The "party" mentioned in the first despatch was the code designation for Gompers, and he was indicated in the second message as "Twelve thousand five hundred." "B" was Buchanan, upon whose connection with labor Rintelen told Meloy the success of the plan rested. Lamar hurried to New York, arriving July 19, and met Rintelen in a limousine at the 100th Street entrance to Central Park; on the ride which followed the "Wolf" told Rintelen that a strike then going on among the munitions workers at Bridgeport was "only a beginning of his efforts," and that within thirty days the industry would be paralyzed throughout the country. Meloy advanced the information that Gompers had just gone to Bridgeport to stop the strike, to which Lamar replied: "Buchanan will settle Gompers within twenty-four hours!" The clippings kept coming in as testimony to the vigorous work being done by the organization's press bureau: the Council attacked the Federal Reserve Banks as "munitions trusts," it cited on July 8 nine ships lying in port awaiting munitions cargoes, and attacked Dudley Field Malone, then Collector of the Port of New York, for permitting such ships to clear; it claimed to represent a million labor votes, and four million and a half farmers; it listened eagerly to an address by Hannis Taylor, a disciple of the late warmhearted Secretary of State, Mr. Bryan, in which Taylor criticized President Wilson and was roundly cheered by the German-American element in the audience. Semi-occasionally during the midsummer heat Charles Oberwager, attorney for the Council (whose firm had received handsome fees from von Papen), rose to deny any German connection with the organization. The Council assailed Secretary Lansing as a man "whose radicalism was liable to plunge this nation into war." The Council assailed, in fact, any project which furthered the interests of the Allies. Rintelen began to have his doubts of the effectiveness of Lamar's work. The bank account in the Trans-Atlantic Trust Company had dwindled from $800,000 to $40,000, and Rintelen admitted that his transactions with Lamar cost him several hundred thousand dollars. Labor's National Peace Conference died quietly, Lamar flitted away to a country estate at Pittsfield, Mass., and Rintelen started across the Atlantic Ocean.