“There’s goin’ to be a lot more people without jobs now,” she heard Erik say, “and without homes, too.”
CHAPTER 16
Emily’s Prayer
Erik was right, Emily thought a few days later when she, Ted, Erik, and Mr. Beck again stood beside the river and looked across at the smoldering ashes that had once been over a mile of buildings. Even the part of the bridge they’d stood upon Sunday had been burned. Many sawmills had been completely destroyed. Over 160 houses had been burned, leaving more than two hundred families homeless.
“I can’t imagine losing my home and everything I own,” Ted said, shaking his head.
“At least the people have places to stay,” Mr. Beck told them. “A church and two large halls have been opened for them. People and businesses have donated food, clothing, beds, and blankets.”
“It must be awful to live that way,” Emily said.
“It’s not the same as having a home,” Mr. Beck admitted, “but at least they won’t have to live under the stars until the men find jobs and can afford to move their families into houses.”
“The city is helping the men to find jobs, too.” Erik’s voice sounded bitter. “The city is even giving work to the men in return for their family’s food and shelter.”
Emily frowned. “Why does that make you so mad, Erik? It sounds like a good thing.”
“Why should the city make jobs for these men when they don’t make jobs for men like my pa? He and thousands like him can’t help being out of work any more than these people.”
The anger and pain in Erik’s eyes sliced through Emily’s heart.
August slipped into September. Ted and Emily went back to school, where they spoke to their classes and wrote essays about their trip to the World’s Fair.
Oklahoma Territory opened former Cherokee land to settlers. On September 16, one hundred thousand people raced over the land to claim their own acreage.
“The paper says a lot of the people are unemployed and came from other parts of the country,” Emily told Ted. “I wonder if any of them are from Minneapolis.”
Ted shrugged his shoulders. “Maybe, but we know Erik’s father isn’t one of them.”
“Maybe Frank’s father is,” she said. Of course, they’d never know. It wasn’t likely they’d ever again see the tough boy they’d met at the World’s Fair.
Sadness slipped over her when she thought of Frank and Erik. She wished for the hundredth time that she could do something to help children whose fathers were out of work. She remembered the White City and her father’s words about hope. Looking out the window at the gray, rainy fall day, she whispered, “It’s hard to have hope sometimes.”
Mayor Eustis opened an unemployment bureau like the Chicago mayor had done. Walter told Ted and Emily that the labor unions were pleased about that. Emily wondered if the unemployment bureau was a sliver of hope.
One day after school when she and Ted went to meet Erik and Mr. Beck, she brought a copy of the Minneapolis Tribune with her.
She opened it noisily to the article she wanted and pointed it out to Mr. Beck.
“Look at this! It says, ‘The army of the unemployed is on the decrease. Nearly all who want work have found it.’” She glared at the reporter. “How can the newspaper print lies like that?”
Mr. Beck shoved his bowler toward the back of his black curls and spread his hands. “What makes you think it’s a lie?”
Erik snorted. “Most anyone would know it. I know lots of men who need jobs.”
Ted nodded. “My brother Walter says the labor unions are helping out a lot of their members’ families.”
“Walter’s wife, Lena, is Swedish,” Emily said. “The Scandinavians are trying to help their own people, like the labor unions are doing. Lena says there are many Swedish men here out of work. Many of the men send money back to relatives in Sweden. Now they can’t send money back because they haven’t got jobs. They can’t even pay for their own food and rent.”
Mr. Beck nibbled on the end of his pencil. “It’s true there’re very few people coming to America from other countries now. Since the panic began, for the first time in our country’s history, more people are leaving the nation than entering it.”
“You see?” Erik challenged. “Everyone but the city leaders knows how bad things are.”
“If you want to be a newspaperman one day, Erik, you have to learn to deal with facts,” Mr. Beck said. “The truth is, no one knows how many people are unemployed in the city. No one has counted the unemployed.”
Erik lifted his chin and glared at Mr. Beck. “You always say newspapers make people aware of important things in the world. Why don’t you write an article saying the city needs to count the unemployed men?”
Mr. Beck stared at Erik for a moment. “Maybe I’ll do that.” He pushed himself up from the wooden bench outside the soda fountain where they’d met. “I’d better get to work.”
Emily crossed her arms and watched him walk down the street. The adults in the city weren’t doing nearly enough about the jobless. It was so frustrating!
“I’m going to find a way to help jobless people,” she declared in a low voice.
Erik and Ted whooped with laughter.
“You’re only twelve!” Erik reminded her.
“What makes you think you can do more than adults?” Ted asked.
Her cheeks burned from their laughter. For a moment she was tempted to take her words back. Then she remembered the women artists at the World’s Fair.
“Remember the motto of the World’s Fair?” she asked the boys.
“I will.”
Erik chuckled. “A couple little words aren’t goin’ to help people get jobs and food and rent.”
A trickle of doubt slid into her mind. She pushed it away. “The Bible says, ‘I can do all things through Christ, who strengthens me.’ If we ask God to show us something to do to help people, I’m sure He will. Will you two pray with me?”
Ted looked like he wasn’t sure God would really answer them, but he agreed.
Erik just shook his head. “I think you’re bein’ foolish. God hasn’t helped my family in all these months. Why should He help now?”
“You’re wrong about God not helping your family,” Emily said quietly. “He gave you a job as a newsboy to help your family, didn’t He? I wish He would have given your father a job instead, but things would be worse if you didn’t have a job, either.”
Erik kicked at a brown leaf. “I still say you’re foolish.”
“I don’t care.” Emily lifted her chin. “I’m going to ask Him to show us a way to help anyway.”
CHAPTER 17
The Plan
The logs in the parlor fireplace crackled and gave off a warm glow. Outside a late November snowstorm howled, whistling around corners and sending an occasional puff of wind down the chimney.
It’s cozy here, Emily thought. She poked a needle through the gray wool school dress she was mending and glanced around the parlor.
Ted’s mother and his sister-in-law, Lena, were spending the evening with Emily, Anna, and Mother. The women at church had collected used clothing. It had been sent home with the women to mend before being given to the poor.
“Isn’t this lovely?” Lena held up a long black wool cape with a high collar trimmed in black velvet. “It barely needs any repair.”
Mother smiled. “I’m glad so many people are giving things that haven’t been worn to shreds. Every mother wants to be able to dress her family well.”
“Have you girls bought your Christmas dresses yet?” Aunt Alison asked Emily and Anna.
Emily glanced at Anna and bit her bottom lip. “We … we don’t need new dresses this year,” she finally answered.
Aunt Alison raised her eyebrows in surprise. Her hand stopped with the needle above the brown trousers she was mending. “But both of you love pretty clothes!”
Anna bent over the child’s red knit bonnet she was working on. “We decided to rem
ake our dresses from last year instead.”
“Oh.” Aunt Alison and Lena gave the two girls funny looks but didn’t ask any more questions.
Emily breathed a small sigh of relief. She was glad Anna hadn’t said more. It would have sounded so proud. Last Sunday the pastor had spoken on giving to the poor. “If you find ways to save money,” he’d said, “you will have money to give to those who need it more.” She and Anna had decided to give away the money they saved by not buying new Christmas outfits. Their parents had agreed they could do so.
But I don’t think that’s the answer to my prayer, Emily thought.
She didn’t think helping the church women was the answer, either, though she was glad to mend and sort clothes with them. There must be something special God has that children can do together to help, she thought.
At least Mr. Beck had written an article suggesting the city count the number of people without jobs. So far the city hadn’t done anything about it.
“It’s going to be cold walking to school tomorrow.” Anna pretended to shiver.
“Can we put a pot of oatmeal on the back of the stove tonight so it will be ready to eat for breakfast?” Emily asked her mother. It always seemed easier to face a winter morning with warm oatmeal in her stomach.
She wondered how many of the jobless men’s families would have warm breakfasts.
“Oh!”
Mother leaned forward. “Did you poke yourself with the needle?” Emily shook her head. “No, I’m fine.” She knew now what she wanted to do to help.
Emily searched out Ted first thing the next morning at school and told him her plan.
“I think that’s a great idea,” Ted said. “Let’s ask Mr. Timms right away if we can do it.”
Mr. Timms listened carefully then nodded so fast that his round cheeks bounced. “Wonderful! We’ve a few minutes before school starts. Let’s go speak to the superintendent about your plan right away.”
A nervous lump formed in Emily’s throat as the three of them hurried toward the superintendent’s office. She’d never actually talked to the head of the entire school before.
When they entered his office, the superintendent lifted his bald head. “What can I do for you?”
“The children have a wonderful plan, sir. I thought you should hear of it right away.” Mr. Timms put a hand on Emily’s back and urged her forward.
She gulped and wiped her sweaty palms down the sides of her dress. “My cousin Ted and I, we wanted to help the families of some of the jobless men. So we thought … that is …” She swallowed again.
“Go on,” Mr. Timms urged.
“Could the students bring food to the school to give to their families?” The question came out in a rush. “I mean, if every student in the school brought just one thing, we’d have a lot of food to give.”
The superintendent folded his hands on his desk and thought a moment. “Where would you collect the food?”
“We could put baskets in each classroom,” Emily suggested.
“And how would you get the food to the jobless men’s families?” the superintendent asked.
“I thought we could give it to the city’s Associated Charities,” she answered. “We could ask some of the students whose fathers’ businesses have wagons to take the food we collect to the charities’ offices.”
A thin smile spread across the man’s face. “It seems you’ve thought of everything, Mr. Timms. Please arrange for these two to speak in all the classrooms this afternoon. Now you’d best all get to your class. The morning bell will be rung any minute now.”
A couple days each week, Emily and Ted had fallen into the habit of going home from school by way of a street on which Erik often sold newspapers. Today when they saw him, Mr. Beck was with him.
“We have something so exciting to tell you!” Emily told Erik almost before she finished saying hello.
Mr. Beck laughed. “If this is important, why don’t we go inside the soda fountain across the street? I’ll treat you all to hot cocoa while you tell us your news.”
“What do you think?” Emily asked eagerly when she’d told them her plan.
Erik and Mr. Beck both thought the plan was great. “But you should get more of the schools involved,” Erik said, lifting his mug of fragrant, warm cocoa.
“Someone should write a short article about the plan,” Mr. Beck suggested. “The article could be distributed to the schools. Why don’t you do that, Erik?”
Erik almost spit out the cocoa he’d just sipped. “Me?”
Mr. Beck nodded. “You want to be a writer, don’t you?”
“But … but that’s just a dream.”
“If you write the article, I’ll check it over and correct the mistakes,” Mr. Beck assured him. “That is, if you make any mistakes. I’ll ask the Tribune editor if he’ll have his staff print copies of it.”
Erik wrapped his hands around the warm mug. “Do you really think I can write it?”
Mr. Beck pushed his bowler back on his curls. “Wouldn’t have suggested it if I didn’t. Every writer has to start someplace.”
Ted remembered what James Hill had told him and Erik last summer: Believe in your dreams and a way will open. Was this a way for Erik’s dream to begin to be real? Would he take it or let it pass by?
“I’ll try it,” Erik said with a sharp nod.
Mr. Beck said Erik’s article was well done. The reporter only changed a couple misspelled words. Later Mr. Beck told them, “When I showed it to the editor, he told me to do a follow-up article when the food has been collected and delivered. Why don’t you try writing that one, too, Erik?”
Ted thought Erik couldn’t look happier if he’d been handed a bag of gold coins.
The project went better than Ted and Emily ever imagined. The Minneapolis students collected enough food to feed 120 families!
Emily held up her best winter dress, looked it up and down, and sighed. “It’s no use, Anna. There’s nothing that can make this dress look new again for Christmas.”
“Of course there is. You simply haven’t given it enough thought. You are too impatient, Emily.”
Emily laid the dress over the parlor couch. “I know, but I’m trying to change.”
She picked up the sewing basket from beside the fireplace. “Maybe I can find something in here to help.” She opened the basket and pulled out ribbons, lace, and buttons her mother had saved from different sewing projects over the years. She held up different pieces against the dress. “Nothing seems to work,” she complained.
“Let me try.” Anna went through the same process with no success.
“This seemed like such a good idea when Pastor Adams said to be thrifty,” Emily told her. “Now it seems hard.”
“I know! Do you still have that black velvet dress that you outgrew? We could cut it up and use the material to make a high collar and long cuffs. They’d look wonderful against this purple brocade.”
Emily jumped up, excited. “Maybe a wide black velvet tie around the waist, too.”
Half an hour later, they were busy cutting out the pieces from the old dress and talking happily about their Christmas plans when Ted and his brother Walter stopped by.
“Did you hear about the mayor’s new plans to help jobless men?” Ted asked.
The girls hadn’t.
“The cold weather has brought so many homeless men to the police station to stay at night,” Walter told them, “that the mayor decided to go there and talk with them himself. He found out only two had had anything to eat.”
Ted grinned. “So he decided to open a soup kitchen for the unemployed and homeless men who stay at the police station at night. The city leaders are planning to hire jobless men to remove snow from sidewalks and streets and help with road repairs.”
“Which the labor unions and others have been asking the leaders to do for quite a while now,” Walter added.
“Best of all,” Ted said, “Mayor Eustis has ordered a count of the people in the city
who are unemployed and in need.”
“Do you think he did that because of Mr. Beck’s article?” Emily asked.
“Maybe,” Walter said, “but I think meeting and talking to the homeless men helped, too.”
“The mayor is asking businesses to donate food so every family that hasn’t a way to buy food can be given a Christmas basket,” Ted told Emily and Anna.
Emily’s heart seemed to grow with joy. “What a wonderful Christmas present for the people!”
Anna frowned slightly. “I think it’s wonderful, too, but … won’t the people be embarrassed to take charity from the city?”
“The mayor thought of that,” Walter said. “Unemployed men will make the food deliveries to the families. That way the people getting the baskets won’t feel as bad about others seeing them in hard times.”
“I know the food baskets won’t fix all the problems for the families of the jobless men,” Emily told Ted, “but it’s a start.”
“At least no one will have to go hungry on Christmas,” he agreed.
CHAPTER 18
Christmas Eve
Snow fell in large, fluffy flakes on the afternoon of Christmas Eve. The Allerton house was filled with smells of Christmas baking: sugar cookies and pies in the morning and now the turkey that was roasting for dinner.
In the parlor, Emily, Anna, and Richard were decorating their Christmas tree with colorful glass ornaments and white strings of popcorn. Ted was helping because he liked Christmas trees so much. His family had put their tree up the night before.
The tree stood in the parlor’s bay window, where the children could watch the snow fall while they worked. Sleighs and runners on wagons made soft hissing sounds as they passed down the snow-covered streets. The horses’ hooves could barely be heard for the snow.
“I like the bells so many people put on the horses this time of year,” Emily said. “Their ringing is such a cheerful sound.”
A large horse-drawn wagon on runners pulled along the curbstone in front of the Allerton home. “Johnson Brothers Market” was written in large letters on the side of the enclosed wagon. A driver and his partner men sat bundled against the winter weather.
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