When Cinderella Ran the Show: Bertha Duppler Baur in Chicago

HOLLYWOOD COULD NOT WRITE A BETTER SCRIPT than the real-life story of Bertha Duppler Baur. This small-town Cinderella used intelligence and determination to make her way in the world before marrying her Prince Charming. The fairy tale might have ended there, but Bertha continued to live as a wealthy, independent woman after her husband's untimely death. She was presented to the Queen of England and entertained European royalty in her home. Her daughter married a Canadian nobleman, securing a place in society. Truly a fairy tale story. But, in this Cinderella story, the Republican Party served as her fairy godmother, and the US post office in Chicago became her ballroom.Bertha Duppler Baur's story is more than a fairy tale, however. A truly modern woman, she moved in some of the highest political circles of her day. She was comfortable in the male world of politics and business, where she excelled, and she did this before women had the right to vote or held seats in the board rooms of corporate America. All this derived from her years in the Chicago post office.Bertha Duppler was born October 22, 1874, in Mineral Point, Wisconsin, to German Catholic parents who had immigrated to the United States in 1848. Her father Sebastian began his American life in Milwaukee, where he worked for the Pabst Brewing Company.1 In Sauk City, Wisconsin, he married Mary Fuhr in 1863. The couple moved to Mineral Point, a mining community in southwestern Wisconsin, where Sebastian operated a “sample room,” with the family living above. A sample room was a licensed saloon that provided space for traveling salesmen to display their wares.2 The local newspaper noted he carried “wines, liquors, and cigars,” but also a temperance drink known as Spruce Beer, and liquors for “medicinal, mechanical, scientific, or harvesting purposes,”3 suggesting recognition of the power of temperance and respect for it. This practical approach to alcohol would later influence Bertha's run for Congress.Bertha's mother Mary died when she was just six years old, leaving her father with four children, two boys and two girls, with Bertha being the youngest. He never remarried. Bertha's older sister Rosa married a boy from a nearby town, and moved to Iowa just five months after their mother's death, leaving Bertha without a female presence in her daily life.4 Many years later, after her marriage to Jacob Baur, Bertha took a course in home management at Chicago's School of Domestic Arts and Science to learn how to supervise a household, since this knowledge was not passed to her.5 Today known as “home economics,” the course of study was designed to bring scientific rigor to domestic labor,6 creating “domestic engineers.”7Bertha attended public schools in Mineral Point, graduating from High School with honors in 1889.8 Eager to assert her independence and make a name in the world, after graduation at age seventeen, she moved to Chicago by herself and studied at the Metropolitan Business College where she learned shorthand or stenography, and typing.9 Metropolitan was one of twenty-eight business schools operating in Chicago as of 1890.10Bertha was one of thousands of young women who flocked to Chicago in the late nineteenth century. The demand for office workers grew in response to the changing nature of work. Industrial capitalism required a new skill set to serve the bookkeeping, secretarial, and other office needs of the growing economy. Traditionally a man's field, secretarial work became a woman's job with the introduction of typewriters and business machines. Ninety percent of the students at the Metropolitan College were women, mostly middle class. One could work a job during the day to pay for tuition, and attend classes at night, completing the course of study in six months.11 The skills taught would allow a young woman to earn enough to support herself, or to help her family financially, and this work was seen as more desirable and higher paying than either factory work or retail. According to an 1892 Illinois Bureau of Labor Statistics study, “The average wage for all clerical workers . . . was $8.79 per week, while the average wage for non-office employees was $5.71 per week.”12 It was believed that middle-class women possessed the necessary language skills and decorum to fit into an office situation. Bertha checked all the boxes—she was well read and well spoken, as evidenced by her high school records, and knew how to manage herself around men, thanks to her father's trade.Bertha used the skills of shorthand and typing to enter the male-dominated world of railroad business. She became secretary to W. S. Parkhurst, general passenger and freight agent for the Midland Railroad in Anderson, Indiana. In what was described as a “lucrative” position, she literally learned how to run a railroad.13 The knowledge of logistics learned in this position would later serve her well at the Chicago post office. During her time in Anderson, Bertha became a popular young woman in the town. Her hometown paper noted that before she left, “several members of the Anderson Club will give a reception and dance . . . in honor of Miss Bertha Duppler.” The paper noted she “made many friends while in Anderson and has been popular in social circles.”14 She returned to Anderson for several visits after she moved back to Chicago.When the Midland Railroad was sold to Henry Crawford in 1891, Bertha returned to Chicago and worked at the 1893 Columbian Exposition.15 Her exact position is unknown, but thousands were employed by the fair administration and it is likely she used her stenography skills.16 During the peak months of the fair, about twenty people were employed in the director-general's office alone, but the final report gives no breakdown for stenographers or secretaries.17 Her reputation as a smart and hard worker got the attention of influential men, which led to a position with the Republican National Committee in Chicago. She was the last stenographer to be retained following the 1896 Republican National Convention, despite a “clean sweep of the stenographers and typewriters” as the headquarters shut down.18At the party headquarters, she encountered Republican politicians from across the country. She met leaders such as the Republican king-maker Mark Hanna of Ohio and met the prominent women who occupied four rooms at the headquarters devoted to the Women's National Republican Association. This influential group, founded in 1888, had established clubs across the United States to promote women's participation in politics. Judith Ellen Foster, the leader of the WNRA, wielded patronage power in the party and secured positions in government for her friends and family members.19 A trained lawyer from Clinton, Iowa, Foster came to the Republican Party, as did many other women, from the temperance movement.20 Bertha's exposure to national politics would set a course for the remainder of her life. She would go on to work for women's suffrage and attend several International Women's Suffrage conventions.21 She was one of the first women in Chicago to cast a ballot after women gained the right to vote in national elections in 1920. She ran for Congress twice on the Republican ticket and was a Republican national committee woman for over twenty-four years. She personally met Republican presidents such as William McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge, Warren G. Harding, and Herbert Hoover and regularly attended presidential inaugurations.22Through Bertha's “great industry and unusual intelligence,” she was appointed to the Chicago post office in 1897 as a clerk, one of the few women to hold such a position, earning a salary of $900 per year or about $29,500 in today's dollars.23 The next year she was promoted to assistant secretary to postmaster Charles U. Gordon with a 33 percent increase in pay to $1,200.24 She continued in that position under the next three postmasters, Frederick Coyne, Fred Busse, and Daniel Campbell. Busse served only a short period before being elected mayor of Chicago. But during Busse's tenure as postmaster, he was involved in a railroad accident that left him with severe injuries and confined him at home. By all accounts, Bertha stepped in to act as postmaster until his return, a fact that was noted in the press nationwide via an Associated Press newswire story.25 She would regularly visit Busse at his home for signatures and briefings, but she handled the day-to-day operations. Cinderella truly ran the show.Her post office job required Bertha to meet and remember everyone. She had to handle disgruntled and ambitious people who sought a meeting with the postmaster since he was responsible for over six thousand jobs. Bertha handled this graciously and with respect. Also, her overly flattering biography notes she was always “grateful” and loyal to whomever was in the position. “She knew all the officials, every clerk and a battalion of the carriers, as she knew a majority of the county and city officials, not to mention men and women further afield in banking, the law, and an ever-widening circle of politicians, state and national.”26 She was also a fount of institutional knowledge that each new postmaster found invaluable.27 During her eleven years at the post office, she used her professional skills and her “people skills” learned in the male where she had worked to her place as one of the in a comfortable life on her She a in a at the in Chicago. She to and found time for a modern In a newspaper Bertha that was a could not also be She noted that did not the of that the of many women who devoted their time to of and But could time to to their such as the law, and During her at the post office, Bertha found time to a a act for a woman at that and School at She for by a on a in the of the of in she used her in politics and business, as well as her social which some of the to for a of the Republican National also time to attend Chicago College of at She she not she to but it would help her in her other and could a of she her post office She before her marriage in one of three women in her and was to the Illinois had been in Illinois since the state women be to the in but were few in In she her school on in general for their of which she believed for She the men, “The the women is more than the which gives the women an right and place with The men in her many of the men she worked with in politics and business, women as who in the male was a woman of who from their middle-class that women were and not women who were with the of a saloon or women who had always in to to their She herself as the work as men in the business world, was comfortable in and not by their world, and she to be for her not just she was a years in the post office set Bertha on her in politics. It took her into room where it in modern The Chicago post office was the in the and grew to such as and handled their until came in the Chicago post During her years there, a new was to post office several and all the and In the new was and after a of to six of and men moved the Chicago from the on the to the new at the of and all without the of that the Chicago post office handled two per day and two of other such as and the the new to across the In a world that ran on post were the and business of the 1888, positions were all appointed on a political the postmaster wielded political patronage the of the in 1888, which the to positions had to only the were power from the political management such as postmaster and assistant postmaster were political and were at the national a woman with no political Bertha was on her and her she the power of the to jobs. She passed the in Fred Busse was elected mayor of Chicago in was that Bertha would him to to serve as his her job with the post office was under which it from political She it to where her was more and Her salary at that time had to per the of over assistant secretary and later secretary to postmasters, Bertha was in of all She was responsible for for and that were to the right she did Chicago newspaper “She is always and to work it is a to have her and and at all She occupied a office just that of the she on business such as and his Chicago to Theodore where she met the during a visit to the and attended the unusual position for a woman the attention of the Chicago which regularly on her She the who the post office and found her life Her biography she has been by the of and that she had for the The Chicago a story on her work for the postmaster in she had only been at her post office job than a but she was of the highest of all the women employed in the post she took of a that was in an A high honor was to her in when she was by to the first a in post office years from 1897 to also her to the Republican By for the Republican National she had not only gained her post office job but was to attend the in honor of William in Chicago in She did not have an but was one of the in each year loyal his on by his Bertha took it herself to a to in the post office. The a read a of her on with a her the of the post She passed of before She boys to more from around the which she to and in the with a be and She continued the for after leaving the post office. She to at the Republican National after her as national as a of her to political power that with the of the post of her in which the attention The story of how Bertha an American that over the post office was in at nationwide from Illinois to Wisconsin, and to be several of the story, but in Bertha is as a young woman who to a American when the Chicago post office moved into new the was to be but an American over it. a of the American by and and with a few of what was the Miss Bertha assistant secretary to postmaster Busse, over the and of the post office on the other day and took it and from the was with to the and The of the young woman on the a on the and and of all the her to that and Miss Duppler would have and been to on the around the before help could and to the as she worked her way across the to the where she took the and it to the She later the press she had personally the the year after from the public about the of the that had been took some to the . . . and to it as a the over a year a new took a and but it has The Chicago noted she would the with she had In several of the the story a of the young woman a to the but in the was and the only two Bertha had Duppler at her post office job until just before her marriage to one of Chicago's Jacob Baur, a who founded the the to and it in to the and the grew in several the it was to as well as and for Bertha continued the after her in Cinderella ran the her of the from per to when she sold the in the time of his death, Jacob Baur's was at the of over in only was Chicago's when she and her on political life in Chicago for women's suffrage some of the and women in the Hanna the daughter of Mark of and herself a US from Illinois in Bertha the of of and were who were in the Suffrage of with Bertha as their last She the Women's into the Republican National of where over women a to the to make their for of the Chicago Suffrage Bertha for the She did to one press not only as of but also on the she women to and met with of women to would be time to She the in which the and the of during the make were as a the women in to the would be to in around and with A of were which women, women, and from many and the Women's the Chicago and many from all of the Bertha a to a for the of a which the women The was for the to for during the to the Chicago it only got as as before it into to the of the who that the would not after The was returned a party and held at the home of Bertha's and attended by a who of men and women from and and of the which ended at the The women's to the the and a of was to their political with her led to her as of the Chicago and of the during She thousand women at to the which of during the four Her was not by the a Bertha was appointed of the which their after short in their first A report by to the in which the the many men who during the first but to to mention women at a born in she used her in politics and business, as well as her social circle which some of the to for a of the Republican National In just five she thousand for the Republican National Committee in she thousand in six for the National Committee as of the women's in She was of the committee of one women who one for the of the Chicago her work on the Bertha began to that many women knowledge the she classes in for women, held in from and a of such as and and and “The women did learn their a was at the of the The where Bertha held a on the board of the at the women to more comfortable with their she a women's at to help women to be to their In to the she to women's clubs across the city on her she for women, married women, to have their of Bertha had been since she left Mineral Point, other women in Chicago at that time were not in the position. were a male and first and or other the and the woman, who was Bertha's Her by her father and later by her was to a to her in and to her would But did earn in her right that she could Bertha became of women's of to when she was for her for the first four years of her Bertha had held a job and herself since the age of an to help women earn and their she women to in local newspaper such as of the of the and of the Chicago of a who entertained royalty in her home in was a of the of and many by their in newspaper were in the that their used only American to for their and The that women had thousands of in all of which were the The that a of to the had a into their by their to the women could earn that could Many of to the to the in and Bertha could her attention to other and her political after suffrage was In several her for mayor of Chicago in the Republican In the her name first on a and she served as a presidential who to to cast her vote for the In she into the political herself by the party Fred for the in on the of Chicago. Chicago and her of her her work for the Chicago and after she knew at the political she did not how to a is where came a he knew politics at the local Bertha had into the one to when came to He that run in the Fred for the Republican for Congress in the a The of the was after years of hard work in the business But the shut and it it was to live life than to read about on the and her a that ran the a that and to home. for Bertha many Bertha the not as but She the to her from it and She and for in the her position as Bertha's that she had in the for years and had run a business in the as well as her post office Her home for an in the city where many the on their home Chicago could their She a new post office with for employees and the as a as well as the She the to But she on women, in their She women's clubs the which her from until late She the in her and she worked the German to German with the her more of a and of a used Bertha's social as an to her as Bertha that had not during his time in that he had served in Congress for years but had to had been to the for Chicago's which many to the It was the modern of the The Bertha became more in a Chicago in “The had a to the of suffrage a of but she is an to a on where her who is for and In an to her to the a to with the across the It the the but the was to Bertha's it to the used by an the It was the of and of in such a she ran a Bertha by the a in Congress for an of the by the of on of for a and to that known to the from one place to at the with their in of also that were with to the their were not carried by The noted that is over the and an as is to be around . . . to Fred him to the when she and were it came of the did Bertha final for office came in when she ran for the held by who the from Fred in This time the was not alcohol but the of which she for many She her in what the Chicago and at a She to give her set but when she at she found several around drink and she and did the her position by her without she to the this of is in Chicago or twenty years when was The with and she all children, to to school to give people came to this for and for She to in what have have of Baur, have was the one of the women in Cinderella was to her as the Bertha was an she continued to work for the Republican Party, as a national from until In she was elected the first woman of the a Republican social founded in promote the government and to the and of and of at Theodore Roosevelt, and of In she not only served as to the Republican National but also the Party Convention, held in She as to Chicago's Republican National Convention, which she personally Duppler died at the age of in never remarried. Her which in the Chicago post office, her national Her was carried by United Press International and in across the United The small-town Cinderella had led a life. Her led to her without the exposure to the world of politics in the Chicago post office, her story might have been of a fairy

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