“But what good is a printing press if I’ve no goods to advertise?” Frank said.
“I’ve heard that John Drake is giving up and returning to Syracuse. He is looking to sell off his newspaper at a bargain price.”
“A newspaper?” Frank said, lowering the paper he was currently reading, unlit pipe stuck between his teeth, legs draped over the arms of the upholstered chair. “There are seven daily newspapers in Aberdeen right now. Two Democrat, one Republican-leaning,” he went on, tapping the paper he held with his finger. “One staunch Republican, one for the Farmers’ Alliance, one for the Knights of Labor, and one that seems to have no purpose for existing whatsoever. If there’s anything Aberdeen has too many of right now, it’s newspapers. I’m full up on hobbies. I’m looking for a moneymaking concern.”
Even as down-spirited as he was, Frank managed to make this long speech sound halfway cheerful. Matilda was not deterred by his pessimism.
“Nobody writes anything of interest to ladies,” Matilda said. “You need to write about education and the health of children, and the suffrage cause.”
“And parties and social gatherings,” Maud added. “You’ll have the wives asking to subscribe.”
* * *
—
TWO WEEKS LATER, Frank put out the first issue of his new newspaper, which he had christened The Aberdeen Saturday Pioneer. Eager to redeem himself, Frank had dived into his new business with a fervor. He was out the door early every morning and didn’t come back until late into the evening. The work seemed to suit him; after several months, however, the emerging financial picture was less rosy. From the first day, Frank had struggled to keep up subscriptions, but Maud remained optimistic. Everyone said that once the spring came and the rains started up, a single wheat crop would put everyone in the black again.
But the summer of 1890 showed no change in the weather, and a curse seemed to have fallen upon the new state of South Dakota. Rapacious bankers foreclosed on farms and businesses. A steady stream of Aberdonians were giving up and leaving town. With each family that departed, a part of the economy departed with them. The baseball team disbanded when most of the players left town to look for work. Frank kept up a steady drumbeat of positive boosterism for the town in his editorials. Still, everyone knew that one more failed harvest would drive the town to the brink of extinction.
Maud received few letters from Julia, but she knew that if times were hard in town, they would be doubly so on the homestead. Although she thought of Magdalena constantly, her pride prevented her from approaching her sister again about sending the girl to Aberdeen. She had not gotten over the shock of learning that her sister had expected her to die in childbirth. Still, she waited, and hoped that in such hard times, Julia might at last relent.
The Baum family could not control the weather, so they threw their energy into the upcoming vote for women’s suffrage. The big day—November 4, 1890—was when the voters of South Dakota would decide whether or not they should strike the word “male” from the suffrage plank, giving women the right to vote. Maud had stuffed envelopes, embroidered banners, baked cookies for socials, and donated her fine lace to the white elephant sales. Frank penned pro-suffrage editorials and served as secretary of Aberdeen’s Women’s Suffrage Club. Enough was enough. Women needed to win the vote!
By now, Matilda was traveling all over the state to canvass in tiny towns and on lonely farms. As the vote approached, Frank worked himself into a fever pitch of excitement, convinced that this one thing, this one single thing, could turn the tide of misfortune that had beset Aberdeen. The South Dakotans were going to embrace women’s suffrage, and then, magically unfolding from this one great event, the rains would come and the town would bounce back, and all would be well.
Maud waited up on the nights when he came back late from the printing press, now smeared with ink, as he’d been forced to let the typesetter go to save money. With fewer subscriptions, Frank worked just as hard for a third less money. Maud had been scrimping on everything.
She guarded these quiet evening hours when the children were in bed and Frank was not yet home. With the three children, Maud felt as if she never got a moment’s peace. This day had been particularly trying—baby Harry was teething, and Robin and Bunting had done nothing but squabble all day. When at last all three boys were settled, the dishes washed and put away, and she had finished sweeping up, Maud collapsed gratefully into an armchair and picked up a novel. Soon she was carried away to the Scottish Highlands, forgetting her cares for a moment.
Unfortunately, the blissful interlude was short-lived. As soon as Frank burst in the door, his words came out in a torrent. Although Maud loved Frank dearly, right now she wanted to steal a few more quiet moments before heading up to bed, and she hoped that more conversation could wait until the morning. She had never expected to miss those long, peaceful hours she had once spent in the Sage Library, her books lined up next to her, lost in a Shakespeare play or an epic poem, but now she sometimes wished she had a place like that to slip away to, where no one would interrupt her while she read.
“Hello, darling,” she murmured as he stooped down to kiss her on the cheek. She smiled, tapped on her book, and said, “I’m just going to read for a few more minutes.” Frank, however, seemed to have been storing up speeches all day, and, undeterred, he prattled nonstop as he took off his hat and scarf.
“You see, Maud,” he went on, “people just need to have a little bit of imagination. The problem of rain seems insurmountable now, but there is enough water in the James River to irrigate a hundred thousand acres, and the technology already exists to do it—artesian wells. And it’s not just wells. The world is changing so quickly. We’re just ten years away from the twentieth century, and the pace of technology is moving along so fast—faster than the speed of our imaginations. See what the iron horse did to this part of the world? Imagine that soon the iron horse might fly through the air like a mighty iron Pegasus! Machines will till the fields! Farmers can just stroll down Main Street, stop for a shave, and return home to find a silo full to the top. You remember why we came here, Maud? It was promise. It was a blank slate. It was a town to build the right way from the ground up, where men and women are equal citizens, so there’s double the energy to get things done.”
“Perhaps we don’t need to solve all this tonight?” Maud kept her eyes on her book.
“This is the turning point, my dear!” Frank exclaimed, so dramatically that Maud looked up and studied him. What was agitating him so? He was making a rapid whirling motion with his hands, as if he were responsible for the spinning of the world itself. His gray eyes were almost black, and the whites of his eyes flashed in the dim room. He ran his fingers through his hair, making it stand up like a lion’s mane. The heels of his shoes tapped furiously as he paced the floor.
“The vote will save us! Mark my words, darling! In three years, we’ll most likely be up to ten thousand subscriptions and wondering why we don’t have more. All we’ve got to do is have a little imagination. Why can’t the citizens of this one-horse town do as I do? Why can’t they push the curtain aside and peer just a little bit into the future?”
Maud tried to quiet her growing feeling of impatience. She had snapped at the boys several times today, and she feared that soon she would snap at Frank, too. Reluctantly, she placed a bookmark between the pages and looked up at him. His eyes were feverishly bright. He paced back and forth in the small parlor, gesticulating wildly. There was a dark ink smudge on his left cheek.
“I don’t know, Frank dear,” Maud said soothingly, hoping to calm him so that she could return to her book. “Why don’t you sit here by the fire for a moment. I’m sure we will not solve all of Aberdeen’s problems, nor secure the vote for women, this very night.”
“November 4, 1890,” Frank said, ignoring her suggestion. “Once women have the vote, they will vote sensibly, my dear Maud, as you would do, and Aberdeen will be set on a right path to the future.”
“Frank.” Maud was growing exasperated. “We all hope to see women win the vote, but the success of the movement is far from certain. This is your first time dabbling in these waters. Just think of it: Mother and her friends have been working for this all their lives and have yet to see it come to pass. You have to be patient.”