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Article by Francis L. Lederer II Published Sept. 1975 Journal of the IllinoisState Historical Society (V. 68 NY PS. 308-318) Reproduced by permission of the Illinois State Historical Society.
Special thanks to Oak park Public Library, Chicago.
Nora Marks Investigative Reporter
From August 1888 to July 1890 eighty feature stories appeared under the by-line of Nora Marks, the pen name of Eleanor Stackhouse. Many of the stories would today be classified as examples of "investigative reporting."*
The first series of Nora Marks stories examined the life of domestic servants. In gathering information, Stackhouse posed alternatively as “Nora” a “friendless girl in a great city,” and as an employer who went to agencies in search of a domestic servant.[1] Stackhouse, as Nora, began her experiment by putting on a shabby dress and hat. Her change in appearance had an immediate effect.
The most remarkable thing about it was that self-confidence began to go with my change in appearance and I wondered with a good deal of anxiety as to the result of my search – [as] a stranger in the great City of Chicago, an ignorant, unknown country girl….How would it fare with one who came under such circumstances hunting some kind of honest work in one of the thousands of homes in Chicago? Inexperienced in the ways of city life, but strong, healthy, anxious to please and to earn her bread by work of the only kind she knows, housework, many a girls has come from suburban villages and farms believing that earnest endeavour will surely find a way.[2]
Nora registered for work at three employment agencies but was not referred to a job because she had no “character” or experience. At the fourth agency she was offered a place in the country by a Mr. Mills of Millsdale, WillCounty. She accepted it because it would give her an opportunity to find out if such jobs, which were often advertised in the newspapers were valid or not. She agreed to meet Mr Wills at the station, and she was closely followed by a chaperon sent by the Tribune – “a muscular young man in an elegant get-up. By some coincidence he also was going to Millsdale.”
Nora found Millsdale a rural paradise. The family consisted of Mr. and Mrs. Mills and their two young children. The house and farm buildings were beautiful and immaculate. Nora rhapsodized: “It seemed as if I would always be there, and that it would always be afternoon. The world had stopped; the sin and shame and hardships and misunderstandings and suspicion and grimy, besmirching smoke of the city life were forever behind me.”
She stayed with the Mills family for two days and then, dressed in her own clothes, returned to the Chicago employment agencies at which she had earlier sought work. Although she had been interviewed there only a few days earlier, she was not recognized because she “was dressed differently and talked with the easy self-possessed air of a lady.”[3]
The woman at the agency promised to find a suitable girl for the Mills family, and Nora changed back into her servant clothes and went to another employment bureau in search of another position. As she waited in line with the other women, she commented on her dilemma.
Earning uncertain wages in precarious positions; knocked about with no permanent abiding place; ignorant of everything but their round of duties; with no time to learn how to buy, to plan, to make…Is it any wonder they live up, or down, to their clothes?
A good appearance is half the battle. A constant fight against appearances is a losing race…The curt words, the frowns, the neglect, are all for these. The courtesy, the smiles, and considerate treatment, all for one who is dressed and looks a lady. I know whereof I speak.
The faces of the women seeking work “were of three classes – stupid, bold, or disheartened, the stupid ones were made so by God’s mercy: those who were bold or discouraged [.] by the world’s lack of it.” Nora invited two of the girls to lunch at a nearby restaurant. The food was terrible, but the other girls ate with gusto. Nora understood why.
Compelled to take the refuse always they can never discriminate, and yet must bear all the odium of having chosen. In this refuse physical only, or moral, intellectual, artistic also? Whose fault is it? They might never become so discriminating as their mistresses; perhaps that would not be best; but there is room for both mistress and maid to learn of God’s bounty…There is something wrong, not with humanity, but society, when any rational creature can take such vile food and be grateful for it.
Nora waited in the agency all afternoon and finally went home without having received a job offer. At home she had a visitor – a woman sent by the employment agency for the position with Mills family. The woman had been one of Nora’s companions earlier that day but did not recognize her in different clothes. “She who had addressed me not tow hours before in a ten minutes’ conversation as an equal stood dutifully before me listening to my explanations” But the woman refuse the job because, she said, Millsdale was too far away and she would not be able to see her friends. Nora, intent on employing a maid for the Mills family went back to the agency. There the proprietress received her “with the utmost consideration. She gave me a fan, a delicious peach and made a small child run a half dozen errands for me. She took my word absolutely though I made up yarns serenely… I was a lady, therefore to be believed. I bullied her a little and asked impossible things of her. Nothing but a paragon servant would suit my purposes. She promised all – nothing was too difficult.”[4]
The Tribune commented that the “servant problem is confessedly the most intricate in modern life….Our boasted democracy comes into the kitchen and claims for the servant rights and immunities never thought of in England or Germany.” Yet since ancient times, women had been despot to their servants.[5]
This time posing as a servant, Nora called on another agency, which directed her to home that wanted a “second girl.” The lady of the house declined to hire Nora since she had no experience and would have no knowledge of the “many little things about setting and waiting on a table, the care of the silverware, china and glass, etc. No she really could not try me.” “O, mothers, unless you are heathen and can consign your daughters to the Ganges, pray that they will prove more valuable than intelligence.”[6]
At another agency, Nora, still in the role of a domestic, was sent to a Wells Street hotel that needed a “dining room girl.” Nora was somewhat apprehensive about taking such a position. “ ‘Plain young girls’ might get along well enough, but a pretty girl, I thought, is sure to attract attention from the gentlemen guests: and the glimpses of luxury she would gain, the publicity and exposure to temptation, would be bad for her.” In order “to prove or disprove” that theory, Nora applied for the position and was hired. She enjoyed the work and did not find it degrading. Her fellow workers “were all comfortable, with the best of fare, good beds….getting from $12 to $25 a month, and were not driven from morning until night…There was the best of feeling among them for each other, ladylike manners, pleasant tones, and demands were invariably put in the form of requests.” Nora doubted if clerks in offices were “treated more like ladies than we were.”
If I had been Nora Burns {an alias she used when she applied for work at the hotel}, depending on my own resources and able to do just this, clerking or factory work, and wished to remain in the city, I should greatly have preferred this place…to the other alternatives. I have learned by actual experience that the work is easy, pleasant, and natural to women. It is well paid for, and a girl is considered and treated like a lady if she behaves like one, and can choose her associates exactly as she can in other positions… And there is no excuse for girls working themselves to death on small wages in stores and factories when the release is so close at hand. I, too, had erroneous ideas concerning domestic service, but now that I have seen how easy it is to do… no visions of a possible helplessness and dependence haunt my troubled dreams as they used do at times.[7]
Nora nevertheless concluded that there was a need for reform. In the first place, she pointed out, a job seeker was seldom able to discriminate among the employment agencies. There were “a few large offices in Chicago where, when the right girl comes the tight place is to be found, but the majority of the intelligence offices are small establishments where the facilities both of supply and demand are limited.” Although those places were “misleading to an ignorant girl,” the proprietors were generally honest and did not “hold out false hopes to get registry fees.”[8] In all, Nora visited more than thirty employment agencies during her three-week investigation. She was able to secure six places, and her “expenses for car fares, registry fees, and occasional lunch, etc., had been $14.35… a [pair of walking boots, a pair of gloves, and my temper had been worn out.”[9]
Nora recalled that before beginning the series, she had looked at matters from the stand point of the mistress: “Being served was easy, why was it not easy to render service?” She found the answer in the Declaration of Independence…”It has always seemed a real thing to me… but down there among those who serve I caught my self trying to work it out and reconcile the reality to external inequalities.” People in the middle or upper classes sacrificed time and labor for a consideration and enjoyed their own interests and pleasures after work. But that was not the case with a domestic servant; who “ must leave her own home, live with her employer, making all his interests hers. Sleeping and waking under his roof, sharing the common life of his household, and yet be nor part of it – a spectator having no part in the drama, and whose applause even would be impertinent. This is hard to reconcile with our… privileges guaranteed by the Declaration.”
In her role as a “young, inexperienced, refined, but indifferently educated girl,” Nora discovered that even though she was
well housed, well fed, and treated like a human being: more so than in a factory or store… there was that indefinable feeling of surrender of every instant of time, every thought and emotion. I felt no inferiority in serving, but only a resentment that I could be called on any hour of the day and night for any service required. This much is demanded of the mistress of a family for love, but cannot be purchased, nor is it right. If it were possible to take domestic help as “one of the family,” that would be partial solution. A hundred years ago it was done, but if we will have our civilization so ornate, then housework becomes a fine art, with its several departments, and creates distinctions and classes.
A girl could be “one of the family” in the country, but it was difficult to persuade girls to take positions there, primarily because wages were better in the city. “The almighty dollar is a good deal to you; how much more may it not be to the servant girl. Who cannot always consider her soul’s welfare against the need for dollars and cents?” The solution, Nora said, was that domestic service should be considered “ a distinct and honorable trade.” There should be certain number of hours of service for a certain price, just as there are in other businesses, and when the hour strikes no one should demand that the workman hold himself for further orders.[10]
The next Nora Marks investigative series began with the headline “ ‘Nora’ Joins the Army: Two Weeks’ Experience as a Salvationist.” Nora’s introduction to the Salvation Army was a rally at Farwell Hall on September 24, 1888, at which Marshall Ballington Booth and his wife Maud addressed a huge enthusiastic crowd. After the meeting, Nora spoke to Mrs Booth about becoming an Army recruit. Mrs. Booth asked her if she was a converted Christian and Nora replied that the conversion had taken place while Mrs. Booth was speaking. Nora was then referred to a Mrs. Evans, who informed her that her training could begin the next day. Nora told Mrs. Evans that she wanted to become a “full-fledged” Salvationist but did not want to go through the usual preliminary training. She also requested that her “cousin” Jessie (probably a fellow reporter) be allowed to join with her. Mrs. Evans and her husband, a Salvation Army major, agreed to the proposal and made arrangements for the two recruits to live at the Englewood headquarters. [11]
There Nora and her companion were introduced to the other “soldiers”. The captain at the Englewood barracks, Bertha Leigh, advised Nora and Jessie to wear simple clothes until their uniforms were ready. Nora noted that her fellow soldiers “were girls with limited education, but [their] devotion to a high purpose had lifted them from the common people to which they belonged.” After a simple supper the girls attended a meeting and then went into the streets. Nora was very nervous: “Would the kindly earth or some friendly coal-hole please open and swallow me? My feet were like lead.” The streets were thronged with people ablaze with light. She and the other Salvationists were a “straggling, inconsequent crowd, but we did all we could - we marched and made a noise for the idle passer-by so to laugh at, to wonder at, to glory in, or revile, according to his humor.” All the while Nora” felt like a subject under the surgeon’s knife…Nothing but the grace of God or the keen interest of a psychological study would have carried me through it.”
Nora returned to the Englewood headquarters with the other others in time for a meeting attended by a “shouting” bizarre, fanatical crowd” of about three hundred. Nora sat on the stage and participated in the prayers but declined to give testimony.[12]
Nora’s first Salvation Army Sabbath, “the old Puritan Sunday,” began at 6.30 A.M. with a “knee drill”: “Inside of a half hour there were holes drilled clear through my knees, and still we knelt. We prayed and sang. Once in an age we got up to testify to the fact that we were never tired of serving the Lord: then we got down again. If I could have served Him in some other attitude or after breakfast I could have acquiesced.” Nora grew so uncomfortable that she rose to a half-standing position and groaned, “O Lord, how long!” Though spoken in exasperation, her statement caused “rejoicing among the devout for my conviction of sin, when, if they had only known it, I was convicted of their stupidity and inhumanity… I was chastened. To be tired out and hungry, body, and mind, and soul, will make one humble and submissive if anything will. To take the starch out of one. I had never seen the ‘knee drill’ equalled.” There were sixteen hours of prayer, singing, and marching that Sunday. Nora was impressed by Captain Leigh’s behavior. “She uplifted, she inspired, she magnetized simply by her won earnestness. She said little and tat was of the simplest.” The Captain’s prayers” used some stock phrases, but not a word of it was ‘cant’…She repeated endlessly, but it never got old with her or her hearers. She cried; the blood left her lips…yet it was without rhetoric, without eloquence, without other adjunct than her earnestness.” Despite her cynicism about some aspects of the Salvation Army, Nora had great respect for Captain Leigh, who showed “no ostentation of self-denial. At any time, on an instant’s notice, this or that was rejected in another’s favor. She did not even protest, and the others always accepted her sacrifices. It was something I was not capable of myself, and it humbled me involuntarily.” Captain Bertha Leigh was truly a model soldier in the Army of the Lord.[13]
One day Nora and Jessie ventured down town in uniform. As they walked up La Salle Street, Nora was the center of attention. “Men going about to business took the cigars out of their mouths to stare at me, “ she wrote. “One country fellow stood still with his mouth open, and his hands in his pockets, and shop-girls laughed openly. It all disturbed me no more than a May zephyr would ruffle the placid lake.” [14] When Nora returned to the Englewood barracks, she helped sell the War Cry, the official publication of the Salvation Army. “The pen seems to be as valliantly [sic[ as the sword, and the amount of salvation literature is truly amazing considering the length of time the army has been in existence.”[15] The newspaper was a source of revenue, and may corps had a “War Cry night,” at which member of the audience were expected to purchase a paper. If any copies remained unsold when new copies arrived, the officers were expected to sell them at “places of business, preferably …saloons and places of public resort.”
In order to leave the Englewood barracks and her career in the Salvation Army without arousing suspicion, Nora, told her companions that she was going to a training school recommended by Major Evans.[16] This was not Nora’s last experience with the Army, however. Four months later, after Major Evans had been promoted to colonel and transferred to New York, Nora donned her uniform and attended the installation of his successor. The service included singing and prayer. “We all got up and howled ourselves hoarse, then prostrated ourselves in the dust. I had learned from previous experience how long drawn out petitions could be, and laid myself flat.”[17]
In order to see how women of the working class lived, Nora next studied peddlers and stockyards laborers. For this series she first masqueraded as an “indigent saleswoman of stationery.” She wore “a brown calico dress over two skirts of a plethoric build, an ancient jacket minus buttons, and old white straw poke-bonnet lined with white lace, and a pair of disreputable shoes. I let my hair down and tied it behind my ears with a red cotton string.” With a basket in her hand, she “sallied forth from the area door and through a back alley, assumed an idiotically cunning expression, and emerged onto the streets.” No one paid any attention to her as she walked to the Clark Street bridge. Thinking that her face might be too clean, she “ stood on the bridge to get the full befit of the smoke from a tug-boat.” Two men on the deck of the boat “lifted their hats” and flung an airy kiss. Nora purchased her wares- pencils and paper-from a supplier. Her first stop was the Portland Block, where she sold only three pencils, She had no success at the Ashland Block but did sell a few items in the street. At her next stop, the HomeInsuranceBuilding, she was thrown out.
Her peddling experience was almost fatal. By the end of the day, she reported, the Whole hideous afternoon” had so wearied her that she stepped in the path of a truck. Fortunately, a “lady on the corner grabbed me back, frowned at me, and then rubbed her gloves ostentatiously with her handkerchief.” The money Nora had earned-thirty cents – was spent not in necessary food, but for a couple of rosebuds in a florist’s window. So was my aesthetic soul given a balm for all the slights and sneers, but another girl could have thought only of her body and its needs to be supplied out of 15 cents profit of a hard afternoon’s work.” The role had been difficult for Nora, and she was thankful that she did not have to live off the few cents she had earned. The experience helped her to understand what she called the “surplus population”: “I have been a part of it and know that the ‘surplus’ fails individually to accept the public estimate” that hard work would bring success.[18]
Nora was introduced to the stockyards by Elmer Washburn of the Union StockYards National Bank, “whose influence was to open all gates” for her. Nora arrived at the yards on a Saturday morning, and Washburn told her to go to lunch and that he would “find somebody” for her “to victimize.” When she returned to the office, Gustavus F. Swift himself was there! Swift promised that a place would be found for her on the following Monday. With such friends, it is little wonder that the series was titled “Nora’s Stock-Yards Fun.”
On her first day of work she was greeted by Arthur A. Libby, Sr. They went into a shipping room, through the tin shop (which produced forty thousand cans a day) and into the women’s workroom. Her ears were assaulted by the “whir-r-r of innumerable belts, the chug-chug of cog-wheels, the rattle of tin cans, the roll of drays, the tramp, tramp of heavy feet, and all the varying sounds of machinery….The Babel of nineteenth century language of inventions never emerged out of confusion for me.”
Nora first labeled cans, a job she found very difficult. One of the girls reported that she made ten cents an hour if she labeled 132 cans, and that she earned twenty to twenty-five cents an hour if she worked fast! Nora soon moved on to painting cans. She noted that the girls in the painting section “bent over their work and twisted their necks and wrists painfully to get at it properly. It was all done with incredible rapidity by the others, slowly and painfully by me.” Wages were nine cents for painting 121 cans. Within two hours Nora was ill from turpentine fumes. She worked in the canning room. A hundred men and women were working there; much of the operation was done by hand.
The cooked meat was tossed down to a long table, where it was chopped; then it was passed on to be weighed and dropped into a revolving filling machine. Girls took the filled cans, pressed the beef down, and passed the cans on to those who distributed caps. The cans were lifted on to trays and passed to the cappers. To get the cans ready for capping three girls were kept busy slipping the caps into place. There were two; one cap slipped inside to keep the meat from boiling up through the vents…. A small concave circular piece of tin was pushed down and under the edge of the opening and the upper cap slipped on. The cans were then slipped under a soldering machine, securely fastened, and… [put] into a boiler for a second cooking. From there the vent was sealed, and the lye-water bath prepared them for the painters and labelers.
Nora was put to work capping the cans, which was even more difficult than labeling or painting; and, as she noted, the difficult work, throughout the plant, was given to foreigners. The women wore “no corsets or bustles; there was a quaint pair of ear-rings among them [their] hair was combed in European peasant style and [they had] broad, flat, highly – colored faces. The men were picturesquely arrayed in red flannel shirts.” The workers “handled their instruments with a certain rude dexterity and strength. Around the room, “little soldering machines each with a can on a pivot swirled; the belts swung through space; the tins crashed; the steam ascended in shining wreaths,” and through it all the workers performed their assigned tasks. Nora capped cans for two hours and left. Libby then gave her a tour of the stockyards and showed her two beef off the hoof was turned into corned beef. She saw how the steers were slaughtered, bled, skinned, and cut and dressed. Her host also showed her the refrigerator rooms and tin shops.
Nora believed that many of the tasks done by hand could be eliminated by machinery.
One of these days there will be a brainy man or woman (why not?) who will make a patent labeler and varnisher. Then a supercilious, well-dressed young woman, who would scorn the position of typewriter (secretary) will stand and feed a machine that turns our blue topped cans with all the wriggling yellow lines put straight, and all the constellations of yellow stars performing their prescribed orbits.[19]
The stockyards then a little more than twenty years old, was the kind of unexplored territory that was expected to appeal to Tribune readers. Nora’s report did have the investigative aspects of the domestic service series, bit it did have the human interest aspect of the Salvation Army stories. Nora’s readers, most of whom were daily subjected to the smell of the yards, could “see” it through her eyes. Her account detailed the back-breaking labor, the “overpowering smell of thousands of animals,” and the “muddy refuse that clung to the shoes like a bur to the cloak of a king”; but there was no hint of labor unrest, and the appalling working condition were minimized. For that series she was less the investigative reporter and more the special guest.
Another series, titled “Charity for ‘Nora’” began in December, 1888. It was a study of Chicago’s charity agencies, to which Nora applied two standards of judgement: services rendered and the ease with which those services could be obtained. She first presented herself as a candidate for relief at the Chicago Relief and Aid Society.
My heart began to beat painfully in my ears and several things to swim before my eyes. What if no one should be present but some cold officials who would look their doubt of me, take down my carefully concocted story, and turn me over to an investigating committee of one! To guard against time for investigating I intended to be a bundle of necessities in need of instant relief. The let them bring on their red tape to tie down the craving of hunger.
Nora said that her mother was dead and that her father had left her in the charge of another woman while he sought a job in another city. When the money left by her father ran out, Nora said, the woman evicted her. The interviewer at the Relief and Aid Society suggested that Nora look for work as a domestic. She said that she would try, but would return if she could not find a job. She did return later that day and was then give a letter of introduction and told to go to the Home for the Friendless at Wabash Avenueand Twentieth Street. “The “’friendless’ was befriended!” Nora wrote. “There was shelter for the homeless without money or price or credentials, or ‘red tape’.”
Nora was made to feel welcome at the home. After a meager supper, she was taken to the nursery and told to wait there for her turn in the bathroom. Several women and children were already waiting in the nursery. Among them were “a big dark Swede woman… with two babies that she kept amused by some fine acting. A careless girl held her baby to her greasy dress; a trim young, mulatto wheeled a bright copper-colored child about in a carriage, and still another baby sprawled on the floor gnawing a piece of corn bread.”
When her turn came Nora turned on the water, not intending to take a bath, and saw that the floor was crawling with cockroaches. I have sometimes thought I lacked courage,” Nora wrote, “but I stayed in that place with all those crawling things about me, perhaps on me, for fifteen minutes, and didn’t scream once. My hairs has a porcupine tendency yet.” Two hundred new people entered and left the more each month, and each new entrant was expected to take a bath, but apparently, like Nora, many avoided it. After her “bath” she was taken to a dormitory, where she spent a restful night.
The next morning Nora was awakened at an early hour and had breakfast. She described the others around the table: “Ignorance and poverty looked from the faces of many, but little vice. Some were depressed, some defiant, but a great many had improvidence written on every lineament.” After breakfast Nora visited “ a room full of babies at play; a school room filled with older children studying in a manner the new education would disapprove; [and ] a room where some old dames were quilting a patchwork spread.” A “forewoman” put Nora to work scrubbing floors. “After the first square yard my back began to ache, then my wrists, and pins seemed to go through my knees. It made me dizzy to kneel” A bell calling the residents to prayer interrupted her, but she later returned to her task. When Nora decided that she wanted to leave the home, she told someone in authority that she wished to back to the Relief and Aid Society; but since she was a young woman without a job, she had some difficulty in getting permission to leave.
“It took little red tape to get in – my necessities did that for me – but the amount it took to get out convinced me that once they get hold of a girl she is not likely to get into danger if they can help it. They certainly take the responsibility of assuring themselves of one’s well being and safety….
It had taken me thirty-five minutes of hard work and unlimited talk to get out and not two minutes to get in. So much for real help and protection of a helpless stranger. For those to whom these are necessary they are given freely and efficiently at the Chicago Home for the Friendless.[20]
During the Christmas season of 1888 Nora wrote another series of stories about the poor. Her purpose was to seek out the “worthy poor” and give the Tribune readers an opportunity to provide the “practical charity that pays house rent and buys coal. Provisions, and clothing” for less fortunate. The name of the people she visited had been given to the Tribune by either the Chicago Relief and Aid Society or the County Agent (whose office supervised admissions to the county hospital infirmary, and insane asylum). [21] Nora reported that the Relief and Aid Society was apparently “unwilling that any of their cases shall be relieved except officially through the regular circumlocution channels appointed for that purpose. They are resolutely determined to prescribe a bit of red tape and a stick of sealing wax as the best means to stop immediate suffering from cold and alleviate the pangs of hunger.”
From the County Agent, on the other hand, she “received every consideration.” Nora distributed food, clothing, and money collected by the Tribune to twenty-one of those “worthy poor.” The infinitesimal amount of which these people live is something marvelous. What we would consider abject poverty is to them an abundance and often by their utmost exertions they are unable to earn even that.”[22] Despite the apparent insensitivity of those statement, the purpose of her columns was “to open the eyes of rich and fortunate to a conditions of which they realize little. “ Nora summed up her findings:
Poverty is not always caused by improvidence of laziness; the breadwinner dies or becomes physically disabled, and the burden of making a living falls on weak, unskilled, child-bound women and on children who ought to be too young to know…anxiety. Institutions are not numerous enough to take in all who are permanently disabled…[or to] make the weak strong, the unskilled skilful, or the old and decrepit young and self -sustaining![23]
One month later Nora wrote a series of stories dealing with the treatment of dependent and delinquent children. She first visited the CookCounty jail and which she called “ a sometime industrial school of detention for boys….. awaiting their trial.” The jail harbored “old and young sinners alike… left to reflect on the ways of the transgressor, swap experiences, and get pointers from each other.“
Nora asked Conrad Folz, the warden, if she could see the boys. “Chicago gamin was written all over them,” she wrote of the twenty young prisoners. “They were alert, but cunning rather than sharp, impudent and ignorant.” The teacher at the jail school a Mrs. Wright, did not approve of jailing boys. Unlike, Folz she thought that the boys awaiting trial – those too young for reform school and those guilty of a misdemeanor – should be in an industrial school. Manual training, unlike book learning, would keep the boys busy.
That was the way matters stood before Nora, a self-proclaimed “public moral health officer,” opened her investigation. She described her role as that of an “inconvenient individual who keeps abreast of the moral sentiment of his age and pushes his nose ahead of reform into existing institutions.”
Nora found that the Illinois system, except in Chicago, was “beautiful and complete.”
Chicago had no institution for delinquent boys over the age of ten. Those under ten years of age convicted of minor offences were sent to the Bridewell; older boys went to the county jail. Both institutions, Nora wrote, were “good schools for the young criminal to serve an apprenticeship and learn all the tricks of the trade.”[24] Nora also visited the Illinois Reform School atPontiac.[25] The inmates there were boys between the ages of ten and sixteen who could be “taught something besides advanced criminal knowledge.”
Dr. J.DD. Scouller, the superintendent, told her that the institution was governed by a combination of ideas – mild restraint, constant occupation, manual training, and school instruction – whose purpose was to break up the old patterns of thought by forming new ones. Scouller thought that if the boys were taught a trade, they would be less inclined toward crime.. He gave Nora a tour of the school shoe factory, where nearly two hundred boys “were working away steadily, faithfully, and contentedly.” Nora observed “no ugly sullen faces, but … a good many stupid, ignorant ones. To learn one thing and do it expertly was all the majority of them were mentally capable of.” In addition to working six hours a day, the boys attended school for four hours. One fourth of the school population came from Chicago. The majority had been bootblacks, newsboys, choreboys, or vagrants. Not more than one or two had been apprentices. “This is surely proof,” Nora concluded. “that if a vagrant or dependent boy is caught before he commits a crime and put to work and study under contract the chances of his becoming a criminal are minimized. There is only hereditary tendency to count against him.”[26]
Another institution Nora visited was the IndustrialSchool at NorwoodPark, a private institution supported by voluntary contributions. The boys there had been classed as dependent and sent to the school by the Humane Society. Mrs. L.V. Harrison, the superintendent, gave Nora a tour. She noticed that many of the boys “were odd-looking, haggard, shrewd, [and] cynical…. Nearly every fourth boy has a wrinkled forehead – lines seams clears across what should have been smooth and fair – and disfiguring frowns and crowsfeet – the result of hard neglected lives…. Every line means neglect, suffering, [and] repression.” The major problem facing the IndustrialSchool was financial; as a private institution it did not receive any public support.[27]
In order to compare the treatment of children in Illinois with that in other state, Nora visited the StatePublic School at Coldwater,Michigan, a home for dependent children. C.D. Randall, secretary and treasurer of that institution, told her that no child between the ages of two and sixteen was in a poorhouse and that only two hundred were then at the State Public School. The school had been in existence for fifteen years and had the same enrolment it had in 1874, even though the population of Michigan had increased fifty percent. The Michigan system was considered a model for other states, like Illinois, that were preparing legislation for dependent children. Randall told Nora that a child under two years of age was left with the mother, who if dependent, was sent to the county poorhouse. The probate court then examined the case, and each child declared legally dependent was admitted to the public schools. Most of the children at the Coldwater school were half orphans, or their parents were mentally or physically incapable of caring for them. Once a child was sent to school, the state had all the rights of the parent, and the natural parents could regain custody only by proving competency. The Michigan law was a model for the Illinois law as amended in 1877 and 1895.[28] The object of the StatePublic School in Michigan was to place destitute children in private homes. If a satisfactory home was found, the child was indentured until he reached the age of twenty-one. Michigan handled approximately two hundred new cases each year and placed those children in homes at a cost of less than $100 each. In addition to the two hundred children at the school, there were nearly fifteen hundred wards of the state in private homes. Another three hundred had been declared self –supporting, and approximately eight percent of those had been returned to their counties. “No ‘cry of the children’ in Michigan is left unheeded,” Nora wrote.[29]
The picture was far different in Illinois where 470 children were kept in county poorhouses. “The cry of the children, even 500 children, is too feeble to be heard over the side stretch of green fields, woods, hills, and streams of 102 counties comprising the State of Illinois,”
Nora also reported on the county poorhouses. In ChampaignCounty it was common practice for a farmer to take a boy (the oldest boy he could get) from the county poorhouse in the spring and work him all summer without wages. When the heavy work was finished, the boy was sent back to the poorhouse. Those boys were sent to school only if someone insisted. Healthy children, moreover, were not separated from sick mothers. At the Danville poor farm, at which there were both young and old, the “same lack of knowledge” prevailed. Authorities there were reluctant to let Nora see the children. The reason, she said was obvious. The children “were ragged and dirty, neglected and spiritless. None of them had been in school since they came to the poor house.” They were also frightened by other inmates. “Here was real fear. Little children within hearing and ear sight [sic] of things which scared them so they could not think. Herded like cattle with the aged, decrepit, the chronic pauper, whose idiocy and insanity could make their impression on minds that received no other instruction.”
In some Illinois counties, Nora wrote, no effort was being made to find suitable homes for dependent children, and state law did not require that education and training be provided those children taken from the poorhouse. Altogether, only about two hundred delinquent or dependent children were placed in foster homes each year. The efforts were obviously inadequate: “With 470 in poorhouses, 35 in county jails, the 200 held by Norwood Park School and the American Educational Aid Association and the large quota from the highways and byways, the streets, alleys, jail, and bridewell of Cook County, the 200 who are being given a chance swells to 800 or 900 who ought to have it.”[30]
In April, 1889, Nora wrote three feature stories on the subject of divorce. Chicago at that time was, in the words of an American historian, “a notoriously popular divorce center.”[31] Posing as “Mrs. Helen Ford,” Nora made an appointment with a reputed “divorce shark,” Alphonso Goodrich, whose office was at 124 Dearborn Street. (Goodrich advertised himself as an attorney, but he had been disbarred for “irregular practices” in 1876.)[32] Nora said that she was from Oshkosh and that she wanted to be rid of her good – for – nothing husband, an actor. She had no grounds for divorce, but Goodrich said that he could arrange one for her within ten days if her husband consented. The divorce would cost $75 to£100 plus a £25 retainer.[33] “Charles Egbert Ford” who identified himself as Nora’s husband, came to Goodrich’s office for an interview. On that occasion Ford agreed to a collusive divorce for a payment of $1,000. Goodrich said that he would supply an attorney, Jacob C. Turnes. Who would handle the case for both parties. The “grounds” would be infidelity. Goodrich’s scheme involved a hackman who would drive Ford to a disreputable house. Ford would go in and then leave almost immediately, but the hackman would swear that he had taken Ford there.[34] The evidence of Ford’s infidelity was so obtained…., papers were drawn up, the sheriff’s office served Ford with a summons, and the case of Ford v. Ford was placed on the calendar. Before the case came to trial, however, the first of Nora’s stories was published, and Turnes (who had not been informed that the divorce was a charade) moved for a dismissal.[35]
In 1890 the tone of Nora’s writing changed. Except for a series about life in the Dakota Territory.[36] and an article about a woman who placed babies for adoption,[37]
Little is known of about Eleonora Stackhouse. Archives of the Chicago Tribune do not contain records even of the existence of such a person. Philip Kingsley’s history of the Tribune refers to Nora as a ‘star girl reporter’ but does not give her real name.[38] The only evidence that Eleanora Stackhouse was Nora Mark’s is found in a Library of Congress catalog, which shows her true name in the listing of a book she wrote about the Salvation Army in 1889 (the book was published under the pseudonym Nora Marks).[39]
Chicago city directories for 1889 and 1890 show that Stackhouse was employed by the Tribune in those years, but there is no entry for her in later directories.[40] In a Tribunefeature story of December, 1889 Nora wrote about going Christmas shopping for “him”. She had trouble finding a suitable gift, and, by her own account and exasperated young store clerk snapped, “Why don’t you give him yourself?” Nora replied “I’ve already done that two weeks ago.”[41] The next column under the Nora Marks by-line appeared the following month; it was about The Hermitage, Andrew Jackson’s home near Nashville, Tennessee.[42] Nora may have been on honeymoon at the time
* A list of the Nora Marks stories compiled by the author is on deposit at the Illinois State Historical Society
[1] Chicago Daily Tribune, Aug 31 188 p.1. cols. 1 ff.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid., Sept.1 1888, p. 1, cols.1 ff.
[4] Ibid., Sept 2 1888, p. 9 cols. 1 ff.
[5] “Women’s Clubs and the Domestic Problem,” ibid., Sept. 2., 1988, p. 4, col. 3.
[6] Ibid., Sept. 3 1888, p. 1, cols. 7 ff.
[7] Ibid. Sept. 4, 1988, p.1, cols. 1 ff.
[8] Ibid., Sept 6, 1888, p. 5, cols. 1 ff.
[9] Ibid., Sept. 8 1888, p. 9, col.1.
[10] Ibid., Sept. 9, 1888, p. 5, cols. 1 ff.
[11] Ibid., Oct. 14, 1888, p. 9, cols. 1 ff.
[12] Ibid., Oct. 15, 1888, p. 1, cols. 1 ff.
[13] Ibid., Oct. 16, 1888, p. 1, cols. 1 ff.
[14] Ibid., Oct. 18, 1888, p. 9, cols. 1 ff.
[15] The Salvation Army was founded in London in 1865; the organisation began to operate in the United States in 1880.
[16] Chicago Tribune, Oct 219, 1888, p. 6, cols. 1 ff.
[17] Ibid., Feb 15, 1889, p. 1, cols. 5-6.
[18] Ibid., Nov. 1888, p. 28, cols. 1-2
[19] Ibid., Nov. 25, 1888, p. 29, cols. 1-2.
[20] Ibid., Dec. 9, 1888, p 25, cols. 7 ff.
[21] For discussion of Chicago charities, see A.T. Andreas, History of Chicago from the Earliest Period to the Present time ( Chicago A.T. Andreas, Pub. 1884-1886), 111, 163, and Bessie Louise Pierce, A History of Chicago, Volume III: The Rise of a Modern City, 1871-1893 (New York Knopf, 1957).pp. 8-9, 461-462 Chicago Tribune, Dec 15 (p. 1 cols. 1 ff.), Dec 18 (p.1, cols. 1 ff.), 1888.
[22] Chicago Tribune, Dec. 17, 1888, p. 1, cols. 1-2.
[23] Ibid., Dec. 21, 1888, p. 1, cols. 7 ff.
[24] Ibid., Jan. 13. 1889, p. 112, cols. 1-2.
[25] In 1891 the Illinois General Assembly changed the name of that institution to Illinois State Reformatory. Harvey B. Hurd, comp. and ed., The Revised Statues of the State of Illinois, 1901 (Chicago: Chicago Legal News Co., 1901), p. 1431 (hereinafter cited as Revised Statues); Blue Book of the State of Illinois …(Chicago: H.B. Meyers & Co., 1898), p.236.
[26] Chicago Tribune, Jan. 14, 1889, p. 1, cols. 1 ff.
[27] Ibid., Jan 15, 1889, p. 1, col. 2
[28] Revised Statutes….1901, p. 1317.
[29] Chicago Tribune, Feb. 11, 1889, p. 1, cols. 1 ff.
[30] Ibid., March 18, 1889, p. 6 ,cols. 1-2.
[31] Daniel J. Boorstin, The Americans: The Democratic Experience (New York: Random House,1973), p69
[32] Chicago Tribune, April 11, 1889, p. 1 cols. 1 ff; information from the office of the clerk of Illinois Supreme Court Springfield.
[33] Chicago Tribune, Feb 1, 1890, p.12 cols. 1 ff.
[34] Ibid., April 12. 1889, p. 1. cols. 7 ff.
[35] Ibid., April 13, 1889, p. 12, cols. 1 ff.
[36] Ibid., Jan. 27, (p.1, cols. ff.), Jan 28 (p. 1 cols. 1 ff.), Jan . 29 (p. 1 cols. 1 ff.) Jan. 30 (p.2, cols. 3 ff.),1890.
[37] Ibid., Feb 1, 1890, p.12, cols. 1 ff.
[38] Philip Kingsley, The Chicago Tribune: Its First Hundred Years (Chicago: Chicago Tribune, 1946), III. 131.
[39] Library of Congress and American Library Association. Comps., The National Union Catalog: Pre- 1956 Imprints (London, England: Mansell Information/ Publishing Ltd., 1974), CCCLX11, 465
[40] Reuben H. Donnelly, comp. The Lakeside Annual Directory of the City of Chicago 1889 (Chicago: Chicago Directory Co., 1889) p. 1689; Donnelley, comp., The Lakeside Annual Directory of the City of Chicago,1890 (Chicago: Chicago Directory Co., 1890), p. 2079.
[41] Chicago Tribune, Dec. 24, 1889, p. 2, cols. 1-2.
[42] Ibid., Jan. 8, 1890, p. 1 cols. 7 ff.
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