Something Worth Doing

by Jane Kirkpatrick

  “From the tongue of an intemperate woman.” Shirley smiled and shook her head. “I could never be so bold. How is Clara Belle? Does she still sing at the meetings?”

  “Sometimes. They have that new baby, and Stearns talks about moving them to the swamps of Washougal.”

  “You’re a grandmother? How wonderful.”

  “Is it? A sign of my aging. I do like the little tyke, though. But there’s little medical help in that Washington burg should she need it. The baby is sickly, it seems to me. And they don’t have the income to bring in help. Ben and I gave her one of his washing machines, but it’s still hard labor in the laundry.”

  “Will getting the vote mitigate those hardships, do you think? I sometimes wonder,” Shirley said.

  “At least it will allow women to help pass laws that let her keep the income she makes from eggs and butter and stitchery instead of having to hand it over to some man—unless, of course, she wants to do that. It’s about choices.” She sighed. “It has to make a difference, doesn’t it? Otherwise, is this effort all for nothing?”

  “Don’t you get discouraged, Abigail. Or we’ll all lose hope. We’re working to expand women’s opportunities. We all have gifts differing, isn’t that what St. Paul wrote to his followers, both men and women, I might add. You do what you can do, push for legal changes, quietly but faithfully gather women to organize.”

  “And urge my brother to remain quiet in his opposition as he’ll never support us. Then we’ll have a fighting chance.”

  TWENTY-SIX

  The Moving World

  1880

  _______

  The meetings were endless and not always productive, the smell of tobacco lingering on her jacket for hours after a discussion with a senator or house member. She’d come home, rub lavender on the cloth as it hung on the outside porch to air, reviewing what she’d said, how she’d managed the interview. Sometimes she thought she’d had a legislator’s vote, only to learn by the grapevine that he hadn’t committed at all. Other times she’d left the offices thick with memorabilia of photographs and family and the man’s special interests—horses, dogs, a brewery he stood in front of—thinking she had failed to have him even entertain the idea, when a woman at a meeting would report, “He’s seriously considering backing us.”

  She wondered.

  She hated the unpredictable nature of this still hunt, but it carried more hope than the rallies and parades. Somehow eye to eye carried weight. Even Shirley had said that she thought Oregon with its pioneering ways would be the first to get passage.

  Abigail found greater satisfaction in writing about the encounters. Once she told of an exchange not with a legislator but a potential voter that ended with the man saying his wife had long wanted a subscription to the New Northwest so she could read it at home, but she “hadn’t had the money.” He’d crowed that as a generous husband, he’d given the delivered paper to his wife as a gift and wasn’t that grand? Abigail agreed it was, adding that “if women had the vote and control over their money, your wife might one day use her money to buy you a special gift. Perhaps a ticket to a pugilistic event or even a new pipe.”

  “You’ve a point there, missus,” the new subscriber had said. “Something to consider.”

  That’s all she could hope for with a new conquest: that the man would consider the possibility that suffrage might have an advantage to him. At the same time, she showed her readers how diplomacy and humor could turn a patronizing man into a subscriber, while highlighting how women were still dependent on men in order to accomplish the simplest of wishes.

  It was how she had to manage legislators too. Gently, soothing their egos, always trying to find a way to show the advantage suffrage would be for them. A few listened and agreed because they believed in equality. But the women had to win over those most opposed in order to get sufficient backing. And in 1880, they did. The legislature agreed to refer to the voters the question of giving Oregon women the right to vote. The governor signed it. The first hurdle had been crossed. Now the second legislative session had to agree. “Onward to ’82” became the new motto.

  A spatter of rain hit the tin bucket sitting on the front porch. Otherwise Abigail wouldn’t have been aware that an April freshet washed the streets of Portland, matting the leaves, turning the day to darkness. Abigail was deep in reading the latest issue of her New Northwest.

  Kate had brought onto the paper’s pages excerpts from Mark Twain and writer Bret Hart; letters from Aunt Susan and local authors too. She’d even recommended a couple of pieces written by Willis. Abigail liked seeing young writers get into print, remembering how difficult it had been for her all those years before. Frances Fuller Victor, a prominent Oregon writer, had her works appear in San Francisco’s Overland Monthly and now Abigail’s New Northwest. Abigail’s own serialized novels appeared weekly, sometimes written in great haste. She was grateful Kate was there to give them polish, though she didn’t like changes beyond improved grammar. No discussion of characterization or plot ever resulted in a pleasant sisterly conversation. Letters to the editor often spoke of the novels and how they had moved readers, reassuring Abigail that words had power to change people. Her words could do that, both with her factual, journalistic pieces and with her fiction.

  Her women readers still wanted entertainment and a chance to dream of another life they might have had, one not so burdened with hard labor. Her novels served that purpose. Sometimes, when she wrote late at night with Ben snoring softly, she understood she too dreamed of another life, when a hero would have swept her off her feet—as Ben had—but who also took care of her—as Ben had not always. She put those longings into her characters and gave them courage to take risks, seeking happiness but always “doing good” and finding ways to forgive themselves for mistakes they made. She created hopeful endings, if not always happy ones. That gave her stories realism, she felt, and she resented the preachers who described her novels as both frivolous and spiritually harmful. Her poor readers were described as sinful. There were certainly greater affronts to God they might have railed against, including real men, not fictional ones, abandoning their wives and children.

  It was true, she did write of girls who became entangled with men and moralized about the tragedy of girls becoming pregnant without marriage. She could understand how such mistakes could happen—hadn’t her family been involved in that through her father’s wife? But such shenanigans meant a lack of discipline on the part of the woman and the man. Her novels emphasized how devastating the consequences could be when a girl didn’t wait until marriage. She wanted her children to read those stories—especially her sons.

  In between writing, she found herself attending more local meetings, balancing the politics between the Temperance Union’s wanting to pass their reforms and Abigail’s fear that the liquor industry would block suffrage efforts if the temperance ladies were successful. Abigail had good friends and supporters in the Jewish community led by Jacob Mayer, who had funded her millinery venture. She placed his ads for free, and he supported women’s suffrage and said he would work on his associates in the legislature. She wrote articles defending the Chinese and how it was a Chinese man who went into his store to bring out chairs for the comfort of the women when they protested an injustice. She noted that the people she was closest to were considered outsiders, Republicans, but working folks, not moving in the circles of her brother or the wives of investors. She didn’t mind being an outcast, but both Ben and Kate pointed out that she ought not to agitate those powers that be.

  “How else can we take them on but through the press. We can’t only be about the vote. Otherwise they don’t even see us, and what they do see they dimish.”

  “It cuts into our subscriptions,” Kate said.

  “And gives us bad press,” Wilkie had agreed.

  Not a week later, someone had written in the Albany paper that when she traveled, Abigail drank and entertained men in her hotel rooms. Abigail had defended herself agai
nst one Mr. Bunter, while at the same time saying if the original accuser didn’t want a slander suit, he might get the editor to retract his accusations or she’d get witnesses to some of the rumors she’d heard about him. “That should show him at last. The man has been a burr under my saddle for decades,” she told Kate.

  The Duniways thought all had died down, when another report appeared in the Portland Sunday Welcome, and Willis—back at the New Northwest—and Hubert decided to cane that editor, a level of force that stunned Abigail. How I have failed them.

  “Words,” she told them, tears in her eyes. “Not violence. Not ever.”

  The boys were arrested for assault and battery, and now letters addressed how the famous suffragist was unable to manage her own children. “See what comes of such activity,” wrote Mr. Bunter.

  “They’re grown men,” Abigail defended. “It’s a sorry day when a mother’s sons have to defend her.”

  A few of her minister friends came to her defense, and even Harvey wrote an editorial, taking to task any editor who would question the name of a “good and faithful mother.” She was as shocked at his support as she’d been with the ferocity of her sons’ defense of her.

  “I’m not much of a mother if my children disobey or act with cruelty before I could even make a written response.”

  Ben whittled on a block of wood, nodded at her outrage. He put it up and set the tea kettle on to heat. “At least the jury found the boys innocent and the editor admitted it was a ficticious story.”

  “Bunter never apologized.”

  “He never will. He’s a lost cause, Jenny. He’ll never vote for yours. Let’s hope the story winds down.”

  “You know it won’t. It’ll be a filler in the Walla Walla Union. Or front page of the Statesman.” She fumed, then sighed. “Advocating for rights requires a balance between notoriety and publicity.” Abigail shook her head. “A couple of the suffrage women have suggested I lower my celebrity for a time.” Could they be right?

  “We could use a little break in the financial drain your cause is taking.”

  “That’s the very fact of things. I could be a millionaire if I’d have invested in land instead of the paper and this important work, but what would I have in the end? I’d have money but at the expense of bettering a woman’s life. A man’s too, if they’d ever admit it. At least the bill to allow women to have control over their own property and money passed. Tiny gains.”

  “You’re on target to get the ’82 legislative vote.”

  “That we are.” She had to find moments of hope in the midst of this powerless swamp of old nemeses who took her to task and sons whose methods of confrontation startled her with their vehemence. She was grateful they wished to defend her good name. What mother wouldn’t be. But chastened that they thought aggression would be the proper proportion of response. Maybe they’ve learned that from me? She could get strident and perhaps “caned” with words no differently at times than the actual hickory sticks they’d used.

  The Woman Suffrage Amendment was proposed in the United States Congress, a sure sign of progress nationwide. It added to the hopefulness of the individual meetings Abigail scheduled with legislators, old men sucking on their pipes and cigars. “I’m not sure why they send grown men who are not yet weaned to make laws for women,” she told Ben after one visit to the Washington legislature.

  “I hope you didn’t say that.”

  “Not to their faces, but it’s a good line and I’ll find a time to use it.”

  “Not while you’re trying to win them over, Jenny.”

  “You’re right. I’m grumpy. We were making such gains and then Kate’s leaving—” Her voice caught and she felt tears come. “What did I do?”

  “Nothing.” Ben patted her shoulder.

  They’d gone to the old farm where Ben had once trained horses and saddled two calm mares. Ben had insisted that she get some sunshine and do something she once loved. She had loved the wind on her face riding a fast horse. There’d be no racing, what with her prolapsed uterus and Ben’s back. But side by side with Ben, the control of the horse by the reins in her hands, the brace of breeze on this April day was invigorating. She needed that now.

  Yes, they’d made good advances, first with the passage of a bill to allow women—and men—to vote in all school elections. Abigail had promoted such action in her newspaper and spoke of it at various meetings. If a woman was capable of teaching young men, she ought to be able to vote about what they should be taught. The legislature had agreed. The same year, women were granted freedom to manage their own property, own it without spousal consent.

  “I need to rejoice with these new laws, but they add to Harvey’s editorials as yet another reason why suffrage isn’t needed. ‘Men are taking care of women, so women need not lower themselves to the legislative floor in order to gain rights.’” She mocked her brother with a fake voice, pontificating as he did at family gatherings. He’d gotten even more pompous with their father’s death and his being the head of the Scott clan. He’d also gotten more odious in his objection to the woman’s vote. Until their father’s death in 1880, Abigail hadn’t realized that her father had been a mitigating force on the suffrage issue between his daughters and his one surviving son.

  Still, it had been Kate’s leaving the New Northwest that had hurt her the most. She had always thought it would be Harvey who betrayed her.

  “The Daily Bee gives her a chance to lead the team. She can write more too. And it helps Don and Clara Belle as well.”

  “But it’s an inferior paper. He gives it away for free, Ben! No wonder those children live hand-to-mouth. How can he make any money giving a paper away?”

  “They aren’t children. And Kate tells me he prints invitations and posters—for a fee, of course. And he sells ads. People love free things, you know that.”

  Why did it seem that things could go smoothly on a trail only for a short time but that rugged roads went on forever?

  “It’s time,” Kate had said that morning in February when she told of her taking the new position, leaving Abigail on a boulder-strewn road just when things were looking up with the legislature. “And he offered me more money than you can afford, not that that’s the best reason to do anything. You have to make cuts somewhere, and Abigail, you’re a fine editor.”

  She was a fine editor, but Kate had given the paper polish and shine, freeing Abigail to travel and lecture. She’d need to do more of that, not less, with the hope to get a bill before the legislature by 1884 and continue to support the Duniway Publishing enterprise, not to mention her efforts to encourage Washington’s, California’s, and Idaho’s voting campaigns.

  “But he’s a competitor,” Abigail said. “And he took my Clara Belle away and now you too.” She rolled her lower lip out in a pout.

  “You could be pleased that your daughter married into the news business and that your sister, too, will be an editor of another paper that could promote our cause.” Kate’s curls cascaded down the side of her face, perfectly coiffed, and she pushed them from her cheek.

  She has to get up early to have her person look so together. Abigail touched her own hair, tucked in stray strands. She planned to try the new bob look, smooth at the sides, the way Susan B. wore her hair. But Ben loved brushing her long hair for her.

  “We’re in the same business, Jenny, and yes, competing, but that competition keeps us sharp.” Kate’s eyes softened, and Abigail saw in them sympathy. And kindness. “I’ll be closer to Clara Belle too. And little Earl.”

  “She brings the baby to work?”

  “As her forward-thinking mother did.”

  Kate picked up her personal things, her special pen and ink set, and her teaching certificate she’d had framed and hung on the wall. “I won’t stop working for the vote. You know that.”

  “You’ve cut my feathers, though.”

  “You can blame me for keeping you home a little more.” She sneezed then, and Abigail worried for her health. “J
ust the dust,” Kate had said.

  Abigail’s horse shook its head and blew through its nose and brought her back to this glorious spring day. She pulled up and turned toward Ben. “I hope she’ll carry suffrage articles in the Bee, maybe reprint a few of my pieces.” She sighed. Was there nothing she could do about this? “The world is moving and women are moving with it. That’s what I told her, Ben.”

  “She’ll use that saying as a filler.”

  “Just so she credits it to her older sister. Let’s go back.” They turned the horses on the dirt trail. Apple trees had leafed out and promised blooms. “She told me that the Daily Bee will be a Republican paper, so I can rest easy that we have another voice in our fight. She said she was glad I’d talked her into leaving teaching to become a newspaper editor, that I’d paid her well and treated her fairly, that we are still working together. But it doesn’t feel that way. I probably took her for granted.” Do I take everyone I love for granted?

  “You’re still on the same team, Jenny.”

  “I hope so. I don’t need any more editorials complaining about my strident voice. Kate helped temper my tone.” She wiped at the tears on her cheek. Who will do that now? The world was changing and women with it. She’d have to change too.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Drawing Closer

  1882

  _______

  Abigail had accepted with pleasure the invitation to speak at the Idaho statehood planning convention. It took her to a new landscape. Her stagecoaches rolled across the trails, with canvas window coverings rolled down to hold out at least a portion of the dust. But when they stopped to change horse teams, or she rose in the early morning to catch the dawn, she stood in awe at the vistas. Mountains like purple lace circled the prairies, and she was always imbued with a hopefulness, an inevitability that progress would happen for women, that such a landscape not only promised it but helped shape it. At one stage stop, she met Carrie Strahorn, another writer and wife of a railroad promoter, her husband an author as well. They laughed at the terrible coffee as they looked out across sagebrush dipped in sunrise. They spoke of women’s rights. The air was crisp, and they parted as sisters in the cause, each taking a stage in a different direction.