JACK LEFT TOWN six weeks later. He had applied for work with the Grenfell Mission in Labrador and been accepted, and sailed down to Labrador on the Kyle. Grace was not sure what kind of good-bye to say. “God go with you,” she said finally, as he kissed her cheek and turned towards the gangplank.
“I was going to suggest He should stay here and look after you,” Jack said with a grin, so that her last picture was of him smiling and making a joke.
She walked back to her grandfather’s house from the steamer dock; it was a warm day for this early in the spring. In her room she looked at her reflection in the mirror and thought: A spinster. A maiden lady. She had not thought of herself in those terms before. During the war she had been a young girl with a special friend overseas. Now Jack was gone and he had said they should not make or keep promises. Grace was twenty-two years old, with a diploma in Social Work, a post as lady assistant with the Methodist church, and, she supposed, a more or less broken engagement.
She thought of the room upstairs that had once been Lily’s, of her mother looking at her own reflection in that mirror up there. Lily had been married at twenty-one. Grace didn’t know if her parents’ engagement had been short or long: she knew so little about her mother’s life before marriage. Had Lily ever looked at herself in the mirror and thought of herself as a maiden lady, a spinster?
Over dinner that evening, while spreading butter on a thick slice of her own home-made bread, Daisy said to Grace, “Do you ever think of going back to teaching? I mean, not in some little outport school, but with your college education I’m sure you could get a decent position at a nice school here in town—maybe even teach at the Methodist College. Wouldn’t you like that?”
Grace laughed. “No, I don’t think I’m cut out for teaching,” she said. “I only ever did it for those two years when I was young, and I don’t have the patience for it. Or the interest, really.”
“That’s a pity,” Daisy said. She didn’t need to explain that if poor Grace was going to be jilted and condemned to a spinster’s life, she ought to get herself back into the one profession deemed wholly respectable for a single woman. It was clear she thought that any potential Jack had as a suitor was erased by his decision to take off for the Labrador, but to her credit, Daisy didn’t harp on things.
“Going off to another meeting tonight, dear?” she asked as Grace left the table. “Must be the suffrage ladies, is it?” If it were Ladies’ Aid or the Women’s Missionary Society, Daisy would have kept her company, but she drew the line at the Women’s Franchise League. Not that she disapproved of the cause. “It’s time women had the vote, but it’s for young girls like yourself—educated girls, not a simple housewife like myself,” was the sort of thing Daisy would say. “I think it’s grand for you—go, get involved in all these things, Grace.”
Grace darted a look at her grandfather, who sat at the head of the table paying more attention to his roast than to the conversation of his wife and granddaughter. He had snorted under his breath a few times when she’d mentioned going to meetings of the Franchise League, and she wasn’t entirely sure how he felt about the suffrage cause. But he made no fuss about it.
Grace herself had only recently started attending the meetings when one of the ladies at church had invited her to come. At the franchise meetings she felt, more than at the Ladies’ Aid or the Missionary Society, that she was in the midst of a group of like-minded women. Women like Mrs. Gosling, Mrs. McNeil, and Miss Kennedy all believed in improving society by reforming the liquor laws, educating the poor, and cleaning up the slums. Above all, they believed that for real change to occur women had to have a vote and a voice in how the country was run. Sitting in their meetings, Grace felt a strange sense of kinship with her mother’s younger self, even though she had never heard Lily speak of women’s votes with anything other than disdain.
“Oh yes, I remember Lily Hunt from back in the WCTU,” Fannie McNeil told Grace. “I was a few years younger so I didn’t go to the meetings, but I was always interested in the cause. I think your mother wrote for their paper too—it had some good pieces in it, all written by women. That was Mrs. Ohman’s project, of course.”
“I met Mrs. Ohman in Montreal.” Grace had kept in touch by letter with the older lady since her visit two years before. She didn’t know if Mrs. Ohman and Lily had ever corresponded, other than the time Mrs. Ohman wrote to Lily inviting Grace to stay with her in Montreal.
“You don’t remember Grace’s mother, do you, Miss Kennedy?” Mrs. McNeil turned to May Kennedy.
“No, but if she was in the WCTU that’s hardly surprising—there was no place for Catholic girls in that. Nearly all Methodists and Presbyterians. It’s the one thing we’ve done right so far here in the Franchise League—cut across the denominational lines and got women from all walks of society.”
“Though only the well-off,” Grace pointed out. “I mean, we don’t see any poor women here, fishermen’s wives or factory girls, do we? They stand to benefit from the vote, but we don’t include them.”
“Ah, you need to talk to Mrs. Earle—pardon me, Mrs. Salter Earle,” May Kennedy said, with an arched eyebrow.
“Salter is her husband’s name?”
“No, Salter is her maiden name. She didn’t want to lose it entirely when she got married so she uses both. Now, the urge to hang onto one’s own name is something a spinster lady like myself can well appreciate, but only Julia Earle would be headstrong enough to think she could have it both ways—keep her name and get a husband.” Miss Kennedy laughed. “But you must have met her, she’s one of your Wesleyan crowd.”
“I think I have seen her at Cochrane Street Church,” Grace said; her grandfather and Daisy attended there and she had a vague memory of being introduced to a formidable woman who was secretary of the Women’s Missionary Society there.
“You would have, surely. She’s a big wheel among the Methodists, and she’s hung onto another thing a lady usually loses when she marries. No, don’t look shocked, I mean her job! She’s a secretary in the House of Assembly, and goes to business every day along with looking after her home and raising her children. Though truth to be told, the word on the street is that looking after the house is fairly low on her agenda—she’s not much of a homemaker. I suppose she must have a maid, at least.”
“She sounds formidable,” Grace agreed, trying to remember what she’d heard about the woman, “but why do you recommend her to me?”
“Why, she started up the ladies’ branch of the NIWA—you know, the factory girls’ union. She shows up here once in every blue moon to lecture us all on how women’s rights mean nothing if we don’t include the rights of the working woman. She’s quite the character.”
By chance Grace heard a second mention of Mrs. Salter Earle and the NIWA that same week, from Effie Butler who announced that she was having Aunt Loll look in on the children on Thursday evening so she could attend the union ladies’ meeting. “Oh, we have a lovely time,” Effie said, “they always gives us tea and biscuits, and after the business part there’s recitations and sometimes music, and Mrs. Earle always haves something to say—you should come sometime, Miss Collins, you’d love it.”
With recommendations from two such different sources, Grace thought she ought to go, so on Thursday evening she left Aunt Daisy to attend the Ladies’ Aid on her own while Grace went off to the old Temperance Hall to attend the NIWA meeting. She didn’t see Effie Butler there, but she did see Julia Salter Earle, who crossed the floor to greet her before the meeting started.
“Ah Miss Collins,” she said, gripping Grace’s hand in a handshake as firm as any man’s, “I’ve been wanting to invite you here for a while. You’re doing good work there at Gower Street I hear. Or at least as good as one can do under the present circumstances. I always feel charity work is a bit like putting bandages on people who are bleeding to death, yet we can’t seem to get by without it, can we? Sit here with Miss Foster, we’re about to begin.”
Julia Salter Earle, it seemed, knew all about Grace Collins. In fact, she seemed to know all about everyone. Grace sat and listened as Mrs. Salter Earle chaired the meeting, tabling resolutions about regular lunch breaks and restroom breaks for factory employees. “We’ve made good progress these last three years,” she reminded the assembled women, “but with businesses facing hard times and factories closing, the owners think they can take back the rights we’ve fought for. I’ve had men who call themselves Christian businessmen tell me to my face that if the girls on a factory floor—I won’t say which one, but I’m sure some of you can guess—if the girls go on strike, they can fire the lot of them, replace them the next day with unemployed girls, and never have to give an inch. You know it’s true. If we don’t stand together, they’ll pick away at your rights, one by one, ’til you’re worse off than you were before the war! Solidarity forever!”
“Hear, hear!” shouted the women around Grace. Mrs. Salter Earle referred to them as “girls” and they were, on average, several years younger than Grace herself, since so many girls worked for a few years and then gave up outside employment when they got married. Girls of sixteen and seventeen, some, like Effie, even younger, in threadbare blouses and home-sewn skirts, sat ramrod-straight hanging onto every word their leader uttered, and joined together to sing the union anthem “Solidarity Forever.” Grace had heard it sung at meetings in New York, but never here in St. John’s.
Grace was stirred by the sight: she wasn’t sure what to make of Mrs. Salter Earle’s strident, abrasive manner, but the young women she had collected around her were inspiring. And her vision was like that of the settlement workers—not just handing out charity, as Grace was doing, but working among the poor themselves, enlisting their own efforts to raise them out of poverty. It was strange to sing “Solidarity Forever” and applaud the suggestion of a strike, when at home that evening Grace had listened to Grandfather fuming about how the printers’ strike, which had dragged on for months, made it impossible to run his business. Yet she couldn’t help agreeing with much of what she heard. She already knew that girls were exploited in factories, and united effort was necessary to improve their lot.
After the business part of the meeting there was, as Effie had said, tea and biscuits, and some of the girls got up to do songs and recitations. Mrs. Salter Earle settled herself and her teacup into the seat next to Grace as a slim girl of about seventeen stepped up to the front of the room and cleared her throat. “I read this poem in a magazine,” the girl said, “and the paper said a crew of women out in the States carried it on their signs when they went on strike, and I think it’s the best thing I ever heard.” She cleared her throat, clasped her hands before in school-recitation posture, and raised her voice.
As we come marching, marching in the beauty of the day,
A million darkened kitchens, a thousand mill lofts grey,
Are touched with all the radiance that a sudden sun discloses,
For the people hear us singing: “Bread and roses! Bread and roses!”
As the recitation continued, tears sprang to Grace’s eyes. Mrs. Earle listened dry eyed, nodding slightly at the end of each stanza, but Grace was lost in the poignant beauty of the words, and of hearing them recited by a working girl who must surely have known from experience what they meant.
As we come marching, marching, we bring the greater days.
The rising of the women means the rising of the race.
No more the drudge and idler—ten that toil where one reposes,
But a sharing of life’s glories: Bread and roses! Bread and roses!
As the room full of women burst into applause, Mrs. Earle leaned over to say in Grace’s ear, “Seamstress at the Royal Stores. Mother was a seamstress too, ’til the arthritis crippled up her hands so she couldn’t work. Father’s a drunkard, good for nothing. Young Theresa there did well at the convent school—family’s Catholic, of course—up ’til she was ten and had to leave to go to work. Fine reciting voice, fine mind. Shame she couldn’t stay in school.”
When the recitations and songs were done and the women sat around chatting, Grace turned to Sylvia Pearcey, another of the young women she knew from her church work. Sylvia worked in the same factory as Effie Butler and Grace asked her, “Do you know where Effie is? It was she who invited me to come this evening; I thought she’d be here.”
“Oh, didn’t you hear what happened today at the factory?” said Sylvia. “There was an accident with one of the machines and Effie got her hand caught in the works. She’s in awful bad shape.”
“Is she at home? Did anyone take her to a doctor?”
The girl shrugged. “Don’t know. We had to shut down an hour early today because they couldn’t get that machine running again, that’s the only reason I had time to get me tea and get here for this meeting.”
“Oh dear—I ought to go look in on her and the children, see if she’s all right,” Grace said.
Mrs. Earle, who was engaged in lively conversation nearby, turned and said, “Is that the young girl who was in the accident at the boot factory? I heard she’s been taken to hospital.”
“Yes—Effie Butler,” Grace said. “I was just going to go by the house.”
“I’ll come with you,” Julia Salter Earle announced. She clearly knew who Effie Butler was and where she lived. Remembering her thumbnail life sketch of Theresa McGrath, Grace wondered if she knew every factory girl in St. John’s by name and address.
At the crowded flat they found four of the five younger Butler children. Frank was away fishing on the Labrador, and Jennie, who was ten, was the next oldest. It was Jennie who answered the door.
“No, Miss, Effie’s gone, they took her to hospital. I tried to find Aunt Loll to tell her but she’s been gone this two days. And I don’t know where Jimmy went to neither, he took off with them Morris boys and Effie always says they’re a hard crowd and he shouldn’t go around with them. And all the little ones are bein’ bad and I don’t know what to do!”
“Did you have anything to give them for their tea?” Mrs. Earle asked, wading into what seemed like a sea of small children.
“There was only half a loaf of bread, and no butter, Ma’am, and they’re still squallin’ at me like they wants more.”
“I’m going to the shop,” Mrs. Earle said to Grace, “to get something for these children to eat. You try to find out what hospital they’ve put poor Effie in and how badly off she is.”
Grace remembered May Kennedy’s comment that Julia Salter Earle was an indifferent housekeeper. She had an untidy look to her—her clothes were serviceable but unstylish and her greying hair was pinned up any which way, with no impression that she had taken time over it. But she was able to perform housewifely duties when the situation required. By the time Grace had spoken to the neighbours and determined that Effie was at the General Hospital, Mrs. Earle had bread with butter and jam, and slices of bologna and hard cheese ready for the Butler children along with a fresh pot of tea—a better meal than those children had had in months, Grace guessed.
It was the next morning before Grace was able to visit Effie. She found the girl feverish, her hand swathed in bandages, in a bed with the word “PAUPER” hung on a sign over it. Effie drifted in and out of consciousness. She told Grace the story of her injury and insisted she was well enough to go home, but didn’t seem to know who Grace was. “Infection,” a nurse told Grace. “We can’t put her out on the street in that condition.”
Grace went back to the house to shepherd the younger Butlers off to school. The baby, Rachel, was only three and not yet going to school, and Jennie wanted to stay home to look after her, but Grace insisted everyone go to school. She took Rachel downstairs to Aunt Loll, who had reappeared but seemed to have little interest in the Butler children’s plight. Grace left the child with her anyway, not knowing what else she could do.
When she stopped back by the hospital in the evening to see Effie again, she found a very different scene from the morning. Effie was asleep and the “PAUPER” sign had been removed. A bouquet of flowers sat on the table beside her bed, and Julia Salter Earle, looking pleased with herself, sat in a chair nearby. Where another woman would have occupied her idle hands with knitting, Mrs. Salter Earle was scribbling notes on a large pad of lined paper.
“Did you bring the flowers?” Grace asked as she pulled up a chair.
“No, they were sent by Murrays—the factory owners,” Mrs. Salter Earle said. “I stopped by and had a little chat, and pointed out a few provisions in their policy book that bound them to pay the medical expenses of an employee injured on the job. After putting up a little protest they agreed to abide by the policy, and I suggested it might be a nice touch to send flowers as well. We’ve won all these concessions in the past, you see. It’s all down in writing. But as soon as times get tough and workers are desperate for jobs, the owners think they can go back on what they’ve agreed to. Someone has to hold their feet to the flame.”
“And that’s your job.”
“It is one of my jobs.”
In the dimmed light of the hospital ward, Grace looked at the older woman. She was a bit scared of Mrs. Salter Earle, though she felt as if they had something in common now, having gone together to the Butler home last night. “May Kennedy told me I ought to meet you,” she dared to say now. “Though she said you only drop by the Franchise League meetings once every blue moon.”
Mrs. Earle snorted. “That’s about right.”
A nurse moved through the ward, checking on patients. She paused beside Effie’s bed and felt her forehead. “She’s sleeping a bit more peaceful now. I think the fever has broken,” she said to Mrs. Earle. “You ladies will have to go soon, it’s nearly the end of visiting hours.”
“I was just hoping she’d wake so I could tell her that the children are being looked after,” Grace said. “I’m sure when she does wake up she’ll be worried.” Effie stirred and shifted a little in the bed but did not open her eyes.
“The Franchise League ladies are well-meaning,” Mrs. Earle said to Grace when the nurse had moved on, “but they’re wealthy women with all the advantages of their class. They’re glad to have poor women mark their names—or their Xs—on a petition, but they don’t really see those women as equals, as sisters.”
“Do you? Really? I mean, do you really believe—” Grace gestured towards Effie, who murmured a little in her sleep, “she is your equal?”
“In education, in opportunities, in breeding, of course not. But those are external things. Raise a girl like that in a different family, give her a good education at the Methodist College, put the right clothes on her and she’d be indistinguishable from me or you. That’s what equality means—recognizing we’re all the same underneath, and working to strip away those external differences.”
Effie’s eyes fluttered open. She looked around the hospital ward and then at Grace and Mrs. Earle, who had been sitting there nearly an hour, waiting to give her the good news that her bills were paid and her brothers and sisters fed.
“Glory be, is that the two of ye there chattering?” she said, meeting Grace’s eyes with her own fever-bright gaze. “I kept havin’ a dream there was seagulls perched all around the bed. Can ye quiet down or go home so I can have a few minutes’ peace?”