How To Write Special Feature Articles Part 43

as a certain combination of business men in St. Louis is known?

Naturally they refused to print a line. You never step on your own toe, do you, or hit yourself in the face--if you can help it?

One must admit that things looked bad for the League. How were girls who raced at machines all day, who had neither money nor the voice of the press, to rouse this sluggish, corrupt city to the menace of sending to the legislature men like E.J. Troy, pledged body and soul to the manufacturers? How could they waken the public to woman's bitter necessity for shorter hours? The case looked hopeless, but Mrs. Knefler merely set her teeth, and got busy--decidedly busy.

She planned a campaign that no other St. Louis woman in her cla.s.s would have had the courage to tackle. Mrs. Knefler is a member of the club that is the St. Louis clubwomen's "holy of holies." They have a club-house that just drips art, and they steep themselves in self-culture. As a group their consciousness of the city's industrial problems is still nebulous. The high light in which Mrs. Knefler's work must inevitably stand out is intensified by this background of self-culture women, with a few--only a few--rash daughters s.h.i.+vering around preparatory to taking their first cold plunge in the suffrage pool.

In such an atmosphere Cynthelia Knefler planned and carried out the biggest, the most modern and strategic campaign for the working woman ever waged outside a suffrage state. It was done simply because her heart was filled with the need of the thousands of helpless, unorganized girls for protection from the greed of organized capital.

There are moments when love gives vision and raises us head and shoulders above our group. So it was with Cynthelia Knefler, brought up in this conservative city, educated in a prunes-and-prisms girls'

school, steeped in the Southern idea that no "lady" would ever let her picture or her opinions get into the newspapers, and that making public speeches was quite unthinkable!

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 ma.s.s 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 gla.s.s 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.

How did they accomplish the next move? That is one of the secrets. Their money was gone, the silence of the press had crushed them with an overwhelming sense of helplessness, but nevertheless they turned the trick. They reached the upper and middle cla.s.s readers of the South Side District, Troy's district, which the papers were determined to keep as much in ignorance as possible. All one night, silent, swift-moving men whipped the paste across the billboards of that section and slapped on huge posters, so that when Papa Smith and young Mr. Jones and Banker Green came out of their comfortable houses next morning on their way to business, they neglected their papers to find out why they should "scratch E.J. Troy."

The day of the primaries was almost come. Now to reach the dull fellows who hadn't seen the cards and the huge posters, who use their eyes only to avoid obstacles. One night, as the factory whistles blew the signal of dismissal, the men in the lines of operators who filed out of shop and mills found themselves mechanically taking and examining this ticket handed them by League girls, who had gone off their job a bit early and had their wages docked in order to work for the larger good.

The Committee of the Central Body was now openly active in their behalf.

Men as well as women were pa.s.sing out the tickets.

Then came the eve of the election. Busy pairs of girls who had already done ten hours' work were going over E.J. Troy's district, with its sections of rich and poor and well-to-do. Throbbing feet that had carried the body's weight ten hot, fatiguing hours hurried up and down the blocks, climbed flight after flight of stairs, and stood at door after door.

"Say, kid, ain't it the limit that a woman can't vote on her own business?" said one girl too another after they had finished the one hundred and forty-fifth family and tried to explain their stake in the election to a bigoted "head of the house."

On the morning of the primaries Mrs. Schurz, as she took the coffee off the stove, remonstrated with her oldest daughter, Minna. "Vat, Minna, you ain't goin' to stay out of de mill today and lose your pay?

"Yes, I be, _Mutter_," retorted Minna, with a tightening of the lips and a light in her eyre. "I'm goin' to the polls to hand out cards to the voters. I'm goin'. I don't care if I lose my job even."

"Oh, Minna, dat is bad, and me wid four _kinder_ to eat de food. Where is de _fleisch_ and de _brot_ widout your wages?" Mrs. Schurz's heavy face wore the anxious despondence so common to the mothers of the poor.

The girl hesitated, then tightened her lips once more. "I've got to take the risk, _Mutter_. It'll come out right--it's got to. Do you want the rest of the children workin' ten hours a day too? Look at me! I ain't got no looks any more. I'm too dead tired to go out of a Sat.u.r.day night.

I can't give n.o.body a good time any more. I guess there won't be no weddin' bells for mine--ever. But the kids"--pointing to the inside bedroom, where the younger girls were still asleep--"the kids is a-goin'

to keep their looks."

So at six o'clock Minna joined the relays of working girls who--many of them, like Minna, at personal risk and sacrifice--handed out cards all day to each man who entered. Thus the men were reminded at the last moment of the working woman's stake in the election. "Scratch E.J. Troy"

was before their eyes as they crossed their tickets.

Every moment of the day there were alert girls to make this final quiet appeal for justice. They were serious, dignified. There was no jeering, no mirth on the part of the men at the novelty of this campaign--nothing to make any woman self-conscious.

The girls were quiet enough outwardly, but the inner drama was keyed high. Had all their speech-making, placarding, bill-posting and the canva.s.sing of factories, blocks, and primaries--had all their little savings, their risk and personal sacrifice accomplished anything? That was what the girls asked themselves. The thermometer of their hope rose and fell with the rumors of the day. The fathers of the Central Labor Body patted them on the head benevolently and tried to ease their fall, if they were to fall, by saying that anyway it would be something to make Troy run third on his ticket.

Seven o'clock, and the girls were leaving the primaries in twos and threes, tired but excitedly discussing the situation. Between hope and despondency the comment varied on the streets, at the supper-tables, and in the eager, waiting groups of girls on tenement steps and stairs.

At last came the authentic returns. E.J. Troy ran _3,338 votes behind his ticket. With a silent press and practically no money, the working women had defeated one of the most popular men in St. Louis._

A man pledged to the interests of labor legislation won his place. That made the outlook better for the Women's Nine-Hour Bill, and thousands of working girls tumbled into bed, tired, but with new hope.

Every newspaper in St. Louis failed to comment on the victory. The slaves who sit at the editorial desk said they couldn't--they weren't "let." _So the most hopeful feature in St. Louis politics has never been commented on by the American press._

As for Hannah Hennessy--she had been too ill to share in the active work of the campaign, but her influence was everywhere--a vital force, a continual inspiration.

Week by week her cheeks grew thinner, her cough more rasping. But after the campaign against Troy was over, she turned with the same intensity of interest to the National Convention of the American Federation of Labor which was to meet there in November. For a year she had been making plans, eager to make this convention a landmark in the history of women's labor. But in November she was in bed by the little grate fire in the family sitting-room. And when convention week came with its meetings a scant three blocks from her home, she could be there in spirit only; she waited restlessly for the girls to slip in after the daily sessions and live them over again for her.

On Thanksgiving Day, between the exhausting strain of high-tension work and the zeal of the young reformer, her beautiful life and brilliant fire were burned out. The committee for the prevention of tuberculosis added her case to their statistics, and the League girls bore her into the lighted church.

In the winter of 1910-11 the leaders of all the labor and social forces of St. Louis, all the organizations for various forms of uplift, united under an able secretary and began their custom of lunching together once a week to discuss the pending social legislation. They played a good game. First, there was the educational effect of their previous legislative campaign to build on. Then there was all the economy and impetus gained from consolidation. They knew the rules of the game better, too. Their plans were more carefully laid and executed.

With a more wary and sophisticated eye on the Manufacturers' a.s.sociation and a finger in the b.u.t.tonhole of every legislator, the socially awake of St. Louis have secured _more humane child labor legislation, and the Nine-Hour Day for women and children with no exception in favor of shop-keepers_.

Knowing the sickening fate of industrial legislation in certain other states when tried before judges whose social vision is fifty years behind the times, the winners of this new bill began to wait tensely enough for its testing. So far, however, the Women's Nine-Hour law has not been contested. It has also been exceptionally well enforced, considering that there are only four factory inspectors for all the myriad shops and mills of this manufacturing city of the Southwest, and only seven factory inspectors for the whole state of Missouri.

Meanwhile St. Louis's new political wedge, the Women's Trade Union League, continues to be a perfectly good political wedge. When there is legislation wanted, all kinds of organizations invariably call upon this league of the working women, whose purpose is a wider social justice.

St. Louis is another American city where the working women are discovering that they can do things if they only think so.

(_The Delineator_)

Ill.u.s.trated by two pen-and-ink sketches made by a staff artist.

THE JOB LADY

GIVES THE YOUNG WAGE-EARNER A FAIR WORKING CHANCE

BY MARY E. t.i.tZEL

The Jones School, the oldest public school building in Chicago, is at Harrison Street and Plymouth Court. When it was new, it was surrounded by "brown-stone fronts," and boys and girls who to-day are among the city's most influential citizens learned their A-B-C's within its walls.

Now, the office-buildings and printing-houses and cheap hotels and burlesque shows that mark the noisy, grimy district south of the "loop"

crowd in upon it; and only an occasional shabby brown-stone front survives in the neighborhood as a tenement house. But in the Jones School, the process of making influential citizens is still going on.

For there the "Job Lady" has her office, her sanctum.

Job Lady is a generic term that includes Miss Anne Davis, director of the Bureau of Vocational Supervision, and her four a.s.sistants. The Bureau--which is the newest department of Chicago's school system--is really an employment agency, but one that is different from any other employment agency in the United States. It is concerned solely with a much-neglected cla.s.s of wage-earners--children from fourteen to sixteen years of age; and its chief purpose is, not to find positions for its "patrons," but to keep them in school.