“Never before was the local talent so pressed into service and the issue was one of merit. Many of the people came out in open defiance of my father; he was quoted and misquoted. Meanwhile Roy Sunderman was showing his ability as a politician. He made speech after speech at the school houses in the township; his diplomacy steered clear of the real issue, as he knew that the odds were heavily against him; he not only saw that the public was in favor of women teachers, but he realized that he stood before the people an abject subject to the severest forms of criticism. Still, this man of personal magnetism made many friends and fast friends everywhere he went; his arguments were forceful and conclusive and at the closing of each speech he made the announcement that on the day before the election he would address the people en masse, and if every voter would promise to come he would obligate himself to tell them something startling, and that something would be proven to them, that they would weigh the facts in their own active minds and be guided by their own decisions; in other words, they would be given facts that would put them on their honor as patrons of the public schools, as husbands of their homes and as fathers of their children. Such orations had the desired effect. It set everybody talking and the result was that when the day arrived for the ‘firing of the gun,’ as many of the skeptical ones put it, the entire populace was in the grove that had been chosen for the occasion. I am sure no one knew what was coming. All of the school directors were invited to seats on the rough platform by the speaker. His speech was a marvel of philosophy, his language was one continuous flow of correct and convincing utterances. The attention which was accorded him was within itself a mark of the appreciation of his efforts. “Then he made the statement that on a certain night the school directors had met in caucus at the home of one of the candidates (namely, Mr. Lane), and solicited him to enter the race, and that he considered the matter in a favorable manner, and that Mr. Lane’s son had gone to the daughter of Mr. Dalby and made the proposition that in consideration of her giving to him her love he would dissuade his father from entering the race, and, pending the decision of the young woman, the Board of Directors had received this letter: “‘Fellow Citizens,’ shouted the enthusiastic speaker, as he waved a sheet of fool’s cap aloft, ‘declining to become a candidate, then within two days after the young woman had decided that a man of the mercenary ideas of Elmer Lane was unworthy the love of a true woman, the father of the purchaser of love announces himself as a candidate, and young Mr. Lane had menacingly declared that ‘Old Man Dalby would be beat all holler if the young lady refused him.’”