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 offices where she had worked to secure her place as one of the best-known “businesswomen” in Chicago.Bertha lived a comfortable life on her salary. She maintained a residence in a hotel at 16 Astor Place, amid the Gold Coast in Chicago. She traveled to Europe, and found time for work-life balance, a very modern viewpoint. In a 1902 newspaper article, Bertha wrote that there was “no reason” why a businesswoman could not also be “social.”28 She noted that “social” did not mean the endless rounds of entertainment that defined the lives of many “society” women who devoted their time to traditional activities of lunches, shopping, and late-night suppers. But businesswomen could find time to devote to causes besides their work, such as music, the law, medicine, literature, and philanthropy. During her career at the post office, Bertha found time to ride a bicycle, considered a very progressive act for a woman at that time, and teach Sunday School at St. Chrysostom's Episcopal Church.29 She raised money for cancer treatment by giving a speech on a table in the “pit” of the Board of Trade.30 Later in life, she used her connections in politics and business, as well as her social circle, which included some of the wealthiest Chicagoans, to raise money for a variety of causes, including the Republican National Committee.31Bertha also made time to attend Chicago Kent College of Law at night. She attended, she said, not because she wanted to practice law but because it would help her in her other endeavors and could provide a source of income should she ever lose her post office job. She graduated shortly before her marriage in 1908, one of three women in her law class, and was admitted to the Illinois bar.32 Women had been practicing law in Illinois since the state legislature mandated women be admitted to the bar in 1873, but they were still few in number.33 In 1906, she addressed her law school class on chivalry, attacking businessmen in general for their lack of “rugged chivalry,” which she believed denied opportunities for women. She told the men, “The chivalry shown the women is more superficial, habitual politeness than the chivalry which gives the women an equal right and place with men.”34 The men in her law class, like many of the men she worked with in politics and business, viewed women as “ladies” who needed protection in the male world. “A lady was a woman of sensitivity who needed protection from vulgar behavior.”35 Their attitude reflected their middle-class values that assumed women were vulnerable and not women like Bertha, who were “familiar with the inside of a saloon or wage-earning women who had always walked through rowdy streets in order to get to their jobs.”36 She saw herself as having done the same work as men in the business world, was comfortable in and not intimidated by their world, and she expected to be respected for her ability, not just because she was a woman.Her years in the post office set Bertha on her career in politics. It took her into “the room where it happened,” in modern terms. The Chicago post office was the second largest in the country and grew tremendously due to Chicago-based mail-order businesses such as Montgomery Ward and Sears Roebuck. Although mail-order houses handled their own parcel delivery until 1913, orders came in through the Chicago post office.37 During her years there, a new building was constructed to house post office operations, several federal courts, and all federal offices including the Customs House and Treasury Department. In 1905, the new building was completed, and after a month of drills to practice, six hundred teams of horses and men moved the Chicago postal operations seven blocks from the temporary building on the Lakefront to the new building at the corner of Jackson and Dearborn Streets, all without the loss of any service.38 At that time, the Chicago post office handled two million letters per day and two hundred tons of other mail, such as newspapers and magazines. Like the previous location, the new building featured underground pneumatic tubes to move mail across the city.39 In a world that ran on paper, post offices were the information and business hubs of the country.Until 1888, postal positions were all appointed on a political basis; thus the postmaster wielded tremendous political patronage power. After the passage of the Pendleton Act in 1888, which created the civil service, applicants to lower positions had to pass exams, so only the best qualified were hired, removing power from the political parties. However, upper-level management jobs, such as postmaster and assistant postmaster were still considered political appointments and were made at the national level. As a woman with no political power, Bertha was hired on her “past record and her merit only.”40 However, she recognized the power of the civil service to protect jobs. She passed the exam in 1897.41 When Fred Busse was elected mayor of Chicago in 1907, there was speculation that Bertha would follow him to City Hall, continuing to serve as his secretary. However, her job with the post office was covered under civil service laws, which protected it from political influence. She thought it best to stay where her employment was more secure and lucrative. Her salary at that time had grown to $2,500 per year, the equivalent of over $70,000 today.42As assistant secretary and later personal private secretary to postmasters, Bertha was present in high-level meetings of all sorts. She was responsible for recording minutes, taking dictation for letters, and seeing that orders were delivered to the right people. And she apparently did so cheerfully. An 1898 Chicago newspaper article noted, “She is always eager and willing to work so cheerfully it is a pleasure to have her around, and thoroughly capable and reliable at all times.” She occupied a separate office just outside that of the postmaster.43 And she traveled on business trips, such as accompanying Postmaster Coyne and his Chicago delegation to Theodore Roosevelt's 1905 inauguration, where she met the president during a visit to the White House and attended the inaugural ball.44Her unusual position for a woman attracted the attention of the Chicago press, which regularly reported on her career. She befriended the reporters who covered the post office beat, and they found her life made good stories. Her biography noted, “Always she has been approachable by the fraternity of printing ink,” and that she had “furnished considerable copy for the newspapers.”45 The Chicago Times-Herald featured a story on her work for the postmaster in 1898, noting she had only been at her post office job less than a year, but she was “one of the highest salaried of all the women employed in the post office.”46 Newspapers reported she took custody of a chameleon that was discovered in an undeliverable package.47 A high honor was awarded to her in 1902 when she was selected by Chairman Fernando Jones to plant the first tree, a linden, in Grant Park.48Bertha's post office years from 1897 to 1908 also cemented her loyalty to the Republican Party. By working for the Republican National Committee, she had not only gained her post office job but was able to attend the ball given in honor of President William McKinley in Chicago in 1898. She did not have an official capacity but was one of the invited guests. After McKinley's assassination in 1901, each year loyal Republicans observed his birthday on January 29 by wearing red carnations, his favorite flower. Bertha took it upon herself to provide a red carnation to everyone in the post office. The Inter Ocean newspaper, a widely read pro-Republican paper, prominently displayed a drawing of her on page 5, along with a description calling her the “patriot of the post office.” She passed out “an armload” of carnations before running out. She then dispatched messenger boys to fetch more from around the city, which she sent to “every judge and department head in the building with a note asking they be distributed and worn.”49 She continued the tradition for years, even after leaving the post office. She distributed red carnations to delegates at the 1928 Republican National Convention after her election as national committeewoman as a remembrance of her rise to political power that started with McKinley's election.Bertha earned the title “patriot of the post office” because of her actions in 1906, which brought the entire city's attention upon her. The story of how Bertha saved an American flag that flew over the old post office building was reprinted in at least eighteen newspapers nationwide from Illinois to Texas, Oklahoma, Wisconsin, Ohio, and Iowa. There appear to be several versions of the story, but in each, Bertha is portrayed as a brave, “plucky” young woman who displayed extraordinary courage to save a tattered American flag.In February 1906, when the Chicago post office moved into its new building, the unoccupied temporary building was scheduled to be demolished, but an old American flag still flew over it. “To rescue a tattered remnant of the American flag, its colors nearly obliterated by soot, sleet, and rain, its field alone intact and fringed with a few frayed ribbons of what was once the stripes, Miss Bertha L. Duppler, assistant secretary to postmaster Busse, climbed over the ice and snow-clad roof of the old post office on Michigan Avenue the other day and took it halyards and all, from the tottering flagstaff.”50 Other accounts noted, “Every step was fraught with danger”51 due to the ice and snow. The sight of the young woman on the roof drew a crowd on the street below, and “automobiles, carriages, and vehicles of all kinds choked the highway.”52 Policemen warned her to come down, fearing that “one false step and Miss Duppler would have fallen and perhaps been dashed to death on the cement pavements around the building before help could reach her.”53 However, our “plucky” heroine smiled and waved to the crowd as she worked her way across the roof to the flagpole, where she took down the flag and briefly waved it to the cheering crowd below. She later told the press she had personally purchased the flag the previous year after complaints from the public about the condition of the flag that had been flying. “I took some chances to get the flag . . . and now I'm going to keep it as a remembrance. I put the flag there over a year ago, a beautiful new one. I took down a tattered and blackened rag, but I feel it has accomplished its full duty.”54 The Chicago Tribune noted she would keep the flag along with others she had collected.55 In several of the newspapers, drawings accompanied the story depicting a scene of the young woman climbing a steep incline to retrieve the flag, but in reality, the roof was rather flat and the building only two stories tall. Still, Bertha had captivated Chicago.Bertha Duppler stayed at her post office job until just days before her marriage to one of Chicago's most eligible bachelors, Jacob Baur, a wealthy industrialist who founded the Liquid Carbonics Company. Baur invented the standard process to liquify carbon dioxide and deliver it in pressurized containers to soda fountains. His award-winning process revolutionized the soda-fountain industry, and the company grew rapidly, opening factories in several cities nationwide. To ensure quality, the Liquid (as it was called) expanded to manufacture soda fountain equipment, as well as providing fruit, syrups, and flavorings for drinks. Bertha continued running the company after her husband Jacob's death in 1912. Once again, Cinderella ran the show. Under her leadership, shares of the company's stock rose from $50 per share to $124 when she eventually sold the company in 1926. At the time of his death, Jacob Baur's estate was valued at $1.8 million dollars, the equivalent of over $100 million in 2021 dollars.56 Their only daughter, Rosemary, was deemed Chicago's richest debutant when she turned eighteen and inherited her own $2.8 million on May 13, 1929.Bertha's political life in Chicago included working for women's suffrage alongside some of the wealthiest and most powerful women in the city. Ruth Hanna McCormick, the daughter of Mark Hanna, widow of Representative Medill McCormick, and herself a US Representative At-Large from Illinois in 1928; Bertha Palmer, the widow of Potter Palmer; Harriet McCormick, wife of Cyrus McCormick Jr.; and Jane Addams were among those who were active in the Equal Suffrage League of Chicago, with Bertha as their last president.57 She helped organize the Women's Rainy-Day Parade into the Republican National Convention of 1916, where over 5,500 women marched through a downpour to reach the convention to make their case for suffrage. As part of the Chicago Equal Suffrage Association, Bertha oversaw “arrangements” for the parade.58 She did “double duty,” according to one press account, not only presiding as chairman of arrangements but also serving on the steering committee. As chairman, she recruited women to participate and met with employers of working-class women to ensure they would be granted time off to march. She organized the order in which they marched, mapped out the route, and arranged the distribution of flyers during the parade.59 To make certain they were taken seriously as a force, the women drilled in Grant Park prior to the parade so they would be able to march in step, wheel around corners, and perform with military precision.60 A total of ten “divisions” were organized, which included club women, college women, and alumnae from many colleges and universities, the Women's Trade Union League, the Chicago Teacher Federation, and many others from all wards of the city.61For publicity purposes, Bertha paid a fifty-dollar deposit to a bird store for the use of a talking parrot, which the women named “Votes.” The intent was for the bird to say “votes for women” during the parade. However, according to the Chicago Tribune, it only got as far as saying “votes” before it broke into “hoarse laughter,” much to the chagrin of the organizers, who determined that the bird would not participate after all. The parrot was returned unused. Other events included a garden party and ball held at the Gold Coast home of Bertha's neighbor, Edith Rockefeller McCormick, and attended by a who's who of society men and women from Boston, New York, Washington and Chicago; luncheons, meetings, and of course, the big parade, which ended at the convention itself.62 The women's commitment to the cause impressed the delegates, and a plank of support, although watered down, was added to their platform.63Her political connections along with her fundraising abilities led to her appointment as chairman of the Chicago and Cook County Woman's Division of the Liberty Loan League during World War I. She organized ten thousand club women at “very small expense to the government,” which raised seventy-eight million dollars’ worth of Liberty bonds during the four campaigns.64 Her success was not unnoticed by the less successful men. As a remedy, Bertha was appointed vice-chairman of the men's division, which helped them achieve their goal after falling short in their first drive. A report filed by chairman Edward Clifford to the Federal Reserve District in Chicago, which oversaw the bond sales, extolled the many men who volunteered during the first drive, beginning May 4, 1917, but to failed to mention any women at all.65Bertha's biographer Alice Rosseter-Willard stated, “in common parlance, she's a born money-getter.” Later in life, she used her connections in politics and business, as well as her social circle which included some of the wealthiest Chicagoans, to raise money for a variety of causes, including the Republican National Committee. In just five weeks, she raised eighty-five thousand dollars for the Republican National Finance Committee in 1924.66 Earlier she raised fifty-five thousand dollars in six weeks for the National Finance Committee as chairman of the women's division in 1920.67 She was chairman of the committee of one hundred women who raised one million dollars for the guarantee fund of the Chicago Civic Opera.68During her work on the Liberty Bond drives, Bertha began to realize that many women lacked knowledge regarding money. To rectify the situation, she organized classes in financial literacy for women, held monthly in from 1920 through 1923 and covering a variety of topics such as “Money; its Origin, Its System and Circulation,” “Stocks and Bonds” and “The Present Financial Situation.”69 To ensure women really did learn their lessons, a “quiz” was given at the end of the series.70 The Federal Securities Corporation, where Bertha held a seat on the board of directors, sponsored the free lectures conducted at the LaSalle Hotel. To encourage women to feel more comfortable with their finances, she instituted a women's department at Federal Securities to help women “at least to be equal to their own personal affairs.”71 In addition to the seminars, she lectured to women's clubs across the city on finances.Throughout her life, she advocated for women, especially married women, to have their own source of income.72 While Bertha had been self-supporting since she left Mineral Point, other women in Chicago at that time were not in the same position. Finances were a male domain, and first fathers and then husbands or other males often kept the books and paid the bills. That included America's richest woman, Edith Rockefeller McCormick, who was Bertha's neighbor. Her Rockefeller money, originally controlled by her father John D. Rockefeller and later by her brother, John D. Jr., was converted to a trust to keep her spending in check and to ensure her children would inherit Rockefeller money.73 But rarely did Edith McCormick earn money in her own right that she could control. Most likely, Bertha became aware of women's lack of access to money when she was fundraising for her causes. Except for the first four years of her marriage, Bertha had held a job and supported herself since the age of seventeen.In an innovative venture to help wealthy women earn and control their own money, she recruited “Gold Coast” women to endorse soap flakes in local newspaper ads. Women such as Ada Elizabeth Wrigley, wife of the founder of the chewing gum empire and owner of the Chicago Cubs, Laura Shedd Schweppe—wife of a financier, who entertained Swedish royalty in her home in 1926, Narcissa Niblack Thorne, whose father-in-law was a partner of the founder of Montgomery Ward, and many others listed by their addresses in newspaper advertisements were named in the ads. They claimed that their laundresses used only American Family Flakes to care for their linens and finery. The ads touted that these women had “laundry totaling thousands of dollars in heirloom linens, gorgeously colored silks,” all of which were laundered using the mild soap.74 The timing suggests that perhaps a shortage of funds due to the stock market crash had put a dent into their fortunes. For whatever reason, by lending their endorsement to soap flakes, the women could earn money that they could then control. Many of them chose to donate the money earned to charity.With the Liquid in good hands and financially sound, Bertha could turn her attention to other matters, and her political career blossomed after suffrage was granted. In 1922, several newspapers suggested her for mayor of Chicago in the Republican primary.75 In the 1924 election, her name first appeared on a ballot, and she served as a presidential elector who traveled to Springfield to cast her vote for the Coolidge/Dawes ticket. In 1926, she jumped into the political fray herself by challenging the party regular incumbent Fred Britten for the seat in Illinois's Ninth Congressional District, located on the North Side of Chicago. Two Chicago aldermen, Arthur Albert, and Titus “Tubby” Haffa, backed her publicly because of her “organizing ability,” citing her work for Liberty Bonds, the Chicago Civic Opera, and relief efforts after World War I.76 Although she knew everyone seated at the political table, she did not know how to get a seat herself. That is where Haffa came in. Being a ward boss, he knew “retail” politics at the local level. Bertha recounted: “I had gone into the library one evening to read, when Titus Haffa came to see me. He proposed that I run in the primaries against Fred Britten, for the Republican nomination for Congress in the Ninth district. For a minute I hesitated. The leisure of t