Fanny Herself | Page 5

for salary, with men.
Oh, there were plenty of women wage earners in Winnebago, as
elsewhere; clerks, stenographers, school teachers, bookkeepers. The
paper mills were full of girls, and the canning factory too. But here was
a woman gently bred, untrained in business, left widowed with two
children at thirty-eight, and worse than penniless--in debt.
And that was not all. As Ferdinand Brandeis' wife she had occupied a
certain social position in the little Jewish community of Winnebago.
True, they had never been moneyed, while the others of her own faith

in the little town were wealthy, and somewhat purse-proud. They had
carriages, most of them, with two handsome horses, and their houses
were spacious and veranda-encircled, and set in shady lawns. When the
Brandeis family came to Winnebago five years before, these people had
waited, cautiously, and investigated, and then had called. They were of
a type to be found in every small town; prosperous, conservative,
constructive citizens, clannish, but not so much so as their city cousins,
mingling socially with their Gentile neighbors, living well, spending
their money freely, taking a vast pride in the education of their children.
But here was Molly Brandeis, a Jewess, setting out to earn her living in
business, like a man. It was a thing to stir Congregation Emanu-el to its
depths. Jewish women, they would tell you, did not work thus. Their
husbands worked for them, or their sons, or their brothers.
"Oh, I don't know," said Mrs. Brandeis, when she heard of it. "I seem to
remember a Jewess named Ruth who was left widowed, and who
gleaned in the fields for her living, and yet the neighbors didn't talk.
For that matter, she seems to be pretty well thought of, to this day."
But there is no denying that she lost caste among her own people.
Custom and training are difficult to overcome. But Molly Brandeis was
too deep in her own affairs to care. That Christmas season following
her husband's death was a ghastly time, and yet a grimly wonderful one,
for it applied the acid test to Molly Brandeis and showed her up pure
gold.
The first week in January she, with Sadie and Pearl, the two clerks, and
Aloysius, the boy, took inventory. It was a terrifying thing, that process
of casting up accounts. It showed with such starkness how hideously
the Brandeis ledger sagged on the wrong side. The three women and
the boy worked with a sort of dogged cheerfulness at it, counting,
marking, dusting, washing. They found shelves full of forgotten stock,
dust-covered and profitless. They found many articles of what is known
as hard stock, akin to the plush album; glass and plated condiment
casters for the dining table, in a day when individual salts and separate
vinegar cruets were already the thing; lamps with straight wicks when
round wicks were in demand.

They scoured shelves, removed the grime of years from boxes, washed
whole battalions of chamber sets, bathed piles of plates, and bins of
cups and saucers. It was a dirty, back- breaking job, that ruined the
finger nails, tried the disposition, and caked the throat with dust.
Besides, the store was stove-heated and, near the front door,
uncomfortably cold. The women wore little shoulder shawls pinned
over their waists, for warmth, and all four, including Aloysius, sniffled
for weeks afterward. That inventory developed a new, grim line around
Mrs. Brandeis' mouth, and carved another at the corner of each eye.
After it was over she washed her hair, steamed her face over a bowl of
hot water, packed two valises, left minute and masterful instructions
with Mattie as to the household, and with Sadie and Pearl as to the
store, and was off to Chicago on her first buying trip. She took Fanny
with her, as ballast. It was a trial at which many men would have
quailed. On the shrewdness and judgment of that buying trip depended
the future of Brandeis' Bazaar, and Mrs. Brandeis, and Fanny, and
Theodore.
Mrs. Brandeis had accompanied her husband on many of his trips to
Chicago. She had even gone with him occasionally to the wholesale
houses around La Salle Street, and Madison, and Fifth Avenue, but she
had never bought a dollar's worth herself. She saw that he bought
slowly, cautiously, and without imagination. She made up her mind
that she would buy quickly, intuitively. She knew slightly some of the
salesmen in the wholesale houses. They had often made presents to her
of a vase, a pocketbook, a handkerchief, or some such trifle, which she
accepted reluctantly, when at all. She was thankful now for these visits.
She found herself remembering many details of them. She made up her
mind, with a canny knowingness, that there should be no presents this
time,