800 THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
experience. A young man offered to vacate his office that I might have that, the best and only office in the city suitable for me, on the first floor, he going in an upstairs room with several others.
I fitted up my office; that is, I had a new carpet put down. Then a new friend came in and said, “ Don’t buy a desk; I have two; one is in my way, and you will do me a kindness to use it. I’ll send it in for you.” Another said, “ Don’t buy chairs; I have half a dozen extra ones; they are yours.” Another sent his bookkeeper to open my books, put up my maps, tag me a hundred or so lots for sale with prices and terms. Another, and another, and another called to extend the right hand of fellowship, as it were, and proffered their assistance, until in less than a week nearly half the men in town, married and single, had enlisted in my behalf, and declared they would rather see me sell a lot and make money than do it themselves.
Well, I thought, this is delightful. If this thing keeps up they’ll do the selling for me next and hand me the commission. But it was gratifying and encouraging to me to be so well received and have the approval of these splendid men. The sales came on the next week; the city was full to overflowing with strangers from all parts of the country, and many from abroad came to invest in city lots and build industries. Everybody was in a state of feverish excitement. Bidding ran high, corner lots ran up to $410 per foot, and many believed that this city, which in less than two years had grown from an open cornfield into a population of five thousand people, would in five years be twenty-five or thirty thousand souls. Fabulous prices were offered for center property, some few taking advantage of it and selling, others holding on for still more advance.
After the Town Company had continued their sales for four days, selling many thousands of dollars worth of lots, the real estate agents declared it was time they should have a chance now, and the company should take their property off the market, which they consented to do on Friday. Everybody was buoyant, feeling good, going to make more money than they had ever heard of. The real estate agents, of which there were something less than a hundred, were busy making their arrangements to reap a rich harvest in the next week, and all time to come. Property was already beginning to change hands at a good profit to the seller and promise of better to the buyer. Dozens of newcomers were locating every day. Houses could not be provided for them fast enough. They crowded into the hotels and into every available space, paying enormous rent and board.
An agent for the United States Building and Loan Association of St. Paul came in to establish an agency. He asked me if I would take it. 1 told him I knew nothing of the workings of building and loan; that if he could teach me I would take it.
He was pleased to find that after I had read the matter put into my hands, and heard him talk “building loan” an hour, I was able to talk “building loan” intelligently. Small posters were struck and distributed, “$200,000 to loan by Miss Barlow,” and I at once became the most popular woman in the city. (Money makes the men move.) Men thronged my office to borrow money, but when they found they must give a first mortgage on real estate, and could only borrow fifty per cent of the most conservative valuation of their property, they gave the matter more deliberate thought. But we had no trouble in organizing a good board, and I launched into the “building loan” business, in connection with real estate, with the brightest prospect of doing a splendid business.
You must not think I had gone thus far without having to overcome an immense amount of embarrassment and timidity. No one can ever know what I have suffered from timidity, and what a fight I have had to overcome it. I had never been thrown with people before, except in a most cordial, social, and home-like way; and all this was so new to me, and I was so timid I many times wished I could hide. But I had a certain feeling of pride that I must not fail at anything I undertook; that often came to my rescue. I remember one of the first would-be customers who came into my office was a man from Massachusetts. He introduced himself, and said he had come to Mid-