With the men off in the miserable trenches of Europe, someone had to fill in for them in order to keep the factories and other workplaces going, and most of the time, that someone was female. After being discouraged from working for so long, women were now told that joining the labor force was the patriotic thing to do. “Victory Waits on Your Fingers—Keep ’Em Flying, Miss U.S.A,” read one poster recruiting women to the civilian workforce. Sandwiched between the cheery words, a patriotic blond with a red-and-blue ribbon in her hair saluted from behind a typewriter. Over the course of the war, the female workforce would eventually grow by almost 50 percent, adding six million women to the fourteen and a half million who were already working.
“Rosie the Riveter” became a national icon, and for good reason: At one point during the war, there were some three hundred thousand women working in the aircraft industry alone. According to the Office of War Information, their ability to pick up these kinds of jobs and to do them so well “disproved the old bugaboo that women have no mechanical ability and that they are a distracting influence in industry.” Still, there were some problems inherent to the new coed arrangement. As one female worker admitted: “At times it gets to be a pain in the neck when the man who is supposed to show you work stops showing it to you because you have nicely but firmly asked him to keep his hands on his own knees . . . Somehow we’ll have to make them understand that we are not very much interested in their strapping virility.” Women also took many white-collar jobs during the war years, including spots at newspapers, which, like every industry, had been virtually stripped of male employees. Among these new women in journalism was Mildred Wirt.
The first edition of Inside the Blade, the in-house organ of the Toledo Blade and Toledo Times newspapers, was published in October of 1943. Despite its lighthearted mission statement—“News, gossip, [and] humor going on daily in all departments”—it was a de facto war newsletter as much as anything else. In addition to amusing squibs, Inside the Blade ran photos and addresses of all the paper’s men in the service so that staff members could write to them. Altogether, fifty men had been deployed, and many more were no doubt to follow, since, as the newsletter noted, “Draft deferments have been whittled down to a point where many of the Blade employees are now subject to call.” Soon after Mildred was hired, Inside the Blade ran a comic interview with her under the headline “ONCE WROTE FOR CHILDREN, NOW WRITES FOR TIMES.” “Married for sixteen years,” it quipped, “Mildred still gets away with cooking only when she has to.”
The willfully incompetent homemaker had initially started working full-time outside her home in the summer of 1944, writing to Harriet to say that she was “taking a new position as publicity writer (radio and newspaper) for the Toledo Community Chest . . . Mr. Wirt is in very poor health, having had five strokes, and for this reason I feel it wise to take on salary work during this period when women are so much in demand.” By 1945, the year after Mildred started at the Community Chest, women made up more than a third of the civilian workforce in the country. There were also 1,000 Women’s Airforce Service Pilots (WASPs)—no doubt Nancy Drew would have put her new pilot’s license to use with this group—140,000 Women’s Army Corps (WAC) members, and 100,000 Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service in the navy (WAVES).
Mildred’s job at the Community Chest was certainly less glamorous than such thrilling posts, but the real problem with it was that it was temporary. She needed work desperately if she was to continue supporting her family while Asa lay ill, so taking advantage of historic opportunity—newspaperwomen were not unheard of in the forties, but they were far from the norm—she applied for a reporting job at the Toledo Times. She also refused to give up writing books, continuing on with the Syndicate even as she worked full-time at the Community Chest and looked for a new job. Upon learning of all this from Harriet, Edna was amazed at Mildred’s will to succeed, commenting, “Too bad about Mrs. Wirt’s husband—it must be a dreadful strain. Evidently she loves to write or else would give up the work entirely.”
Indeed Mildred did, so when her application at the Times was turned down, she simply refused to take no for an answer. She began sending stories about the Community Chest to the paper for publication. Eventually, the Times editors were low enough on reporters and impressed enough with her gumption and her writing to hire her. In the fall of 1944, she joined the staff of the Toledo Times as one of its city hall beat reporters. “It was during the war, and they were taking on women for the first time,” she recalled many decades later. “[The editor] said ‘As soon as the war is over, I want you to understand you will be the first one to be fired.’ I ran scared for about at least 49½ years.” Like many women, she wanted more than anything to keep her job after peace was declared. As an article in the New York Times Magazine put it, “Alma goes to work because she wants to go to work. She wants to go now and she wants to keep going when the war is over. Alma’s had a taste of LIFE. She’s poked her head out into the one-man’s world.”
But the opposite sentiment about women and work was also very much in evidence. As the country prospered and marriage and birth rates jumped, the old worry about allowing women to become too much like men cropped up again. One ominous pamphlet warned: “The war in general has given women new status, new recognition . . . Women are ‘coming into their own’ in this war . . . In her new independence she must not lose her humanness as a woman. She may be the woman of the moment, but she must watch her moments.” Mildred’s tactic in this battle was to simply work harder and longer than anyone else, and it proved to be a wise one. When the fighting finally ended, she was given a permanent spot at the Times because, as she put it plainly, “I could always get the story.”
Working the night shift until 11:00 P.M.—though in reality she was often at the paper until 1:30 or 2:00 in the morning—Mildred often turned in six or seven stories a night as she sat amid a sea of hardscrabble male reporters who chain-smoked nonstop and listened to police scanners to pick up tidbits to publish the next day. While her mother took care of Peggy and Asa—Lillian had come from Iowa so that her daughter could work—Mildred held her ground as one of the few women working in the editorial department and the only one who was not working on the society pages. She thrived on the chance to put her excellent journalism training to good use. One of her efficiency techniques was to start her stories in her head as she walked back to the office from city hall, and often she barely had time to get them down on paper before someone ripped the sheet from her typewriter to rush it off to copyediting. Among her favorite pieces were those that covered the effects of the war on Toledo’s citizens, which she filtered though her access to the various committees at city hall that regulated prices in the face of inflation caused by the rapidly expanding economy. The thriving underworld of the black market and its effect on local retailers and residents was one of her liveliest topics, and she returned to it often: “CITY’S SHOPS ON VERGE OF BARE CASES!” “EGG BLACK MARKET SWITCH REPORTED!”
After the war was over, Mildred would turn to more uplifting stories about GI brides, who were arriving in Toledo by the dozens and finding the local ways highly impressive. “The washing machines and refrigerators! Why Monday I finished a washing and ironing all in one day!” one of the British transplants exclaimed to Mildred, who added, “Many of the brides said they had found the United States a veritable promised land, and life here much like a movie.” That life in America was in stark contrast to conditions overseas could hardly have been made clearer than it was in another story Mildred filed about a repatriated American wife who had been living in Germany with her German husband. “I lived in Germany for 12 years and heard of only one concentration camp,’ Mrs. Frischmann said. ‘The people were kept in ignorance. Now for the first time, I think the German people are beginning to accept the truth.’”
When Mildred arrived home from a long day at the paper, she would relieve her mother, set up her typewriter by Asa’s bedside, and start her fiction work for the day
. “I was a tired writer,” she remembered. “Lots of people think that Nancy Drew just came, but I’ve paid for that with blood, with real blood. I sweat when I wrote the books and I worked hard, unbelievably hard. I don’t think very many people would ever work as hard as I worked during the most active years of my life. I would never do it again.”
Still, she managed somehow, if only because she had no choice. “The salary is so excellent that I cannot afford to drop it,” she wrote to Harriet of her newspaper job, while still assuring her that, amazingly, she could make the time to write a new Dana Girls book. In an effort to help Mildred, Harriet had offered to let her write her next book from an outline that was more like the brief ones Edward had sent out. The two women had by this time exchanged numerous letters about whose style of writing was more suited to the work. Unable to get Mildred to see it her way but also too busy to find another ghostwriter, Harriet decided that perhaps if she sent out just a “synopsis such as Mr. Stratemeyer used to send,” she might be able to both cut down on her rewriting work and get a better manuscript from Mildred, who would not be fighting the copious amounts of information and detail that Harriet had become accustomed to putting into each outline. Mildred agreed wholeheartedly with this plan, writing back, “I do feel that it would make for easier writing and a better book.”
An agreement reached, however uneasily, Harriet wrote to Edna to let her know. Though Edna had not set foot in the offices of the Stratemeyer Syndicate for several years, she was still in on the profits and expected to be kept up-to-date on as well as consulted about everything. When Harriet confessed that she found Mildred increasingly hard to deal with, Edna wrote back in Mildred’s defense once more: “Mrs. Wirt is certainly a go-getter,” she wrote to Harriet, “and she must have a following even if you find her difficult to work with . . . Her style made the Nancys.”
Thankfully, Harriet’s new outlining methods were rewarded when Mildred handed in her next effort. “I think our plan of a less complicated outline has worked out very well,” Harriet wrote to her upon receiving the Dana Girls story, reassured enough to assign Mildred the next Nancy Drew, The Mystery of the Tolling Bell.
Having solved her problems with Mildred, for the time being anyway, Harriet was left to face a much larger difficulty—namely, Edna. Not only were the two sisters in disagreement about some of the ghostwriters and the way the sale of various rights should be handled, but Edna’s growing obsession with her royalty income had started to take the form of constant heavy criticism of Harriet’s management of the business. Her letters began to take on a hectoring tone that created an awful tension between New Jersey and Florida. Disconnected from the everyday practicalities of the business, Edna had no comprehension of how it ran or just how lucky she was that Harriet was willing to put in the time to keep them wealthy. She asked constantly for numbers to show that Harriet was not making grave errors. “A convincing answer to some worries which you seem to have over the income of the Syndicate,” Harriet wrote her at one point, trying to defend herself. “They [figures she had just compiled for the last fifteen years of business] prove to me that our profits have increased each year, and there is no indication the depression hit our pocketbooks.”
In addition to other insults, Harriet had not had a raise since 1942, when Edna had first become a silent partner. She knew, however, that Edna was bound to be stingy about money, and her efforts when it came to getting her sister to agree to spend more were well prioritized. Instead of thinking of herself, she put the issue of a very necessary increase for the office secretaries, of whom there were now several, to her reluctant partner. Without their help, she could not run the business smoothly. The same went for ghostwriters, and so she also made a pitch for Mildred, whose work, she had discovered during her accounting blitz, had been consistent and brought the Syndicate a great deal of money over the years. “Before getting off the subject of remuneration, I think it would be a nice gesture to Mrs. Wirt to let her share in the profits of the Nancy Drew,” she wrote to Edna. “Dad always gave Christmas gifts to his writers, but we have never practiced the same generosity.”
Harriet could not have known just how badly Mildred needed both the money and the affirmation at that particular moment. Her bonus check for $1,000 arrived in Toledo in September of 1945, just a few months after a joyous VE Day made the end of the war official, and just weeks after America dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Two hundred ninety-five thousand American lives had been lost in the fighting, but now the grief was leavened with celebration as the danger came to an end. For Mildred, however, peacetime brought new reasons to worry, as her stable job was now uncertain. Things had not improved much at home, either. “During the past four and a half years, while my husband has steadily gone down hill following a series of seven strokes, there have been times when I seriously considered giving up all writing,” she admitted in her thank-you note to Harriet. “Some of the copy I turned out a year or so ago probably was not my best, but you were very patient, and I feel now that I am over the hump, so to speak . . . The Syndicate gift of $1,000 is more than generous, and to say I am appreciative expresses it very mildly. I trust that Nancy will go on for many years, and that she will vie with the Rover Boys in carving a lasting name for herself in popular fiction.” Then, signing off contentedly, she wrote, “I have earmarked part of your gift for a new typewriter as soon as they are released to civilians! I am sure this will be good news for everyone remotely connected with my copy!”
But when Mildred handed in the next Nancy Drew, the awful pressures under which she was trying to bear up were apparent everywhere in the text. Exhausted, she had allowed her own troubles to seep into the charmed world of River Heights, most noticeably in the character of Nancy herself. Like Mildred, Nancy was no longer the strong, optimistic firebrand she had once been. One of the office secretaries wrote a mini-review of the manuscript for Harriet in which she made no effort to hide her disdain for Mildred’s work: “The MS did not read like a Nancy Drew mystery at all . . . The characterization was outstandingly poor—everyone, from Bess to the gypsy violinist, spoke the same, and acted undistinguishably [sic] . . . Perhaps Nancy herself was worst of all, appearing as a sissy and a defeatist, a far cry from the girl whom the young readers have come to admire.”
After reading this report, Harriet decided to take some kind of action. Nancy Drew was by this time both her favorite character and her most important asset, and she could not simply stand by and watch her be ruined. Nor did she have the time to do an extensive rewrite of every manuscript. She began to keep a list of the various criticisms she had sent Mildred over the past decade or so, presumably to create a paper trail for future reference, and she let Mildred know that her work was unsatisfactory. “Nancy does not seem like the courageous, untiring person she has always been,” Harriet wrote. “She is definitely a defeatist, always weary and ready to give up. There was no differentiation between Bess and George, and the comraderie [sic] we had tried to build up between Mr. Drew and Nancy was lacking entirely. Nancy spoke in a very adult fashion, and it made her seem much older than in former books.”
Harriet was, as always, unfailingly polite to her employee, but in a letter to Edna about the problem, she was more candid about wanting to sever ties with Mildred, and she did not hesitate to lay the blame not only on the overworked writer, but on Edna herself. “Right now we are re-writing the NANCY DREW,” she wrote to her sister somewhat bitterly. “After you wrote you thought Mrs. Wirt should go on with the series I decided to try her once more. Before making any comments on the story I listened to those of three or four other people who voted it practically a washout.” As usual, Edna was not ready to accept her sister’s opinion. In her reply, she asked to see the outline Harriet had send to Mildred before she would agree to “drop her from the S.S.” “You and I never could agree on how a Nancy should be written,” she reminded her sister. “After all,” she finished, jabbing at Harriet’s conscience unmercifully, “her year
s of work mean something to her too.” Harriet put off, yet again, a decision about what to do with Mildred. But she could distract herself with other, more pleasurable pursuits, like the fact that her daughter Camilla had given birth to a baby girl. She threw herself into the role of grandmother with characteristic gaiety and pleasure. Sending congratulations on another new baby to a young man who had written an article about her in the Herald Tribune, she mused on the changes that had taken place since her own children had been born. He had mentioned to her that he was taking over domestic duties while his wife recovered, and the very idea brought her up short: “Recently I have reflected upon my own post-war life after World War I, when my domestic status quo was similar to yours now. I don’t dare let myself think that things have retrogressed considerably, or I become wuzzy!” she wrote. “Nevertheless, my husband’s situation at that time was not unlike your own, yet the country’s whole economic system was so different that he never washed the dishes nor took care of the baby. Somehow you young people of today will have to straighten out the present hectic situation—and I am sure you personally will want to do it as soon as possible and get out of the dishpan!”
In the meantime, Edna had taken to getting advice from her own tax man down in Florida, no longer trusting Harriet to even present a legitimate picture of the business. Among other things, Harriet had decided in 1946 to bring out a new baseball series, and, as usual, she had consulted Edna about the contract. When Edna finally wrote back almost a year later, Harriet was as close to outraged as she could bring herself to be. “I was rather amazed at your recent reply to my letter about what you wish to do concerning the new series,” she sputtered. “I wrote to you nearly a year ago about this, and again some months later, so it seems to me that you had a long time in which to get the ‘expert advice’ you mentioned. I had hoped to have the whole matter settled for Income Tax purposes, and also for contract with the publishers. At the end of the week I shall deliver the second baseball story to Cupples and Leon and I dislike having them bring out a series under unsettled conditions between us.”
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