Four of a Kind: A women's historical fiction

by Russell, Vanessa

  Mama shook her head adamantly, and for a good moment I thought she was going to scold Opal. “I just can’t imagine! Sinners they are! If this group of women thinks like men, what’s next? Will they start dressing like men as well?” She began rearranging things in the basket.

  I could be quiet no more. “Really, Mama! They are simply asking that all women have a right to be heard and counted.”

  Opal shook her head adamantly. “I hear you, Ruby, but it makes no difference in the end. The results are the same, for the wife should follow the husband in what he does.”

  Edith held the soap under my nose. “Isn’t this the sweetest smelling soap of any in town? I got the idea from you and your dried lavender. I crushed some lilacs and some dried herbs and started experimenting. Pennies go a long way toward feed and farm tools. Making soap costs nothing and uses up all that ash and grease from the winter.”

  “Well, anyway, you be careful out there with those city women, Ruby,” Mama said. “Mark my words, girls. We are nearing the end of time when we see the devil move from men to women. Another Eve in our garden.”

  What is love?

  Ladies, liberate yourselves from the drudgery of dirt! What you long for is a picnic amongst the rabbits, so why stay indoors with the dust bunnies? Ease your burdens and take the rest of the day off with this time-saving Home Washing Machine. For only fifteen dollars this machine will take away your worries and red hands and do the work of mothers and daughters. No rubbing or beating – soiled garments are whitened without friction - so consequently no injury. The currents of water passing through the fabrics cause no wear. Boiling water and a good soap is all that is necessary. The base is made of sturdy pine and the crank is easy to turn. While some labor is required, any intelligent woman will find this a labor of love. The Home Washing Machine promises to be to the housewife what the motor car is to the husband.

  I dropped my pen. What tacky tactics! No substance; like soap bubbles without the soap. No mission except to convince naïve women to buy yet another product. Hardly a cause to work hard for. But work hard I did because frankly those wages came in handy to replace those weathered and worn travel clothes I previously lived in. The remainder I gave to the Lighthouse household account. It was time I started giving back. So I treated each working day as a means of collection to earn my keep. This form of independence I was unfamiliar with. Funding from the suffrage association had paid for my trips and lodging with fellow suffragists for years, and upkeep and menus for my home in the Lighthouse were covered by monthly checks from Thomas to Lizzie.

  I was accustomed to taking orders from a woman, so to repeatedly be ordered about by Thomas’ assistant editor, Mr. Shilling (or Chilling, or Shivering, or Shelling I liked to think when perturbed by him), proved a difficult transition. I was given one badly scarred wooden desk holding one drawer underneath, and a typewriter on top with sticking letters of R and T (the most commonly used letters of course), and a barely productive type ribbon. Dare may read like dave, if you dared read it at all. I was in a long room with all-male reporters who were quite filled with smoking breath and cursing shouts. These men were a crude species and I only had hope for my man-kind when Thomas approached my desk. I gave him a justified smile one such day, when reading over my advertisement for The Home Washing Machine.

  “I told these hounds around you that you smiled. I also told them you could be witty in a quaint old-fashioned way.”

  I took back my smile and replaced it with pinched lips. “Yes, I have a rather mid-Victorian flavor, don’t I?”

  He perched on the edge of my desk with such comfortable ease, I felt envious. He looked down at my hair twisted back into a bun, my back straightened with exaggerated posture, my hands docile in my lap, and he laughed heartily. “You are a modern lady who just doesn’t yet know how to have fun. Someday I might teach you, but it won’t be today. Today I have an assignment for you. Come with me.”

  I grabbed my hat and coat and tried to follow closely to his long strides, my lengthy straight skirt having me resort to a silly pony gait.

  His motor car was parked out front and he opened the passenger door for me. “A riot is brewing at the textile mill.”

  I stopped and waited for more.

  “Your sister, Pearl, is working there, correct?”

  I nodded.

  “The United Textile Workers Union is there asking women to sign up, and it’s creating quite a buzz. Get in and we’ll motor over.”

  I obeyed and then waited until he did the same on the driver’s side. His new Duisenberg was a beauty in the daylight, the details of which I’d heard at great lengths on our ride out to Hullabaloo’s the other night. It hummed quite nicely as we bumped and splashed along the pitted muddy streets through the rain.

  “Do you want me to handle the story?” I asked hopefully, wanting some substance to write about.

  “No, I already have a reporter there gathering the facts. I thought you would be interested in seeing how the other side lives and why these women ask for labor laws to protect them. Does Pearl not talk to you about working at the mill?”

  I squirmed uncomfortably under such direct questioning. I knew little about her. “Pearl and I lead very different lives, Thomas. I don’t even understand some of the language she uses. She’s so crude, really, and the way she dresses.” I stopped here and shook my head, not able to go on with something I didn’t understand.

  “She’s not so different, Bess. She’s searching for answers just like we are.”

  I was caught off guard by the use of ‘we’ – he seemed to have all the answers - and changed the subject. “You don’t have a Model-T like everyone else?”

  “No thanks. Ford doesn’t need my money. He makes two hundred thousand a day making Model-Ts and Model-As. The real reason is I’m on the road so much I need more comfort. I was down in North Carolina a few months ago and slept on my backseat because a rainstorm had muddied the one good road to where I sank into mud up to my hubs. I had to wait two days before the road dried enough to continue. The government is offering federal money for highway construction. It will create more employment, increase use of motor cars, and more people will be out traveling, visiting, and spending money. The growing prosperity of this country is because of the motor car. Remember I said that.”

  “Oh, and I thought it was because of my catchy advertisements.” I said, trying to mock his southern drawl, but my words sounded stiff and flat, compared to his soft vowels.

  He smacked his palm against the steering wheel. “See, I was right. You are witty!”

  I glanced over at his profile and felt warmed by his presence. I pulled my eyes away from his mouth and tried to concentrate on the street’s next pothole. I didn’t agree with his motor car theory. I preferred the train as a mode of transportation myself, its metal tracks connecting the states like no road ever could. How could the government afford cutting and dynamiting paved strips of ribbon through farmers’ fields, home yards, mountains and canyons, removing anything in front of them, including houses and villages, only to force families’ added expense of private motor cars?

  We soon pulled up alongside the gate to the factory, its two-story building no more ornate than a child’s building block. A tent protected a long table outside the side entrance. A banner sagged in front of the tent like a baby’s wet diaper, reading ‘United Textile Women Workers’.

  I tiptoed between mud puddles, once almost losing my shoe to the mud’s suction and finally made my way to the inner tent, more out of a desire to escape the rain, than of curiosity. Ten or so women were standing about or leaning over the table writing in ledgers, two seated women were deep in discussions. No one acknowledged our entrance. I assumed Thomas expected me to ask questions about the purpose of such a union, but when I approached the table my attention was drawn to the easel beside them. Thumb tacked there was my article on Equal Rights with a thick red X marked through it. Written above it in big bold letters was ‘Women ARE Women!” C
rude notes were posted around the paper with name-calling I shall not name here. Suffice it to say, my article was not favored.

  In my defense, I believed the Equal Rights Amendment would give equal rights to women with men. Yet only with another long uphill climb – many working-class and trade union women opposed it, saying they benefited more from labor legislation that gave a special category of benefits for working women. They had their side, I had mine. Another battle. One I was too exhausted to commit to. So it was with dispassionate belief that I had written the article.

  Nonetheless I was livid with the red X, as if they’d used my blood to mark it. How dare this lower working class criticize my learned research and findings! What did they contribute toward women’s rights? I recognized not one of them in any of the women’s parties to fight for suffrage. This was how they supported other women who fought on their behalf?

  I leaned over the table, and parroting much of what I wrote, spoke loudly to the two women seated there. “Women are women? This is a common sentimental old argument. What does this mean? Weaker. Defenseless. More susceptible to accidents and disease than men. Mothers or potential mothers, nothing more. We all know that’s not true. What about the Great War? Eight million working women took over practically every trade formerly owned by men. While men fought the war, more than a million women provided them the ammunition. For four years, they worked long hours in the war industries of factories, mills, shipyards, workshops, and laboratories. Did they complain that they were weaker and defenseless? Of course not. Why are we doing this now? Approximately seven million women are wage-earners – that is one out of four women in the paid labor force. Nearly two million of these women are married, so the image of the only women workers being the wretched virgins fluttering between the schoolroom and the matrimonial altar is a façade.”

  When I paused for breath, I heard someone to the side of me snicker. “You said ‘virgin’.”

  I turned to scarcely recognize my own sister. Dressed in men’s trousers and a tweed jacket buttoned to her neck, collar up, a man’s cap completed her ensemble. The sack dress was better than this. I felt terribly embarrassed for Pearl and for me as her sister. I opened my mouth to rebuke her but she beat me to the punch.

  “Why are you here?” she asked, her tone not curious but critical.

  The rain pattering on the outside of the tent became noticeably louder, as if pounding to get in.

  I looked above me hoping to avoid any potential water drops on my wool coat and then brushed some drops off my sleeve. The bigger problem was that I wasn’t exactly sure why I was there.

  Thomas stepped in. “Pearl, your sister and I just wanted to make sure you were in good form. We’d heard there were altercations earlier.”

  “Your sister?” another woman cried, entering in our circle. Her baggy calico dress and coat looked many years old. Her face didn’t look any younger, with pale pocked skin and raccoon shadows around her eyes. “Isn’t she the one who wrote that nonsense in the paper about equality with men? Work here lady; I’ll show you equality!”

  Pearl rolled her eyes at Thomas as if to say, thanks for letting the cat out of the bag. She folded her arms across her chest. “Sister, now that everyone knows who you are, perhaps you won’t mind explaining what you mean by equality. Before protective labor laws, we were equal to work twelve-hour days but not free to refuse it. And take Ethel here.” She jerked her thumb toward the baggy coat, “She’ll lose her job if they find she’s pregnant. How can pregnant women have equality with men? Besides, we don’t compete with men. We get leftovers. No man wants these under-paid, unskilled jobs.”

  Pearl’s eyebrows were completely covered by hair flattened down by the cap. I wondered why she spoke good English only when dressed like a man.

  “That’s right, Miss … ?” Our attention turned to one of the ladies seated behind the table.

  “Miss Wright,” I said, self-consciously folding my right hand over my left. There was no need as that little wedding band from Jere was long gone.

  “Miss Wright, more than one hundred organizations, clubs and unions agree with United Textile Workers that protective law is needed; not for all women, but for all mothers. We oppose the constitutional amendment sponsored by the Woman’s Party because it’s too dangerously sweeping and all-inclusive. More harm than good will come of it.” Because of the tent leaks above her, water dripped unnoticed from the wide brim of her felt hat.

  I took a deep breath to prepare myself. I had entered a debate unknowingly and unwillingly but had no recourse. I would lose all credibility if I walked out now. Thomas understandably remained quiet in such a hen house.

  “You and I agree that much improvement is needed to further the position of women,” I said. “Suffrage is only half the battle. But as long as women are subject to restrictions that do not apply to men, women will only get the jobs men don’t want. Under protective legislation, employers are liable to a heavy fine or imprisonment if he keeps a woman five minutes over the nine-hour days. Men have no such restrictions so don’t you think men are more likely to be hired? Here in New York alone, thousands of women in restaurants, candy stores, and railroads have been thrown out of work in the name of protecting their health and their morals. If an employer has the choice between a woman who can legally only work nine hours a day – and only during the day - and a man who can work twelve-hour days on any shift, naturally the employer will chose the more flexible of the two. Women’s labor laws can actually work against her and give more opportunity for the men. Is this protection or a handicap? Is it protecting women, or protecting men from the competition of women? Is it any wonder men support protective legislation? After all, most of the protective legislation was passed before women had the vote. Equal grounds would give the defenseless a weapon to make them strong. Preaching protection only makes her appear weaker.”

  They were closing in around me and I began to perspire in this cool September air. I hadn’t felt this uneasy since being arrested for disturbing the peace during the Syracuse march for suffrage. Policemen closed in like this but I feared these women more; they had righteous anger.

  I stepped back, swallowed, and continued, raising my voice to try to cover my tremor.

  “Hundreds of state statutes take away the rights of women. In some, the earnings of the wife belong to the husband. In forty states, the husband owns his wife’s work in the home, which means if the wife is injured, the husband can collect for damages for the loss of her services. The woman is put in the same class with children, so she becomes of as little value as a thirteen-year-old child. The amendment asks for equal rights throughout the United States. Don’t you want control of your own earnings?”

  “Earnings?” came a cry from behind me, the thin woman’s rancid breath reaching me before she did. “What earnings? We get paid half of what these here men do. You suffragists promised us everything; a new heaven and a new earth. To listen to you, all women are going to have their own offices in the White House. Well looky around, miss – this ain’t heaven and the earth ain’t nothing but dirt that these men throw in your face if you don’t do what they tell you!”

  Pearl stepped in front of her as if to hide her. “Look, sis, when you sweep the floor boards, you leave the dirt between the cracks.” Pearl’s thumb pointed toward herself. “We’re that dirt and we’re forgotten about. First, we start here and look after our own. We’ve got to work from the bottom up.” Her eyes suddenly squinted in resentment. “But you don’t hear me do you? You don’t know –”

  As if the sky was falling, the tent abruptly collapsed on one side, women squealing and protecting their heads with their hands, all scurrying toward what once was the entrance. Men’s voices were heard outside, barking orders to pull out the poles on the other side. Lifting the tent canvas, we scrambled out to see two heavily built chaps working around us like we were nothing more than escaped ants. I followed Thomas over to a suited man standing to the side, obviously in charge of his
devilkin.

  Thomas extended his hand to the man and said calmly, “I’m the editor of Annan News, Mr. Griffith, and this will make a helluva story.”

  The man, well-fed and full of himself, sputtered in surprise. “I’m very well aware of who you are, Mr. Pickering. I had no idea you were in the midst of that group of – of traitors and whiners! I’m the owner of this factory, sir, and these so-called union representatives refused to leave private property.”

  Thomas took out a small pad and pencil from the inside of his jacket and began writing. “So you are opposed to union representation? Women having a voice?”

  “If you think I’m going to listen to seventy-five yacking clacking broads with cat claws at each other’s backs, think again! Loyalty is what I command in this business. If you want a story, write about my productivity. That’s why I’m a successful businessman just as you are. Now let’s shake hands so that I can go off and do my business, and you can do yours.”

  Mr. Griffith extended his hand but Thomas seemed too engrossed in his notepad to notice. Thomas finally tapped his pad and looked up. “Your success would allow an increase in women’s wages then, would it not? My sources tell me they make one third of the men’s wages here.”

  The extended hand dropped and Mr. Griffith’s fake smile dropped to a frown. “There’s no point in discussing this any further. It’s unfortunate that you have become hen-pecked. You and that loudmouthed broad that tagged behind you can get the hell out of here. My men are capable of carrying you out, if you like.” He walked away waving his arms. “Back to work, girls!” he barked at top volume. I dared not guess whether his bark was worse than his bite. I touched Thomas’ arm and shook my head as a way of saying it’s not worth pursuing him.