Read Online Touch and Go by Studs Terkel - Free Book Online

dead ringer for Yellow Kid Weil, the master con artist?” As Louis Sullivan was Lieber Meister to Frank Lloyd Wright, the Yellow Kid was role model to all the imaginative youngbloods who wouldn’t hurt a fly, though they would skillfully relieve “the greedy who had too much.”
    J. Ham and the Kid were each in a class by himself, well dressed. Oh, sure, there was Jimmy Walker, the one-time mayor of New York, and the Prince of Wales, who, with his great love, Wally Simpson, didn’t think Hitler was quite that bad. In any event, I’ll try to describe the Yellow Kid, and it could describe as well, spats and all, the august senator: a well-trimmed Van Dyke beard, a pince-nez, a pearl stickpin in a flash of tie, shoes that were far above Florsheim in style and value. Probably Italian. Each of them was possessed of a panache none of our young models in Gentlemen’s Quarterly could touch.
    A long time went by before I ran into the Yellow Kid. Dog days for him. I knew it because I spotted a slight egg stain on his once-expensive jacket. It was on a streetcar that we met. His eyes were watery, he appeared weary; yet he was the same articulate, persuasive Yellow Kid Weil.
    I’m still in Burton K. Wheeler’s office and he’s still, in memory, back in the cloakroom with J. Ham.
    I had finished a hot assault on the big corporations that were short-changing all the hardworking people. Old J. Ham came up to me. He used to call out “Boy!” That made me mad. “Boy, give
’em the devil.” I said, “Won’t you make a speech on it?” He said, “No, I can’t. I represent a damn bunch of thieves, I tell you, who want to reach their hand in the public coffers and pull all the money out. My God, if I were a free man, I’d tear this thing limb from limb.” I was pretty much discouraged when the men in the cloakrooms would come up to me and say, “I agree with you!” Then go out and vote the other way.
    I remember one piece of legislation I was interested in. It involved a challenge to the big money powers. A senator said to me, “I think you’re right. I’m gonna vote with you.” In the afternoon, he said, “I can’t.” “Why not?” “My bosses called me up. You’ve got one.” I said, “The only boss I got is the people.” He said, “Don’t give me that stuff. You’ve got a boss somewhere.”
    When Tom Pendergast was indicted, Harry Truman came up to me. “Should I resign?” I said, “Why should you resign?” He said, “They’ve indicted the old man. He made me everything I am, and I’ve got to stand by him.” [Pendergast ran the Democratic Party of Missouri.]
    There was a distinct difference between Yellow Kid Weil, Wheeler’s fashion-plate colleague, and other political figures. The Kid had only one boss—himself. His credo was a simple one: “I am an educator. I educate only those who can afford to pay for their education. They are either rich widows on an expensive cruise or well-heeled men in finance who are by their very nature greedy. They want more. Always. As a matter of fact, I once took Andrew Mellon’s brother for half a million. It involved a silver mine in Colorado.”
    Remember that easy summertime of 1924, when I appeared to be in a catatonic state, bound to that Atwater-Kent and the never-ending dull, dull, dull convention—aside from the wondrous Tom Walsh’s sternly comforting voice. The hard fact is that I was really invited to join the magic circle of politics by The Man himself. Non-Chicagoans, young ones, or those who suffer from Alzheimer’s when it comes to politics, may need a guide. The Man to whom I’m
referring was not the mayor. He was Bill Dawson, the congressman from the First Congressional District. It was an overwhelmingly African American community, whose votes were always delivered by