Hallie Daggett and Anne Workman; dispelling shadows
Ken Springer
Contributing Writer
“Women are not performing men’s jobs. They are performing jobs.”
Regarded as one of the greatest series in TV history, All in the Family came into our living rooms in 1971 and stayed for nine wonderful seasons.
A 1974 episode called Archie’s Helping Hand tackled the topic of women in the workplace for the first time on a sitcom. In this episode, Archie is upset because Edith has been attending a women’s rights group meeting with Irene, his “mechanically inclined” feminist neighbor.
Knowing that Irene is looking for a job, Archie suggests she take a bookkeeping job that has opened up at the plant where he works. He figured that if Irene had a job, she wouldn’t have time to be putting feminist thoughts into Edith’s head.
But Archie’s plan goes awry when Irene indeed gets a job at his plant, but not the bookkeeping job he presumed. She informs Archie that she was given the position of forklift operator.
When Archie finds out this “woman” is making as much money as him, the men at the plant get up a petition to have her fired. Archie’s boss gets wind of the initiative and forces him to quell the petition.
Archie confronts Irene about how much money she is making.
Irene counters, “But, Archie, they are paying me less than they paid the man who used to run the forklift.”
“After all,” replies Archie, “it’s a well-known fact, men are worth more than women.”
“Archie, have you been reading Playboy?” asks Irene.
“No Irene, the Bible,” proclaims Archie. “And in the Bible it says ‘God made man in his own image.’ He made women afterward, from a rib, a cheaper cut.”
“But Archie, we should still have equality, right? asks Irene.
“But equality is unfair” replied Archie. “What’s the point of a man working all his life to get someplace if all he’s going to do is wind up equal?”
When I first set about writing this article on the tough pioneer women, overshadowed by the popularity of mountain men in books and film, I was sitting in the Depot Café. I looked up from my notes when it occurred to me that the woman who operates the café is a retired Marine.
The same hands qualified to work on attack helicopters were presently making the best pastries outside Paris and Vienna. We’ll be hearing more about Delsie Swearingen in next week’s episode on Warrior Women, Past and Present.
I knew right then and there that there is only one proper way to write this series on women who have broken through the metaphorical glass ceiling. It must include those who live right here in Pocahontas County.
And, there are plenty to choose from – as one might expect in a county full of self-reliant characters – of both sexes, I should add. But, we will stick to the gender that the Victorian era labeled (or libeled, as the case may be) as “…weak, passive, and best suited as followers of men.”
I can attest that Anne Workman approaches trail work with the same vigor as any man. Having worked with her and her husband, Sollie, on many occasions in Watoga State Park, Anne clearly has many years of experience with the tools of the trade, including the fire rake and Pulaski.
Indeed, Anne was a seasonal employee of the United States Forest Service in the 1970s. A time when many men tenaciously believed that there were jobs that women couldn’t and shouldn’t do.
We’ll return to Anne’s experience, but we need to turn the clock back to the early years of the 20th century to meet another amazing woman named Hallie Daggett. Hallie blazed the path for women like Anne, who wanted a challenging outdoor occupation.
Hallie Morse Daggett, of San Francisco, was born into wealth and status.
She could have taken the usual road of high society, and all that comes with a life of leisure and privilege.
But Hallie loved the outdoors and knew well the devastation of forest fires. So, she applied to be the first female lookout for the nascent United States Forest Service.
But, as often the case, Hallie was competing with three men for the job. In her favor, one had poor eyesight (not a good quality for a fire lookout), another was a known poacher. The third candidate was not considered because he was deemed “not a gentleman,” whatever that meant.
Thirty-year-old Hallie, described as “Not timid and knows her way around the forests and mountains,” got the job and started June 1, 1913. She was assigned to Salmon River Eddy Gulch lookout station in the Klamath National Forest in northern California.
Hallie’s job would be one of solitude and danger at an annual salary of $840 with two days off each month. Hallie knew that she was not expected to stay at the task. It was predicted that “after a few days she will telephone that she is frightened by loneliness and danger.”
Who made these predictions?
Men, of course.
But they were wrong. Hallie Daggett would perform superbly in her job for 14 seasons. And more importantly, she opened the door for other women to take on rewarding careers that were out of reach in earlier times.
Adjusting to the social deprivation of living and working in a remote lookout would be difficult for most.
Hallie wrote, “It was quite a swift change in three days from San Francisco, civilization and sea level, to a solitary cabin on a still more solitary mountain, 6,444 feet in elevation and three hours hard climb from anywhere.”
This was at a time when male supervisors thought that women could not handle the physical demands of even the clerk jobs in the Forest Service. Albert Cousins of the Forest Service wrote in 1908 that “the employment of women clerks in the supervisor’s office was not looked upon with favor.”
Cousins referred to the demands of assembling and packing the fire tools for distribution to the firefighters. We know full well now that women like Hallie Daggett and Anne Workman could have carried out such tasks equally as well, or better, than men.
We must acknowledge that this universal attitude about women, largely perpetuated by men, created overwhelming hurdles for women, particularly in the job market.
I have so often heard it said by women, who pioneered jobs previously denied them, that they had to prove themselves. In some cases, even “work harder than the men.”
In reporting about Daggett’s position at the Eddy Gulch Lookout, The Morning Oregonian stated on June 15, 1913, “…this modern Joan of Arc, to whose eyes and alertness is committed to the task of sighting and reporting the fires which occur on the Salmon River Watershed, is Hallie Daggett, an accomplished and refined young woman.”
It is a sign of progress that the hyperbolic Joan of Arc reference would be dropped from the article if written today. There would be no particular case made of a woman working in most occupations. Good on you, America.
We need to bring another woman into this story, one that suggests the Daggett women may have a familial disposition for extraordinary capabilities and tenacity.
In the July 16, 1921 edition of the Blue Lake Advocate, the following brief mention was made of Hallie’s sister, Leslie. “Miss Leslie Daggett was at Eddy Gulch Lookout station with supplies for her sister, Miss Hallie, last week.”
For 14 seasons, Leslie Daggett arrived at the Eddy Gulch Lookout every week with supplies and mail for Hallie. She did this on horseback, towing a pack mule over nine miles of rough country. And, she did this without fail.
Yet, without a cell phone or GPS, is that even possible? Yes, it is; there was a time in the not-so-distant past when they had these things made out of paper, called maps – more on these strange and primitive navigation devices in a future column.
Anne Workman started her Forest Service seasonal job not very far from Hallie Daggett’s lookout cabin in Klamath National Forest.
“There were few women technicians and foresters in the 1970s,” Anne said.
Some of the men she worked with felt that the women, who were hired, were just chosen for their gender. Likewise, the men contended, these women took jobs from men with families who needed them.
Anne relates an experience when applying for a job as a chauffeur. This position required shuttling people to and from an airport and a resort, as well as someone knowledgeable with a pleasant demeanor.
Anne, a single mom with two children and wholly qualified for the job, was declined the position because, as she was informed, “You would be taking jobs away from men with families.”
What?
Many of the women interviewed spoke of having to prove themselves to be accepted by their male counterparts at even the most basic level.
This was true in Hallie Daggett’s time, and it persisted on an overt level, at least until the latter part of the 1970s.
Reflecting on her early years with the Forest Service, Anne said, “I do not really consider my personal experiences a struggle, but we always had to work harder to prove our worthiness in a male-dominated field.
“I worked a long, hot summer in the woods side-by-side with a male colleague, and by the end, he said,” “Well, you’re different, you’re not like other women.”
As a male, working similar jobs to Anne’s, I never felt the necessity of proving myself. I can only imagine the additional stress that would impose.
Yet, Anne persevered, by virtue of her mother’s encouragement that she could “Be whatever she wanted to be.”
She took a full-time position with the Forest Service in 1992 in the nearby Richwood office and had a long and rewarding career helping to preserve and protect our nation’s forests.
Like many women who dared enter fields dominated by men, they would pay the price so that today’s women can indeed be whatever they choose to be.
Warrior Women – Next week. Until then,
Ken Springer
Ken1949bongo@gmail.com