be inferred that Doc told B. J. Stone of his doubts, for the very next day B. J., Ruth Lillian, and all of Frenchy's girls withdrew their savings, and not a minute too soon, because two days later a rush on the bank forced it to shut down, never to open its doors again.
I confess to feeling wickedly pleased when I discovered from the records that among the many savings wiped out by the bank's collapse was a small account in the name of Professor Michael Francis Murphy and a very considerable one in the name of Mrs. Sven Bjorkvist.
Ruth Lillian must have been surprised to discover that her father had kept all his savings in her name, and that they amounted to a very tidy sum. From records of bank transactions, we discover that during Destiny's financial panic she (or rather, B. J. Stone operating as her agent) purchased the entire stock of two clothing shops, a hardware store, a notions shop, and a harness maker's, all at dirt cheap panic prices; and from railroad shipping invoices, we learn that this stock came with them when they left for Seattle.
Evidently Frenchy read the writing on the wall too, for two days later she and her girls also bought tickets for Seattle, pursuing a clientele that was attracted to the Klondike Gold Rush, and my researches in Seattle turned up Frenchy's name (Marie-ThГ©rГЁse Courbin) on a lease for a 'resort-hotel' on Skid Road (soon to be corrupted to 'skid row' and applied to any area of down-and-outs).
Because I've grown fond of them, it would be pleasant to confect happy futures for those four women. I can picture Frenchy returning rich to New Orleans and establishing herself in a fine old house from which she dominates local society through her generous support of the First American United Tabernacle of the Glorious Message of the Risen Christ, where none of the congregation even dares to comment on the succession of handsome, well-muscled young 'nephews' she keeps in splendid clothes and expensive cigars. And Kersti? Well, I can envision Kersti using her professional nest egg to buy a fertile half-section where, with some full-blooded young man, she raises a clan of tow-headed rascals. Queeny? I can see Queeny winning the heart of some grizzled Klondike miner who, having struck it rich, opens a theater that features her performing her Famous Dance of the Seven Veils. Then, when finally her time comes, she dies of a sudden and painless heart attack while taking a seventh curtain call before a wildly appreciative audience. And Chinky? Poor Chinky, one of nature's victims, condemned to be used and discarded by a long parade of faceless, mean-hearted strangers. I'm afraid the best life I could reasonably project for Chinky would be a short one.
But all this is fantasy. The fact is that after Frenchy signed that lease, she and her girls disappeared into the eddies of time without a trace. But at least we know that Frenchy set up shop in Seattle, where her girls could harvest Johns fresh off the ships, rather than being dragged through the rigors of the Chilicoot Pass to the gold fields, where they would have had to compete with those hard-faced, sapphomorphic professionals of the Yukon who serviced queues of prospectors with a production-line efficiency that would have impressed young Henry Ford.
Following Ruth Lillian's trail in Seattle was not difficult, for she became a minor financial legend and, inevitably, the subject of an unpublished (indeed, unfinished) thesis. * I owe many details of Ruth Lillian's later life to this biography, where we learn that she, B. J. Stone, and Matthew Dubchek arrived in Seattle with three boxcar loads of tools, clothing, and other equipment just as thousands of men were amassing to try their luck in the Alaskan gold fields. It would appear that Ruth Lillian benefited from her father's story about the old Yankee peddler who said that the surest path to a fortune lay not in digging for gold, but in selling picks and shovels to the fools who did. Saved from the shriveling effects of grief and self-pity by having two young people to care for, B. J. Stone became the manager of Ruth Lillian's store, over which an ornately lettered sign proclaimed: Kane's Mercantile Emporium.
* R. Lillian Marx: The Woman and Her Times: Michele Goldman-Harris.
One can picture Matthew working happily in the Mercantile during its early, hectic, enormously profitable years. But later his activities seem to have been limited to gardening and doing odd chores around the house that Ruth Lillian had built only half a block from the store.
Until 1917 most of the Mercantile's orders and sales records bear B. J. Stone's signature (although all legal and banking documents are signed by Ruth Lillian, who had by then become R. Lillian Kane). Then suddenly, we find Ruth Lillian's signature on everything, because B. J. died the year American doughboys surged up the gangways of troop ships to the tune of 'Over There,' on their way to die in the 'war to end war.'
At the age of thirty-six, Ruth Lillian married David S. Marx, an earnest, hard-working rival whose mail-order business in outdoor supplies and work clothes ('Every Item Made in America by Americans!') had earned a reputation for quality throughout Alaska and the Northwest. It was both daring and canny of Mr. Marx to abandon his company's identity and unite their activities under the name of Ruth Lillian's store, recognizing that 'Mercantile Emporium' lent their combined enterprise a nostalgic aura of reliability and honesty. He accented this image by using old-fashioned lettering on the cover of his catalogues, a practice continued by the multinational combine that owns the business today, although the target consumer has shifted from farmers and homesteaders to young urban dwellers eager to proclaim their concerns about ecology, and the American Past, and the Good Old Days, and… all that sort of thing. The clothing is now made by underpaid women in Asiatic sweatshops.
It would appear that Mr. Marx accepted Ruth Lillian's moral obligations, for Matthew went with them when they moved into what is now on show as the Marx-Kane House (appointment required). This ornate pile in the parvenu 'Timber Baron' style is one of the few houses to survive the Great Fire that left Seattle an architectural wasteland. Matthew was described by a neighbor as a'… jack-of-all-work around the house. He went about his chores with placid good humor, always wearing a six- pointed marshal's badge pinned to his jacket. He was well known in the Queen Ann Hill neighborhood, where he used to take long rambling walks every evening. Occasionally a badly brought-up child would follow him chanting 'moron' or 'Simple-Simon,' but a short, stormy visit from Mrs. Marx always sufficed to put an end to that.'*
* These details come from the Goldman-Harris biography where, in quoted interviews with an elderly Ruth Lillian, I also discovered her habit of describing persons and behaviors she disapproved of as small!
Mr. Marx died at his desk from overwork a year after the Wall Street Collapse threatened not only their company's profits but the jobs of their expanded enterprise's four hundred employees, for they had only three years earlier bought out two of their principal suppliers.
In 1931, American business's darkest moment, Ruth Lillian Marx became president of the Mercantile Emporium. By taking everyday management into her own hands and instigating more efficient practices, by declaring a moratorium on profits, by maintaining her company's reputation for high-quality goods even while prices plunged, and above all by tapping into the creativity of her work force, soliciting their suggestions and rewarding those accepted, she managed to navigate the treacherous waters of the Great Depression without having to fire a single person or reduce benefits. * Thus, when the nation's entry into the Second World War lifted American business from the doldrums into soaring profits, the Mercantile Emporium's eleven outlets, its mail-order division, and its manufacturing activities enjoyed the commercial advantages of a strong reputation for quality and fair dealing, a faithful clientele, and a fiercely loyal work force.
* It is difficult to avoid comparison of Ruth Lillian's treatment of her workers and colleagues with today's piratical practice of wringing every last cent of profit out of the work force, and 'downsizing' to the point of hectic inefficiency, while denying workers the dignity that comes with civilized benefits and secure futures.
During the second year of that war, when radios across the country were echoing the soldier's metaphorical plea that the girl back home refrain from sitting under the apple tree with anyone else but me, anyone else but me, anyone else but me. No! No! No!.. Matthew died in his sleep.
The war ended, and Ruth Lillian retired from active leadership of her now-robust and profitable company, to become a stern and feared force in liberal politics, and a generous, if slightly scornful, supporter of what passed for culture. She was recognized on the streets by the gray-shot russet hair she wore piled up and held in place by antique silver combs, and by her outdated, handmade dresses, which were in disapproving contrast to the postwar 'New Look' with its graceless calf-bisecting skirts.
Full of years, Ruth Lillian Marx died in 1963. Seattle was surprised to learn that of the many millions of dollars she was reputed to be worth, all that remained was her rambling house on Queen Ann Hill, and even this was mortgaged down to the ashes in the fireplaces. It came out that all her money had gone to organizations seeking to combat what she held to be the greatest menace facing humankind: the worldwide population explosion. (It is sobering to realize that since Ruth Lillian's death world population has more than doubled, and will double again within the next twenty-seven years.)
Eleven years ago I found myself in Seattle, attending the funeral of an old friend (the one who sent me C. R.
