The Cold Millions: A Novel

The Cold Millions: A Novel, by Jess Walter (New York, NY: Harper Collins Publishers, 2020) 

I had looked forward to reading this historical novel for several reasons. Most obviously, Walter writes about a subject dear to my heart, the Industrial Workers of the World, better known as Wobblies. Secondly, I have used historical novels to engage students in the study of labor history and even published a longish essay explaining why three of Philip Roth’s novels offer exceptional insights into mid- and late twentieth-century US history. Finally, a positive review of the novel in the Sunday New York Times whetted my interest. Sad to say, reading the novel disappointed me.

Why? First, the language and dialogue felt stilted. Second, Walter’s portraits of working-class life in the early twentieth century seemed awry. Most of the workers who appear in the novel are portrayed as hobos/tramps and are described as overwhelmingly “new immigrants,” other than two of the primary male protagonists who are the children of Irish immigrants. In fact, as of 1909, the central date in the novel, most Wobblies were old stock, American born or of North European extraction. Most also were not hobos/tramps but wage workers employed in seasonal industries and hence out of work for extended periods and frequently on the move seeking work. Novels such as Thomas Bell’s Out of this Furnace and Jack Conroy’s The Disinherited offer far more realistic portraits of working-class life in the early twentieth century.

The same might be said about Walter’s portraits of private detectives hired by employers to harass union organizers and break strikes. In this novel, they are little more than murderous immoralists with few or no redeeming features. For a far more realistic fictional portrait of such private detectives, I would suggest reading Dashiell Hammett’s Red Harvest.

The two key historical events in the novel—the Seattle IWW free speech fight and  Elizabeth Gurley Flynn’s role in it—are less than accurately portrayed. One would never know that the battle between Wobbly speakers and police on the streets of Spokane was less about attacking “employment sharks” (agencies that offered jobs for a fee) and more about the IWW’s ability to have access to itinerant workers where they congregated when out of work. Walter’s portrait of Gurley Flynn, moreover, delineates her as a personification of late twentieth-century feminism or women’s liberation and less as a typical IWW woman for whom class was a far more important factor than gender. And badly as the arrested Wobbly free-speech fighters were treated by Spokane authorities before and after their imprisonment, they were never as brutally maltreated as the novel suggests. Other than Walter’s focus on Gurley Flynn and the dropping of such names as Frank Little, John Walsh, Charlie Siringo, Fred Moore (a defense attorney for imprisoned Wobblies), Big Bill Haywood, and even Clarence Darrow, readers learn little of substance about the IWW.

Only two aspects of the novel ring true. Walter, a longtime resident of Spokane and apparently a local history buff, provides realistic glimpses of early twentieth century Spokane, its physical features, its neighborhoods, its enterprises, cultural districts, including the red-light one, and its residents. The life trajectory of Ryan Dolan, the younger of the two Irish-American protagonists introduced early in the novel, is more than credible. Like many young itinerant workers early in the century, Ryan, as he matures from a teenager to a young adult, learns a trade, becoming a skilled machinist. He also drops his youthful flirtation with Wobbly syndicalism, becomes a proud member of the International Association of Machinists, a local union official, and a dedicated practitioner of business unionism. And like so many other one-time itinerant workers, he matures into a stable family man, a proud pater familias. Other than these two aspects of the novel, I did not find much that resembled historical reality or drew me more into the narrative.

Reviewed by Melvyn Dubofsky

Distinguished Professor of History & Sociology Emeritus

Binghamton University, SUNY