Light from a Little Candle

Huddled under twin mountain peaks that the Indians called Wah-Hah-Toyas (Breasts of the World), the Colorado town of Walsenburg is a battered relic of the Old West, scarred by deserted downtown stores, unpainted houses, potholed streets. Once a thriving coal town, Walsenburg sank into slow decline when its customers started switching to oil and gas in the 1920s. The population gradually shrank by one-third, to 5,500, and the town's prime source of income became federal and state welfare handouts. Then, last year, the exasperated women of Walsenburg rebelled.

New Brooms. A dozen women, fed up with the male politicos who had increased municipal debt while letting the town decay, formed their own "United for Walsenburg" party, drafted a stern austerity platform calling for prompt payment of the town's debts and no salaries for the mayor and town council. The women pored over civics textbooks, stormed into meetings of the all-male city council, journeyed to Denver to seek advice from Democratic Governor Stephen McNichols. Though Walsenburg had never before elected a woman to any office, the United party put up a slate of seven of them, recruited women volunteers to ring doorbells, pilot sound trucks up and down the streets, and haul voters to the polls in cars and station wagons. Mrs. Betty Kalmes, 34, echoed an old Chinese proverb:-"We decided it was better to light one little candle than to curse the darkness."

The people of Walsenburg saw the light. Last November they elected six of the seven women candidates--three to the top city jobs of mayor, city clerk, treasurer, and three others to the eight-member city council (where the women, though outnumbered 5 to 3 by men, usually manage to get their way because two of the men support their reforms). Taking office in January, City Clerk Doris Caine, 26, widowed mother of two children, found a disorder that shocked her womanly eyes: sheets were missing from city ledgers, texts of some city ordinances were gone, and some city financial transactions had apparently never been recorded at all. City Treasurer Ann Christiansen, 44, discovered that the general fund was down to $432 and that Walsenburg was wallowing in the red by $20,813.75.

Sweeping Clean. Under Mayor Ethel Stacy, wife of a retired rancher, the women briskly set about cleaning up the mess. By delaying municipal paychecks, the women wiped out Walsenburg's $5,333.75 debt of back taxes owed to the state.

They chucked out the $115,169 budget that the men had left them, got the new total down to $89,176.51 by bumping one policeman and one city street sweeper, voting down the scheduled purchase of a new police car and a street-cleaning machine (under the new regime, inmates of the city jail sweep the streets). Serving without pay themselves, the women slashed the salary of City Attorney Angelo Mosco, long a political power in Walsenburg, from $1,744.50 to $800 a year. Mosco brought charges of malfeasance against Mayor Stacy & Co. in the state district court, lost his case. Some months later, the women of Walsenburg dealt Mosco an even unkinder cut: they asked him to serve without any salary at all, and. then, when he refused, fired him outright.

Last week, with the women in charge, once-dying Walsenburg was abuzz with hopes, plans and signs of progress. A timber company from Colorado Springs was getting ready to move into Walsenburg, build a sawmill and start cutting away at a vast stand of ponderosa pine that the U.S. Forest Service, at the women's urging, had opened up to lumber operations. A newly created Walsenburg planning commission scheduled its first meeting for this week, hopes to bring in additional industries under an offer of free land for manufacturing sites.

Having won their victory, the women of Walsenburg were now making peace with the men. To the new planning commission, Mayor Stacy appointed three men, only two women. "I thought this would be a diplomatic move," she explained. Mused Mariann Mauro, a United party founder: "One of the first things we ought to do is erect a statue to all the patient husbands of Walsenburg."

-Also the motto of the Christophers, a Roman Catholic-sponsored organization of leaders in education, government, journalism and the arts.

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