American Progress

by Veda Boyd Jones

“Keep your heads up,” she instructed, “your eyes in front of you, and walk in dignity and in silence. No matter what is said or done from the sidelines, continue walking in silence. Be very careful not to respond or reply to any actions or comments.”

  Through the crowd of students, Maria saw Abigail. Maria smiled and waved, and Abigail waved back. Someone handed Maria a stick with a sign that read Women Should Vote. Libby was given a small American flag to wave.

  It was time to begin. A hushed silence fell over the crowd of nearly two thousand marchers. A strong solemn drumroll sounded from somewhere in the front, and the giant mass of people moved slowly but steadily down Second Avenue. Maria thought it would be easy to keep her eyes in front of her, but it wasn’t. It took all her willpower not to look over and see the crowds of onlookers filling up the broad sidewalks on either side of the street.

  A feeling of pride welled up inside her. History was being made on this street, and she was part of it. The parade moved in an orderly fashion to Fourth Street, where they turned and followed Fourth to Nicollet Street. Along Fourth, the crowds were denser, and the hecklers were out in full force. As the hoots, boos, and insults began to fly, Maria felt Libby move closer to her side.

  “Wave your flag,” Maria whispered to her little sister.

  Bravely, Libby raised her flag higher, and Maria did the same with her sign. When they came to Nicollet and turned the corner, she saw a gang of boys. One of them was Charles Briggs. Her breath caught in her throat. They were throwing tomatoes at the marchers.

  Maria was glad she was on the outside where she could protect Libby. She saw one of the overripe tomatoes fly toward a woman in the section ahead of them, and she heard the splat as it made a direct hit. The boys hooted and cheered. Maria wondered why the police didn’t stop them.

  As they drew near that corner, she heard Charles yell, “Here’s one for you, Maria Schmidt. Go back to the kitchen where you belong.”

  Maria did not duck or dodge as the tomato came flying right at her. But it sailed in front of her and hit Libby, who let out a yelp. Maria wished it had hit her instead of her sister. Maria wouldn’t have let out one little peep. Now she looked down at Libby. The red had splattered on the girl’s blue church dress and was dripping down on her white stockings. The tomato was rotten, and the stench was overpowering in the warm sunshine.

  Maria wanted to wring Charles’s neck. In a loud whisper, she said to Libby, “Lift your flag higher and keep on marching.” And Libby did just that!

  CHAPTER 7

  Curt’s Darkroom

  When the parade ended at the courthouse, many of the students fussed over Libby and commended her for being so brave. Several produced handkerchiefs and helped wipe off the remains of the tomato, wrinkling their noses at the awful smell.

  “My Sunday dress is all stained.” Libby was near tears.

  Libby was so fussy about her clothes. “Don’t worry, Libby,” Maria assured her. “Mama can make it come out. She gets the grass stains out of Curt’s knickers, doesn’t she?”

  Now it was time for speeches. Maria kept tight hold of Libby’s hand as they listened to the women speak from the podium set up in the street in front of the courthouse. One of the speakers was Mrs. Clara Ueland herself—the one who had organized the entire event. Because of the pressing crowd, Maria didn’t have a very good view of the stand, but she could hear the rousing words.

  Later in the program, State Senator Ole Sageng stepped to the speaker’s lectern. Maria had heard of this senator who was an avid supporter of the suffrage movement. She hung on every word of his speech, which he closed with these words:

  It is true, a woman’s highest duty is to her home, but that is just as true of man. But what an absolutely crazy and absurd proposition would it not be to argue that he would be a better father and a more loyal husband if we take away from him the right to vote. American manhood would resent as an insult any serious mention of such a theory. It is just as much an insult to American womanhood to say that giving her the full right of citizenship will interfere with a mother’s devotion to her children and her home.

  A deafening cheer went up from the crowd. The marchers held their flags and signs high and waved them back and forth and cheered and cheered. Maria yelled until she was hoarse. This man certainly had the right idea about women and their roles in society.

  The next day, an article in the Journal gave a favorable report on the parade. “It was not what the majority of people had expected,” the paper read. “Minneapolis learned by practical demonstration that those who ask the ballot for women are distinctly not a bevy of hopeless spinsters, unhappily married women, and persons who have nothing else to do.”

  The Tribune‘s quotes were equally as positive. Maria clipped the articles and put them in her scrapbook. She never wanted to forget that she had had a part in all this.

  The backyard shed was now the official darkroom for Curt and his photography endeavors. Coleman Wright came over several times to help teach Curt how to develop the photos. Coleman was an unassuming young man not much older than Thomas. He’d quit school to work at the newspaper in order to support his widowed mother. Maria thought him very kind to take the time to help a little boy like Curt.

  Coleman and Thomas ran a long electrical cord from the house and rigged up a light in the shed. With Coleman’s clear instructions, everything came together quickly.

  Curt’s first picture-taking adventure was a dismal failure. The heavy, bulky camera was difficult for a ten-year-old to handle. At first Curt was crestfallen. The photos were blurred, and in some there were people with no heads. He’d been unable to focus correctly.

  “I thought all you had to do was point it and shoot,” he said in a small voice.

  “I think that’s a Kodak Brownie,” Thomas said.

  Coleman suggested that he and Thomas make a tripod that folded so Curt could carry it around with him. It was exactly what Curt needed. Thomas even chipped in some of his earnings from the newspaper route to help Curt purchase chemicals and other supplies.

  Seeing Curt’s need for extra money gave Maria an idea. “If I were to help you and Thomas with the paper route, you could expand your route,” she said when she was alone with Curt. She figured after she sold Curt on the idea, she’d have an easier time presenting it to Mama.

  “Since they refuse to give a girl a route, you and Thomas can just ask for your routes to be expanded and I’ll help throw. Why,” she added as she warmed up to the idea, “I could even sew a canvas bag to carry the papers in. I’d be more than happy to share whatever I make with you. Then you could buy more supplies for your darkroom.”

  Curt was quiet, but she could tell he was thinking about it. That’s all she needed now—for him to think about it. “You can tell me later what you decide,” she told him.

  Although earning money would be nice, it wasn’t the money Maria was after; it was the principle of the thing. To her way of thinking, it was wrong not to allow girls to have their own routes, and this was one way to fight that injustice.

  For days after the parade, Charles Briggs had a heyday making rude comments to Maria about tomatoes. “Had any ripe tomatoes lately?” he taunted. “I hear they’re delicious!” Or, “How does your little sister like the color red?” Evelyn and Cathy always seemed to be nearby and twittered their high-pitched giggles. Maria did her best to ignore them.

  While she had to put up with Charles’s nonsense because of the parade, several of the eighth-grade girls, especially Abigail, treated her with new respect. Abigail invited Maria to sit with them at lunch. Even though the school term was nearly over and these girls would be in high school next year, Maria enjoyed the temporary diversion.

  She also enjoyed the warm spring evenings spent playing outdoors with Lloyd and Joanne when Maria’s family visited the Andersons’ home. Uncle Robert’s place had a spacious lawn with cropped grass in which they could run and play. Even Thomas lent a hand helping the younger ones play games of tag,
statues, and hide-and-seek.

  Libby joined in with hide-and-seek, but she wouldn’t hide in any places that might get her dress dirty. And when they threw each other around to play statues, she asked Thomas not to throw her so hard that she landed in the grass.

  “I’m not getting any grass stains on this dress,” she stated flatly.

  Aunt Josephine let them play until almost dusk. She trusted her two children to stay outdoors longer when the older cousins were around to watch them.

  One evening, the grown-ups had just finished several games of whist when Aunt Josephine called them all inside to cool off with glasses of sarsaparilla. The windows of the parlor were open, and the May breeze caught the heavy lace curtains and billowed them gently. Uncle Robert had the Victrola cranked up. His favorite song was playing, and he sang along:

  We were sailing along on Moonlight Bay.

  I could hear the voices singing, they seemed to say,

  You have stolen my heart, now don’t go ‘way

  As we sang love’s old sweet song on Moonlight Bay.

  When the song was finished, Uncle Robert moved the needle and played it again. It was a melancholy melody that made Maria feel all hazy and soft inside.

  “Maria,” Aunt Josephine said, jerking Maria out of her dreamy state, “I was just telling your mama that the suffrage association is making plans to set up a big tent at the state fair in July.”

  Maria was all ears. “Yes, ma’am?”

  “I wondered if you’d like to work at the tent. There’d be ever so many things you could do.”

  Maria had seated herself on the floor next to one of the open windows. Wisps of hair had escaped from her braids and were clinging to her damp face. She pushed them back. A couple of times when she was alone in her room, she’d tried to put her hair up like Mama did, but it was all slick and slithery and just slid back down again. Of course she didn’t use the curling iron like Mama did. But what was the use of so much bother? She didn’t care if her hair was all up in a fussy do anyhow.

  “What things might I be doing?” she wanted to know.

  Aunt Josephine smiled. “The purpose of having the tent is to recruit hundreds of new volunteers and to educate the public about our cause. We’ll do that with signs, packets of literature, and of course plenty of ice-cold lemonade and flavored ices. We may even show a flicker that has to do with women’s suffrage.”

  Curt looked up with interest. He loved the flickers.

  If Aunt Josephine had already talked to Mama, then permission must have already been given. “I’d love to help, Aunt Josephine,” Maria replied. “Put me down as a volunteer.”

  Aunt Josephine pulled out a small notebook from the nearby table. “Which days can you help?”

  “Every day, all day long will be fine with me.”

  “Don’t forget it’ll be powerful hot on the fairgrounds in July,” Libby reminded her older sister.

  “I can handle the heat,” Maria shot back. Just as quickly, she was sorry for being so brusque. She knew Libby didn’t mean anything by it.

  “Libby’s right.” Aunt Josephine took her pencil and scribbled a note or two. “I’ll put you down for all four days, but we’ll alternate afternoons and evenings. If you feel like doing more, you may. How’s that?”

  “Fine. Thank you for asking me.” Maria’s heart was tripping double-time at the thought. This wouldn’t be like a parade where she became swallowed up in the crowd. At the fair, she’d be shoulder-to-shoulder with the key women who worked with the city’s suffrage movement. Suddenly July seemed a long way off.

  To Mama, Aunt Josephine said, “Clara asked that you attend our next meeting, Christine, so you can assess the strength of our working women’s contingency. It’s to be held at the Ueland home early next Saturday evening. Will you go?”

  “Oh, Josephine,” Mama said with a sigh. “I don’t know. Can’t they get that information from someone else?”

  Maria knew Mama never liked to be away from home on her off-hours. Work already kept her away much more than she wanted to be. And Maria wondered if Mama would fit in at the Uelands’. After all, the Uelands were terribly wealthy.

  “Just this one time,” Aunt Josephine said. “Your input is as vital as any other person’s. Several of us are driving our automobiles out to the Uelands. I can pick you up and drop you off again when it’s over. It’s only four miles west of town.”

  Glancing over at Papa, Maria noted that he was allowing Mama to make the decision. He was good like that. He gave Mama leave to make a good many of her own decisions—unlike their neighbor, Johann Braun. Mrs. Braun could hardly breathe without her husband telling her when and how deep.

  “I suppose just this once,” Mama answered. “But I can’t devote much more time to the cause, Josephine. Truly I can’t.”

  Aunt Josephine smiled and made more notes in her little book.

  CHAPTER 8

  Maria, the Newsboy

  With obvious reluctance, Mama had gone with Aunt Josephine to the meeting at the Uelands’ home. When Mama returned, Libby was itching to know all about what the house looked like. But Mama was noncommittal. Comments like “It was a nice house” and “Mrs. Ueland is a nice lady” told them very little.

  Even Maria was a little curious. She’d never been inside a rich person’s house before. She knew she wouldn’t want to, either. That is, unless she were rich as well.

  The next day, Maria, Curt, and Thomas decided to approach Mama about the plan to have Maria help with the newspaper route during the summer.

  “But, Maria, I need you here to keep an eye on Libby,” Mama protested.

  “I’m almost nine,” Libby replied. “When Maria was nine, you thought she was old enough to take care of me.”

  Mama chuckled because Libby was exactly right. “But throwing papers is so unladylike,” she said. “I’d hoped you could hire out this summer as a mother’s helper to some family in a nearby neighborhood.”

  “She could still do that in the afternoons,” Thomas suggested.

  “Yes, I could,” Maria echoed.

  “With Maria’s help,” Curt put in, “Thomas and I can take one-half again as much territory, Mama. That’s quite a bit.”

  Mama looked from one child to another. She smiled. “All right. You may try out this plan. But if any circumstances should cause me to change my mind, I reserve the right to do so.”

  “I’m sure there won’t be.” Maria beamed with anticipation.

  The week before school was out marked the beginning of Maria’s new job. She got up each morning at the same time the boys did, donned an old pair of Thomas’s knickers, and pushed her blond braids up into one of the boy’s caps. The knickers now stayed in a drawer in the bureau in the girls’ room—a definite victory in Maria’s mind!

  At the newspaper office, she hung back so that the adults wouldn’t notice her. As soon as the bundles of papers were handed out, she and Curt and Thomas sat down in the alley and folded them. Then they loaded their bags.

  Within a couple days, Maria knew the names of most of the newsboys.

  “Yer sister’s quite a sport,” Tony said to Thomas one morning. “Ain’t many girls’d wanna do tough chores like throwing papers. ‘Specially so early in the morning. Most dames just wanna lay around and sleep late.”

  Maria wasn’t sure what Tony knew about “most dames,” but she glowed at his left-handed compliment. After the other boys had gone off with their papers, she mentioned to Thomas that she’d like to bring along a few biscuits for them each morning.

  “Be careful how you do that,” he warned. “They may be orphans, but they’re plenty proud of being on their own. You don’t want it to smack of some charity deal. That wouldn’t set well at all.”

  Maria would have to think about that. Perhaps helping these boys wasn’t going to be as easy as she’d thought. Thomas handed her bag to her and helped her adjust the strap. She’d learned to fold an old cloth and place it beneath the strap so it wouldn’t cu
t into her shoulder quite so much.

  “Why aren’t they in the orphanage?” she asked.

  Thomas shrugged. “Only so much room in an orphanage. You’ve never seen the Bohemian Flats. There’re so many poor little kids down there, a hundred orphanages couldn’t hold them all.”

  The Flats were the lowlands bordering the Mississippi River where poor immigrants often ended up. The houses were built from tar paper, tin, and scraps of lumber.

  “How could I have ever seen the Flats?” Maria said sharply. “I’m not even allowed to go to the dump.”

  Thomas shot her his lopsided grin. “Believe me, Maria, the Flats are a lot worse than the dump and more dangerous to boot.”

  “Someone should go in there and help those people,” she said softly, almost to herself.

  One morning Tony and Liver Lid both had black eyes and cut lips. It seemed they’d gotten in a scrap with the newsboys from the Journal. There was plenty of bad blood between the archrivals.

  “You’d think the newsboys would all stick together instead of fighting,” Maria said as she walked between her brothers on their way to their routes.

  “Since I’ve never lived alone on the streets, I wouldn’t know,” Thomas replied. “What I do know is that they’re used to fighting for everything and anything they get. Even space on a street corner.”

  Maria thought about that. Children having to fight to earn a few coins to be able to eat each day … It just wasn’t right. Then there were all those rich people, like the ones who owned Northwest Consolidated, where Papa worked. Rich people like Evelyn’s and Cathy’s parents. People like that could buy food for these boys with the money they spent just on a year’s worth of collar stays. Something wasn’t right.

  The newspapers said that the summer of 1914 was the hottest one in over a decade. No one needed to read about it to know it. The night of the elementary school graduation at the end of May had been stifling, and the weather just grew hotter for weeks.