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He’s all business again. “What do you remember from the suffragist demonstration—the one in Washington last March? Thousands of women in the streets, demanding the right to vote, but what do you remember?” “There was a woman on a horse . . .” “Exactly. One person caught your eye. That was Inez Milholland. Did you know she’s a labor lawyer?” Annie shakes her head, half-ashamed. “But you do remember a lovely young woman dressed all in white, riding a beautiful white horse! Her photograph was in all the papers. You see? That’s what a good picture can do: it can give people a memory that lasts longer than words. It can sum up something important and offer people a way to think about it. And that’s what I want people to remember about tomorrow: a lovely young woman, dressed all in white, carrying an American flag. We don’t want them to read ‘union’ and ‘strike’ and think ‘roustabouts, roughnecks, thugs’—” “And immigrants.” “Exactly! Union men are an anonymous crowd, don’t you see, but the robber barons? The rich men who are doing the real harm? They’re individuals. We know each name. Rockefeller. Vanderbilt. Gould. Fisk. Society pages have photographs of their wives and their daughters and their fancy houses and parties. Business pages tell the world what each of those fellas think, one at a time . . .” He sits gazing at her for longer than is entirely comfortable, and chuckles when she waves her hand in front of her face as though swatting at a fly. “Mrs. Clements,” he declares, “I am going to make you America’s Joan of Arc!” “Blarney,” she says. “God’s own truth,” he replies. “Calumet needs one name to represent all the decent people who just want decent lives for decent families. You are a beauty, inside and out, and I am going to make America see what I see.
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