Annie Pike Greenwood
Page 43
“Better vote for a poor man who believes as you do,” said one of our speakers, “than a clever man who believes in the opposite principles, for the clever man can do more harm by reason of his very efficiency in the wrong direction than the less capable man can do when he is trying his best along the line you believe right.”
I was convinced. I made up my mind to vote a perfectly unscratched ticket, a very difficult thing for me to decide. I find such fascination in revolting from the massed decision of a few people. Of course, if I had been included among the deciders...
We knew that the Old Parties would be winging down upon us in no time, and we all agreed to attend every rally. But we knew, what they did not, that they might talk their heads off, and it would not change our settled course. That laughing-stock Progressive Primary did not mean what the Republican and Democratic politicians thought it meant.
The Republicans came and—canny folk—brought with them frankfurters, buns, coffee, tin cups, canned milk, sugar, tin spoons, and a gasoline stove. Our Progressive farmers, and the one farm woman present, all fell to with the utmost cordiality of welcome when the refreshments were passed. There we sat, like dumb, driven cattle, chawnking away on our buns and hot dogs and swilling down our coffee, and Brer-Foxing by not sayin’ nothin’, and just regarding speaker after speaker with round, expressionless eyes, and every man and one woman of us with our minds made up past any changing. Fifty thousand, or more, years is a long time to bear injustice.
Then came Senator William E. Borah a-campaigning—not to the Greenwood school-house; he was too big for that. He was too big for anything. Almost too big for our puny universe. The star Betelgeuse, dwarfing the sun as it does, and washing out our globe as a wet sponge a fly speck—Betelgeuse would have been almost too small to accommodate him. Ramping and stamping and bellowing all over the State of Idaho he came, little politicians rushing out to meet him with threats and scrambling out of his scornful way to avoid being mashed under his foot.
From what Borah said, you could not have believed that he was in Congress by the vote of the people of Idaho, but solely by appointment of God Almighty Himself. And maybe he is, for in spite of all the poisonous, antagonistic fulminations of the other politicians of Idaho, Borah stays right on being a Senator in the Halls of Congress. He is a strong man, and not to be sniffed at, no matter whether we agree with him or not.
Borah began by condemning everything done by the Republicans during his absence from the state—the cabinet form of government, the state constabulary; coming out flat-footed for the direct primary, in spite of the convention plank in the Republican platform; splitting his party wide open and not giving a damn; challenging Moore, the Republican candidate for Governor, to reject the Republican platform and make one of his own.
I was sick with bronchitis on election day, but I was doing a big washing just the same. We had no money to pay for laundry work, and, besides, no laundry wagons came out into the sagebrush where the telephone and electric light had not yet penetrated. Some one in a car took me to town to vote, and I simply left the tub of suds standing, donned my coat and hat, and was off for the six-mile ride through the cold.
By this time, in the history of our district, some of our folks had old, rattletrap, second-hand cars—but cars just the same. The Progressives had requisitioned every one of these to get the farm folks to town. As we rode along, we passed car after car bringing voters back from Hazelton—that done, to start back again with more voters. Some of the drivers were in borrowed cars, Ben Temple for one, who year after year, when he planted his crop, smiled at the thought, “This here year I’m a-gonna git me a new sheepskin coat, by God!” But every year the crop cost more to raise than he could get for it; slipping back...slipping back...was good Ben Temple, and all his labor lost. I thought of that as I saw his tattered coat fluttering in the seat of that borrowed car.
I did not know Frank Melotte except as one might know a shadow. He lived on the desert edge, alone, in a tar-paper shack, and always had a brooding look about him. Returned volunteer, he was now trying to help the farmer in his battle, thus helping himself. He had been drafted into the World War, but nobody needed to draft him into the war for justice in which we farm folk were engaged. The car he drove was his own second-hand flivver.
It seems so strange to me now that my heart was not touched by that pitiable, round-shouldered, raw-handed, shabby farm woman I saw climbing down over the wagon-wheel in front of Irvine’s store back in Provo, as I sat so smugly, the Doctor’s daughter, in that fringed-top phaëton. On election day in 1922 I watched those poverty-stricken farm families walking on the streets of Hazelton with a painful swelling in my throat. A baby in the mother’s arms, in almost every case, and a baby a trifle older in the father’s arms, and scared, dumb, staring little fellows clinging to the father and mother at whatever vantage-point they could find, all of them dressed in the poorest of clothing. I could see back of them the years of thankless toil, the crops raised at greater cost than the price for which they could be sold—hopes blasted, year after year, ground down into the soil. Infamous, luxury-loving, self-indulgent Government of these United States! What do you mean by allowing interested profiteers to set the price of wheat below the cost of production and get away with it? What are you thinking of yourself in proposing any arbitrary price-fixing that is not based upon absolute computation of the actual cost of production?
That night the men stayed in town to watch election returns—and oh, how I envied them! To be alive in every pore as I was, and not to be allowed to live all the life I could live! I was up early, as usual, next morning, and at six o’clock I was busily engaged in turning hot cakes, pouring coffee, stirring fried potatoes, watching omelettes, frizzling bacon, setting table, skimming cream, and a few other little things, when I heard Ike Bennett’s wagon come lumbering into the farm on the road above the orchard. I remember my pancake-turner was poised for another cake flip-flop when in through the kitchen door they burst. Yes, our dear friend Hib, the baker, and jolly Steve Drake, and they were all singing, for my benefit, at the very tops of their voices, standing together for a moment so that I could get the full effect of their song:
Three cheers for the red, white, and blue!
Three cheers for the red, white, and blue!
The army and navy forever!...
Three cheers for the red, white, and blue!
As soon as their voices had ceased, but not the shining of their eyes, I cried breathlessly, “How did it go?”
“We’ve carried Jerome County, and we may have carried the State!” Ike Bennet assured me.
“It’s too good to be true,” I exclaimed happily. I had forgotten that Charley was now a State Senator. The farmer’s cause had swallowed up all selfishness on my part and, I am sure, on the part of the Baron also. When I thought of it, I was glad, for now perhaps he could do something in the Legislature for the Idaho farmers. But the thing that impressed me most of all was that two years before we had gained ten thousand more votes than in our first campaign, and that the Progressive year we had gained still ten thousand more. I knew from election returns that at the next campaign we needed only an additional five thousand and one votes to make the state Progressive. I had a vision that such would be the event. But I was just seeing things. There was something so seriously wrong with agriculture that only a governmental major operation could cut out the cancerous growth of rapacious middlemen. No, the farmers would not stick together; particularly blind were the farmers’ wives. And why should either of the Old Parties do anything for the farmer when it was sure of his vote anyway, because Pa had always voted that way, or we had always voted that way in our family...?
Through me, Charley drew the solid Mormon vote in both his elections. In our part of Idaho, when we first went there, the population was preponderantly Mormon, which meant not such an extravagant number even so. During Charley’s second campaign there were only a few among us, and the Mormon Sunday-school, which had u
sed the school-house one-half of each Sunday while the Union Sunday-school used it the other half, had entirely died out.
The Mormons who live in that part of Idaho are not much of a credit to the faith, the men proudly swelling their chests with the announcement, “I’m a Mormon!” and the next moment biting off a chaw from a plug of terbaccer or pulling out a whisky-flask with the kindly offer of a snootful, which, of course, are habits not sanctioned by the Mormon Church, though it is at present rather badly affected by modern trends of society. If the Mormon Church should stop sending its young men on missions, where they convert themselves, it could not retain its solidarity.
I know all that can be said against Mormonism. I doubt if any outsider knows the Mormon religion and its practises better than do I. Some of my very dearest friends are Mormons, and I have no desire to meddle with their faith, which cannot be any stranger than what I believe. I have no desire to meddle with the creed of any church. There is enough good in each one, if practised, to revolutionize the world in which it has influence. I do condemn the churches, including the Mormon Church, for not living an acting loving life as defined by Jesus, while going right on singing and praying about saving their little peanut souls. Forget it! Go out and save your brother man’s body and mind! Our souls can be trusted to take care of themselves. And, for God’s sake, cut out the ritualistic abracadabra dowsing-rods! There is nothing supernatural. “If anything is divine, all is divine; if anything is human, all is human.” “All things were made through Love, and without Love was not anything made that hath been made.” Nor can anything more be made of good to the human race except through absolutely disinterested, dis-creeded, dis-prejudiced, dis-judging Love!
At the Ladies’ Fancy work Improvement Club I was one day a guest. I was trying to behave myself properly because I had gone as the guest of my dear friend Mrs. Dan Jean. And then, of course, it had to happen. Two or three of the women began running down the Mormons. I wanted to keep my mouth shut. I always do too much talking. It is hard for me to believe that the world will get along about as well without my trying to reform it as if I were always in hot water because of my altruistic squabbling. I looked desperately around me for some one else to take my place, and there she sat, Mrs. Ross, a little, dark woman, and a Mormon, I knew.
“Mrs. Ross,” I said, beginning to be exasperated at her silence, “aren’t you a Mormon?”
“Why, yes,” she admitted, falteringly, “but I do think the ladies are right about this...”
“They are not!” I proclaimed boldly. “Maybe there is a rotten bunch of Mormons up here in southern Idaho. Perhaps you know them, Mrs. Ross, but I do not think you should allow it to be said that all Mormons are of the same stripe. Some of the finest people I know are Mormons...” and so on, and so on, for Mrs. Greenwood was galloping away, maybe on the Tenth Crusade again, the one she always wanted to lead. And there sat the other women, their faces growing harder and harder, and not a word in answer. What a fool I was! The Mormons must rise or fall by their own deeds, and nothing I can say will have any effect. If they are more interested in their rituals than they are in spreading disinterested Love throughout the whole world, and that is all the message Jesus brought, the Mormon Church also will die, along with the other churches that are now at their last gasp because they no longer function as missions for the unfortunate, from whatever source.
I could not go rampaging around, making other women hate me, without having it winded abroad that I was a Mormon. Thus, I pulled the Mormon vote, while Charley pulled all the rest. He was handsome, charming, with attractive manners, and that combination always makes all the women wonder how he ever happened to marry that woman, meaning me. I could tell them. I picked him out and picked him off, as nearly every woman does, if she has any gumption.
IN 1919, when Charley went to the Idaho Legislature as a Representative, there was a terrible epidemic of influenza sweeping the country. In our part of the world the school-houses were turned into hospitals, and folks died like flies around a saucer of poisoned paper. There were really not enough well folks to take care of the sick, and there was no one to go from any house to another house to help.
On the point of leaving for Boise, Charley was stricken. I nursed him through all right, but he was no sooner gone than Rhoda, Joe, and Walter fell sick. And then little Charles, my only help, struggling around sick so that I should not know, could no longer keep going.
In those days, when the bond was so strong between my children and me, I could cure the three younger ones by my words or my hands. I had not thought of this until Charles sickened. I made Charles feel faith enough in God that he was completely healed by morning. No sooner had I left the little fellow than I myself was prostrated. Again I declared my belief that my loving Creator had no intention that I should be sick with little children depending on me. I fell into a sound sleep, and awoke healed. I could have healed the other three had it occurred to me. It is man who limits the power of God by his lack of trust.
Charley was hardly gone to the Legislature as a State Senator when I was suddenly laid low with pneumonia, pleurisy, and facial neuralgia. There was not the faintest warning of my impending illness. As I stepped from an evening bath in the galvanized tub, I had to call to my children, a towel wrapped about me, and they came running, slipped my nightgown over my head, and between them fairly carried me to bed.
Hib was with us. He telegraphed for Charley, then scrubbed the house from bottom to top, using a tub and broom. We no longer had any rugs. Charley’s first act was to get some white mule from a friend who knew where there was a still. This man I married was a veritable angel of mercy in time of sickness, and he believed, as I believe, in that other angel of mercy in time of sickness, the benign alcohol. Because there are dipsomaniacs who should be under lock and key and the care of a physician, the rest of mankind were not to be allowed alcohol for medicine. Paul was wrong in so many of his teachings that he did more harm to the Message of Love than he did good. If my brother should not eat meat, I will not stop eating it. He must be put where it cannot bother him to see me eat it, or he must develop the will power to resist. No, I do not like Paul. He is no more sacred than I am. He was just a man, as I am a woman. We both believe in Jesus. But Paul had it in for the women. Some woman had jilted him. The scar of that disappointment shows through the drapery of nearly everything he says.
We had not abundance of bed linen, so every day Charley washed and ironed a change of sheets for my bed. Every day he bathed me from head to foot, and combed my hair, and prepared dainty things for me to eat, which I could not eat, I was suffering so. I should have gone insane without that corn likker to soothe away the pain occasionally. The Baron thought it would please me to hear him reading to the family. I was diverted through Pudd’nhead Wilson, but when he was about half through A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, I called, feebly, to have him shut the door. Even now it makes me feel sick, momentarily, to recall how I was tortured by even the faintest sound.
If I ever remark that I am not feeling well, it is a good idea for folks to put me to bed, forcibly if necessary, for I shall be on the point of death. My head so tyrannizes over my body that some day my body is going to die of it, and then it will be just too bad for my head, and serve it right. When I go down, I go down dead, and the faintest complaint is a serious signal. And when I come up, I come up bounding. No lingering convalescence for me. There are too many interesting things to do, and see, and smell, and hear, and taste, and feel. It is my head getting its innings at last, and a good thing for the body, too, for the time to forget you were ever ill is when you are getting well.
I cannot remember how soon I was well from that terrible torture. What happened, probably, was that suddenly one day I insisted on being wrapped in blankets and propped up before the typewriter. I cannot stop writing. Then I must read. Maybe all I could do that day. The next day I would try to dance. The third day I would be tottering about my work, on the job again.
There were to be no more political campaigns in Idaho for me. I was to go out to teach, to try by that means for a way out of the poverty of that sagebrush farm for my little family. Yet politics is to me the most worthwhile interest of an American citizen, and in my mind I am in the thick of national governmental affairs every day I live. I shall never stop wanting to taste up the political soup, stirring around with my spoon to find out just what is at the bottom of the brew, determinedly attempting to give justice to all by my vote, not afraid to admit mistakes, and backing any one else who has the same ambition, be he, or she, Democrat, Republican, or Socialist.
X—FAITH
THE wilderness had taught me lessons; I had learned from bearing children and from seeing death; I had taken part in the sagebrush recreations and outdoor sports; war brought knowledge which will last me the rest of my eternity; politics gave me an insight into practical economics. I had the greatest lesson yet to learn, one which I had never learned before, the lesson of faith. It did not last me always. I had to learn and relearn, until now I have no doubts, and nothing can shake my faith in a beneficent God. I am about to tell you of when I turned my case over to God, with such astonishingly dramatic results, at which time I was not a Christian. How I became a Christian, and to what it led, is a story in itself—a story not yet completed.