Bold Spirit - Linda Hunt [58]
A newspaper artist for the World drew an original rendition of Helga and Clara wearing their reformed costumes and toting knives and guns. The caption read: “Mrs. Estby and Her Daughter Walked Armed from Spokane,” and it was signed J.C. Fineman. Then one brief sentence gave the ominous news that had shattered the trust, dreams, and determination of a mother and daughter to rescue their family, crushing their earlier exhilaration. Evidently, they discovered on Christmas Eve afternoon that the mysterious sponsor refused to honor the contract. The World reported Helga’s news: “The object of the long tramp was to make money, but the woman who engaged them to do it has gone back on her contract.”16
The sponsor not only refused to honor the contract but also refused to provide train money to return home, a tragic omission that ultimately shaped the destiny of the Estby family. Helga had put such faith in a stranger’s promises. The reporter provided no information on the identity of the sponsor or the women’s profound disappointment. Only Helga’s concern was noted by the reporter: “She is wondering how they are going to get home.”17
Stunned by this harsh betrayal, Helga and Clara spent Christmas Eve among a crowded city of strangers, so far away from the family they loved. Now destitute and homeless, did they still light a candle on this most silent of nights?
16 HEARTBREAK AT THE MICA CREEK HOMESTEAD
I have heard news that diphtheria is in my house.
—NEW YORK DAILY TRIBUNE MAY 2, 1897
During the following spring, Helga and Clara faced the reality of being penniless women eking out a living in New York City. They needed to fend for themselves in a city teeming with other immigrants, trying to earn enough money to live while also saving for two return tickets home. Women generally earned only half the wages for similar work as men did at the turn of the century; their prospects for saving looked bleak.1
They moved to Brooklyn to look for work because it was a less expensive place to live than Manhattan. Helga, an excellent seamstress and housekeeper, might have found employment this way. The large immigrant population of Brooklyn, however, filled the newspapers with similar “work wanted” advertisements. Tens of thousands of immigrants came to New York, first from northern and western Europe and then, after 1890, also from southern and eastern European countries. Although women now entered the labor force in factories, most worked in “women’s jobs,” primarily in the garment shops, textile mills, hosiery plants, or food production area. Workers faced long hours, dismal working conditions, occupational hazards, and low pay. A sixty-hour, five-and-a-half-day week was commonplace. Highly skilled labor that required training, and provided higher wages, was reserved for men. For example, in breweries, men were brewers and young women were bottle washers; in bakeries, men were bakers and women were boxers or “cracker-packers”; even in the garment industry, men performed the most highly skilled work of cutting the fabric in waistmaking.2 The low pay for women in temporary menial labor provided only for bare survival needs; saving enough for two cross-continental train tickets verged on the impossible.
Two topics that appeared continually in the Brooklyn newspapers in the winter of 1897 likely perked Helga’s interest after her experiences in Wyoming and Colorado. The “woman question,” particularly the issue of suffrage, often made front-page news in the Brooklyn Standard Union. Similar to her experiences in Manistee, Michigan, when she was sixteen, both sides argued vociferously. Helga now knew firsthand that some western women enjoyed this privilege, and her travels kindled her growing belief that women did not deserve to be treated as inferior.3 As a