tear? Flora had trouble believing that of an old Tartar like TR. Then, spotting her among the crowd of nearly identical-looking men, the outgoing president waved and blew her a kiss. He could hardly have astonished her more if he'd turned a cartwheel.
She stayed on her feet after he passed, as did all the other Socialists, most of the Midwestern corporal's guard of Republicans, and the more courteous Democrats-about half. Here came Hosea Blackford, about to make the change from vice president-elect to vice president. He too wore formal attire. He didn't look like a penguin, not to Flora. He looked splendid.
Flora called his name while she was applauding. He smiled at her, but he was smiling at everybody. He hurried after Roosevelt toward the platform.
And behind him-in front of another honor guard, this one of sailors and soldiers-walked the man of the hour, Upton Sinclair. Craning her neck to look back at him, Flora saw a sea of red flags waving in the crowd. Her heart slammed against her rib cage in excitement and delight. As the dialectic predicted, the people had at last turned to the party that stood for their class interests.
Up on the platform, Theodore Roosevelt shook Sinclair's hand, a formal gesture, and then slapped him lightly on the back, one much less so. The president that was and the president that would be grinned at each other. Flora remembered how Senator Debs had stayed personally cordial toward TR even after losing two presidential elections to him.
Whatever Roosevelt and Sinclair said to each other, they were too far away from the microphone for it to pick up their words. Chief Justice Holmes stood by it, a Bible in his hand. He beckoned to Hosea Blackford. When Blackford took the vice-presidential oath, the electric marvel let the whole enormous crowd hear him doit.
Then Justice Holmes summoned the president-elect to the microphone. His amplified oath filled the vast, echoing silence in Franklin Square: 'I, Upton Sinclair, do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.'
'Congratulations, Mr. President,' Oliver Wendell Holmes said. As Roosevelt had done, he reached out to shake Sinclair's hand. What had been quiet erupted into a vast roar of noise: the noise of almost forty years of Socialist struggle finally rewarded with victory.
Upton Sinclair lifted up his hands. As if he were a magician, silence returned. Into it, he said, 'It's time for a change!' — the same theme he'd used in Toledo, the theme the Socialists had used through the whole campaign. 'We've been saying that for a long time, my friends, but now the change is here!'
More fervent applause followed, as did scattered shouts of, 'Revolution!' Sinclair raised his hands again. This time, quiet was slower in coming.
At last, he got it. He said, 'We are at peace, and I hope and expect we shall remain at peace throughout my term.' That drew more cheers, and a jaundiced look from Theodore Roosevelt Sinclair went on, 'And we shall have peace here at home as well, peace with honor, peace with justice, peace at last. We shall have not the peace of the exploiter who rules his laborers by force and fear, but the peace of the proletariat given its rightful place in the world.'
The crowd roared its approval. Theodore Roosevelt looked like a thunderstorm about to burst. But all he could do was frown impotently. Upton Sinclair had the microphone. Upton Sinclair had the country.
He said, 'If the capitalists will not give the workers their due, this administration will see to it that the rights and aspirations of the laboring classes are respected. If the capitalists will not heed our warnings, this administration will see to it that they heed our new laws. If the capitalists go on thinking that the means of production are theirs and theirs alone, this administration will prove to them that those means of production belong in the hands of the people, which is to say, the hands of the government. For too long, the trusts have had friends in high places. Now the people have friends in high places.'
The red flags dipped and waved. The crowd in Franklin Square screeched itself hoarse. The Democratic minority in the House and Senate listened to President Sinclair in stony silence. So did Chief Justice Holmes. Flora noticed that, even if Sinclair did not. Sinclair might propose laws, Congress might pass them… and the Supreme Court might strike them down.
But that would be later. Now there was only the headiness of victory. Flora felt it, too, and applauded loudly when President Sinclair made an eloquent call for equity among nations. If we d had equity among nations all along, she thought, my brother would walk on two legs.
But even pain and bitterness could not last, not today. After President Sinclair's speech ended, the celebrating began. Every saloon in Philadelphia had to be packed. So did every ballroom. Not every Socialist had proletarian tastes in amusement-far from it.
Flora went to a reception at Powel House for the Socialist Congressional delegation. She met the president and his wife, a vivacious redhead named Enid who was wearing an off-the-shoulder green velvet gown that would have caused multiple heart attacks on the Lower East Side; Flora's district was radical politically but not when it came to women's clothes.
Sinclair was also dashing in the clawhammer coat he still wore. 'I want you to go right on being the conscience of the House,' he told Flora.
'I'll do my best, Mr. President,' she said.
Senator Debs came up then, and shook the president's hand. ''Congratulations, Upton,' he said graciously. 'You've done what I couldn't do. And now that you have done it, I've got a question for you.' He waited till Sinclair nodded, then asked, 'What do you propose to do about the claims this Confederate submarine sank one of our ships after the war was over?'
'Examine them. Study them,' the new president answered. 'Not go off half-cocked, the way TR would. The Confederates are having their own political upheavals. The claims may have more to do with those than with the truth. Once I know what's what, I'll decide what I need to do.'
Debs nodded, but said, 'That Freedom Party down there could do with some slapping down. It's reaction on the march'-a sentiment with which Flora agreed completely.
'Once I know what's what, I'll decide what I need to do,' President Sinclair repeated. Flora had hoped for more, but had to be content with that.
The reception went on for a very long time. Flora had grown more used to late hours in Philadelphia than she'd ever been in New York City, but she was yawning by the time it got to be half past one. Hosea Blackford-Vice President Hosea Blackford- said, 'I'm heading home, Flora. Can I give you a ride?' He grinned. 'I get a housing allowance, but no house-shows where the vice president fits into the scheme of things. So why should I move?'
'That would be very kind, your Excellency,' Flora said with a smile that made Blackford snort. The vice president's nondescript Ford seemed out of place among the fancy motorcars around Powel House. In companionable silence, he drove Flora back to the apartment house where they both lived.
No matter how tired she was, she invited Blackford into her flat. He cocked an eyebrow. 'Are you sure?'
'Of course I am.' Flora stood on tiptoe to whisper in his ear: 'I've never done this with a vice president before '
He laughed out loud, and was still laughing when he stepped inside. After Flora closed the door behind him, he said, 'I should hope not! Walter McKenna would have squashed you flat.' Flora squeaked in outrage. Then she started to laugh, too. He took her in his arms. She forgot she was tired. She knew she'd be reminded in the morning, but for now-she forgot.
Cincinnatus Driver and his family had never lived in an apartment house before moving to Iowa. One thing he hadn't been able to investigate at the Covington, Kentucky, public library was how much houses cost in Des Moines. It was a lot more than it had been down in Covington, either to buy or to rent. The two-bedroom flat he'd found was much more in his price range, even if none of the rooms was big enough to swing a cat. But the flat had electricity, which went some way toward making up for that. He'd never lived in a place with electricity before. He liked it. Elizabeth liked it even better.
The apartment house was in the near northwestern part of town, west of the Des Moines River and north of the Raccoon. It was as close as Des Moines came to having a colored district, although only a little more than a thousand Negroes were hardly enough to constitute a real district in a city of over a hundred thousand. The Drivers shared their floor with two other black families and one white; the proprietor of a Chinese laundry lived upstairs. Nobody was rich, not in that neighborhood. People got by, though. As far as Cincinnatus could tell, they got by
