REUBEN FINDS HIS HOME

he remarkable story of Reuben G. Soderstrom is also the story of the town he made home: Streator, Illinois. The bustling, cosmopolitan, close-knit, and enterprising, and ethnically diverse turn-of-the-century town was inexorably linked to the labor movement, and would indelibly shape Reuben. As he later explained:

One had to be born in or come into an industrial community such as the city of Streator in order to catch the atmosphere necessary to lead labor. There isn’t any question about that. The contribution which the community makes is tremendous in the development of someone who has a flair for that type of activity. And Streator was just suited for that…It’s a very cosmopolitan sort of a community where they say that seventeen tongues are spoken daily in that city.[1]

Industrial and ethnically diverse, Streator became the experiential genesis for many of Reuben’s landmark achievements in labor; it is the place where he found personal happiness, stability, and opportunity. For these reasons it is worthwhile take a brief moment to become acquainted with the colorful city that formed the man.

Worthy S. Streator and Col. Plumb

80 miles southwest of Chicago on the Kankakee railroad line, Streator originated in the early nineteenth century as a small village named “Hardscrabble.” John O’Neill, owner of the town’s first general store, painted the word above his front door and the name stuck.[2] After the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter in 1861, the town officially changed its name to “Unionville” in a show of northern solidarity, though it continued to be known by its original name (“Scrabble” for short).[3] Throughout these early years, it remained a small, relatively unknown settlement along the hazy humidity of the Vermilion River.

All that changed, however, with a single discovReery. Around 1865, a five-foot thick/six-mile wide vein of coal drew widespread attention. Worthy S. Streator, a retired physician from Cleveland, Ohio, caught word of the carbon-rich deposit and immediately formed the Vermillion Coal Company. The company purchased 3,000 acres and sent its business manager, Colonel Ralph Plumb, to survey the area and oversee construction.[4]

A Civil War veteran and famous Ohio abolitionist, Plumb had once spent 84 days in jail for his association with a group which had forcibly seized a runaway slave from U.S. Marshals and smuggled him into Canada.[5] After incorporating various settlements and shantytowns into the city of Streator (newly named in honor of Dr. Streator), Col. Plumb was unanimously elected the city’s first Mayor. He was responsible for the city’s first railroad, built and donated a high school, and constructed the city’s first opera house.[6] Citing Plumb’s example as inspiration, Andrew Carnegie financed the building and stocking of the Streator Public Library, a magnificent structure with Ionic columns and oak staircases. It opened on January 30, 1903, in a grand public ceremony likely attended by a fourteen year-old Reuben Soderstrom, who milled about in the crowd and celebrated Streator’s national significance as a recipient of Carnegie’s philanthropy. The library opening would be Plumb’s final public appearance; he died three months later at age 87, but the grand building would endure as the primary space for Reuben’s impressive self-education on all matters historical, philosophical, and American.[7]

Streator grew rapidly. By 1877, it was an industrious city of over 6,000 with “handsome residences” replacing the “waste of ten years ago.”[8] Hearing rumors of well-paid work, immigrants came to Streator by the trainload. The first immigrants came primarily from the British Isles of England, Scotland and Wales, with successive groups coming from Eastern Europe and Italy.[9]

By the time Reuben arrived in 1901, the city had nearly doubled to over 10,000 residents. With new ethnicities came new faiths. Churches from over a dozen traditions populated the city, including the onion-domed St. Casimir, originally a gift from the Czar of Russia to the Chicago World Fair in 1893, and St. Stephen’s, the oldest Catholic Slovak Church in America.[10] Culturally diverse and full of wealth and opportunity, Streator was fast becoming “in business importance among the best towns and cities in the country.”[11]

“You Load Sixteen Tons, and What Do You Get?”

The “official” story of Streator is one of enterprise, hard work, opportunity and success—the American Dream that so many immigrant families, including Reuben’s, came to pursue. The truth behind these initial facts, however, is much more complex, beginning with Dr. Streator and Col. Plumb. In addition to being a retired physician, Dr. Streator was a railroad magnate who, alongside the great “robber barons” of the Gilded Age, made his fortune by leveraging connections born of social privilege to monopolize vital lines of transport. He was first introduced to the lucrative trade of natural recourse extraction when he built the Oil Creek Railroad connecting Pennsylvanian oil fields to the industrial center of Corry.[12] Ralph Plumb, meanwhile, was—according to historian Allan Peskin—a get-rich-quick schemer who “While campaigning down the Sandy Valley…had apparently been looking as hard for signs of oil as for sins of rebels.”[13] Shortly before coming to Streator, Plumb had enlisted the help of then-congressman and future President James Garfield in an elaborate and deceptive plan to “tap the riches” of Kentucky (complete with hidden buyers and agents dressed in disguise). The scheme fell apart when no oil was discovered. Undeterred, Col. Plumb tried his luck again in Illinois. Peskin writes:

After his disappointing Kentucky oil venture, Plumb had settled on an isolated Illinois trading-post called Scrabble as the place to make his fortune. Scrabble was sitting on top of a rich but neglected coal field and Plumb was determined to tap that wealth. He enlisted Dr. Worthy S. Streator, a prominent Cleveland railroad promoter who was an intimate friend of Garfield’s through his membership in the Quintickle Club, to be the president of the new Vermillion Coal Company. Scrabble was re-baptized as Streator, Illinois, and mining operations were began.

Both Plumb and Streator wanted their friend Garfield to get in on the ground floor of what promised to be a very good thing, and in February Plumb “cordially invited” both Garfield and [Ohio Representative Robert] Schenck to come in. Ten thousand dollars worth of stock was set aside for each of them and, as Plumb expansively said, “you are at liberty to consult your own convenience about the time of paying it.” In return, Plumb had one small request. Unless a railroad ran by the mines, the coal could not reach the market. It would cost at least $80,000 to build a spur to the Illinois Central, but if the projected American Central could be induced to “bend their lines” to Streator, Plumb’s problem would be solved cheaply. He hoped that Garfield and Schenck would suggest this possibility to the road’s managers and he hinted that “if by your influence the Am. Central supplies our necessity the company will feel very kindly towards you both I am sure.”

The message seemed clear enough: Garfield and Schenck were expected to sell their influence for $10,000 worth of free stock apiece...Garfield, however, was unable to meet the payments and had to give up his stock. Plumb advised Dr. Streator…to place the stock “where its influence will do us the most good.”[14]

In the wake of Garfield’s withdrawal, Streator made arrangements with the Fox River Line and sent Plumb to oversee development of the land the company had purchased. To entice workers, Plumb laced steamship offices and railroad depots with rumors of the town’s wealth and opportunity. Such notices reached Reuben’s Aunt Sophie, already a Streator resident, who, in turn, conveyed the message of increased business to her brother, John. Plumb’s plan worked. Soon young Reub was one of thousands forming the sea of immigrants making the pilgrimage to Streator in search of work.

nder the weight of these new arrivals, “Scrabble soon had to ‘scrabble away’ and give place to Streator.”[15] It was this new company town that elected a Board of Trustees, who in turn unanimously elected the company manager, Plumb, as Mayor.

Plumb may have lived in Streator, but the man for whom it was named never visited. In fact, those who gained most from the mineral wealth of Streator never set foot in the city. Reuben later referred to them as “absentee owners” who shared in nothing of the life of Streator except the profit.[16] Life was miserable for many of the city’s working poor. The coal miners who constituted the backbone of the city worked long days in dangerous conditions for little pay. As Dale Bennett describes in his study of the Streator labor movement:

The mine shafts in Streator varied from 50 to 150 feet in depth. Ground water trickled into the shafts—bringing rats, mud, and stagnant water. Methane gas was another potential hazard…The coal miner needed, most of all, a strong back; mental agility was a secondary condition of employment. He kissed his wife good-bye every morning never knowing if it would be the last time for such a display of tenderness in his harsh world. He lived in a house owned by the coal company. Yet he must have felt there was some way out of this drab existence.[17]

To make matters worse, half of a miner’s pay was in “scrip”—notes only honored only at company stores.[18] With this near monopoly on sales, stores owned by these mining companies could charge exorbitant prices, forcing many miners to incur ever-increasing debt to their employer, a vicious cycle famously lamented by singer Merle Travis:

You load sixteen tons, and what do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt.
Saint Peter, don’t you call me, ‘cause I can’t go
I sold my soul to the company store.

As successive waves of immigrants arrived, the neighborhoods of Streator developed distinct ethnic boundaries. The poorest lived in Shanty Town north of Prairie Creek. To the West on the river was Dog Town. The area between Main and Hickory served as Bulldog Alley. West of the High School sat Twister Hill, named after the German glass blowers. Meanwhile, Bung Town, between Park and Bronson, was the entertainment district, with offerings equal to its name.[19] To an indebted, disenfranchised, and deeply divided population, this wasn’t the wealthy city of Streator; it was still every inch the hard, tough town of Scrabble.

Streator in 1900: Immigrants at Work

Like many working towns in America at the turn of the century, Streator both benefitted and suffered from the wealthy capitalists behind its growth. Undoubtedly, figures like Plumb and Streator employed cronyism and company scrip to further their own interests. Yet these men also did great things for the people of Streator; the public works commissioned by Plumb were essential to Reuben’s future, including the Plumb Opera House and the Streator Public Library, not to mention the bustling atmosphere of business and labor, mining and work. In the words of John Williams, a figure soon to loom large in our story:

Streator is not a beautiful city. It is a town in the making; not yet a finished product. Its wealth and energies are devoted to deepening and broadening the foundations of its industrial life, rather than smoothing out the wrinkles of toil from its face or adorning itself with the fruits of its labor. It is still in its iron age; its golden age is yet to come…

Streator is still a town of workers and workingmen. It is still in the making; and although its sense of beauty is growing, and evidences of it may be seen in its parks, streets, fine homes and well kept lawns…it is unfinished…It has not a long past but has an immense future.[20]

Work defined the town and its people. The hunger for labor, skilled and unskilled alike, drew together disparate peoples—German glassblowers, British miners, Italian bricklayers, and strong backs from all over eastern and northern Europe. They were Catholic, Orthodox, and every stripe of Protestant. While their religious and cultural differences often divided them, their common economic condition united them; laboring long days to support their families, lining up together to receive their paychecks, and sharing parks, libraries, and theaters.

By 1900, the growing city was an easy place to find work. Fourteen mines produced coal daily, providing thousands of jobs. Glass factories belched out thousands of bottles a day, exporting their product across the country. Brick and tile works employed hundreds to kiln-bake bricks, and five great railroad systems with more than 45,000 miles of track shipped materials in and out of Streator across the entire United States.[21]

TWELVE YEAR-OLD REUBEN ARRIVES

In January of 1901, Reuben took the train from Cokato, Minnesota to Streator, Illinois by way of Chicago. He traveled with a small knapsack stuffed with a few personal belongings and bread and cheese packed lovingly by his mother. The sights of the heavy industry and the noisy neighborhoods of Chicago must have been astonishing for the 12 year-old. He traveled unaccompanied, sharing seats with strangers and navigating the chaotic connections in Chicago armed with nothing more than his satchel and a hand-me-down jacket.

Although he had moved several times already — Waverly, Woodland, Cokato, and Hancock — Streator was quite different from the Scandinavian townships of rural Minnesota. On the platform in Streator, he was greeted by his Aunt Sophie, whom he was meeting for the first time. Sophie’s first husband, a printer by the name of Carlson, had died of tuberculosis a few years prior. Widowed and caring for her three-year-old daughter, Annie, Sophie remarried a coal miner named August, who worked fourteen hours a day to meet his tonnage, for which he was paid $4 a day. Reuben’s arrival—especially his muscle—was welcome; with a full family to support, even a $1 a week contribution from a child laborer like Reuben could make a difference. For Reuben, his aunt’s household was simply the next in a long line of quarters during his itinerant childhood, and his next base from which to go out and work.

A Trolley Line Waterboy

Reub wasted little time. “Reub’s first job in Streator was as a water boy for the gang that was laying the street car tracks,” writes Olga. “He worked from 8:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M. and received $3.00 per week. The workweek was Monday through Saturday. Child labor existed everywhere as there were no child labor laws.”[22]Day in and day out, Reuben hauled water barrels from the supply wagon to the line for the work crews, delivering drink to the workmen. Track crews worked six days a week, but Reuben would start hours before, placing barrels every fifty yards along the entire stretch of the day’s work.

Work on the trolley lines was brutal. No doubt, twelve year-old Reuben witnessed horrific accidents, like the severing of arms and legs when workers slipped between moving cars. Often, working children were recruited for dangerous tasks that included narrow spaces between or under the cars, or small crevices that required small hands. They were routinely injured, maimed, and permanently deformed. The workday included relentless physical commands and demands—“Boy! Get these buckets down ‘ere now I said!”—and the conditions were compounded by constant presence of rain, mud, steel, and steam.

The boys Reuben worked alongside were products of hard, unfair circumstances. Like him, most had left school to help support their families or pay off debts. Some were orphans or runaways, hiding in shantytowns in the woods along the Vermillion River. They spent their free time (and earnings) more like the men they worked with than the boys they were, drinking five cent beers, playing poker, and fighting in Bung Town. By the time Reuben arrived there were “67 saloons, 25 gambling houses, and several houses of ill repute” ready to help workers spend what little they had.[23]

Working here, Reuben certainly became streetwise with his pocketbook, mind, and fists. He avoided the saloons, but soon took a passionate interest in one of Streator’s most popular pastimes: boxing. Reuben’s adopted home was well-known for prizefighting; Billy Myer, the “Streator Cyclone,” was one of the best fighters of his day, earning his hometown a well-deserved rough reputation. Golden-age greats like Bob Fitzsimmons and Jim Corbett came to fight, drawing fans from far and wide. As Streator historian Paula Angle writes, “Promoters constructed boxing rings in the countryside near railroad tracks, spread news of coming fights, and arranged for special trains.”[24] Although disapproved of by many (including, probably, Reub’s own pacifist father), laboring men largely agreed with pugilists like John L. Sullivan who argued “Every young man from fifteen to twenty-one years of age should be taught the manly art of self-defense, in order to protect himself against any bought or tough who might undertake to waylay him on the highway.”[25] Reuben took this advice to heart, learning the “manly art” soon after coming to Streator. The lessons didn’t go to waste; Reub existed in a world full of petty crime, hard labor, and fisticuffs.

Long hours in the factories and mines of Streator brought chronic bronchial problems to both child and adult workers, not to mention typhus and tuberculosis. Lack of medical care meant common injury could easily turn to infection and death. Hardly a week went by without Reuben seeing or hearing of a serious injury or fatality in the local mines or rail yards. It is no accident that one of the future titans of the American labor movement experienced these gruesome conditions first hand, regularly witnessing a maimed worker entering church on crutches after a long convalescence, hearing Sophie’s husband talk of the damp danger of the mines, or seeing a fellow child worker lose an arm between trolley wheels and steel track. Scenes such as these filled young Reub with an anger he had to work to master, even as he refused to forget. “As Reub grew older he learned to control his temper,” Olga tells us. “He rebelled silently about conditions as they were, about children working so hard in sweat shops, about miners being practically slaves in the mines and about work in general as it existed as he grew up, and determined that he sure was going to try and do something about all these things.”[26]

Visiting Luminaries in Streator’s City Park

Still, the city of Streator in 1900 was a thing of fascination and beauty to young Reuben, filled with lights, excitement, and attractions, from the refurbished Opera House presentations of “Way Down East” and “The Royal Box” to the introduction of the city’s first car, an event that “attracted more attention than a circus.”[27] The city soon attracted personal visits and public speeches from luminaries such as Clarence Darrow, Eugene Debs, and of course Samuel Gompers. According to Reuben:

All of the unions that were inexistent at that time seemed to have some sort of a local in the city of Streator, and all of that information—Samuel Gompers, the great leader of the American Federation of Labor, came there a number of times, too…it was that type of community and so many labor officials came to the city of Streator in those early days. The tendency was to pay some attention to what they were doing, and I, of course, was enthused by it—by what they had in mind.[28]

By the Presidential election of 1900, Streator was viewed as such an important center that both Vice-Presidential candidates Adlai Stevenson (Democrat) and Theodore Roosevelt (Republican) made campaign stops in the bustling city that October. The awesome current of national politics flowed right to the town square, and the impact on Reuben was profound. Roosevelt’s visit was a particularly extravagant affair, celebrated in the city’s park with a parade of 5,000 marchers and over 20,000 spectators.[29] The park was festooned with red, white, and blue banners, and townspeople from many neighboring villages walked or rode horses through the brisk winter weather to hear the great man speak. He spoke forcefully of the need for American expansion abroad and reform at home, his words packed with optimism and urgency. It was a speech that portended Roosevelt’s progressive “Bull Moose” party of 1912, which Reuben would enthusiastically join.

Streator enthralled Reuben. Here he was exposed to a broader conversation and consciousness that he had never known in the farmland of Minnesota. Streator’s outsized importance was the direct result of Gilded Age Industrialism and the nation’s movement into the new and exciting century. America was an immense, bulky society in the noisy throes of momentous transition, and Streator—and Reuben—were at its center. As 1901 came to a close, our young protagonist found himself surrounded by the swirl of trolley cars, hard labor, and vibrant debate argued in foreign tongues over vibrant ideas, and he would waste no time becoming an active participant in the middle of it all.

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