Among other things, dealing with its so-called Manifest Destiny and that “trifling little scuffle” called the Civil War, the United States missed the First Industrial Revolution and was almost late for the Second. But it soon made up for lost time, by the early 20th century becoming the leading industrial nation in the world. Prior, however, during our Gilded Age, the North was already well equipped with unshattered cities and fat financiers to move forward into that steam-powered future with relative ease. The New South, meanwhile, struggling to rise from the ashes of war and take its place once again at the forefront of civilization, not so much. And perhaps among all the southern cities, it was “that red-dressed bitch in seductive repose along the Mississippi Crescent” that had the most to win…and the most to lose. New Orleans had not been bombed or burned to oblivion like so many other locations throughout the South. It lay near the mouth of that wide, Mark Twain waterway, cutting through the middle of the country to prosperous cities north. It maintained an enormous port, giving it access to port cities throughout the world. And once it figured out how to lay railroad track across a terrigenous landscape more liquid than solid, California, Mexico, and all points west were there for the taking. It had steamships, steam factories, steam locomotives, and even a steam-powered toot-toot man with his monkey and cup, grifting pennies on the street corner. It had it all. The only problem, of course, with New Orleans being the one to lead the New South forward into its Industrial Revolution was that it was, well, New Orleans.
After marinating for nearly two centuries in the cultures and tongues of near-countless and oft-unknown origination, to say Gilded-Age New Orleans was “different” from any other city, foreign and certainly domestic, was an axiom so obvious, further comment was unnecessary. As it was more than a matter of degree or detail, rather a paradigm shift of style, of over-the-edge panache, of its indefinable je ne sais quoi, wearing its royal-blue cloak of eccentricity with neither care nor concern. A style that, particularly among those outer edges of its society, could also care less about anyone’s Revolution, Industrial or otherwise. For it was hellbent busy with its own Revolution of Style and Culture since that first plume-hatted Frenchman encountered that first feather-bonneted, face-painted Indigenous along its swampy shores.
Still, someone had to take one for the team. For their New South. And if New Orleans was the chosen one (by illicit show of hands or otherwise) to lead the South forward into its Revolution of Industry, it would do so. But it would do so only in its own unique manner and style. To give but one example: This Industrial Revolution brought the need for labor. Endless labor to work and run the endless steam-powered machines. And when you had the typical Victorian family of two adults and eight children, it did not take the business titans long to figure out where their labor, their endless busy hands, would come from. Children were kidnapped, sold by indigent parents, imported by the shipload, etc., to satisfy the need. Children. Placed before, beneath, and around these clacking, clanking, hissing, lunging, shrieking steam machines to carry out innumerable tasks. Endless hours, ill-fed and ill-cared for. Endless little limbs, endless little lives, were lost, but production always continued. New Orleans, of course, was no different from any other industrial city, with little limbs, little lives, lost…until, as mentioned, you reached those outer edges of culture and style. New Orleans style
As in my Gilded-Age mystery, The Brothers Shaughnessy, my detective team lived or died, rose or fell, depending to the greater degree on their network of trusted confidential informants. And facing a tidal wave of corruption and chaos, backdropped by a gloomy Gothic landscape of fog-shrouded, iron-laced architecture and Cities of the Dead (After all, who else buried their dead atop the soggy earth in dismal tombs covered with voodoo graffiti?), their most trusted CIs were those untrustworthy, self-named Steampunks. These, the discarded sons of alcoholic boilermen and drug-addled machinists whose hungover noggins made one mistake too many: that, of forcing recalcitrant boys to well learn the secrets of their generational trades and do their work, so they might have time enough for that next nip of whiskey or puff of opium pipe. Or at least until our gang of little Punkers grew tired of slave labor by day and kicked to sleep in the proverbial gutter by night and ran away, taking over an abandoned Union army steam factory to begin their lives anew, sleeping all the day, building their rather monstrous steam-driven toys all the night, and where my informant-seeking detective brothers found them: “scattered about, doing final checks and readings, and entering the boiler and pump rooms to prepare their shutdown; and all were dressed in their rather bizarre, mishmash fashion, neither brother could ever quite comprehend. This was an assorted mix of random cork caps and derbies, miners’ hats and military headgear—helmets and such from a dozen unknown armies; long, black trench and pea and coachman coats; and, again, the bits and pieces of military frocks, the puffed pants and black-laced boots to their knees; assorted-style goggles to protect their eyes from spark or fire; leather belts laden with tool and lamp; gloves of leather, canvas, or the occasional satin; decorative ribbons and medals and cloth strips of flying colors, not the exception.”
And where at last, in the factory’s center, they spied Tophat, their leader: “sitting on his highchair throne, clipboard in hand. At first glance, with his wire-rimmed spectacles and focused gaze, he could have passed for a very young mathematics professor. But then you noticed the black-leather vest with silver-nugget buttons over red-silk shirt; the long black storm coat; the tight-fitted, black-leather pants with iron rings for belt loops, through which ran the wide, machine-nut-studded leather belt with gargoyle buckle; the laced, knee-high black explorer’s boots; and, of course, the crowning black top hat, with eagle feather poking out from its crimson band…and your initial glance soon lost its way…”