Bold Spirit

by Linda Lawrence Hunt

  From Lincoln, they walked northeast to Omaha. Here Helga and Clara saw the grand Missouri River and a flourishing town for trade and commerce. But in Omaha, Clara fell sick, perhaps from food poisoning. Unfortunately, this laid them up for several days, causing Helga to revise their expected arrival date to December 13, providing allowance for illness as the contract stipulated. Now into September, they still had several states to cross before reaching Manhattan.

  When Clara felt better, good fortune aided them as temperatures hovering near the 70s created a far better climate for walking. Along the riverbanks, they could rest under the shade of the cottonwoods, and finding meals, housing, and work became easier in these more populated areas. They stayed in Atlantic, Iowa, the home of the Rock Island Railroad depot, and then followed the tracks east. Wearing straw hats to protect themselves from the sun, they passed by rural family farms and Midwestern towns that exuded a sense of peace and stability. As Helga and Clara’s accomplishment of traversing halfway across the United States became known, reporters took interest in their expected arrivals into a new town. On October 15, the Des Moines Leader reported that the women were somewhere between Atlantic and Des Moines after having covered almost 2800 miles already. The reporter described their short gray skirts “reaching only to their shoe tops,” heavy shoes, and leggings, and said they should be arriving soon to sell pictures of themselves to earn money.12

  To earn money along the route, Helga and Clara sold formal portraits of themselves, an effective fundraiser.

  Courtesy Portch/Bahr Family Photograph Collection.

  Then, early frosts and cold weather in October sabotaged Iowa farmers and gave Helga a vivid reminder of the vulnerability of farmers everywhere. What looked bucolic belied the full truth. With the onset of cold weather, the market demand for watermelons abruptly ended and thousands of beautiful ripened melons rotted in the fields south of Des Moines. Like the ways a hailstorm or grasshopper infestation destroyed crops in Minnesota and unseasonable rains ruined the grain fields near Mica Creek, she knew intimately how such crop failures sank farm families deeper in debt.

  They followed the Rock Island Railroad through Dexter to Des Moines where they arrived on October 17 and stayed at the Savery Hotel. After announcing Helga’s and Clara’s arrival and the $10,000 wager, the Des Moines Register reporter noted that they were “being watched by agents of the woman who has made the offer and therefore prevented from stealing rides,” and that they continued to have confidence in their eventual success. “They said last night that they expected to win it.”13

  The reporter also mentioned that in addition to the wager, the women were writing a book of their experiences. From their early interviews in Washington, through to the final interviews in the East, Helga attached importance to her plans to write a book. An avid reader, she expressed confidence in her ability to capture this intrepid journey. But, she saw this in addition to winning the $10,000. Although probably Helga’s original idea, not the sponsors’, they may have agreed to help her make essential contacts in the New York publishing world. Helga also stated that the purpose of the feat they were attempting to perform “on the part of the lady who is putting up the $10,000 is to demonstrate the endurance of women.” Helga and Clara clearly demonstrated this strength. But Helga makes it equally clear that this was not what motivated her to walk. The controversy between “new women” and those advocating that women need to live a protected life were not her concerns. As she stated their purpose to the reporter, “as far as they are concerned it is to earn the $10,000.”14

  They worked odd jobs in Des Moines long enough to replenish their depleted funds and to buy new shoes and mackintosh raincoats. Cinders on the railroad tracks quickly destroyed their shoes, so now they planned to walk along the dirt roads beside the Rock Island Railroad into Chicago. By now Helga no longer lived with so many of the fears that people planted in her mind before she left. Instead of threats, almost every day in their encounters with ordinary citizens, men and women alike, they received kindness. Most people wanted to help them. As an Iowa reporter wrote, “They say, however, that their reception has always been satisfactory and that they have had no troubles.”15 Even so, the article concluded with reference to Clara’s candid comment, “Miss Estby said she was sick of the trip.”16

  Before leaving town, they met with Governor Francis M. Drake and he added his signature to their document.17 Frustrated by the delays and needing to raise money with as brief a stay as possible, Helga began writing ahead to towns, asking them to set them up in a public place where they could tell their story and sell photographs. On October 22, when Helga and Clara traveled through Marengo, Helga wrote a letter to the Davenport, Iowa, newspaper. She announced that they expected to be there the following Tuesday, October 27. She wanted to know how much the manager of the opera house would be willing to pay her and her daughter to come there “as an advertisement,” intimating that they needed to make their expenses en route. Anticipating her arrival, the October 24 Davenport Democrat reporter wrote that the city will be “honored” by her call: “We hereby refer the matter to the managers of the many places of amusement in this city. No doubt these two ladies would pull custom like a span of mules, if any manager here had the nerve to play them.”18

  The two walkers cross the Mississippi at Davenport, Iowa, on the brand-new railroad and wagon bridge.

  Courtesy Rock Island Arsenal Museum.

  Shortly outside of Marengo, Helga and Clara passed the experimental Amana Colonies. These German communities that sought religious freedom and the opportunity to practice their distinctive communal farming system settled along the Iowa River in 1855. Rather than live on isolated farm homesteads as Helga and Ole did outside Canby, all the farm families lived within the village and contributed to creating a self-sustaining community. Each person over school age held assigned tasks in the kitchens, fields, factories, or shops. Helga and Clara admired the craftsmanship of the sturdy timber and native sandstone homes, and they knew that Ole would have shared in their admiration of the well-built homes, shops, and churches—even the barrels made at the cooperage. The villages exuded a sense of abundance, with bountiful vegetable gardens, beautiful flowers, and grape vines climbing up each house arbor. It is possible that women invited Helga and Clara to a meal in the common dining areas where the women cooked together and then ate in quiet contemplation at tables separate from the men. A farm feast of homemade breads, hams, and berry wines would have energized them for the next stretch ahead. Or they may have been shunned, seen as a worldly influence, unfit for associating with the children and women.

  They walked along the Millrace, a seven-mile canal used to power the Amana Woolen Mill, a major source of revenue for the villagers. Seeing women leisurely boating and hearing the laughter of children playing with their mothers along the waterway inevitably brought memories of family outings by the Spokane River and picnics in the parks. In the silent hours of walking, Helga’s mind often drifted to images of Ole and each of her children and a longing for the familiar comforts of home. Almost every single day in the last twenty years, motherhood had shaped the rhythms of her life. Tucking children into bed, reading them stories, and listening to their daily pleasures and worries provided joy amid the labor of caring for a family of eleven. Even with all their difficulties, she had felt a comfort in these familiar family patterns.

  Now each day brought something new, challenging her in unexpected ways. She liked that walking had made her stronger and liked having time for lingering discussions with Clara and all those who befriended them. On some days, she even enjoyed the many hours of solitude in nature and the time for reflection, something she rarely knew when caring constantly for children. But the family was so far away, and she missed them each and every day.

  When Helga and Clara arrived in Davenport and saw the sheer size of the famous muddy Mississippi, it provided visual proof they were over their halfway mark. In 1896, a marvelous new steel government bridge conn
ected Arsenal Island to Davenport, Iowa, replacing the old iron bridge. Clara fell ill again for a brief time, adding one more delay. But soon they crossed the river, joining the pedestrians and teams of horses that walked on the ground level while trains roared overhead. Destined for even more densely populated land, they knew finding food and shelter should no longer be a problem. However, Helga now carried a new worry as she wondered if the good weather, so essential for their success, would hold.

  13 EARNING THEIR OWN WAY

  They are certainly a strong testimony of woman’s

  endurance and ability to care for herself.

  —PLYMOUTH (INDIANA) REPUBLIC NOVEMBER 19, 1896

  For the first time since crossing the western mountain ridges, Helga and Clara encountered snowstorms as they walked toward Chicago. With the chilling winds and sharp drop in temperatures, their short wool mackintosh jackets gave them limited protection from freezing weather.

  On the plains near Chicago, hoboes tried to accost them, following the women for three-fourths of a mile. “Clara and I walked backward pointing our revolvers at them to save ourselves from harm,” stated Helga. Clara shot them in the face with her pepper gun, an insect powder box filled with cayenne pepper and “the cayenne made them desist.” The tramps that attempted to molest them “begged for mercy.”1

  During their rush to Chicago, the culminating days of the Presidential election reached a fever pitch. By the day American’s cast their ballot, Bryan had traveled over 18,000 miles and given 600 speeches.2 While Bryan’s campaign took him directly to the voters, McKinley brought hundreds of thousands of voters directly to him in a “front-porch” campaign. Also wanting that face-to-face contact with voters, McKinley conducted a steady campaign at his home in Canton, Ohio. In well-orchestrated visits, delegations converged on Canton from many states, brought in through the support of the railroad barons. In these festive visits, replete with welcoming brass band fanfare, McKinley presented his platform to over 750,000 persons, including thirty delegations on one day when he gave fourteen formal speeches.3 Delegates liked the distinguished Civil War veteran’s calm appeal to reason and common sense. As a former United States congressman and governor of Ohio, he offered mature experience to voters. He stressed building unity and harmony in the nation, not social or regional conflicts.

  The Republican party also had a far richer campaign coffer which enabled them to print over two hundred million brochures and pamphlets to promote McKinley.4 Major corporations contributed to assure that McKinley and the gold standard won, including $500,000 from Standard Oil and J.P. Morgan alone. This exceeded the entire amount of the Democrat’s fund.5

  On November 3, when Helga and Clara were just southwest of Chicago, they witnessed one of the largest election turnouts in the United States. Nearly eighty percent of eligible voters came to the polls.6 To Clara’s delight, McKinley won decisively by around six hundred thousand votes. Bryan’s message, however, resonated with well over six million Americans, and he won in twenty-two states, including most of the West and all of the South. Although big money clearly helped McKinley win the election, other important factors appealed to citizens. His personal character and his reasoned message that promised stability, rather than the dangerous experiment with free silver, appealed to urban Northeasterners and even many Midwest voters.

  As they neared the outskirts of America’s great Midwest city, where the Great Lakes link with the Mississippi River system, dirty smog hovered in the horizon from the factories of industrial America, a startling change from the clear skies of the plains. Shanties housing the poor stretched into long slums along the route into Chicago.7

  Needing to live on the least amount of money possible, Helga and Clara arrived in Chicago on November 7, “footsore and travel stained,” with only a dime to their name and “their clothes about in rags.” The Chicago Evening Post announced their $10,000 tramp, and noted “the women are poorly clad and will make an effort to secure money in the city to purchase winter clothing before proceeding further.”8 To replenish their funds, Helga and Clara modeled their reform costumes in a progressive department store, a novel change from the washing and cleaning they did in the West. They earned enough for much-needed new outfits and shoes.9

  Chicago illustrated in a microcosm the extremes of wealth and poverty in the United States that the presidential election highlighted. In the heart of Chicago’s resplendent commercial district near the beautiful Lake Michigan shore, Helga and Clara saw the abundant wealth concentrated in the bustling business center. Barges carrying grain, coal, salt, iron ore, limestone, and steel exemplified the powerful transportation role the great inland port played in the world. The department store where they modeled their reform dresses carried the latest high fashions for Chicago’s rich society women. Designers created elegant Victorian dresses and hats with exquisite fabrics from around the world, sewn with yards and yards of organdy, lace, silks, satins, heather wools, furs, and feathers. As a seamstress, Helga was fascinated by the sheer abundance of beautiful textures and cloth.

  Yet, like in most industrial urban centers in America, the financial Panic of 1893 threw thousands of capable Chicago working-class men and their families into destitution and despair. Over 100,000 remained out of work in the winter of 1893–94, yet transients continued to ride the boxcars into the city in search of jobs.10 These men, unable to find employment, ended up in flophouses or homeless on the streets. A burgeoning immigrant population from Europe poured into the city, too, often living in crowded, disease-ridden tenements. This contributed to the outbreak of diphtheria that occurred during the month of Helga and Clara’s visit, with over 5,000 diagnosed with the disease.11

  These destructive conditions affecting the lives of many of America’s newest immigrants drew the abiding interest of Jane Addams, a young woman who began a settlement house amid the urban misery of Chicago’s slums in 1889. Born in America the same year as Helga, Jane benefited from the new educational opportunities for women and attended Rockford College in Illinois. An excellent student with a strong moral code, but physically frail, she longed to be “useful” in the world. After graduation, however, very few professional occupations were open for educated women.

  During her early twenties, while Helga was gaining confidence homesteading on the prairie, Jane often lamented that the idle leisure life of privileged women left them with no significant work to do. In her early twenties, after back surgery ended her medical school ambitions, Jane traveled twice to Europe on “grand tours,” a favorite diversion for women of means in the late nineteenth century. Often traveling for a year or more to pursue culture by visiting museums, seeing theater and opera, learning languages, or going on shopping sprees, it also provided a means to fend off boredom or depression. However, after an encounter with the wretchedness of urban poverty in East London, she visited Toynbee Hall. Educated young men in England lived and worked here, striving to ease the life of the poorest in the East End, and this model became a catalyst to Addams’ solution of something useful to do.

  She returned to Chicago and founded Hull House with her friend, Ellen Gates Starr. As with Helga’s choice to walk across America, Addams’ choice to live amid the poor was unheard of in her era. But she insisted that this work “saved” those who were serving, giving educated women like herself meaningful work, as much as it helped immigrants. Living among Italian, Polish, Greek, Russian, and Bohemian immigrants, the women in Hull House offered friendship and services for their neighbors. They opened kindergarten and daycare facilities for children of working mothers, an employment bureau, art gallery, playgrounds, libraries, and classes.

  By the time Helga and Clara came to Chicago, Addams’ innovative efforts as a social reformer were becoming well-known. As she saw the wretched living and working conditions of her neighbors, she wrote and spoke persuasively for more humane and just conditions. She also befriended influential clergymen who taught that Christians needed to help change the unjust structures that br
utalized the vulnerable, not just provide individual charity after the fact. This “social gospel” offered an intellectual and spiritual framework for Addams’ efforts to abolish child labor and to improve conditions in unsafe factories, sordid tenements, and garbage-filled streets.12

  Even during the depressed years of the 1890s, Chicago manifested the raucous confidence of a pivotal city standing on the brink of a new era at the turn of a century. Despite the nation’s financial collapse, Chicago hosted over twenty million visitors at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition, financing a 586-acre tribute to American ingenuity. This fair demonstrated the newest technological wonders for farms, factories, and homes, reassuring nervous Americans to expect a positive future. It even included a Women’s Building exhibition that highlighted women designers, scientists, writers, architects, and artists; it was here that many women were first introduced to bicycle skirts like the ones Helga and Clara wore.

  Helga’s contract stipulation only required they visit mayors after they arrived in Chicago, so they made their way to the mayor’s office in City Hall. Here Mayor George E. Swift’s “Private Secretary Minkler” signed their credentials for the mayor to show they had visited the city.13 The Chicago Journal, also featuring Helga and Clara’s arrival on page one of the newspaper, stated that the $10,000 reward was “offered by a New York weekly syndicate,” probably referring to the New York World that first announced their trip.14 Now accounting for illness, Helga states that “to accommodate this feat” they must walk twenty-nine miles a day to reach New York by December 13, actually an overestimation of the mileage.

  Cold, bone-chilling days lay ahead as they left the windy city and traveled through the increasingly populated states of Indiana and Ohio. On November 14, they walked twenty-five miles from Hanna, Indiana, to Plymouth, Indiana. Coming into town hungry and tired on a Saturday evening at 8:15, they stopped at the Ross House and asked for supper and accommodations. They were so browned by the sun and exposure to the weather that “Landlord Bowel” held some doubts as to “whether he was being imposed upon by some Gypsies or tramp women.” But he became intrigued with his guests and notified a reporter from the Plymouth Republic who wrote a lengthy article on the women and their wager.15 For the first time, an article mentioned “a wealthy lady of Spokane, Washington” who wanted to test women’s physical endurance, as well as her ability to provide for herself, had “made an offer.”16 A wealthy Spokane woman connected to the “eastern sponsor” might have known Helga, provided the contact with Spokane’s mayor, and paid the money for the formal portraits taken in Spokane to send to the New York World newspaper.