On February 28, Aino received a letter from Joseph Hillström. He expected to be in the Astoria area for several weeks. Maybe they could meet at Knappton?
Aino and Lempi arrived at Nygaard’s General Store just after dark on Saturday. It was still open, since this was payday. They recognized several loggers from Reder’s and said hello, promising them dances. Aino and Lempi were examining a bolt of cloth when the bell attached to the door rang and Margaret Reder entered.
“Aino!” Margaret beamed and came right over. She had on a bright cotton dress for shopping, which both Aino and Lempi compared with their own plain wool skirts and cotton blouses. “How great to see you.” She reached for Aino’s hands, but Aino pulled her own hands back. How would it look to the loggers, her being so friendly with the boss’s wife? After a brief halt in the flow, Margaret quickly went on. Turning to Lempi she said, “I’m Margaret Reder.”
“Lempi Rompinen.”
Lempi smiled at her, awkward before the boss’s wife. Aino simply chose not to answer. She looked around surreptitiously to see if any of the loggers were watching them. Her deal with Margaret was language exchange. The bargain did not extend past that. Margaret didn’t understand.
Margaret touched the cloth and started talking in English, which Aino could not yet follow fluently. “Nice pattern … with blue eyes,” she said looking at Lempi, who, to Aino’s mild disdain, blushed. “… I tell … over to Astoria … more choice.”
Aino and Lempi said nothing. They worked on Saturdays, stores were closed on Sundays, and they didn’t have money for the boat.
“Of course,” Margaret said, sensing something gone amiss. “You have … the cost of the boat … and back.”
“We know, Mrs. Reder,” Aino said.
“Of course, you do,” Margaret said after another awkward pause. Looking around at the store and attempting to remain bright Margaret said, “Well, Aino, can we do a lesson before the dance?”
Aino nodded yes.
“Kuusi?” Margaret said six in Finnish, clearly already past.
“Kahdeksan,” Aino answered. “Eight.”
“Yksi, kaksi, kolme, neljä, viisi, kuusi, seitsemän, kahdeksan,” Margaret counted to eight. “You see, Lempi? I’m … progress.”
The two Finnish girls didn’t know whether that required an answer, so they made none. Margaret walked quickly to the other end of the store.
“For a friend, you weren’t very nice to her,” Lempi said.
“She’s not my friend. I learn English from her and teach Finnish in return.”
“When’s her baby due?”
“How would I know?”
Lempi gave Aino the look that her snippy answer deserved.
“May, I’d guess,” Aino said, now a little embarrassed at her shortness.
“I wouldn’t mind if she were my friend.” Lempi watched Margaret making her way up the wharf, studiously looking everywhere but back at them. “She seems nice. I mean, it seemed she wanted to be nice. You know.”
“Yes. Nice. I know. Nice. Nice is easy. You look at the palace she lives in and the pigsty bunkhouse my brother lives in and the shacks the married couples live in. Her floors are level and she doesn’t have to wade through pig shit on her way to the huusika.” Aino used a common but crude word for outhouse. “Nice would be housing without wind whistling through the battens. Nice would be sharing the wealth with the people who created it.”
“I think she was trying to be a friend,” Lempi said tightly. “And you weren’t.”
Aino trudged up the hill to Margaret’s house, dreading what would probably be awkward. Maybe she should apologize. Maybe Margaret would understand that they couldn’t be friends. Maybe. The maybes ended when she reached the front door. She knocked and heard the rustle of Margaret skirts as she crossed the floor.
“Hyvää päivää, Aino,” Margaret said. “Se on kahdeksan. Tule sisään. Haluatko kahvia?”
Aino couldn’t repress a smile. She repeated back in English, “Good day, Margaret. It is eight o’clock. Enter in. Do you want coffee?”
“Not ‘enter in,’ ‘come in,’” Margaret said, and the lesson began.
Aino removed her coat and scarf and sat at the kitchen table as Margaret poured them each a cup of coffee. They both drank it black. Almost everyone did. Cream too often went sour.
Margaret took a sip, set the cup carefully back in its saucer, and said very slowly so Aino would understand, “I thought we were friends, Aino. Why did you snub me like that?”
“What is ‘snub’?”
“Snub. Hurt someone by not talking to her.”
Aino didn’t reply.
Margaret sat very straight. Talking faster, she said, “Aino, I like you and … hoped … be friends. I know … boss’s wife … thought we were equals.”
Aino suddenly felt ashamed of herself, but it was clearly too late—the apology had been owed at the door. “How be equals? You living here. I living up there.” Aino nodded in the direction of Reder’s Camp.
“John Reder … a good hardworking man … way up … any of his loggers.”
“John Reder cutting down trees he never planted on land stealed by the railroads.” Before Aino knew it, out came: “And he killing people to do it.”
Margaret stood. “It’s dangerous work.”
Aino stood. “Not so dangerous if loggers not tired and you not having hurry-pants for profits.” She used Finglish for hätähousut.
“Aino, our expenses … same … one log or one hundred. We … out of business in weeks, weeks, if we cut any slower.” Margaret paused for effect. “And all of you would be out of jobs.”
“If the people own the trees and own the machines, never be worry about going out of business.”
“That’s impossible.” Margaret leaned forward. “Aino … intelligent young woman but—” She sputtered to a stop. “That’s communism!”
Aino, sensing that she had the upper hand because of Margaret’s failure to articulate an argument, raised her chin slightly. “Yes. A specter is haunting America, the specter of communism.”
“I could have you fired.”
“Like a good friend?” Aino went to the coat tree by the door and began putting on her coat and scarf. She wrapped her scarf around her neck, tugging at it. She smiled at Margaret, hard. “Maybe you read Karl Marx not Mark Twain, you know history on our side.”
“I think … more to say today … Aino?” Margaret began picking up the cups and saucers. “Maybe … not do any more lessons for a while.”
“Not maybe. I qvit.”
As she walked down the hill, Aino could feel Margaret watching her. Then she heard the front door shut. Suddenly she felt empty. She wanted to say she was sorry. Tell Margaret how difficult organizing was, explain why it was so important. But she did not turn back—and now she would not. This was war and there were casualties.
She took off her shoes and put them in her bag along with her stockings, then continued down the hill, wondering if Hillström would be at the dance. He would understand.
Accustomed to eating at Margaret’s, she was hungry. She looked at the two silver dollars and single four-bit piece in her purse. Soup and a sandwich would cost fifteen cents, nearly a third of her daily pay. Eating her soup, she struggled with the knowledge that she paid for it with money earned by working for John Reder. Without Reder, there would be no Reder’s Camp. Who would coordinate the loggers and get the machines if not Reder? We would do it ourselves, she thought. She saw herself leading a meeting of loggers, deciding to buy a new steam donkey or lay a new rail line.
“Soup any good?” someone asked in Swedish.
She looked up in delighted astonishment at Joseph Hillström. Not knowing whether to rise or stay seated, she stayed seated. “Yes. A bit overpriced.”
He sat, gave his order to the waitress, and began talking in Swedish. “This time it’s going to be different. We will have mills and camps shut down at the same time. Not a stick will move after Monday, April first, until we get two dollars and fifty cents for an eight-hour day.”
Aino did the division in her head. “So, about twenty-eight cents an hour.”
“Yes, but don’t put it that way. Limiting the workday to nine hours is paramount. That gets lost in an hourly wage demand. ‘Two Fifty for nine.’ Catchy and short, always.”
“It should be eight.”
“That’s the goal. Nine first.”
“And if the owners bring in the scabs?”
“It will be harder and harder for the owners. I’ve been at all the labor exchange places on the river. I’ve been in the boardinghouses, the saloons. I’ve handed out more than a thousand red cards.” He reached for his coat pocket and placed a red card in front of Aino. “You get all the workers to carry the card; they feel they’re part of us. Scabs will no longer exist. All workers will be in the One Big Union. How many do you need?” he asked.
Suddenly fired by his enthusiasm, Aino quickly calculated. “One hundred and twenty.” He reached into his valise and threw three bundles of fifty cards each onto her side of the table.
“How much are dues?” she asked.
“A dollar to join, fifty cents if you’re unemployed. Twenty-five cents a month, ten if you’re out of work. Nothing like the AF of L.” Aino nervously held one of the packets, looking at it.
“Will you help me?”
“Aino. I wish I could, but Reder Logging is small potatoes. You’ll have to handle it yourself. We’re going after Inman, Paulsen, Weyerhaeuser, the big boys. I can’t stay.”
She stared at the cards.
“Look, I’m giving a speech tonight,” Hillström said. “That’ll help.”
She looked at him. “Speeches are easy, if you speak the language. Organizing is hard.”
“I’m just a rabble-rouser next to people like you.”
Aino gave a clear signal of what she thought about flattery and false modesty.
Hillström quickly changed his tone. “That’s why we need you. Don’t you see? We, you and me, and the IWW, together we can eliminate wage slavery. When we’re all in One Big Union, there will be no war, no poverty. Imagine a world of peace and plenty for all. Imagine.”
Imagine, she did.