Annie Pike Greenwood

by We Sagebrush Folks

  Next day I sat in the gallery of the House of Representatives, proudly wearing my new black-satin hat, and watched and listened as Charley fought to save the overburdened farmers of our part of Minidoka County from the self-interested plan of Banker John Thom and his Republican friend, Governor Davis. The Baron’s handsome figure moved before a map, a pointer in his hand. He was wearing millionaire-tailored clothes found in a box from his sister Laura. How fortunate it was that Charley’s brother-in-law and he were of identical figure. I was proud of him, but I was apprehensive. What he could accomplish in that hostile atmosphere was the ripple of a polliwog’s tail among a shoal of sharks.

  As soon as I returned to the farm, I wrote an account of this fight, and the Atlantic Monthly paid me another hundred dollars. Then it was that Governor Davis had a letter in the Atlantic, saying that I did not tell the truth. John Thom published a magazine in which he made the same statement, adding, moreover, that all the farmers in our part of Idaho were prosperous—they were, in his magazine. I was a poor farm woman. Probably what I wrote did look warped from the points of view of a successful Republican politician and a successful banker. It is conceivable that for them the very truth would take on a different aspect from what it disclosed to me. The Statesman said I wrote the truth.

  Senator Henrik Shipstead of Minnesota wrote me that he had nearly decided to keep out of politics, but when he read my articles, they determined him to get a seat in the Senate so that he could help the farmers. Governor Lynn Frazier of North Dakota, now Senator, also wrote, commending my work for the farmer.

  Besides these two men, I number in the Senate among my personal friends Senators Elbert Thomas and William H. King, the latter a brother of a girlhood sweetheart of mine. And there is my father’s friend, George Sutherland, so often in our home, on the Supreme Bench, so that I now have just as much passion for politics as in my sagebrush days. It is in my blood.

  I rightly say that it is in my blood, not because my father was a politician, but because my childhood was made aware of politics by things which are unforgettable. I sat on the horse-block in front of our beautiful home, a little girl, fascinated by the flickering kerosene torches of two opposing rallies. Buggies and wagons drove slowly past, harnesses creaking, as the drivers kept even with the marching, shouting men. Bands!—there were actually seven of them in the procession in which Reed Smoot, Will King, and Dr. Pike’s hired man carried flambeaux. The opposing parade had the glory of the Salt Lake Marching Club, dressed in full, Oriental breeches, shiny black boots, zouave jackets trimmed with gilt braid, and little red Turkish caps. With these marched George Sutherland and Dr. Pike. Of course, not long after this Reed Smoot and Will King parted company. But that night they were rallying against George Sutherland, who was running for the office of Mayor of Provo. He suffered a crushing defeat. But instead of committing suicide, on he went, until he reached the job of Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.

  My father had gone to the Legislature of Utah—I had thought he was going to Washington to help the President. Anyhow, the band played just as loudly in front of our home as though he had. And here was Charley, my husband, in the Idaho Legislature.

  THE FIRST PLANK of the Non-Partisan platform was not for the farmers, but for the soldiers—our boys were still Over There. The Non-Partisans promised the soldiers one year’s moratorium on debts contracted previous to the war. In case the soldier wished to farm, this might give him a chance to succeed. It was persistently rumored that the Government meant to give all soldiers so disposed allotments of land for farming, and that this land was to be that very tall-sagebrush land where little Charles, in his red coat, had been lost that first year after we came to Idaho. The last I knew, that land was still uninhabited.

  Our Non-Partisan legislators, from all the counties of the State, worked frantically to put this over as a welcoming gesture for the boys, who might come home any time—the War, of course, was only going to last a few weeks, or months, at the worst. But the Republicans had a different plan, and, being in power, they were able to put it across. No jobs—oh, my, no! All a soldier wanted as reward for his compulsory murderings was to see his name in print, to have a ribbon with a piece of metal attached pinned on his breast, and to gawp at a statue erected in his agglomerate honor. He had no stomach, no family, no necessity for a bed. Waving the star-spangled banner and hearing spouted to a crowd of dormant folks: “We are honoring here today, fellow-citizens...one of the boys...umpty-umpty-ump...sacrifice...umpty-ump...country...umpty-ump...brave...umpty-ump...‘In Flanders fields the poppies blow...throw...grow...umpty-ump...That was all the returned boys needed.

  The Republicans voted them monuments, all alike, after the manner of so many dozens of spoons, one to be placed in each county-seat, so that when the boys were going around from place to place, looking for jobs and being turned down, they could crawl around at the end of the day and gawp and gawp at all that glory made into a big doll to stand up in a public place where nobody would ever look at it after the politicians had the fun of having one of the wives unveil it, and one of themselves star-spangle speech it, before a mass of sheep in human form with hearts which would be sheep or wolf according to what the speecher wanted them to be.

  As I sat in the dentist’s chair having my teeth fixed, I could see through the window, over the sash curtain, myriads of black flags waving in the breeze. I said to the dentist, “What are all those black flags waving out there?”

  He stopped his work of mixing a filling to glance out of the window. “Those? Oh, those are just the American flag! They were put up there when the boys left for the war, and they have never been taken down.”

  As I sat there, I wondered what those boys would think when they returned, quietly, from the front, walking up those streets where they had marched so proudly, scores of bright, red-striped, blue, starry banners floating from every building, and now—nothing but black flags...debased black flags...no jobs...a lot of insignificant statues stuck up for the pleasure of the unthinking politicians. Well, you see, they were either the creditors of the soldiers, or their friends were, and the State could pay for the statues, but who would pay what the soldiers owed? A year is a long time to wait for your money—but a longer time to wait for a job, hounded by your creditors.

  We favored the League of Nations in our platform, but of course we got nowhere with that. And the Non-Partisans, together with some disinterested representatives in both the old parties, passed a very fine education law, which came to nothing whatever because an enabling act was not included.

  The Non-Partisans successfully stood against the eight-hour labor law for women, because the politicians, induced by the business men, amended the law to read, “except in emergency.” Idaho already had a nine-hour law for women which was really being enforced. The eight-hour law, with that vicious amendment, would have meant that employers of women might declare an emergency lasting for fourteen or more hours.

  The Idaho Statesman thought I wronged it in criticisms I made of a front-page article published by that generally estimable paper. A certain well-known Boise minister had been sent to France, at the expense of interested politicians, to secure as many signatures of Idaho soldiers as possible to a set of resolutions denouncing the Non-Partisan League. You see, it would be easy for a minister of the gospel to circulate among the boys. He would be under no suspicion of playing politics in the trenches. It would be taken for granted, when he was allowed to go where he would, that he was preparing the souls of men to meet their Maker. If they were being prepared to live, that might have been thwarted, but dying is so much more unimportant. So come on, holy man! You cannot do any harm, and maybe you can make these conscripts resigned to the butchering!

  But the effect of the holy man’s mission was to betray the farmers. There were several hundreds of our Idaho boys Over There, and the very fact that, for all his circulating about, dodging shells, and slinking here and there into dugouts, he could obtain only sixty na
mes is extremely significant. But take those sixty names and spread them across the front of the best paper in Idaho, and they can be made to look like sixty million.

  Nobody will ever know how black was the misrepresentation of the Non-Partisan League made by that minister of the gospel. But if he misrepresented the farmers as the churches and ministers thereof misrepresent the Christ, then it was aplenty. It is the churches that have compromised the Christian message. Love was the whole gospel of Jesus. Not love of your own soul, but love of your fellowman—particularly of little children, the victims of a barbarous civilization, who flower into suicides, murderers, racketeers, kidnappers, even the conscienceless rich. The churches damn their own souls with their chanted rituals. The only church that is not damning its own soul psychically, and that means spiritually, is that church which, when the minister’s appeal is ended, goes out immediately with love in its heart and a bread-basket over its arm.

  The world is full of benighted weaklings, who follow, like sheep, the strongest voice. It was these among us farmers who caused our defeat at election, although we did make a brave showing. When they saw those sixty names on the front page of the Statesman, the panic-stricken farm people suddenly remembered the safe fold: Pa had always been a Republican, or a Democrat, and our family always voted that ticket, and so I...The poor Idaho soldiers, hundreds as they were, lost through sixty men their only offer of any personal compensation for their confiscated years.

  Home again from Boise, there was more than enough to do. I never wrote in the daytime. It seemed to me that until I was successful, I had no right to write except at such times as other women would be doing fancywork, or reading, or going to the movies. The tired worst of me went into those night writings, yet they were accepted by editors. I had time only for short articles. When I realized that longer articles might be acceptable to the better magazines, I had the frantic thought of carbon-copying my letters to my folks. They had written me how much they enjoyed this account, or laughed at that, or shuddered at the other. I do not believe that our human relationships should be neglected for anything else. Our dear ones, relations and friends, are the greatest riches we have, and without them how empty is wealth! I did not begrudge those I loved, who loved me, the letters I wrote, ghostly in the murk of farmer smoke. Little enough, I think it was, to pay for those boxes of things which kept us clothed and the loving letters I received.

  Cousin Joe wrote me something which put into my head the idea of those carboned letters. I sent the originals to Ellery Sedgwick of the Atlantic, first drafts though they were. One of my letters that he printed was written to Charley, left behind in Boise, fighting uselessly for the farmer. I give a portion of it here, as it so reflects my little children at that time.

  The description in the Digest of how grateful our poor wounded boys were Over There for their ice-cream, served only to the seriously wounded, made me press my hands to my eyes to keep the children from seeing the tears that would have flowed.

  Little Charles! He has been trying all day to express how much he missed me while I was gone, and how glad he is that I have come back. But in between his protestations of love, he was a very limb of Satan. For that matter, all my little branches were limbs of Satan today. Perhaps it was because it was wash-day. You know I hate the smell of soap-suds as much as you hate the smell of manure. So it is just possible that mother’s mood may have played a part in the complexion of the day.

  You should have had a movie of our family life. I fear you would never return. It began early, with Rhoda dashing to the reservoir for a dipper of hot water. She had been playing in cold water—you know what a fish she is—and she wanted to warm her hands. Charles interposed himself like another Roderick Dhu.

  This reservoir shall fly

  From its firm base as soon as I.

  Rhoda believes that actions speak louder than words, so she up with the dipper and whacked him over the head. Charles was dazed, but one of his feet remembered the proper answer; and upon Rhoda’s screech, Walter took a hand, and in his forcible efforts to punish Charles for mistreating his sister, he stepped on Joe’s hand. Now, I leave you to imagine the orchestration.

  It had all happened in the wink of an eye, and their poor mother was totally unprepared for the terrific bedlam. I thought, “I must do something quickly, but, what?” What would you have done? I’ll tell you what I did: I broke into peals of laughter that stopped every last one of those children dead in their tracks, their last yells frozen on their faces. I believe they thought that at last they had driven their distracted mother insane.

  Taking advantage of the sudden lull, I told Charles to try the boat for which I made a sail yesterday in the tub of water in the kitchen, directed Rhoda to watch him, took little Joe on my lap and nursed his hand, and whispered to Walter, “You won’t interfere any more with the children, will you?”

  “I don’t know whether you mean yes or no, mamma, but I’ll try,” he said.

  Again, in a quite heartless manner, I laughed at my children’s cries of woe. But I secreted my head behind the wringer to do so, and did not let them see me. Joe didn’t like something, and in a fit of temper threw himself on the floor screaming. That is something I will not tolerate, so I spanked him and laid him across a chair where he could enjoy his grief at his leisure.

  Charles saw his opportunity, and began to imitate Joe’s cries, which, of course, made Joe bellow all the more. I looked in on Charles meaningly. All that I accomplished was that Charles lowered his tones to what he thought was about right to reach Joe’s ears and escape mine. But I was on the job. I slipped through the bedroom, catching him unawares, and gave him a nice sample of Ivory Soap. Now you may add Charles’ howls to Joe’s.

  Rhoda, hearing his agonized cries, began also to cry at the top of her lungs through sympathy. Of course, Joe, who had failed to notice mamma applying the bad-boy cleanser, supposed that Charles was giving a more vigorous imitation, so his howls of protestation grew louder also. Thank goodness we do not live in an apartment house!

  I went right on with my work serenely. I felt neither anger, sorrow, nor amusement, until Walter leaned over me (he was turning the wringer) and at the climax of the orgy of wails murmured, “Mid-African jungle.”

  It sounded so exactly like a jungle of wild animals giving voice to their emotions that I shook with laughter. Charles found it the proper occasion to brush his teeth, which he did for upwards of half an hour. And it effected a complete cure—at least for today, which is saying a good deal for a child who likes to tease as docs Charles.

  WE SAGEBRUSH FARMERS took our politics seriously, as everyone else in the United States of North America should do. The men did more thinking nationally than the women did. All the women and most of the men were voting as they voted because some one in their families had voted that way before them. It was unintelligent. But it may have worked some of the time. Witness me. I voted against Franklin D. Roosevelt, and no one mourned the ousting of Herbert Hoover more than I did. I still think Mr. Roosevelt’s speeches were very weak before his election. I sat before my radio, scornfully listening to him assure the Mormon Church that the railroads in which it is interested would have adequate protection, just as I scornfully listened, in the same manner, to Charles Curtis, in the Mormon Tabernacle, the same church edifice used by Roosevelt, making a political speech in favor of Reed Smoot. It was not a matter of politics with me. The whole thing looked shoddy.

  But now...yes, Roosevelt is the man we need. Action! Action! Mistakes? Of course! We learn by mistakes. But we learn nothing by inaction. You must plunge into the water, or you will never know whether it is hot or cold; whether it will help your rheumatism or leave you as crippled as you were. It does not matter how many commissions you appoint to think and investigate for you. In the end you must plunge and find out something for yourself by action. Talking is most pernicious. We Americans are a nation of loose-mouthed spectators. How many of us are really living? We are not even a nation of think
ing Hamlets. But the result will be the same—bloody murder of the innocent along with the guilty.

  The Progressive Party was the successor of the Non-Partisan League. Once again Ray McKaig got out and built a state-wide organization. Tactics were different in the Progressive Party. The League had generally simply indorsed men nominated by one or other of the old parties. The Progressive Party put its own men in the field. They even tried to get William E. Borah to head the ticket as a Presidential nominee, but Borah was nobody’s fool, to risk all he has gained in Congress in order to be defeated for the office of President.

  I was asked to stand on the Progressive ticket for County Superintendent of Schools. This invitation filled me with elation. I had always wanted to try out certain educational ideas, and this looked like an opportunity. I thrilled at the thought and began planning nearly all the school work for outdoor, applied experimentation. The pupils would go to Steve Drake’s farm and measure his hay. They would go to Dan Jean’s and calculate the percentage of profit that should accrue from his wheat crop, considering all factors. They would study the geological formations, the lava, the craters, there in our back yards. They would bring all their treasures of Indian arrowheads and spear-heads, so liberally sprinkled over all our farms, and while they walked the fields looking for more, their teacher would tell them the history of mankind. Good-by to the school-houses, the prisons of childhood! Good-by to every teacher who was not healthy enough or interested enough or informed enough to go out-of-doors with those youngsters and keep up with their bodies and their minds! Oh joy, to learn without a text-book in your hand!

  I had a shock coming to me. After even the slightest investigation I discovered that the office of County Superintendent of Schools was nothing but a bookkeeping job, a job which a brainless cash register might do, and only called a job because politicians need offices. And there was a rigid, ironclad Course of Study, which must not be monkeyed with under any consideration. You have to have Courses of Study for uninspired, unintelligent teachers who are just in the school-room to draw their pay.