But it was understood that they were there all right, somewhere.

In the platform speeches of the epoch they figured as working underground, working in the dark, working behind the scenes, and so forth.

But the strange thing was that nobody could state with any exactitude just who or what it was that the league was fighting.

It stood for "honesty, purity, and integrity." That was all you could say about it.
Take, for example, the case of the press.

At the inception of the league it has been supposed that such was the venality and corruption of the city newspapers that it would be necessary to buy one of them.
But the word "clean government" had been no sooner uttered than it turned out that every one of the papers in the city was in favour of it: in fact had been working for it for years.
They vied with one another now in giving publicity to the idea.