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of a Spokane connection but with a new twist. “This long journey was the conception of a wealthy woman of Spokane, who is an ardent advocate of woman’s suffrage, and it is intended to test the power of woman’s endurance.”19 Never before has Helga mentioned a connection to women’s suffrage, although she consistently refers to the goal of proving the endurance of women. In an earlier interview with the Idaho Statesman, she mentioned they were walking to New York on a wager “put up by parties who do not care to have their names divulged until we reach our destination.”20 The female sponsors appeared to keep their identity secret even from Helga, a term she accepted. For whatever reasons, these sponsors encouraged Helga and Clara to gamble with their very lives, engaging them in a desperate feat.

14 A RUSH TO THE FINISH

They are so anxious to gain time that they made no

stop here at all.

—OHIO STATE JOURNAL

UPPER SANDUSKY, NOVEMBER 24, 1896

They called on President-elect McKinley at Canton

last evening and were genially welcomed by the Major

and his pleasant wife.

—ALLIANCE DAILY REVIEW NOVEMBER 30, 1896

When Helga first proposed the walk across America, she heard all the negative predictions. “It’s an impossible trip.” “Women can’t do such a thing.” “You won’t survive.” But as she continued east, she found that with their unique story and engaging personalities, people were anxious to help them along the way. Furthermore, Helga’s worthy ambition to save a family home fit a Victorian value, even if her method appeared radical. By the time Helga and Clara entered the last few hundred miles of their trip, winding through eastern Ohio and the Amish countryside of Pennsylvania, the women undoubtedly felt a high sense of achievement and relief. Even Clara, sick of the trip by the time they arrived in the Midwest, seemed excited about their accomplishment, or at least that the end was drawing near.

Some reporters noted the women’s swinging emotional pendulum. Although Helga expressed assurance that they would make their destination, it was now coupled with a nagging fear that the sponsor might void the contract if they arrived after the December destination date. Delay caused by Clara’s ankle injury and illness placed them in a race against the calendar. Even after walking a formidable thirty-eight miles in one day to make up lost time, they still lagged a few days behind schedule. Surviving the summer dangers of desert heat exhaustion had changed to surviving December’s chilling winds and snowstorms. Recalling the 1880 Minnesota winter that began in mid-October, Helga knew they needed unseasonably mild weather on their side. A winter storm paralyzing the East would make walking in November and December impossible. Would their luck hold?

A brief November 24 article in Upper Sandusky’s, Ohio State Journal indicated their anxiety and hurry as they reached eastern Ohio. No longer did they have the leisure to stop, rest, and earn money. “They are so anxious to gain time that they made no stop here at all,” lamented a reporter, perhaps disappointed not to meet the globetrotters.1 However, while in Ohio, they did take time to visit “General Keep-Off-the-Grass” Coxey, a friend of laborers, in Massillon. Jacob Coxey, a wealthy man who owned a sandstone quarry in Ohio, ranches, and race horses, traveled the poor Midwest roads that alternated between frozen, muddy, or dusty. He believed that if the United States wanted to grow and prosper again, it needed to fix the dilapidated roads, so he began a Good Roads Association.2

Helga and Clara stopped in Massillon, Ohio, and visited Jacob Coxey. His “army” of unemployed men walked to the Capitol in Washington in 1894 seeking government support of a public-works project to provide men with work, setting a precedent for future nonviolent protests on the Capitol grounds.

Courtesy Ohio Historical Society, OHS 11759.

Detail of this photograph on this page.

Then, troubled by the massive unemployment of 1893 that left men desperately in need of work, he came up