,” conceded the Alderman. “In light of his most recent erraticisms, the title is more than fitting. I’ve known Fingy Conners since I took my very first steps as a small child holding my mother’s hand, whereupon he immediately pushed me down to the ground and made me cry. Me dear departed mother nearly tossed the little fucker into the Ohio Basin at that point, she liked to recall.”

  “Oh, if she only had,” countered the Mayor, wistfully.

  “Gentlemen, what your little friend Conners now has on his hands, and doesn’t know it yet, is what our British friends would call a sticky wicket.”

  Willie took another gulp of his Molson ale and savored the cold golden brew’s welcome tickling effect as it foamed down his warm throat. “This should be fun to watch,” Willie cackled.

  The men laughed right along, relishing what was inevitably to come.

  “I got meself a good taste of finally entering into some real combat with Conners during the scoopers strike,” said the Alderman, nodding his head in recollection, “after a lifetime of sidestepping and dancing around to avoid him. And now he’s boasting that I’m as good as ruined. Not to my face, of course,“ chuckled JP. “but certainly in his newspapers. We’ve been at each other’s throats on and off before, but this time he’s hell bent on total annihilation, and we just have to put a stop to this lunatic. And you’re the man I realized could make it happen, dear Willie.”

  “That I am, cousin,” Willie Van Horne grinned widely with no lack of confidence. ”Happy to help.”

  The conspiring men all clinked glasses and laughed.

  Perhaps Fingy forgot, or maybe wasn’t even aware, that Willie Van Horne was family to the Alderman’s wife. Or more likely, he knew but simply didn’t care, so cocksure was he of himself.

  “The Prime Minister would never consider such a deal as Conners’, gentlemen, not for a second,” stated Willie, “nor will the Canadian Pacific Railway. I’ve a good mind to just sit back and allow Conners to go ahead and spend a few million or so building us a lovely elevator facility before we kick his ass out of the country for good.”

  JP and the mayor were visibly relieved.

  “Are you saying, Mr. Van Horne,” asked the
Mayor in disbelief,” that all the gloom and doom we’ve recently heard and all we’ve read in the newspapers is wrong?”

  “Yes, Mayor. Conners will never operate in Canada. I suspect all these positive reports you’ve quoted to me here and all the gloom and doom are all the products of Conners’ own publicity machines. He seems to be dedicated to planting fear in people, you know, as his standard modus operandi. And owning two large newspapers he certainly has the wherewithal to accomplish that.”

  “Whew!” the men expelled in unison.

  “I came here with all my fears and concerns and my head filled with ideas on how we might stop this man, and all along you’d had him already stopped?” asked JP.

  “Well, he is stopped, I assure you. He just doesn’t have any inkling yet. But until the work is done nullifying the contracts and educating his naïve Canadian backers, it can’t yet be stated officially, and that could take a few months still. Meanwhile, Conners will continue to throw his money into a doomed project without realizing it’s all for naught. Surely we can all gain some satisfaction from that. But just between the three of us, right here and now, it’s exactly that—finished.

  “Conners spent a lot of money contracting the building of those ships, drawing up plans, clearing land and improving facilities, laying foundations, and it brings me great joy that he has done so and will continue to, because he will lose his shirt on this deal. And those business partners of his in Chicago and elsewhere? No telling how much money they will lose between now and the official announcement. Those saps will think twice before they ever become bedfellows with Conners again.”

  “I’d give anything to be the one to break the news to him,” mused JP. “What a real knife to the gut that would be! How good that would feel after all these years of all of us just standing there forced to take his shit!”

  The Mayor reminded, “There’s that Exposition Directors’ banquet coming up in May at the Iroquois. How thrilling it would be, as you stood to make your toast in front of all two hundred of the city’s most important men, JP, to raise your glass with all eyes upon you, including Fingy’s, and you saying, “And, oh, by the way Fingy, me wife’s had a little chat with her cousin…you remember, the President of the Canadian Pacific Railway? And he in turn had a little talk with his good friend Laurier, you recall? The Prime Minister of Canada? And together they decided that Canada won’t be makin’ yer acquaintance any time soon. Sorry you went ahead and spent all yer fuckin’ money for nothin’.”

  The men roared.

  “Keep something crucial in mind gentlemen,” summed up the railway man. “This news is completely secret, and if maintained as such, will present us all with investment opportunities based on information that no one else has. As people go forward thinking that Conners will succeed, as some men panic and others’ plans are laid, you could well become rich betting against him. This could be a rare opportunity for you both to secure your families’ financial future. That might be the greatest revenge of all.”

  ...

  As a young boy growing up right around the corner from his future wife, the Alderman had been fascinated by Annie Saulter’s army of cousins and friends-of-the-family spread across the nation as they were far and wide. When they came to visit in the summers to stay with the Saulter clan to see Niagara Falls, the neighborhood was newly enlivened with fresh perspectives and odd colloquialisms and funny accents from California, Tennessee and Illinois, to name but a few.

  Willie Van Horne was older than Jim Sullivan by ten years, older than JP by eighteen, but over the decades they had all become close during his visits, with Willie proving himself a trusted ally. Willie was not quite as fond of the Alderman however as the Alderman was of him, truth be told. Confiding in Jim one year at an early Fourth of July Mutuals Regatta, he said that he believed that somewhere along his chosen path, John P. Sullivan had bargained away a substantial portion of his soul.

  “Annie could have done better,” he declared of his cousin with some regret in his voice.

  Jim did not defend his brother.

  ...

  William Cornelius Van Horne had been an Illinois farm boy until he was eight years old, acclimated to rising with the roosters and tending the livestock in sub-zero winters. Having developed a greater sense of responsibility than most boys his age, the steadfast worker took on additional encumbrances voluntarily, much to his father’s pride. When the family moved to the big city of Joliet in 1852, Willie’s father was relieved to be able to retire his son from the never-ending toil of a family farm. He wanted his boy to get an education and to be exposed to opportunity. Not entirely unselfishly, Willie’s father knew he himself would be getting old one day, and a parent’s best insurance policy for old age might well prove to be a successful child, ably secured with property and money in the bank and occupying a stable place near the upper reaches of the social pyramid.

  And succeed Willie Van Horne did, beginning with employment as a clerk with the Michigan Central Railway when he was just 13 years old. From there he rose to the position of superintendent for the Chicago and Alton Railway, and in 1882 was appointed general manager of the Canadian Pacific Railway. He won the vice presidency of that Canadian enterprise in 1884, then became its president four years later.

  The American, Willie Van Horne, was now a Canadian hero and a legend in his own time for his envisioning and overseeing the construction of Canada’s transcontinental railway—the entire four thousand mile length of it. Willie himself ceremoniously piloted the locomotive engine that inaugurated the first trans-Canadian Atlantic-to-Pacific journey. He was the first to consider the country’s railway as an integrated communications and transportation system. He lobbied the railway’s shareholders and directors to create a telegraph service, stringing lines that paralleled the railroad’s right-of-way from coast to coast, and to establish a lucrative freight delivery business as well.

  Like Alderman John P. Sullivan, Willie Van Horne felt quite comfortable straddling the international border with one foot on either side, working on behalf of both American and Canadian interests, and it was this international vision that finally warmed Willie to the Alderman as the politician rose to claim ever increasing power. From the time Willie first received the effusive letter from the Alderman trumpeting Buffalo’s ambitious Pan American Exposition plans, he set out to make sure his firm would benefit most fully from the international fair. Fortuitously, this very endeavor coincided with another issue of far greater and more immediate concern to the Canadian Pacific Railway: Fingy Conners’ planned infection of that country with his unique recipe of poison.

  “That man knows no boundaries!” boomed Willie. “He professes no loyalties to anyone but himself; not to any political party, neither to any national flag! I daresay he’s determined to gobble up the entire planet if we allowed him.”

  Fingy Conners cared not one iota what anyone else on this earth thought of him, and that was his greatest strength. Even the worst of men seem to harbor in some lonely corner of their hearts or minds some speck of fear of rejection; a fragment of themselves desirous of others’ acceptance. Everyone wants to be liked. Everyone except Fingy Conners.

  “Hop” Sullivan

  Fingy Conners was already hard at work on a plan to purge Mayor Conrad Diehl. That would be easy enough given the power and breadth of the voice of his newspapers. But getting rid of Alderman John P. Sullivan might prove somewhat trickier, although not impossible. “Hop” Sullivan had endeared himself to his First Ward constituents for all time by at long last publicly ramming heads with Fingy during the scoopers strike and mustering troops both political and religious to try and bring an era of unstoppable Conners tyranny on the docks to an end. The gauntlet had been thrown down.

  The Alderman was by his very nature an affable sort, skilled at telling jokes and making disarmingly clever comments at the most unexpected times. He would drop a bon mot, and it would be followed by a full second or more of silence as listeners considered the odd re
mark, until suddenly the group would erupt in great, prolonged gales of laughter, delayed as they always were by the unusual delivery and cleverness of his utterance.

  He had become increasingly popular with the passing years and excelled as a tireless self-promoter. He colluded with the press, especially the Buffalo Express, to create charming or humorous stories about his exploits, principally those involving his large family.

  JP was enthusiastically social and humanely inclusive, having accumulated hundreds of friends among all classes and cultures while skillfully managing many an iron in the fire simultaneously, as his Annie was always quick to guilt him over. He patiently fulfilled promises of employment for his constituents, who would intrusively knock on his door day and night at No. 12 Hamburg Street, much to his family’s irritation. He developed the successful strategy of inviting the job-seeker inside and employing a speedy routine borne out of necessity and practice, one that would allow him to stand tall in their eyes, yet dispatch of them quickly. He would pick up his Frontier telephone in his little home office that had been set aside for this very purpose, which was not hooked up to any line, and pretend to speak with whomever might be the opportune provider of a solution for his seeker. He would feign a positive response, then in short order dispatch the visitor with a handshake and a smile. Then later at a more convenient time, he followed up with the actual provider to see what he could do about getting the man work or the problem solved.

  He himself employed a good many First Ward men during winter in his own business of harvesting Lake Erie ice—a small army actually. Always in his mind were the stories of the kindnesses of his predecessor David Clark of the Buffalo Ice Co. and the generosity the man had bestowed on his parents, and later also on himself and his brother. David Clark’s originality was the compass that guided John P. Sullivan in the conducting of his own ice business, now the largest such private enterprise in Western New York.

  The Sullivan Ice Company’s paychecks were accepted the same as cash throughout the ward and beyond, their backs often covered with a dozen endorsements or more before finally reaching the bank. The check that initially went to the ice company employee was then signed over to the relative he owed money to, who signed it over to the grocer, who signed it over to the plumber, who signed it over to the carpenter, who signed it over to the dry goods store downtown until ultimately finding a nest at the bank. If the check had circulated too long into the autumn season, when the Sullivan Ice Co. bank balance was precariously low, especially if the previous winter had been too warm for a good ice harvest, sometimes a man would find the check he had accepted as being as good as cash would not be immediately honored by the bank.