To undertake the huge task of organizing these thousands of St. Louis women would require not only vision but time and energy. Hannah's return meant being engulfed in the vast roar made by rows of throbbing, whirring machines, into one of which she sewed her vitality at dizzy speed ten hours a day. Vision she had, but training, time, energy—no!
It was at this point that she met Cynthelia Isgrig Knefler, a leisure-class young woman, who had been gripped by a sense of the unevenness of the human struggle. Cynthelia Knefler was groping her way through the maze of settlement activities to an appreciation of their relative futility in the face of long hours, low wages, and unsanitary shops.
Then the idealism of these two young women, born on the one hand of hard experience, on the other of a gentle existence, fused, and burned with a white light whose power is beginning to touch the lives of the women who toil and spin for the great Southwest.
Both women possessed fire and eloquence. Hannah's special contribution was first-hand experience; Mrs. Knefler's the knowledge of economic conditions necessary to an understanding of our complicated labor problems. Wise, sane, conservative, Mrs. Knefler not only helped Hannah to organize branch after branch of the Women's Trade Union League in the different industries, but set out at once to train strong, intelligent leaders. She stimulated them to a critical study of labor laws with the evolution of industry for background.
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.