A FAMILY ADRIFT IN MINNESOTA

Newlyweds John and Anna Soderstrom did not receive a warm welcome from their parish. Olga reports that “Mother said being a preacher’s wife at the age of eighteen was difficult. For one thing the congregation resented, more or less, the December-May marriage, Dad was 38, Mother 18. However, they continued the present status until after son Paul was born.”[1]

One year later, in 1886, John was pushed out of his St. Paul pulpit and traveled with his wife and baby to Red Wing, Minnesota, where he became pastor at a small stone Lutheran church. The move from the robust Swedish community in St. Paul to sleepy Red Wing was most certainly a demotion. They lived in the ground-level quarters of the Church with their first child, one-year-old Paul.

But that was just a way station. Like many immigrants to America, John had dreams of owning land. Investing nearly every dollar they had, John bought a small plot of land, planted modest crops, and trusted in providence. But while Reuben’s father may have been a faithful pastor, he was not an expert farmer. As Olga writes:

Preaching was not the best paid profession in those days, so Dad found it necessary to farm, along with his preaching, in order to provide adequately for his family. Dad, I presume, was an average farmer, but like many farmers had crop failures. This caused him to move frequently, hoping to find better farms, so he became quite a rover…Dad continued to preach, but he would also repair shoes to try to supplement his income, since crops continued to be failures.[2]

It was into these impoverished, uncertain conditions that John and Anna had their second son, Reuben, on the cold, windswept plains of Waverly, Minnesota, on March 10, 1888. Like his siblings before and after, he received an Old Testament name from his pastor father.

From the outset, Reub’s life was beset by instability. By the fall of Reub’s first year, his father’s crop had failed, and the family moved for the third time in two years—this time to a small house in Woodland Township. It was during these years that Reuben’s brother Lafe (birth name Levi) was born in 1890. In 1892 the Soderstroms moved again to a small farm in Delano where, to the family’s delight, Anna gave birth to her first girl, the precious Ruth. But before the year’s end, the tiny child died of whooping cough, a loss that left all bereft. Reuben watched helplessly as the family lovingly buried a tiny wooden casket amidst his father’s prayers and his mother’s tears.

John responded the only way he knew how—he ran away, this time to Cokato township, where he built a beautiful brick home surrounded by graceful elms. Misfortune soon followed. Within a year, complications with Anna’s fifth pregnancy cursed little Joseph, a “blue baby,” with a heart defect that left him forever frail. John faced yet another crop failure soon after, forcing him to sell the farm and move his family into a small house in the center of town.

Still, young Reuben found joy amidst the poverty and tragedy. As a child he was hard-headed but happy, with a serious nature that could quickly give way to playfulness. He loved the outdoors, spending the hours fishing local lakes and exploring the virgin Minnesota wilderness with his brothers. Yet he never had interest in games or swimming or sports. He had a quick temper, a trait his older brother Paul loved to exploit. As Olga recounts, “He [Paul] was mischievous and one time tormented Reub whose temper was quick. Reub was chopping wood at the time and started chasing Paul with axe in hand.”[3]

But young Reuben could turn just as quickly toward tender affection. He was incredibly close to and protective of his younger siblings, and was his mother’s seeming favorite. This was perhaps because she saw so much of herself in him. “Reub was like mother,” Olga writes, “he dominated every situation…But, like Dad, he was good and kind and generous.”[4] Reuben was his mother’s child, a naturally forceful personality, infused with his father’s compassion and Lutheran ethos—a unique cauldron for a singular calling as a great leader of labor.

Daily chores were a staple of his early life. Anna often dispatched her gaggle of boys to fetch berries, kindling, or water, before tucking all three into a single bed at night. The three Soderstrom boys also spent a great deal of time at the Lutheran church, carrying out simple duties and attending summer picnics where the Swedish language and food were staples (Reuben grew up in a bilingual household, and was himself fluent in both Swedish and English). John’s Sunday sermon to the small congregation was the week’s highlight, spoken in Swedish—a moment for which he studied all the other days of the week. It was a celebration of the Bible’s colorful stories and parables, as well as nourishment in the hard times that his congregation endured in the 1800s central Minnesota.

Perhaps the happiest event of Reub’s early childhood was the birth of his baby sister Olga in October of 1897. Jubilation overtook the tiny household as, after years of loss and heartache, the family finally welcomed the arrival of a healthy baby girl. About her own birth, Olga writes:

I was born at about 6:30am and Mother said Reub was so happy. When he came down in the A.M. and saw me, he climbed over her and just wanted to stay there with me. All the family wanted a girl, and there I was, an answer to their prayers. Dad particularly was so happy—he wanted a girl so very much, so I was indeed a welcome addition to the family. Mother wanted to call me Ruth, but friends and neighbors talked her out of it. They said she would disturb the rest of my dead sister. So I was given Olga by my Mother, Rebacka by my Dad, and the boys (gave me) Emmajeen, so my brothers gave me this name.[5]

Reuben’s only sister, loving biographer and life-long friend, Olga Rebacka Emmajeen Soderstrom, had arrived.  

A LIFE OF WORK

A Blacksmith’s Boy

Reuben’s childhood innocence, however, was soon brought to an abrupt end. The bundle of joy that was a baby sister increased the family’s financial hardships. Now too poor to afford any farmland, Reub’s parents did all they could to make ends meet. In addition to preaching, John worked as a cobbler on the ground floor while Anna converted the lower level into a convalescent home for a few ill and infirm “patients.” Yet John’s charitable nature continued to undermine the family’s fiscal stability. He would often not charge his poor clients even for the leather he used in their repairs. “I’ve never known anyone like him,” Olga later wrote, “so kind, so patient, so understanding, and far too generous for his own good.”[6] As for preaching, he ministered mainly to small, poor congregations of farmers, widowers, and travelers unable to feed themselves, much less donate to the church.

And the number of poor and destitute continued to grow; the great Economic Panic of 1893 had turned into a depression that devastated the country. In that year alone, over 15,000 companies sank into bankruptcy and over 500 banks failed. Unemployment in the United States reached over ten percent, and the loans to speculative farmers like John exploded to 74% interest.[7] By 1898, the combined forces of crop failure, economic depression, and idealism had broken the family’s finances. In a state of desperation, John made the heartbreaking decision to sell one of his children into hard labor. Normally, this tragedy would befall the oldest child, but Paul, at twelve, was “a problem child and difficult to manage.”[8]So it was in the winter of 1897-1898 that nine-year-old Reuben was sent away to serve as a helper to a blacksmith in Hancock, a small town over a hundred miles away. Olga writes:

Times were tough, seemed we were always in a state of financial depression, so when Reub was nine years old he went to Hancock, Minnesota to work in a blacksmith shop. There he operated the levers of the blowers which fanned the coals and made them burn hotter for the blacksmith. He also learned to repair wagon wheels, such as taking the steel rims off the wheels to repair the spokes and the then replace the rims. For this labor he received five cents a day and his board and room.[9]

It is conceivable that John viewed this work as an opportunity for his young son. Blacksmith helpers, after all, often graduated to apprenticeships, and a smith’s trade could be profitable work, bringing in an average of $15 per week.[10] By placing his son in the care and learning of an accomplished tradesman, John may have been preparing his son for a better life. Or, perhaps, the family was simply desperate for any kind of extra income.

Whatever the reason, it is truly heartbreaking to imagine the view from little Reub’s eyes as the horse drawn mail cart lurched out of Cokato in 1898, his family receding from sight—the two brothers he fished with, the little baby sister he loved so much, his parents. The daily ache he felt for his missing family as he toiled away in servitude most certainly formed the great empathy he later exhibited for child laborers, and more broadly, for laboring families missing loved ones to excessive work hours, injury, illness or death.

Although unconscionable by modern standards, child labor was very much a part of late nineteenth and early twentieth century American life (at least for its poor), and it would become a large part of Reub’s formative experience. At the time Reuben was sent away, more than one-fifth of the nation’s children aged 10 to 14 were cast into the world of work.[11]By the 1890s many states including Illinois had some laws regulating child labor, but they were often limited in coverage and nearly impossible to enforce. It wasn’t until the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938—national legislation informed by Illinois practices championed by Reuben—that employment of those under the age of 16 during school hours was banned outright.

Life as a blacksmith’s boy was grueling. Reub labored long, strenuous hours, and likely slept in a small cot in the dark shop itself amidst the iron tools and ever-glowing coals. Waking up before dawn, he would break the ice in his water bucket and stoke the fire in the forge, adding buckets of charcoal and pumping the heavy bellows until his small arms were smeared by the dirt and heat. His job was to keep the forge hot while the smith and his striker worked. He also had their tools at the ready for their work, particularly for the striker, who pounded out impurities in the metal. Days would also be filled with chores like cutting timber and making charcoal. He routinely worked six days a week and sent his monthly earnings back to his family. While he probably attended the local school for remedial lessons, he would have had to return quickly to the shop. Most of his early learning likely took place by evening candlelight.

There is scant historical material concerning Reuben’s life in Hancock, and little record of him recollecting his time there. We know nothing about the family he lived with or how long he had to toil, isolated from his parents, brothers, and sister. What we do know is that it was a time of his life he had no desire to revisit. During all of his later trips to Minnesota, reliving fond memories and visiting with relatives in Cokato and elsewhere, he never made a visit to Hancock.

Sent to Streator

Despite Reuben’s sacrifice, by the winter of 1900 the Soderstrom family was still in much the same condition: warm, giving, and poor. The congregation of John’s Swedish church helped the Soderstroms in any way they could, but the family’s financial troubles continued to mount, and by January of 1901 John again had to make a difficult choice. Olga writes:

Times continued to be financially bad. Dad wrote of his troubles to his sister Sophie in Streator, Illinois. She in turn wrote that she felt there would be opportunities in Streator for work for Reuben. Streator had the coal mines, glass factories, and was building or I should say laying tracks for street cars. It was a thriving community at the time…

So at the age of twelve, Reub came to Streator to live with Aunt Sophie and to work…Reub’s first job in Streator was as a water boy for the gang that was laying the street car tracks. He worked from 8:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M. and received $3.00 per week. The work week was Monday through Saturday. Child labor existed everywhere as there were no child labor laws.[12]

Once again, Reuben was sent away, this time seemingly for good. He had no idea if he would ever return home to play in familiar fields, or sleep in his old bed (he wouldn’t). As he boarded the train that would take him once and for all from his beloved Minnesota, anxiety almost certainly overwhelmed him, threatening to drown him in alternating waves of anger and despair. Peering out the dirty window, he waved furiously to his family, watching intently as the train pulled him away, etching their faces into his memory as he steeled himself for the unknown.

Reuben was moving again, and the timing was destiny. As America lurched into the 1900s on a horse-drawn carriage, no one could imagine the awesome might of the century’s impending population explosions, global disruptions, or the colossal industrialization that would become hallmarks of a nation in transition. Twelve-year-old Reuben Soderstrom was about to enter that fray, and Streator, Illinois was a fortuitous microcosm of America itself.

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