This was the way she pleaded for fairness and public interest, and a ride in a fine automobile was a temptation to many of the women and girls. An afternoon in the rooms of a live Red Cross chapter usually convinced and converted most of these “Doubting Thomasines,” as Helen called them.
Working with wool and other goods was all right. But money was needed. A country-wide drive was organized, and Ruth was proud that she was appointed on the committee to conduct it. Mr. Cameron, who was a wealthy department store owner in the city, was made chairman of this special committee, and he put much faith in the ability of the girl of the Red Mill and his own daughter to assist materially in the campaign for funds.
“Get hold of every hardshell farmer in the county,” he told the girls. “Begin with your Uncle Jabez, Ruthie. If he leads with a goodly sum many another old fellow who keeps his surplus cash in a stocking or in the broken teapot on the top cupboard shelf will come to time.
“The reason it is so hard to get contributions out of men like Jabez Potter,” said Mr. Cameron with a chuckle, “is because nine times out of ten it means the giving up of actual money. They have their cash hid away. It isn’t making them a penny, but they like to hoard it, and some of ’em actually worship it.
“And not to be wondered at. It comes hard. Their backs are bent and their fingers knotted from the toil of acquiring hard cash, dollar by dollar and cent by cent. It is much easier to write a check for a hundred dollars to give to a good cause than it is to dig right down into one’s jeans and haul out a ten-dollar note.”
Ruth knew just how hard this was going to be—to interest the purses of the farming community in the Red Cross drive. The farmers’ wives and daughters were making their needles fly, but the men merely considered the work something like the usual yearly attempt to get funds out of them for foreign missions.
“I tell ye what, Niece Ruth, I got my doubts,” grumbled Uncle Jabez, when she broached the subject of his giving generously to the cause. “I dunno about so much money being needed for what you’re callin’ the ‘waste of war’!”
“If you read those statistics, compiled under the eyes of Government agents,” she told him, “you must be convinced that it is already proved by what has happened in France and Belgium—and in other countries—during the three years of war, that all this money will be needed, and more.”
“I dunno. Millions! Them is a power of dollars, Niece Ruth. You and lots of other folks air too willing to spend money that other folks have airned by the sweat of their brows.”
He offered her a sum that she was really ashamed to put down at the top of her subscription paper. She went about her task in the hope that Uncle Jabez’s purse and heart would both be opened for the cause.