Only one copy of this edict was issued and mailed. This found its
way into Tom Grogan's letter-box. Five minutes after she had
broken the seal, her men discovered the document pasted upside
down on her stable door.
McGaw heard of her action that night, and started another line of
attack. It was managed so skillfully that that which until then
had been only a general dissatisfaction on the part of the members
of the Union and their sympathizers over Tom's business methods
now developed into an avowed determination to crush her. They
discussed several plans by which she could be compelled either to
restore rates for unloading, or be forced out of the business
altogether. As one result of these deliberations a committee
called upon the priest, Father McCluskey, and informed him of the
delicate position in which the Union had been placed by her having
hidden her husband away, thus forcing them to fight the woman
herself. She was making trouble, they urged, with her low wages
and her unloading rates. "Perhaps his Riverence c'u'd straighten
her out." Father McCluskey's interview with Tom took place in the
priest's room one morning after early mass. It had gone abroad,
somehow, that his Reverence intended to discipline the
"high-flyer," and a considerable number of the "tenement-house
gang," as Tom called them, had loitered behind to watch the effect
of the good father's remonstrances.
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