Bold Spirit

by Linda Lawrence Hunt

  Helga wanted to visit the Cripple Creek gold-mining area where labor troubles were brewing, even though this detour added a few extra days, and even though two raging fires in April had destroyed the business district and hundreds of homes. So, on Sunday, September 6, they followed the railroad spur into the mountains. With the economic depression following 1893, miners throughout America were upset both by loss of jobs and unjust salaries. The miners in Cripple Creek, by striking, prevented the lengthening of the working day in 1893, and their union won another substantial victory after striking against mine owners in 1894.10 Because Ole belonged to a union, and Spokane Falls served the nearby mining areas, Helga may have been interested in labor unrest, or she may have been gathering observations for her potential book.

  Helga’s frustration at their slow pace surfaced. The sponsor’s twin stipulations that the women must earn their own way across and meet a time deadline placed them in a double bind. With the journey only half completed and just over two months of time remaining, being bound by their contract to “not receive a cent in aid of their own expenses” was proving unworkable.11 The pattern of staying in a town for a few days to earn their own way by washing, scrubbing, or cleaning houses simply took too long.

  Somewhere in Colorado, Clara fell on rocks. She severely sprained her ankle, which caused a ten-day delay and further risked their ability to fulfill the contract.12 With the December deadline looming, they needed to find a faster way to earn their travel expenses. Time was getting short.

  Helga and Clara saw an abundance of natural beauty in the American landscape, such as the front range of the Rocky Mountains at Pikes Peak near Colorado Springs.

  Courtesy Colorado Historical Society,

  photo by Wm. H. Jackson, CHS-J2902, 20102902.

  Detail of this photograph on this page.

  Their trek out of Colorado Springs took them past the splendor of Pikes Peak, where the early morning sun cast a purple hue over the imposing mountain. Returning to Denver, they cut through the northeast part of Colorado, following the rails to Omaha.

  As the ordinary and the famous citizens of America began to learn about the Estby women’s achievement, the sheer audacity of their accomplishment disputed the validity of the commonly held beliefs that women were physically inferior to men, they were a weaker sex that must be protected, and that biology was destiny. Victorian restraints emphasized that the female body should always be covered, that ladies must never sweat, and that physical exertion should take place in private. When women pedaled or walked the streets without corsets or padded clothing, and shortened their skirts, they broke with genteel conventions.

  In the mid-1870s, a few women challenged these assumptions when they competed as pedestrian endurance walkers in women’s footraces, performing before large crowds in America’s major cities. Two such female athletes, American Mary Marshall and German Bertha von Hillern vied against each other in six-day walking races in Chicago and New York, which drew thousands of spectators. Von Hillern continued solo exhibits of walking one hundred miles around a track in thirteen cities, and one time performed the extraordinary feat of walking 350 miles in six consecutive days and nights.13 The Woman’s Journal, a leading women’s suffrage newspaper, asserted that her accomplishments refuted Victorian beliefs and medical claims that women were too frail to be full citizens.14

  In 1878, a middle-aged performer, Ada Anderson, began walking exhibitions. Rather than the one-day walks of von Hillern, hers lasted almost a month and spanned hundreds of miles as she circled a track in the Mozart Garden in Brooklyn. In Chicago, Anderson’s exhibition sold more than 24,000 tickets to fans wanting to watch her spectacular proof of women’s strength.15 By 1879, more than one hundred women were walking for money and hundreds of newspapers chronicled these endurance efforts.

  For a brief period, women suffragists saw these walkers as symbols for women’s rights and the sport received a measure of legitimacy. But the challenge to Victorian morality upset temperance and religious leaders who considered the women pedestriennes as disreputable. “Our modern female pedestrians are a disgrace to themselves and dishonor to society,” claimed a letter to the editor of the Chicago Tribune, “and an outrageous insult to every virtue which adorns true womanhood.”16

  Controversy also arose over the public brutality of such sporting exhibitions sometimes promoted by unscrupulous, profit-hungry managers, who caused women competitors such as Anderson to walk in agony. This perception heightened public efforts to get the government to stop women’s sports for their own protection. Legislation against cockfighting and dog-fighting had already occurred because of cruelty to animals, and some argued that certainly women deserved equal protection from abusive practices.17 This fueled public disapproval, and the popularity of these events waned. Entrenched Victorian attitudes extolling the myth of women’s frailty, despite evidence to the contrary, still prevailed during 1896 when Helga and Clara walked across the continent.

  Popular literature and newspaper advertisements caricatured women as the victims of a host of female complaints, and the rise in sales of vegetable compounds such as Lydia Pinkham’s marked the era.18 Exerting a woman’s intellect was even suspect. The popular health writer and prestigious doctor, Weir Mitchell, argued that a young woman’s “future womanly usefulness was endangered by the steady use of her brain.”19 “New women” challenged these common stereotypes, especially at women’s colleges that instituted rigorous physical education programs and active sports, like basketball. For some middle class and wealthy women, horseback riding, cycling, and golf became attractive activities. By wearing the reform costumes, Helga and Clara became identified in the public eye as examples of these new women.

  Many doctors, however, perceived that an almost epidemic level of nervous afflictions were caused by these new women seeking greater involvement in public life. One leading male physician in the 1890s warned: “Women’s efforts, acted out rashly and foolishly, make her ultimately unfit for active life because of the perilous injury brought on by the deleterious irritations of the outside world.”20 This cultural attitude affected the first group of college-educated women, including Jane Addams, the eventual founder of Hull House in Chicago. Because most professional careers remained closed to educated women, many unemployed postcollege graduates with money took extended trips to Europe on “grand tours” to gain a greater sense of culture. Addams, who took two such tours in her twenties, lamented over this substitute for meaningful work. “I have been idle for two years—I have constantly lost confidence in myself and have gained nothing and improved in nothing.”21

  Theological assumptions that God created women to function in separate spheres from men reinforced these beliefs. Senator George Vest, speaking about women’s roles in 1887, expressed the contemporary view: “I do not believe that the Great Intelligence ever intended them to invade the sphere of work given to men, tearing down and destroying all the best influences for which God intended them.… Women are essentially emotional. It is no disparagement to them they are so.”22

  Some society women succumbed to a semi-invalid status, almost a fashionable disease, or endured bed rest strongly recommended by doctors. But women settling the West rarely lived genteel lives. Like Helga’s reality on the prairie, their daily survival often demanded physical strength, whether clearing the land with their husbands, tending to several children, farm animals, and a home, or planting and harvesting acres of farmland. When Helga’s fall on Riverside Avenue in Spokane led to her earlier bedridden status, she saw no glamour in the confinement. Instead, she risked experimental gynecological surgery to restore her robust health.

  Helga’s and Clara’s actions showed assertiveness, required maximum effort and sweat, aggressiveness, intrepid independence, courage, and sustained physical activity. This journey also immersed them in nature, and the act of walking made them stronger. Traveling through the lonesome land of east Colorado, with the placid South Platte River meandering alongside, the w
omen now contended with temperatures in the 90s. Whistling winds blew prairie dust deep into their clothes. With little human habitation, their companions became white-tail jackrabbits, antelope, prairie dogs, wild range horses, and pheasants. When Helga and Clara paused to rest, they found arrowheads from when the Arapaho and Cheyenne Indians hunted herds of buffalo to feed and clothe their tribes. Now settlers hunted the abundant geese, ducks, deer, and wild turkey. The sharp scent of silver sage, the turbulent moods of the sky, and the yip of a coyote calling its mate helped them endure the monotony of dry grasslands. They trudged northeast through Fort Morgan, Marino, and the abandoned city of Fleming on their route to Sterling. Here they saw the large fields of sugar beets, a major source of income for local farmers’ crops.

  Always alert, Helga and Clara listened carefully for the dreaded sound of the diamondback, a terrifying rattle in the sandy regions that were “so thick with rattlesnakes as to make it almost impossible to get along.”23 They stepped carefully, always aware of their surroundings. Equally fearsome were the “Mexican cattle,” probably longhorns, “that are only afraid of mounted people.” As the women followed along the railroad tracks, they used their revolvers freely to protect themselves from the cattle.24 Earlier pioneers crossed this Overland Trail, many perishing en route as they sought to fulfill their own dreams. Step-by-step Helga and Clara kept trudging along, growing more aware daily of why Americans marveled when they arrived safely at each new destination.

  12 AN ELECTRIFYING PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION

  Miss (Clara) Estby says she is sick of the trip.

  No doubt these two ladies would pull custom like a

  span of mules, if any manager here had the nerve to

  play them.

  —DES MOINES REGISTER OCTOBER 17, 1896

  Helga, now a William Jennings Bryan supporter, shared the excitement of Nebraskans who found pride in the meteoric rise of interest in their politician from Lincoln. The women entered Nebraska through Ogallala. Encouraged by the receptions they received from governors, Helga decided to visit Bryan’s home in Lincoln and add his important signature to their document. Their trek continued along the South Platte River, running through the towns of North Platte, Kearney, and Grand Island, backtracking the Oregon Trail. Coming from the Pacific Northwest, where the turbulent crystal water of the Spokane River cut a dashing swath through the city, this flat muddy river must have surprised her. Known by locals as a mile wide and an inch deep, it was even too shallow for navigation, yet wide enough to have islands throughout. But locals knew never to underestimate the river’s power; it could be perilously unpredictable.

  William McKinley supporters began to question if they had underestimated this other Nebraskan wonder, the thirty-six year old with the silver voice. Because Bryan was young, openly critical of America’s major power centers, and lacking the campaign funds and political organization of the far-wealthier Republicans, at first his candidacy seemed as shallow a threat as Nebraska’s Platte River. But the currents of his conviction and prodigious energy ran deep. Bryan also tapped into the wellspring of discontent in the agrarian west and south that led to earlier calls for change from the Populist Party. The Populist reformer, Mary Elizabeth Lease, expressed the pent-up anger many felt toward abuse from corporate power. “Wall Street owns the country. It is no longer a government of the people, for the people, by the people, but a government of Wall Street, for Wall Street, and by Wall Street.”1 Bryan carried on this Populist mantle in his own campaign.

  Bryan chose to go “to the people,” riding the railroads to bring his fiery brand of campaigning to twenty-seven states. Not only farmers wanted to hear him as he barnstormed the country. In Boston, over 75,000 came to listen to him, a sign that sentiment was growing for his “free silver” cause, even in the East.2 However, it was the heartfelt response he engendered that alarmed his opponents. In Red Cloud, Nebraska, novelist Willa Cather described seeing “rugged, ragged men of the soil weep like children” when he addressed them.3

  William and Mary Bryan’s home in Lincoln, Nebraska, decorated for a celebration during the Presidential election year of 1896.

  Courtesy Nebraska State Historical Society Photograph Collections, RG3198:22-6. Detail of this photograph on this page.

  Helga understood. She knew firsthand the economic devastation during President Cleveland’s administration and valued Bryan’s expressed sympathy with the farmers and working-class families. She witnessed the collapse of the Spokane banks, the foreclosure on businesses and neighbor’s farms, and felt her own husband’s shame and helplessness at being unable to earn an honest living to support his nine children. Many Bryan supporters saw maintaining the gold standard as a conspiracy of the rich, of Wall Street, and the Republican party wanting to maintain the status quo.4 William McKinley ardently upheld the gold standard.

  Bryan, who once wanted to be a Baptist preacher, used potent religious imagery that electrified his supporters. This also resonated with Helga’s Lutheran upbringing and strong knowledge of the Bible. She likely read the newspaper accounts and cartoons that either supported or lambasted his religious rhetoric, especially his famous “Cross of Gold” speech given at the national Democratic Convention. Warming his audience up, he insisted that upholding the gold standard had “slain the poor,” and hurt “the producing masses of this nation,”… and the “toilers everywhere.” Then, in a thundering conclusion, he railed against big business interests, Republicans, and McKinley, who advocated the gold standard. “We will answer their demand for a gold standard by saying to them: You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns, you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.”5 This speech threw down the gauntlet of a campaign that riveted the voters throughout the summer and fall of Helga’s and Clara’s bold venture.

  Helga favored attorney, orator, and Congressman William Jennings Bryan for president, who was only thirty-six when his Democratic candidacy and concern for the poor galvanized interest in the 1896 election.

  Courtesy Nebraska State Historical Society Photograph Collections, RG3198: 17-10.

  Clara did not share her mother’s enthusiasm for Bryan, preferring William McKinley. Republican supporters of McKinley and the gold standard were outraged by what they saw as Bryan’s sacrilegious and inflammatory manipulation of sacred Christian symbols. But they, too, couched the election in religious and moral metaphors as they argued against the proposed silver legislation they saw as a disastrous solution. McKinley believed restoring silver in America’s coinage would lower the dollar’s value to fifty-three cents, thus being an act of “stealing.” Many prominent ministers supported the gold standard, and some linked this to the Ten Commandments, reminding their congregations, “Thou shalt not steal.”6 Also seeking to appeal to the anxious working class, McKinley assured a “full dinner pail” for all citizens, rather than the half pail of free silver. To repay loans with a reduced-value dollar would mean cheating the lender, therefore it was “an issue of integrity and honesty.”7 Keeping the gold standard was essential to revive America’s prosperity, the only “honest dollar” and “sound currency.” McKinley proposed protective tariffs as the best way “to get work for the masses,” which particularly appealed to urban factory workers in the East. Clara, known for her sensitive gentle spirit, found McKinley’s calmer, less divisive campaign more appealing. She looked forward to going to McKinley’s home when they arrived in Ohio.8

  As Helga and Clara continued their walk on the flat lands along the Platte River, they saw places where the Conestoga wagons left their deep wheel ruts, a permanent imprint of the importance of this river that guided settlers along the Oregon Trail. Helga knew this river served as a sustaining friend when pioneers journeyed to Oregon during the 1840s and 50s. But she and Clara found it cooling, too, as they crossed over three hundred miles to Bryan’s home in Lincoln, Nebraska.

  When Helga and Clara arrived in Lincoln, Mary Baird Bryan, the presidential candidate’s wife, warmly welcom
ed them. He was away campaigning in the East, but she invited the two for dinner.9 Helga and Mary Bryan, almost the same age, shared some common experiences. Mary also pursued an unconventional course for women when she studied law and took the bar exam, and likely she admired the women’s undaunted determination. Both grew up as the only child in their families, and both immensely enjoyed being mothers. But their opportunities as young women in America differed dramatically. At sixteen, when Helga became a mother and wife, Mary entered the Jacksonville Female Academy and graduated as valedictorian in 1881. During her college years, she met William Jennings Bryan, a young attorney, and married him in 1884. By this same year, Helga had dropped out of school, birthed and nurtured four children, and lived in near poverty in a one-room dirt floor sod home. Though women with vastly different economic choices, they still shared the common desire to help their husbands and give their children good futures.

  Mary Baird Bryan welcomed Helga and Clara into her home for dinner and bought several pictures. Her husband, William Jennings Bryan, was away campaigning.

  Courtesy Nebraska State Historical Society Photograph Collection, RG3198: 2-8.

  When new opportunities for professional schooling opened for women in America, Mary Bryan, a mother of three, chose to study law. But, “she never dreamed of practicing it.” Instead, she saw it as a way to help her husband. “My sole object was to keep pace mentally with Mr. Bryan as far as my ability would permit. I believe that this is the only way in which a wife can keep the affection and sympathy of an intellectual husband.”10 She took the bar exam both in the District and Supreme Courts of Nebraska, something rarely done by women. Instead of practicing law, she became active in women’s clubs, especially Sorosis, which encouraged thought among women. An enthusiastic advocate for college education for women, she likely encouraged Clara, who was bright and articulate, to consider college if they received the $10,000. Before Helga and Clara left, Mary bought several pictures and added her signature to the document.11