1919: COME OUT SWINGING

Approaching the Illinois State capitol building in Springfield for his first day of work must have been awesome and humbling for 31-year-old Reuben. A lifelong student of government and politics, he most certainly was honored to approach the building in the crisp January air, its tall silvery zinc dome in French Renaissance style, and walk inside to gaze up at its ornate and colorful ceiling. In the chamber, where he spotted famous legislators of the day from Chicago and downstate alike, he was assigned and seated at a wooden desk in the very back row of the chamber. After five years of hard-fought, frustratingly narrow electoral defeats—and countless more years reading the annals of Greek democracy, the great Congressional sessions of America, and reports on contemporary political maneuvering—Reuben G. Soderstrom was a member of the Illinois House of Representatives.

Origins of The Injunction Limitation Act

In his first week in office, Reuben personally took on one of the state’s biggest and most long-standing issues by introducing the Injunction Limitation Bill. Many veteran lawmakers likely arched their eyebrows over this thunderous volley from the young newcomer on the backbench.

It was a momentous issue. Of all the weapons employed against labor, none was more insidious than the injunction. Commonly called restraining orders, court-ordered injunctions had long been used to prevent violence and harassment. By the early twentieth century, however, wealthy manufacturers had perverted this rule for their own ends. Claiming a fear of violence and violation of their property, company owners used sympathetic judges to issue orders forbidding workers from organizing, picketing, protesting, and in some cases from striking altogether, forcing them to return to work or go to jail. These orders often targeted labor leaders specifically, cutting them off from all communication and effectively placing them under house arrest. Their purpose was clear: to brutally punish labor leaders and intimidate workers. In the words of labor’s nemesis, the Illinois Manufacturers’ Association (IMA), “When some of them are bayoneted for refusing to stand for these conditions, the rest will submit.”[1]

Reub viewed injunctions as nothing less than a violation of workers’ constitutional right to assemble. How could a court mandate that four or more workers constituted a “conspiracy” and were not allowed to congregate to discuss their plight? For labor, eliminating the abusive injunction practice was job number one. Without an end to injunctions, manufacturers and their judges could violate workers’ most basic rights. As Reub warned from the House floor, someone sanctioned by injunction was “not a full citizen…if I can’t exercise my rights of free press and free speech and peaceful assembly, I’m not a full citizen.”[2]

The ISFL newsletters from this era are ripe with angry and emotional articles fully mobilized around abolishing manufacturers’ abuse of injunctions. Workers speak to being locked out of work and prevented from congregating or discussing matters with co-workers or local labor leaders. At the urging of JM Glenn’s IMA, anti-labor injunctions were handed out daily like schoolroom detentions. For that reason, Reuben, freshman legislator from Streator, went to the heart of the matter and re-introduced the Injunction Limitation Bill to the floor for debate.

An injunction limitation bill had been introduced four years earlier, in 1915. Described as “labor’s most important legislative measure,” its language was identical to the Clayton Act previously passed by the United States Congress, and matched similar efforts in states across the nation.[3] However, a series of legislative tricks continually postponed a vote on the Illinois bill, most notoriously when Representatives scared of voting “No” simply did not answer during the roll call, preventing a quorum. This silent vote allowed pro-business candidates to claim they did not vote “No” on the popular bill…while simultaneously killing it.[4]

After years of legislative wrangling, the bill again came up for debate in May 1917, as House Bill 270. In that year, the floor debate demonstrated how high the stakes were. Rep. Tuttle from Saline, who called up the bill, remarked “I dare say that there has not been a bill in this assembly that there is more interest in at this time, or that there has been more interest manifested, during this session of the Legislature than number 270.” Stating “there is not a bill in the Assembly today…that will be of more interest and more good to a class or any classes of people than this will be to the working people,” he reminded opponents that passage of identical legislation on the federal level had failed to create the imagined collapse of industry. “There is no harm that can result from the enactment of a bill of this kind into law,” he emphasized.[5]

Anti-union legislators responded with wild threats and incendiary language. Rep. Weber from Cook County denounced the law as “one of the most insidious bills, one of the worst bills that has come to this House.” He carefully cast himself and allies not as industrialist shills but as defenders of the working class: “I am not talking on behalf of any corporation,” he stressed. Calling the courts a “haven and the rescue of the poor and the suffering,” he claimed that passage of the bill would “Drive from the borders of our State all the industries which are now run under the order of open shops, and you will drive from it every vestige—instead of bringing industry to our State, instead of increasing the manufacturing establishments of our State, you will drive them from the borders of our state, and throw over the entire manufacturing proposition into the hands of labor organizations.”[6] By the end of the debate, the wild warnings of men like Weber (and fear of the IMA’s JM Glenn, who announced he would score the vote from the galleys in the Assembly) carried the day. The bill was defeated. Although 73 favored the bill and only 53 (including then-Representative Ole Benson) opposed it, again 21 representatives were “absent,” leaving the bill four votes shy of the necessary 77.[7]

Reuben Battles Courtroom Corruption

Despite these losses, Reuben wasted no time taking up the cause as his own. He knew how important an Injunction Limitation Bill was to workers’ rights, and had defeated Ole Benson in the 1918 election in part because of Benson’s vote against the original.[8] At this point in our narrative, it is a pleasure to finally introduce our protagonist speaking in his own words within the year we are studying, and they do not disappoint. Speaking from the statehouse floor, 31-year-old Reuben declared:

The humanitarian spirit that is prevailing in our nation, and the demands for social justice which has taken hold of the hearts of men and women declare that the brutal doctrine which held that human labor was a commodity to be bought and sold at the lowest possible market price as machinery, oil, coal, wheat, flour, and used until its supply is consumed or its efficiency exhausted, is vicious in morals and unsound in economics…No nation will be truly great, indeed no nation will survive that thus oppresses its producers.[9]

Reuben was charging straight at JM Glenn and the IMA. He fought ferociously for his bill, arguing persuasively before the Committee of the Judiciary that March. As the ISFL Weekly News Letter noted, Reub’s “clear views on this matter and the able manner in which he pointed out how the judges of Illinois had abused the legal and natural rights of the workers in the states proves that he is thoroughly familiar with this entire injunction question and is determined to have the power of these judges limited to common sense.”[10] There is no doubt that JM Glenn was now paying attention to the young politician from Streator.

In many respects, Glenn was like Reuben himself: a gifted writer and speaker, salesman and evangelist. He tirelessly used his considerable gifts to gain adherents to his cause. Yet, while Reub relied on his charisma and persuasion, preferring to win through consensus building, Glenn, in contrast, relied on fear. He was “a fighter rather than a compromiser, a complete partisan in methods and spirit.”[11] Reub was the type that could run in the other party’s primary and win; Glenn was the type that could convince those in the other party that if they crossed him they’d lose everything.

As soon as Reuben resurrected the bill, Glenn went to work gathering resources to defeat it. He sent letters to the IMA’s powerful members, instructing them to make in-person meetings with senators and representatives to tell them to oppose Reuben’s bill. In fact, the personal letter he sent to his fellow industrialists was exposed by a cleaning woman who, upon hearing her boss talking about the need to “hold labor down,” felt her blood boil. Thinking of her son, who was risking his life overseas for the freedoms these men joked about taking away, she made a handwritten copy of the note and leaked it to the press. It read in part:

Every manufacturer is (to meet with) the House Members in the Districts in which their property is located and urge them to use their influence to prevent the passage of this bill. Please advise this office at once as to...any information you receive as to the attitude of members of the legislature…If you have not already done so, please promptly fill out the enclosed blank, giving the name or names of those persons connected with your company upon whom our legislative committee may depend for your cooperation.

Yours very truly,

John M. Glenn, Sec’y.[12]

While Reuben was on the House floor making the argument for the bill on its merit, Glenn was in the back room twisting all the right arms. On April 9, 1919—a mere two months after Reub took office—the bill went down in defeat 69-51. Saliently, the manufacturers again orchestrated 30 absentee legislators. It was JM Glenn’s third defeat of anti-injunction legislation in four years.[13]

Reub’s big swing did not send him victoriously around the bases; it sent him back to the dugout. Unfortunately for him, there was worse still to come. That same year Glenn beat back labor’s attempts at an 8-hour workday bill for women while long, protracted strikes such as the Illinois coal miners’ strike and the great steel strike consumed most of labor’s attention and resources.

Textbooks For Streator’s Schoolchildren

Reuben did enjoy one notable success. In large part though his efforts (and the legislative machine he helped create), the trade unionists of Streator were able to place the question of free textbooks for schoolchildren on the local ballot at the end of 1919. Reub knew the value of books better than most; the product of child labor, he was able to educate himself in large part through the goodness of John Williams, who gave Reuben lasting and valuable access to both public and private libraries.

By an overwhelming number, the people of Streator embraced Reub’s proposition (only 69 voted against the measure). It was an historic vote, making Reub’s hometown the first city in central Illinois to ensure children finally had access to free textbooks.[14] The victory was especially important for Reub in light of a very personal loss; John Williams, Reuben’s teacher, mentor, and role model, died on January 2, 1919, shortly after witnessing his star pupil win elected office.

1920: ELECTIONS, CONVENTIONS, TENSION, AND TEMPERANCE

Like Brother, Like Sister: Olga On Strike

Reuben’s valuing of free textbooks came from his love of the written word, which he still exercised at his other job as a typesetter. It was also badly needed income; as Olga notes:

When Reub won this election of 1918, he would go to Springfield for three days and then he would work at Andy Anderson’s three days, for which he received Eighteen Dollars ($18.00) a week. Now, I had gone in training, so Reub would give Mother Five Dollars ($5.00) a week. During this period Mother did practical nursing and rented rooms. His pay during those years from the State of Illinois was Eighteen Hundred Dollars ($1,800.00) for two years, which netted him little when you see he always had two campaigns in order to win. He received no pay, of course, from being president of the Streator Trades and Labor Council. This position he held for ten years.[15] Working three jobs (State Rep, typesetter and President of the Labor Council), Reub was perhaps so busy he could barely keep track of Olga’s whereabouts in nursing school. Now a senior, Olga and her compatriots found their working conditions intolerable. So Olga, every inch her brother’s kid sister, circulated a petition:

I called a meeting and there had been so much dissatisfaction among the nurses that it wasn’t difficult to get them to sign the petition and if conditions were not improved we threatened to strike. We sure created a storm! We were told that if the news reached the press, we’d be expelled…but, five of us upon learning they wanted no publicity, immediately went to the Chicago American and told our story and our pictures appeared. Well, we all were suspended and after we left, more were suspended for a year. No time was stated for the five of us. We were even told they would blackball us in any hospital we might try to enter.[16]

Initially Olga held the news from Reub, probably because for years he had scrimped and saved to put her through nursing school, and now she was seemingly blacklisted. Still, while it may have been against his wishes, his example likely had a role in the affair:

You can believe Reub was not happy over this experience. Funny, too, the hospital thought we had outside help. I had formulated the letter and our staff doctors said no nurse in training had written that letter…we had no outside help, my brother knew nothing of this until it appeared in the paper. It was a difficult time; Mother felt I had disgraced them.[17]

Luckily, the affair had a happy ending:

It happened one of the doctors was in sympathy with us, and he took an interest in me and said he would help me get into another hospital. I asked that he take my dear friend, Leah Hodgson, along and he got us into the American Hospital on Irving Park Boulevard. It was a new hospital then and Dr. Thorax was its chief surgeon. We, Leah and I, entered there and joined their senior class, which was the first class to graduate from their new hospital.[18]

In the end, Reuben likely couldn’t help but be a little proud of his sister’s courage. After all, she notes, “I believe I probably lead the first strike of nurses…as long as I could finish my training, I was forgiven (by Mother). I will say Reub never scolded me!”[19]

Fruitless Pursuit: The Illinois Constitutional Convention

The Illinois Labor movement spent much of 1920 preoccupied with what most in the state thought would be a game-changing event. On November 5, 1918, the Illinois electorate voted to hold a convention for a new state constitution. Although Governor Lowden put forth the call to re-organize the elective offices, parties of all stripes saw the gathering as a chance to write their interests permanently into Illinois State law. Labor, stinging from the defeat of Reuben’s Injunction Limitation Bill, used considerable energy and resources to find redress through the new constitution. In February of 1920, the ISFL proposed the following constitutional article:

Section 1: The labor of a human being is an attribute of life and is not property.

Section 2: The right of workmen to organize into trade and labor unions and to deal and speak through representatives chosen by themselves is declared and it shall not be abridged.

Section 3: No court, tribunal, judge nor any officer or official shall by any process, order, injunction, restraining order, decree or proclamation abridge the right of any workman to quit any employment either singly or in concert, nor the right of by peaceful persuasion, picketing, assemblage or the payment of strike benefits inducing others so to quit or to refrain from working, nor shall any such acts be made or held to be unlawful, or to constitute an unlawful conspiracy. Nor shall any such process, order, injunction, restraining order, decree or proclamation interfere with the exercise of the legitimate functions of any organization formed for the purpose of advancing the interests of those who labor.[20]

While labor sought to increase workers’ protections, JM Glenn and the IMA sought to remove what little protection workers enjoyed. Delegates from downstate, meanwhile, used their clout to prevent popular representation (stripping votes away from the more populous and union-friendly north). These machinations led some in the press to declare “The constitutional convention appears to be hard at work drafting an unconstitutional constitution.”[21] In the end, the unpopular constitutional draft was handily rejected by Illinois voters. Labor’s considerable anti-injunction efforts, in both 1919 and 1920, suffered very certain defeats, and the IMA’s grip was as firm as ever.

Prohibition

The end of the Great War brought with it a huge influx of out-of-work veterans who had virtually no support. Economic instability in the post-war economy shot up at an alarming rate as unemployment climbed from 558,000 in the beginning of 1920 to a height of nearly 4,754,000 (an increase of over 850%) by 1921.[22] Even those who had jobs could no longer make ends meet. While wages over the previous three years had increased 28%, the cost of living over that same period had increased over 78%.[23]

This economic calamity fanned the flames of an intense social program: Prohibition. The movement to outlaw alcohol truly caught fire in the 1900s when zealous messengers like Carrie Nation and Frances Willard of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union spoke of the “evils of drink” in churches across the nation. The Prohibition Party was the official political arm of the movement, succeeded by the powerful Anti-Saloon League (ASL), both of which drew most of their support from dry, dour Protestant ministers and their congregations. Reuben would soon draw the ire of the ASL in his upcoming election in Streator.

Even with the backing of Protestant zealots, the prohibition movement likely never would have succeeded without big business. Prohibition was “an appealing instrument of social control for respectable Anglo-Saxons, North and South.”[24] Manufacturers saw it as an effective way “of keeping the unwashed classes sober, self-disciplined, and on time for work.”[25] As the vice-president of the Detroit Executives Club, Boyd Fisher, declared in 1917, “It wasn’t Billy Sunday, it was the employers of Michigan that put the state in the prohibition column. They wanted to remove the saloon on the route between home and factory.”[26]

Prohibition hit Streator especially hard because the glass industry had become the primary employer of labor by 1912.[27] No doubt milk bottles provided plenty of jobs, but beer bottles had been the mainstay since Adolphus Busch had invested in the Streator Bottle and Glass Company in 1881 to make bottles for his family’s breweries. The passage of the Volstead Act, which outlawed alcohol nationally in 1918, had already devastated Streator. By 1920 the Glass Bottle Blowers Association lost most of its members and the town experienced economic depression and massive social unrest.[28] Reuben watched all this befall his beloved hometown during his first term as a legislator.

As the state and national push for the prohibition of alcohol intensified, the issue of whether a legislator served as “wet” or “dry” moved to the forefront. Amid this fierce national debate, Reub faced a difficult choice; the preacher’s son didn’t have much of a taste for alcohol himself. Still, Prohibition threatened to strangle the lifeblood of Streator. To complicate matters, the “holy rollers” behind the Prohibition movement weren’t above playing political hardball. In early 1919, Scott McBride, Illinois State superintendent for the Anti-Saloon League, sent a letter to Reub making it clear if he didn’t support the League’s position, they would work aggressively to defeat him next election. McBride wrote to Reuben: “You are a young man just starting in public life along legislation lines and if you make a mistake by not conforming to the understanding in the beginning, you will find it will seriously handicap you through your whole career.”[29]

Reub was not intimidated. When the Illinois House ratified the 18th Amendment on January 14, 1919, Reub voted against it. The Streator Daily Independent Times defended his choice, warning against the dangers of single-issue advocacy:

Rep. Soderstrom is… a man who has ideas, and the courage to apply them; a man in close contact with labor problems, yet sophisticated enough to be intelligently conscious of their mutual dependence on the welfare of capitalistic interests; a young and growing man keenly interested in education… The point we want to call attention to which should be noted by every voter who really wants his ideals realized politically, is that you cannot damn a man for one thing on one issue but you must judge every candidate for office not only on overt acts but on his attitude generally towards problems and his qualifications for putting things over.[30]

The Election of 1920

By the end of his freshman term, 32-year-old Reub had taken on JM Glenn and the powerful IMA, as well as Scott McBride and his anti-alcohol “morality police.” At the same time, Reub’s allies in the ISFL became distracted not only with the farcical constitutional convention but by the allure of a Labor Party. In the lead-up to the 1920 elections, a variety of factors—including economic instability, a distrust of established parties, and the effective end of progressive Republicanism with the death of President Roosevelt in 1919—led some to believe that the people were hungry for a new type of politics. In Illinois, union leaders like CFL president John Fitzpatrick and ISFL president (and Reuben’s mentor) John Walker became convinced the time was right to form a state Labor Party. On April 10, 1919, more than six hundred delegates organized the Labor Party of Illinois, which joined with other state organizations to form the Labor Party of the United States that December. The following June, the new party (renamed the Farmer-Labor Party) nominated Walker as its gubernatorial candidate. He ran a populist campaign, telling the unexpectedly large crowds gathered to hear him that “The progress of the old political parties means a continuation of the present system of profiteering and exploitation of all the peoples of the earth. Indeed, we could not expect otherwise, when both Democrat and Republican parties are owned, controlled, and dominated by profiteers.”[31]

No doubt Reuben followed this development closely after searching for years for a party to match his politics. Certainly, there was an idealistic appeal to both the Farmer-Labor Party broadly and Walker’s candidacy in particular. However, Reub stuck with the established party system, convinced they provided the only real avenues to political authority and, ultimately, to reform. His instincts proved right; the Farmer-Labor party failed to gain any traction, with Walker winning less than 3% of all votes cast and finishing fourth behind Socialist Party candidate Andrew Lafin.[32] Even more devastating, Walker’s focus on promoting a Labor Party drew money, effort, and attention away from pro-labor mainstream candidacies like Reub’s.

Reuben may have run as a Republican, but that didn’t stop him from crossing party lines. His dream that his idol, Teddy Roosevelt, would return to the national ticket was dashed when the grand old man died, opening the opportunity for Senator Warren G. Harding of Ohio. But the national campaign season opened a remarkable experience for Reub right in his backyard. Reuben campaigned that autumn in neighboring Mendota, IL with a young Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was running for Vice President on the Democratic ticket with James M. Cox. A crisp energetic air seemed to swirl around Reuben and Roosevelt as each took their turn speaking to the small town crowd from the back of a flatbed pickup truck. It was a bold move; after all, he was a Republican endorsing a Democrat while being attacked by both the Anti-Saloon League and the Manufacturers Association, all while his state labor leader was experimenting with his own doomed race in the Farmers-Labor Party.

Like FDR, however, Reub lost in 1920. There were many eager to take the credit or cast blame for the electoral defeat. Some interpreted his primary defeat as punishment for his willingness to stump for a Democratic presidential candidate. McBride and his ilk pointed to the fact that Reuben lost to the Prohibitionist candidate John Wylie as evidence of their influence. Others, including the Joint Labor Legislative Board in their own analysis, faulted the unions’ emphasis on Walker and the Farmer-Labor party.[33] The Daily independent Times of Streator blamed the voters themselves, warning its readership:

He [Reub] is a promising young man… [who] has been defeated for a man past the prime of his life who is bound by age and temperament to be more or less reactionary and who through his more sheltered career has never come in contact with the vital problems of toil and stress…We believe firmly that Reub Soderstrom is the one candidate who could have most effectively realized for the prohibitionists and for the righteous of this community the ideals they want embodied in community life. We believe they defeated their own purpose. We need good representatives of labor interests at Springfield. We cannot thrive as a state with too large a proportion of lawyers in our legislative halls. It would be a good thing if we had more farmers, more laboring men and more ordinary business men in the congress of this state. Citizenship is a serious obligation these days… Reub Soderstrom lost out in votes, but he has won by his own merit, he was worthy of continuation in office.[34]

Yes, indeed, he won (and lost) on his own merit. It should not be lost on the reader of this biography that the three issues that contributed to Reuben’s 1920 election loss ultimately would be treated quite kindly by history: his fierce advocacy for an injunction limitation bill, his vote against prohibition, and his endorsement of the opposite party’s Vice Presidential candidate, Franklin D. Roosevelt. It was a prescient performance by the freshman.

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