With the accession to political control of Halloran and the old ring, the influence of Horace Vanney and those whom he represented, became as potent as it was secret.  “Salutary measures” had been adopted toward the garment-workers; a “firm hand” on the part of the police had succeeded in holding down the strike through the fall and winter; but in the early spring it was revived and spread throughout the city, even to the doors of the shopping district.  In another sense than the geographical it was nearing the great department stores, for quiet efforts were being made by some of the strike leaders to organize and unionize the underpaid salesmen and saleswomen of the shops.  Inevitably this drew into active hostility to the strikers the whole power of the stores with their immense advertising influence.

Very little news of the strike got into the papers except where some clash with the police was of too great magnitude to be ignored; then the trend of the articles was generally hostile to the strikers.  The Sphere published the facts briefly, as a matter of journalistic principle; The Ledger published them with violent bias, as a matter of journalistic habit; the other papers, including The Patriot, suppressed or minimized to as great an extent as they deemed feasible.

That the troubles of some thousands of sweated wage-earners, employed upon classes of machine-made clothing which would never come within the ken of the delicately clad women of her world, could in any manner affect Io Eyre, was most improbable.  But the minor fate who manipulates improbabilities elected that she should be in a downtown store at the moment when a squad of mounted police charged a crowd of girl-strikers.  Hearing the scream of panic, she ran out, saw ignorant, wild-eyed girls, hardly more than children, beaten down, trampled, hurried hither and thither, seized upon and thrown into patrol wagons, and when she reached her car, sick and furious, found an eighteen-year-old Lithuanian blonde flopping against the rear fender in a dead faint.  Strong as a young panther, Io picked up the derelict in her arms, hoisted her into the tonneau, and bade the disgusted chauffeur, “Home.”  What she heard from the revived girl, in the talk which followed, sent her, hot-hearted, to the police court where the arrests would be brought up for primary judgment.

The first person that she met there was Willis Enderby.

“If you’re on this strike case, Cousin Billy,” she said, “I’m against you, and I’m ashamed of you.”

“You probably aren’t the former, and you needn’t be the latter,” he replied.

“Aren’t you Mr. Vanney’s lawyer?  And isn’t he interested in the strike?”

“Not openly.  It happens that I’m here for the strikers.”

Io stared, incredulous.  “For the strikers?  You mean that they’ve retained you?”

“Oh, no.  I’m really here in my capacity as President of the Law Enforcement Society; to see that these women get the full protection of the law, to which they are entitled.  There is reason to believe that they haven’t had it.  And you?”