Sensational by Kim Todd (good short books .txt) 📗

said. This was better than chocolates. The women clustered around.

Banks, amused as she watched the whole fracas, noted, “Can one woman lead hundreds of other women? Not in New Bedford.”

A while later, not far away in Boston, where girls threw snowballs at the statue of George Washington in the Common and papers reported gold in the Yukon, Valesh walked into the Massachusetts State House on Beacon Hill, a grand structure of redbrick and white columns, topped, like the World Building, with a shiny gold dome. Buildings with historic significance appealed to her. Giving a speech in an Illinois courthouse where Lincoln had spoken had been an inspiration.

Taking the notion of “journalism that acts” to heart, Valesh would be advocating for a law that she called the “Journal’s bill.” It specified that if any pay deductions were made, the manufacturers had to give the weavers written notice. The weaver needed to see the flaw and agree to the amount of damage. Hoping to rely on legal training she’d picked up from her husband’s night-school classes to argue for the Journal’s positions in front of the Labor Committee, Valesh entered a room full of mustached men, including AFL leader Samuel Gompers. Harriet Pickering was also there, opposing the bill.

Apparently, Pickering made good on her promise to go see the manufacturers and present her idea, one she vastly preferred to Valesh’s. In her view, the fine system should be abolished, not amended. From Valesh’s perspective, Pickering, the woman she’d once considered the Joan of Arc of the strike, had been reduced to a “pitiable object,” doing the bidding of the mill owners by speaking out against the Journal’s plan.

Valesh gave her testimony, basing it on her New Bedford observations, followed up by Gompers and representatives of weavers throughout New England.

Then she turned to question Pickering, underscoring the irony of the weaver testifying for the manufacturers.

“You are out on strike in New Bedford?”

“That’s none of your business,” Pickering said. “Find out for yourself. We don’t want you to come down to New Bedford and make it any worse and your bill here does make it worse.”

A Boston Globe reporter wrote dryly: “The two women were evidently not entirely friendly.”

Papers (other than her own, where articles—written by her—applauded her performance) mocked Valesh for her pushiness, her endless talking. At the end of the first day, when she suggested they close the hearing before the manufacturers had the chance to argue their side, everyone laughed. But she found her stride. On the last day, the Globe reported her argument straight.

In the final speeches, counsel for the manufacturers began by claiming the law was born of “sensational yellow journalism.” He then lavished praise on Pickering, mentioning she’d come of her own volition.

Though Valesh wasn’t a politician or lawyer, lecturing was her expertise. She tied up all her questioning in the final argument, chipping away at the claim that workers who didn’t like the fining could just leave: “We have always had the right to do that. We can leave or starve or throw ourselves into the river. We do not have to come to the manufacturers to have that privilege conferred on us.”

While Valesh left the meeting optimistic, poised for success, thinking it was one of the most important things she’d ever done, Pickering had a hard time being heard anywhere after her testimony against the bill. The tone at the next union meeting turned threatening as word of her appearance at the statehouse spread. “Choke her off,” yelled one striker when her name came up. The Weavers’ Union secretary urged female strikers to ignore Pickering and indicated that when the strike was over she’d be dealt with: “This woman carries nothing only a long tongue, and that tongue had better be shortened.”

As the weeks passed with no concessions by workers or manufacturers, some weavers left and looked for other jobs. Pickering wondered how to get the union to listen. Eva Valesh awaited the outcome of her bill. More national labor leaders arrived, sensing publicity. Hunger and anxiety didn’t soothe tempers.

The outcome was still unknown, except for this: as a result of all these reporters flooding New Bedford, each defining her own niche, the papers were full of women—far beyond aristocrats marrying in silk finery and “ruined” girls leaving beautiful corpses on the streets of New York. Paging through the New Bedford coverage, readers encountered a rare reflection of a society where both sexes contributed. There were female strike leaders and church organists, weavers who supported their entire families, volunteers who ran the childcare center for the mill workers’ children, boardinghouse managers, teachers, and millionaire industrialists. And, of course, dashing journalists.

Far to the south, the Maine waited in the Havana harbor, moored to a buoy. The night air was hot, the sky cloudy, the whole place unsettlingly still. The armored war ship, flying the American flag, had been called to Cuba from Key West for what the Department of State termed a “friendly” naval visit. But the captain noted sullen faces in the crowd when he was on shore and ripples of tension among Spanish officers as he carried out the rituals of military etiquette. Sweltering, the captain put on a lighter jacket than usual and found, in the pocket, a letter he was supposed to have mailed for his wife ten months before. As the crew, forbidden to leave the ship, swung in their hammocks belowdecks, he penned an apology. The notes of taps, played with a flourish, echoed over the water.

Then, with sounds of gunshots and rending metal, the ship exploded.

In the falling debris, the splintered shards of the Maine, the deaths of 266 men, one thing became clear: Hearst would get his war. No one cared about New Bedford anymore.

Chapter 16

1898–1912

Reversal of Fortune

America is a big country; it is destined to become a great country, for there is manliness and vigor in the memorable phrases coined by celebrated Americans.

—The Standard Union, August 20, 1898

Maine Explosion Caused by Bomb or Torpedo?” ran