"So yez would be afther havin' me scratch Misther Troy?" Mike Ryan ran his fingers through his stubby crop with a puzzled air. "Oi'm always fur plazin' the loidies, but Misther Troy, he's a frind o' mine. Shure, he shmokes a grand cigar, an' he shakes yer hand that hearty."
So Mike belonged to the long, long glad-hand line. Well, personal arguments were necessary in his case then. That was the way the girls sized up Mike Ryan.
"But this ticket has something to do with your oldest girl."
"With Briddie?"
"It sure does, Mr. Ryan. Didn't I hear your wife tellin' what with the hard times an' all, you'd be puttin' Briddie in the mill this winter as soon as ever she's turned fourteen? Wouldn't you rather they worked her nine hours a day instead o' ten—such a soft little kid with such a lot o' growin' to do? There's a lot of us goin' to fight for a Nine-Hour Bill for the women and children this winter, an' do you think a manufacturers' representative, like Troy, is goin' to help us? Look at his record! See how he's fought the employees' interests in the legislature! That's a part of his job! He won't vote for no Nine-Hour Bill!"
And the two girls went on to the next tenement.
They were only two of the hundreds of Trade Union girls who were "doing" the First Electoral District (about one-third of St. Louis) on the eve of the primaries. They were thorough. They had the whole district organized on the block system, and they went over each block house by house.
A new move, is it not, this carefully organized effort of factory women to secure justice through the ballot-box?
How have St. Louis women attained this clear vision that their industrial future is bound up in politics? It is a three years' story. Let us go back a little.
St. Louis is essentially a conservative city. First, it was an old French town; then a Southern town; then a German tradesman's town. With such strata superimposed one above the other, it could hardly be other than conservative. In addition, St. Louis was crippled in the war between the states. She lost her market. This made her slow.