One of my goals in writing Journey, American is to use the stories of my characters to tell parts of the largely forgotten story of America, in particular the battle between equality and justice and money and greed.
In 2023 the gap between rich and poor is more of a chasm. When it comes to success in America you are either in or you are out.
Our country is founded on capitalist ideas bound up in the promise of democracy. Of course, promises are made to be broken and the American Promise is the one broken most of all.
They are easy to tick off:
The self-made man does exist, but 99 percent of the backstories of the self-made man tell of him putting a boot in the face of someone he needed to get past.
One man, one vote. Yep, most of us can vote depending on where you live. Thanks to the Electoral College, some votes count more than others.
All men are created equal. Yes, they have more money.
For each of these and far more, there is an event marking its truth. Journey, American begins with the story of a generally upwardly mobile man, free to choose his own path as long as he wins.
The storyline of one character, however, demonstrates the inequality that has marked America since its inception.
While researching the Twenties, I came upon Bisbee, 1917. Today, Bisbee, Arizona is (I’m told, I have not visited in person) is a charming tourist town. In 1917, it was a booming copper mining town virtually owned by Phelps Dodge. Founded in 1834, Phelps Dodge was one of the biggest mining corporations in the world. It disappeared in a buyout in 2007.
Because of America’s impending entry into World War I, copper was in high demand. Phelps Dodge ran its mines and mills hard. Men were frequently injured or killed in terrible working conditions.
The Industrial Workers of the World was a growing union then. The IWW organized the Phelps Dodge miners and 1000 of them went on strike in June 1917. By July, capitalism had enough. The company “deputized” 2000 men, who were armed with shotguns and billy clubs. They marched into Bisbee and shot, beat and herded the miners and many of their families into the company baseball field. Then they forced them into boxcars and sent them 200 miles into southern New Mexico, then a brand new state.
They dumped them in the desert near a town now called Columbus. Columbus is famous for being the site of the only foreign incursion into the United States when Pancho Villa and his small army surprised the garrison there. They still celebrate Pancho Villa Days there today. The fort served as the headquarters of America’s ensuing invasion of Mexico by Black Jack Pershing and the United States Army’s warm-up fight for the coming battles in France.
No one remembers the workers of Bisbee, who were rescued by the Army after they were dumped, nearly dead from heat exhaustion and thirst.
I was in Columbus once and asked a military historian - an expert on Pancho Villa about the Bisbee strikers.
We were sitting on a bench that tops a large dirt rise in the desert and the tallest point in Columbus. From our vantage point, we could see the train station where the alarm was sent out, the hotel where a soldier’s family was killed, and the remains of a bank, with only its vault still standing.
There was an empty field across the highway heading for the Mexican border less than a mile away. That field was once an airfield that played host to the entire United States Air Force (the Army Air Corps then) of undependable machines called Jennys.
The historian could cite fact after fact and tell story after story about the fort and its soldiers and the aircraft that once lifted off from that field.
When I asked about the deportees of Bisbee, he answered, “I have no idea.”
The strike was crushed. Phelps Dodge kept making money as it fed the war. No one knows what became of the deportees.
There are many such stories to tell. Money always wins.
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