Education: Vegetables

It was dinner hour at The Balsams, Dixville Notch, N. H. Ravenous tourists and contented residents were scooping vegetables out of their “bird’s bath-tubs,” calling for more butter and chattering happily all through the airy dining-hall. Back and forth between her table and the kitchen, plied Helen Albro Park of Brooklyn, whose summer as a waitress was drawing to a close. Soon she would be returning to Boston University to take up her junior-year courses. How good it would be to handle books again after stacks of trays and dishes. . . .

“Helen!” whispered a girl who had hurried through the swinging doors. “You’re wanted on the ‘phone. It’s long distance!”

As she pressed the receiver tighter and tighter to her ear, Helen Park was more and more mystified. Some one was telling her she had to go to California the next week … by airplane . . . stopping overnight in Cleveland, Chicago, Omaha, Wichita, Cheyenne, Salt Lake City … all expenses paid . . . $50 spending money . . . See America First . . . glorious . . . winner . . . congratulations . . . 12,000 contestants . . . and a return ticket . . . who? . . . Cove? Kove? GOVE, Gove, GOVE? Lydia Pinkham? … At last Helen Park remembered. She had seen a notice that, for the best 250-word letter by a New England college student or graduate telling why he or she wanted to visit California, a free trip by air would be given by a Miss Lydia Pinkham Gove of Salem, Mass. Helen Park could remember nothing of what she had written except the tremendous reason, “just for the ride.” It was astonishing, disconcerting. . . . Helen Park took the fuming lady at her table a cup of tea.

“I asked for a cup of coffee, about 10 minutes ago!”

No matter. Helen Park was flying to California. (Another winner: Margaret C. Sheehan, of Manchester, N. H., Trinity ’19. Winners of the return flight from Los Angeles to Boston: Paul T. Wilson and Henry C. Fowler Jr., of Boston, seniors at M. I. T.)

That night in the waitresses’ dormitory at The Balsams they discussed the miracle far into the night. Who on earth was Lydia Pinkham Gove? Why should she be handing out free airplane trips to California? One alert girl remembered reading in the newspapers that a Lydia Pinkham Gove of Salem, Mass., had just flown home from California with the pastor’s assistant of the Second Unitarian Church of Salem, one James Luther Adams. Both passengers had been wildly enthusiastic about their jaunt. The newspaper, a local sheet, had called it “an important epoch in aviation history.”

But still, who was Lydia Pinkham Gove? Another girl spoke up. Once her mother had had woman’s trouble, couldn’t do the housework, father had got blue and grumpy. Mother had read an advertisement in the farm journal, got some big bottles and pretty soon been all right again. On the bottle it had said, “Lydia E. Pinkham’s Vegetable Compound.” Nice tasting stuff, too. Lots of women swore by it.

Once the Atlanta Journal editorialized as follows:

“In the year 1819, two babies were born whose lives were destined to have a far-reaching influence. One was born in a stern castle of Old England, the other in a humble farmhouse in New England. Queen Victoria, through her wisdom and kindliness during a long and prosperous reign has become enthroned in the hearts of the British people. Lydia E. Pinkham, through the merit of her Vegetable Compound, has made her name a household word in thousands of American homes.”

History textbooks tell at length of Susan B. Anthony, Carrie Nation, Emma Willard, Molly Pitcher. But it remained for hearty Elbert Hubbard (whose work the Atlanta Journal paraphrased) to record in his last book (1915), a life which, from every evidence, intimately affected great masses of homeloving U.S. women. It were desecration to paraphrase Author Hubbard’s rounded periods:

“This is the Era of Woman. Today is Woman’s Day. … We might hark back to the genesis of human tradition and trace the golden woof of woman’s influence for good through the warp of the ages. . . . Lydia Estes was born at Lynn, Mass., on February 9, 1819. . . . Britain’s Queen has been called the ‘Mother of the Nation.’ . . . Lydia E. Pinkham occupied no throne. She was not born to the purple. As a matter of fact she tasted the dregs of poverty and knew the bitterness of bereavement. . . . The family were Quakers . . . Lydia spent many happy days around the farm doing chores, gathering wood and hunting for herbs. Her mother was a woman of great strength and character. She thought for herself—and thought along original lines … She [Lydia] was a bright and progressive child. . . . She became an Abolitionist and acted for years as Secretary of the ‘Freeman’s Society,’ in which she formed friendships with some of the finest minds of the time—such as Whittier, Garrison and Lowell. Lowell lived not many miles from Lydia’s home. … On September 8, 1843, when 24, she married Isaac Pinkham …. The Pinkhams were a patriotic family. Within the next 14 years five children were born to Lydia and Isaac Pinkham, four sons and a daughter . . . Mr. Pinkham was a real estate dealer … He overreached himself with his ambition . . . Lydia Pinkham helped bear the burden in true wifely fashion … So the boys did what they could to eke out the exchequer. They peddled popcorn at the fairs and did chores for the neighbors … It happened that she [Lydia Pinkham] possessed a recipe for a botanic remedy for the diseases of women. This old recipe was a very effective one as had been proved in the practice of a great physician. Mrs. Pinkham, without a thought of making money out of it, used to prepare this medicine and give it freely to such of her neighbors as she found in need of it. She procured the herbs, steeped them and prepared them in the true old-time fashion on the kitchen-stove . . . for years. . . .”

It is then told how, in the panic of 1873, Isaac Pinkham became insolvent. Lydia Pinkham called a family conference. That very day four different people—three of them in carriages—had come from Salem and Boston for the famed remedy. They decided to sell it and Lydia Pinkham said: “We must advertise.”

So well did they advertise that last year, 42 years after Lydia Pinkham’s death, the gross value of the business was four millions. Thousands have obtained photographs of Lydia Pinkham, signed “Yours for Health.” Grateful women chant their Pinkham slogan: “A baby in every bottle,”

Two of her sons died before her. Seven years before she died, she “spelled down” a whole churchful of people at Lynn, the last opponent to fall being a young student named Gove. When this young man asked, soon after, for the hand of Aroline Pinkham, Mrs. Pinkham consented. It was these two who carried on the vegetable compound business; and their daughter, Lydia Pinkham Gove, intrepid transcontinental air passenger, is advertising manager and purchasing agent today. Lydia Pinkham Gove it is who edits and publishes as display matter the heartfelt testimonial letters of Mrs. Ed Daugherty of 1308 Orchard Ave., Muscatine, la. (“I am on my eleventh bottle”); Mrs. P. W. Carr of 721 West Powers St., Muncie, Ind. (“I tell every woman”); Mrs. M. Riessinger of 10004 Nelson Ave., Cleveland (“After taking four bottles I weigh 116 lb.”). She it is, a faithful granddaughter, who computes that “if all the bottles of Lydia E. Pinkham’s Vegetable Compound sold in 1925 could be placed end to end they would make a column as high as the Woolworth Building, with enough left over to extend from Lynn, Mass., to Cleveland, Ohio.”