The press was silent, but at least Mrs. Knefler could speak to the labor unions.  She and two other women appealed to every labor union in St. Louis with a speech against E.J.  Troy.  They fought him—­not as a man, but as a representative of the “big interests.”  Mrs. Knefler made seventy-six speeches in that one month before the primaries.  That meant hurrying from hall to hall on hot summer nights and making two speeches, and sometimes three and four, while her friends were wearing white muslin and sitting on the gallery, to get the cool of the evening.

Mrs. Knefler’s mind was working like a trip-hammer that month; seeking ways and means for rousing the busy, unthinking, conglomerate mass of people to the real issue.  Money in the League was scarce.  There are no rich members.  But out of their wages and out of raffles and entertainments the League had a small reserve.  Part of this they used to print sixty thousand cards.  So that when you went in to get a shave your glance was caught, as the barber turned your head, by this red ticket “Scratch E.J.  Troy.”  When you stopped in for a loaf of bread, a red ticket behind the glass of the case advised you to “Scratch E.J.  Troy.”  When you went in for a drink, there leaped into sight dozens of little red tickets:  “Scratch E.J.  Troy.”

There are always some men, though, who are moved only by the big, noisy things of life.  Only Schneider’s band sounds like music to them; only “Twenty Buckets of Blood, or Dead Man’s Gulch” appeals to them as literature; and the only speaker is the man who rips out Old Glory and defies forked lightning.  In a political campaign the little red ticket is lost on that kind of man.  Mrs. Knefler understood this.  So one hot July day huge posters in high, wood-block letters screamed from billboards and the walls of saloons and barber shops and labor halls:  “Union men and friends, Scratch E.J.  Troy.”

All this printing and bill-posting was expensive for working girls.  They came back at the Central Labor body again.  “Your sympathy is great, but your funds are better,” they said.

“You’ve tackled too big a job,” the Labor leaders told the girls, with a benevolent air.  “He’s the candy around this town—­E.J.  Troy is.  It would take a mint of money to beat E.J.  Troy.”

However, the Central body instructed the legislative committee of five to give the girls every help, and they did good service.  But the Central Body didn’t instruct the Committee to go down very far into the treasury.

July was wearing on.  The League hurled itself upon the press once more.  Surely after so much speech-making and bill-posting the editors would accord them some recognition merely as news.  Silence—­absolute silence in the next day’s papers, and the next.