After the Miracle, page 11
Annie and Helen had originally planned to travel to Schenectady in the fall of 1912, at which point Helen still believed she would take up a post in the Lunn administration. In July, the Cleveland Citizen even reported that she had been appointed to Lunn’s “cabinet,” though Helen would later note that she never heard from the mayor himself.7 Not long before her scheduled departure, she sat down at her Wrentham home for an interview with Alleyne Ireland, a prominent freelance reporter writing a profile for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Ireland begins the article by informing his readers that his conversation with Helen was one of the most interesting of his career. Perhaps already sensing the tide of public opinion that assumed others were responsible for influencing Helen’s newfound political ideology, Ireland immediately lays any such assumption to rest. “This witty, adroit and well-informed woman is in no sense a mere reflection in the mental field of [Annie Sullivan] or of anyone else,” he writes, “and that so far from being under the intellectual domination of her friends, she follows a highly independent tide of thought and takes the greatest pleasure in arguing against her friends in support of her convictions.”8 He goes on to explain that Helen’s “adhesion to Socialism” continues despite the fact that her dearest friend Annie Sullivan, “whose influence must have been greater than that of any other with whom she has been brought in contact, is strongly opposed to the Socialist movement.”9
When conversation turns to Helen’s imminent departure to take up her post in Schenectady, she again emphasizes her determination to “study the laboring people and their lives” to improve the plight of the poor. When the reporter notes that poverty is “extolled and glorified” in the New Testament, it elicits an indignant response. “There! That just shows how blind people can be!” Helen interjects. “It’s nothing but moral and intellectual blindness for people to think that Christ extolled poverty when he said, ‘Blessed are the poor for they shall Inherit the kingdom of God.’ That wasn’t extolling poverty; what he meant was simply that the poor would have blessings in the future to compensate them for their sufferings.” Here, she shares her Marxist impression about society’s economic structure. “One of the things I want to write about is the social blindness from which so many people seem to suffer, inability to see and to understand the fundamental conditions underlying the relations between the workpeople and their employers. The keynote of the situation lies in the central fact of our present industrial situation, the ownership of everything by the few.”10
At this point in the interview, the reporter notes that Annie comes over and says something to Helen using the manual alphabet. “Miss Keller laughed long and loud and clapped her hands, a sign of pleasure and amusement. Then turning to me she said, ‘She says it’s all very well to talk like that but my views don’t prevent my collecting dividends on a few railroad shares that I own.’”11
And what did Helen have to say to that? the reporter wondered. “Oh, I don’t set myself up to be perfect; and, anyhow, whatever you may think of my conduct, the instance certainly proves my point, for I know nothing whatever about railroads and I never worked for one, and yet I get my dividends just the same. That’s exactly the point I’ve been trying to make.”12 Widely reprinted throughout the country, it is this article that could be considered her true political coming-out.
Though Helen seemed poised to take up a political position in Schenectady, not long after the story ran in mid-September, Mayor Lunn’s office suddenly issued a statement announcing that Macy had resigned his position as executive secretary. His resignation was ostensibly because Annie was “ill”—suffering from what Nella Henney later described as an “obscure malady” that was sapping her strength and required an operation.13 Although this was his official excuse, there had been hints for some time that John was already looking for a way out. Weeks earlier, Helen had written to her mother confiding that he was unhappy with the post. “We don’t think that John wants to stay there much longer,” she wrote Kate in August. “He seems to want almost any kind of work rather than that of a secretary.”14
The ensuing newspaper coverage of Macy’s resignation barely mentioned his name. Instead, most of the reports focused on the fact that Helen would not be traveling to Schenectady after all. “HELEN KELLER WILL NOT AID SOCIALISTS,” blared the headline in the Knickerbocker Press.15
Despite the news of her withdrawal from the post that had never formally been offered to her, the cat was now out of the bag about her political conversion. Although some mainstream newspapers still treated her radical politics as something of a novelty, the conservative press reacted furiously to the news that the widely admired woman had resolved to lend her prestige to a movement that aimed to destroy capitalism. The backlash was so intense that Helen felt compelled to counter some of what was being said about her. In November, she chose the Socialist Party newspaper, the New York Call, to set the record straight—the first of many times she chose to go on the offensive to defend her political convictions.
Although she would employ a variety of rhetorical strategies throughout her life, her earliest tactics frequently took advantage of a trait that had long ago been discovered by her friends, most notably the celebrated humorist, Mark Twain—her biting wit. For much of the next decade, she would use a lethal combination of sarcasm and humorous wordplay to slay her critics and counter the patronizing and ableist narrative that often greeted her outspoken political opinions.
The opening volley came in an essay she composed in 1912 titled “How I Became a Socialist,” carefully formulated to answer a wide range of attacks and innuendo that had surfaced since she had first declared her allegiance to the party earlier that year.16 She begins by citing a recent article in the anti-socialist Jesuit periodical Common Cause, published under the headline: “SCHENECTADY REDS ARE ADVERTISING; USING HELEN KELLER, THE BLIND GIRL, TO RECEIVE PUBLICITY.”17
The writer had declared that he couldn’t “imagine anything more pathetic than the present exploitation of poor Helen Keller by the Socialists of Schenectady who had trumpeted her socialism to publicize their cause.”18 Helen had obviously been waiting some time to answer this charge. “There’s a chance for satirical comment on the phrase, ‘the exploitation of poor Helen Keller,’” she wrote. “But I will refrain, simply saying that I do not like the hypocritical sympathy of such a paper as the Common Cause, but I am glad if it knows what the word ‘exploitation’ means.”19
She continues, “For several months, my name and socialism have appeared often together in the newspapers… Even notoriety may be turned to beneficent uses, and I rejoice if the disposition of the newspapers to record my activities results in bringing more often into their columns the word socialism.”20
At this point, she takes the opportunity to explain for the first time how she had been converted to the cause while dispelling a persistent myth that had circulated widely since her political conversion was made public. She reveals that she had become a socialist by “reading,” starting with the H. G. Wells book that had been recommended by Annie. “When she gave me the book, she was not a Socialist and she is not a Socialist now. Perhaps she will be one before Mr. Macy and I are done arguing with her.”21
She explains that her reading had so far been limited and slow due to the lack of socialist literature available in braille and described the array of sources from where she had drawn her widespread knowledge of current events:
I take German bimonthly Socialist periodicals printed in braille for the blind… The other socialist literature that I have read has been spelled into my hand by a friend who comes three times a week to read to me whatever I choose to have read. She gives the titles of the articles and I tell her when to read on and when to omit. I have also had her read to me from the International Socialist Review articles the titles of which sounded promising. Manual spelling takes time. It is no easy and rapid thing to absorb through one’s fingers a book of 50,000 words on economics. But it is a pleasure, and one which I shall enjoy repeatedly until I have made myself acquainted with all the classic socialist authors.
Although she had already dismissed the idea of Annie’s influence on her radical beliefs, the idea naturally persisted that it must have been John Macy—unlike his wife, an avowed socialist—who was responsible. Responding to the allegation in Common Cause that “both Mr. and Mrs. Macy are enthusiastic Marxist propagandists,” Helen took the opportunity again to correct a misconception that persists more than a century later. “Mr. Macy may be an enthusiastic Marxist propagandist, though I am sorry to say he has not shown much enthusiasm in propagating his Marxism through my fingers,” she writes. “Mrs. Macy is not a Marxist, nor a socialist. Therefore, what the Common Cause says about her is not true. The editor must have invented that, made it out of whole cloth, and if that is the way his mind works, it is no wonder that he is opposed to socialism. He has not sufficient sense of fact to be a socialist or anything else intellectually worthwhile.”22
Indeed, as Joseph Chamberlin had noted years earlier, Annie was still very much a conservative. Notwithstanding her one-time sympathy for the fiery Irish nationalist politician Charles Stewart Parnell and the Fenian cause of Irish independence when she was at Tewksbury, she made no secret of her disdain for the ideology shared by her husband and pupil.
Although much of Helen’s vitriol was reserved for the conservative press, she doesn’t spare the mainstream media in her essay. The previous September, the New York Times had published an editorial headlined, “The Contemptible Red Flag,” in which the paper had described the banner of the socialist movement as “detestable” and “the symbol of lawlessness and anarchy the world over… held in contempt by all right-minded persons.” The bearer of such a flag, declared the paper, forfeits all right to “respect and sympathy,” and should always be regarded with “suspicion.”23
In her response to the piece, Helen reveals that, despite the fact that she is no worshipper of “cloth of any color,” there is one that held a special place in her heart. “I love the red flag and what it symbolizes to me and other Socialists,” she declares. “I have a red flag hanging in my study, and if I could, I should gladly march with it past the office of the Times and let all the reporters and photographers make the most of the spectacle.”24
Here, she points out the irony that couldn’t have been lost on anybody who remembered that only a short time ago—before her radical conversion—Helen was the darling of the American media, and newspaper readers couldn’t get enough of her “inspirational” declarations and accomplishments.
“According to the inclusive condemnation of the Times, I have forfeited all right to respect and sympathy, and I am to be regarded with suspicion,” she wrote. “Yet the editor of the Times wants me to write him an article! How can he trust me to write for him if I am a suspicious character? I hope you will enjoy as much as I do the bad ethics, bad logic, bad manners that a capitalist editor falls into when he tries to condemn the movement which is aimed at this plutocratic interest.”25
It appeared that some newspapers were conflicted about how to approach the difficult balancing act of attacking one of America’s most beloved figures. Predictably, some had chosen to blame Helen’s politics on her disabilities. Nothing infuriated her more and she would often reserve her most withering criticism for these deeply offensive ableist attacks. Again, her biting sarcasm barely disguises her contempt:
The Brooklyn Eagle says, apropos of me, and socialism, that Helen Keller’s “mistakes spring out of the manifest limitations of her development.” Some years ago, I met a gentleman who was introduced to me as Mr. McKelway, editor of the Brooklyn Eagle. It was after a meeting that we had in New York on behalf of the blind. At that time the compliments he paid me were so generous that I blush to remember them. But now that I have come out for socialism, he reminds me and the public that I am blind and deaf and especially liable to error. I must have shrunk in intelligence during the years since I met him. Surely it is his turn to blush. It may be that deafness and blindness incline one toward socialism. Marx was probably stone deaf and William Morris was blind… Oh, ridiculous Brooklyn Eagle. What an ungallant bird it is!26
She challenged the paper to debate her on the merit of her ideas rather than diminish her with ableist slights, admonishing, “Let it attack my ideas and oppose the aims and arguments of Socialism. It is not fair fighting or good argument to remind me and others that I cannot see or hear.” She also notably employed a tactic that would become an increasing feature of her rhetorical arsenal—the deft use of metaphors to suggest that her critics were “blind” and “deaf” to the ills of society. While such language might be considered ableist today, the turns of phrase were highly impactful coming from the famously deafblind figure. “If I ever contribute to the Socialist movement, the book that I sometimes dream of, I know what I shall name it: Industrial Blindness and Social Deafness,” she concluded the essay.27
Meanwhile, the socialist press continued to make hay of the affiliation of such an illustrious figure. “Helen Keller is our Comrade, and her socialism is a living, vital thing to her,” declared the New York Call. “All her speeches are permeated with the spirit of socialism… If ever there was a superwoman that woman is Helen Keller.”28
With Annie still convalescing from her illness, Helen was reluctantly “packed off” to stay with her friend Lenore Smith (née Kinney), who had married a geologist in Washington, DC, since her Radcliffe days with Helen, where she had learned the manual alphabet and would sometimes substitute for Annie in the classroom.29 Helen made no secret of the fact that she regarded the stay as a form of “exile.”30 Still, her old friend was a spirited companion and took her on a number of outings in the nation’s capital.
In a letter to Annie written in October 1912, Helen provides a hint of her evolving attitudes around what she believes it will take to transform society. “No, I am not planning an article about Washington as the wicked capital of the United States,” she assures her teacher. “I’ve no use for ‘reform’ work in that direction. It will always be hopeless until all the people unite and control the government for the benefit of all.”31
In another letter sent during her monthlong stay, Helen wrote Annie excitedly about a planned outing: “I’m going with Lenore this morning to visit some of the worst alleys in the city. There are some active workers who are trying to induce the authorities to have these alleys cleaned up and give the people better dwellings.”32 Although such excursions helped to relieve the tedium, she confided to Annie that she felt like a “prisoner” at times, complaining that Lenore was a “bigoted plutocrat.”33 Her friend’s views had not evolved much since the Radcliffe days and Helen was uncomfortable discussing politics with someone so clearly unreceptive to her newfound political leanings. “I don’t feel free to talk about social questions obviously unwelcome in this atmosphere… I guess that’s the experience of every crank, every heretic and every ‘botherer of men,’” she wrote Annie.34
In a letter to John, she was even more forthright, describing a talk she gave to a group of Camp Fire girls. “They seemed earnest in their efforts to do something worthwhile,” she told him, “but it is pathetic to see how many of those sweet, intelligent, helpless girls there are whose good-will is going to waste because there is no one to direct it towards social service and social regeneration.” Learning from Lenore about the economic beliefs of the so-called intellectuals in her neighborhood, Helen dismissed their “apparent stupidity and want of self-respect.”35
In Washington, without access to the numerous subscriptions that regularly arrived in the mail to her Wrentham home, she was especially frustrated to be cut off from the socialist news sources that she relied on to keep abreast of political currents. “I am hungry for news that counts,” she wrote Annie. “I hear nothing but newspaper gossip about Mr. Roosevelt and campaign fund disclosures. Is the Lawrence strike still on? What about the trial of Ettor and Giovannitti? Please, please don’t throw me out of it all, it makes me too homesick.”36
For months, reading the New York Call and other socialist periodicals, Helen had been following the Lawrence Textile Strike, a labor dispute involving mostly female Italian immigrant workers in Lawrence, Massachusetts—about seventy miles from her Wrentham home. The strike began in January 1912 after mill workers had been forced to accept a significant cut of pay and work hours. The battle would soon be given an enduring nickname—inspired by James Oppenheim’s recent poem—the “Bread and Roses Strike.”
As we come marching, marching, we battle, too, for men—
For they are women’s children and we mother them again.
Our days shall not be sweated from birth until life closes—
Hearts starve as well as bodies: Give us Bread but give us Roses.37
Although Helen was a member of the Socialist Party, it was soon apparent that she had misgivings about the party’s moderate stance of realizing gradual social change through the ballot box alone. As she followed the Lawrence strike from afar during 1912, she had become increasingly drawn to the militant tactics of Big Bill Haywood, a fellow socialist who had traveled throughout America for months to raise money for the defense of Arturo Giovannitti and Joseph Ettor. The two strike leaders had been charged with conspiracy to commit murder in the death of a thirty-four-year-old striker named Annie LoPizzo, even though witnesses claimed she had been shot to death by a police officer after the state militia cornered a group of peaceful marchers. On behalf of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW)—the “One Big Union” whose members were nicknamed “Wobblies”—Haywood threatened a general strike unless the imprisoned leaders, who had clearly been framed, were released. “Open the jail gates or we will close the mill gates,” demanded the charismatic labor leader. In the end, the workers achieved many of their demands, winning a 15 percent increase in pay along with overtime compensation. Enthralled by the successful battle, which eventually saw Ettor and Giovannitti cleared, Helen would later reach out to both men and would soon count the two strike leaders as close friends.
