Blood and iron

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 gri

"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 McKe

Cinci

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 Cinci

"I want to go to school, Pa," Achilles yelled to Cinci

"You'll go to school in the fall," his father told him. "You turn six then. We'll put you in this kindergarten they have here."

In Covington, white children had kindergartens. Black children hadn't had any formal schooling till the USA took Kentucky away from the CSA. Cinci