Night after night for two years Mrs. Knefler and Hannah were out organizing groups of girls. Mrs. Knefler’s friends finally stopped remonstrating with her. Hannah, utterly self-forgetful despite ten hours a day in the mills, hurled herself into the new work. Evening after evening her mother protested anxiously, but Hannah, heedless of her own interest, would eat her supper and hurry across the city to help groups of new girls—American, Russian, Roumanian—a confused mass, to find themselves and pull together.
One June morning in 1910 the papers announced that the Manufacturers’ Association and the Business Men’s League had decided on E.J. Troy as their candidate to the State Legislature for the First District. His candidacy was also backed by the Republican machine. The papers went on to say that E.J. Troy was one of “our ablest and most popular fellow townsmen,” that he had grown up in his district, had a host of friends, and might be expected to carry the primaries by a big majority.
That evening at the weekly dinner of the officers of the Women’s Trade Union League at the Settlement, Mrs. Knefler hurried in: “Girls, have you seen the morning papers? Do you know that we’ve got E.J. Troy to contend with again?”
At the same moment in dashed Hannah Hennessy by another door, calling out, “Girls, they’re goin’ to put Troy on the carpet again!”
To both speeches came half a dozen excited replies that that’s just what they were talking about!
Over the potatoes and meat and bread-pudding the situation was discussed in detail.
“Yes, ’twas him, all right, that thought up most of those tricky moves when we was tryin’ to get our Nine-Hour Bill before,” reflected a wiry, quick-motioned girl during a second’s pause.
“Don’t it just make you boil,” began another, “when you think how he riled ’em up at every four corners in Missouri! He had every old country storekeeper standin’ on end about that Nine-Hour Bill. He had ’em puttin’ on their specs and callin’ to mother to come and listen to this information the manufacturers had sent him:—how the labor unions was tryin’ to get a Nine-Hour Bill for women passed; how it would keep their youngest girl, Bessie, from helping in the store when the farmers drove in of a Saturday night; and how it was a blow at American freedom.”
“E.J. Troy’s got to be squenched at the primaries,” said a third, quietly and decisively.
“But how?” asked a more timid officer.
Bing! Mrs. Knefler got into action. There never was a woman for whom a difficult situation offered a more bracing tonic quality. The business meeting that followed fairly bristled with plans.
The girls’ first move was to go before the Central Labor Body and ask them to indorse their objections to E.J. Troy. Definite action beyond indorsement the girls did not ask or expect. This much they got.
One day a little later, when Mrs. Knefler’s campaign was beginning to take form, a representative of E.J. Troy called Mrs. Knefler on the telephone. The voice was bland, smooth, and very friendly. Wouldn’t she—that is—ah—er—wouldn’t her organization confer with Mr. E.J. Troy? He felt sure they would come to a pleasant and mutually helpful understanding.