The Cold Millions

 

The Cold Millions

By Jess Walter

This has got to be, by far, the best book I've ever read about organized labor. Set in early 1900s Spokane, Washington, the book tells the story of the labor movement's struggle to earn the right to organize. At the heart of the story are two brothers, Gig and Rye Dolan, drifters who, like so many, are exploited by millionaires and the job sharks -- who charge $1 for the chance to work -- in their employ. It's an exploitative world that pushes Gig toward the idealistic philosophy of the International Workers of the World. Gig is a Wobbly all the way -- until the reality of jail time and abuse at the hands of police pull back the curtain on just what the IWW is up against. 

Enter Early Reston (if that is his real name). He appears to be a drifter just like the Dolan boys. But, like so much in Spokane, he's not what he seems. He's actually working for a local millionaire, Lem Brand, who has hired him to stir up the community to make the Wobblies look bad and give the local authorities the shred of an excuse they need to run them out of town. Or is he? There's a chance he just likes violence. Meanwhile Rye is swept up in the Wobblies movement in the hopes of freeing his brother as he travels the West with organizer Elizabeth Gurley Flynn. Then again, he also has a connection to Brand. So which side is he on? 

It's a web of a plot that reads like a mystery and keeps you turning the pages. In addition, Walter does a lovely job of bringing the characters to life. In between the action, he switches points of view so that you can better understand the perspectives of each of the characters. They seem to breathe -- especially Rye.

But there is a larger musing here. At its heart, the book is about the ways in which individuals shape history and the way history shapes individuals. Rye, who later in the book takes up Tolstoy's War and Peace, reflects on how history feels like a roar of motion when you are caught in its flow but something else entirely when you are on the outside looking in. Is it better to be a rabble rouser on the vanguard, sacrificing comfort in the name of eventual progress? Or is it better to view such actors from afar, enjoying what one can from life in anonymity? Rye seems to take the latter tack. But, unbeknownst to him, it was an act of sacrifice and nobility that allowed him to take that path in the first place.