LIFE IN THE GLASS FACTORY

After a year of long hours and hard labor in Streator, thirteen-year-old Reuben had managed to save himself a tidy sum of over $35.00, a lot of money in 1902. But he would never get to enjoy the fruits of his labor. That year, Reub’s dad wrote in desperation to his son that he had no money for taxes. For his family’s sake, Reuben sent his full savings to Minnesota to pay his father’s tax bill.[1]

By this point Reub had left the trolley tracks and begun work in Streator’s famous glass factories, which flourished in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries due to the region’s fuel supply, central location, and an abundance of St. Peter’s Sandstone, a form of high-grade silica.[2] “Streator has very few equals and no superiors in the United States as a location for glass making,” declared American Bottle Company President MW Jack.[3] He was not alone in this assessment; Streator soon became a major bottling capital, with three important plants making all manner of bottles, jars, and plate glass.

In the era before mechanization, glass production in Streator depended on highly skilled German blowers and their carefully guarded twisting method of glass production. Streator’s German “twisters” made anywhere from $7.00 to as much as $15.00 a day, dwarfing the $2.00 to $3.00 earned by a local miner. This made the glass blowers the elite of Streator’s working class, the “Kings of the Drag.”[4] Boy helpers like Reuben, however, earned a fraction of what the twisters made. The work for them was brutal; Olga writes:

Now Reub had changed jobs and had a job in the bottle factory in Streator and here he earned sixty-five cents a day…Reuben worked the night shift and carried bottles from the shop to the layers. He worked ten hours a day and six days a week. There was no work on Sundays and no stores were ever open on Sundays.

Reub often spoke of how tired he was after ten hours of work. He walked home along the railroad tracks and he’d be so tired his lunch pail would hang so low it would bump along the rails. Conditions in the factory were bad, from the hot furnaces and hot bottles. Ventilation was very poor and there were no safety laws or toilets or wash rooms, so you went home blistered and always dirty. He worked under these conditions for three years.[5]

Reuben had a quick temper, which probably landed him in trouble more than once at work. But he was a model tenant at home; he attended church regularly with his Aunt Sophie’s scrupulously pious family, and got along particularly well with his cousin Annie, who worked as a seamstress at a tailor shop. She taught Reub to play the guitar, and the two of them would play together for the Salvation Army, at church, fairs, and even on street corners. Still, it was a cold, stern household, far removed from the warmth he’d known at home.    

A FAMILY REUNITED

The Soderstroms Come To Streator

By the fall of 1902, Reuben had grown from a rural youth to a street-savvy, hard-working, and politically aware young adult. He had made this journey largely on his own, without immediate family or formal schooling. He was strong, smart, and above all independent. But back in Minnesota, his family missed him. Olga describes, “Mother reached the point where she could not, or would not, tolerate this separation from Reub—and she was determined on this move, that we must go to Streator.”[6] It must have come as a delightful surprise and partial shock to Reuben when he received a letter from his mother reporting the sale of their Minnesota property and imminent move to Streator. Olga continues:

In October of 1902, we moved. I was five years old and remember the train ride well, the bench seats, eating our lunch of sandwiches on the train, the not too clean coach and the black smoke from the engine. We first came to Chicago en route from Cokato, Minn [sic]…I do remember Chicago. The cobble streets, the horses pulling the street cars; I remember that they changed teams of horses en route to Auntie Lind’s home.[7] 

Aunt Emma Lind was John Soderstrom’s sister, and she oversaw a boisterous, happy household. She ran a boarding house featuring twenty-five cent meals, a candy counter, and a shoe repair shop in the basement for her husband, Andrew. Along with her father (who lived with them), Emma had eleven children, though she lost six to illnesses. All the Linds were talented musicians, and loved to play for guests like the Soderstroms. “They were such a happy out-going family,” Olga remembered. “So much musical talent, so happy-go-lucky, so different from Aunt Sophie, where the home was solemn, sad and so religious.”[8]

After a short stay with the Linds, the Soderstroms finally made their way by rail to their new hometown of Streator. For Reuben, now 14, it must have been pure elation. He was joined in his new, dynamic city by his mother, father, older brother Paul, and younger siblings Lafe, Joe, and Olga. He and Aunt Sophie met the rural Minnesotans at the Streator Depot with a welcoming smile and bouquet of wild flowers, and immediately gave them a tour of the town’s colorful neighborhoods as they walked home.

Building A New Home

Reunited at last, the Soderstrom family immediately began their search for a home. Olga writes:

When we landed in Streator, Mother said we had Eight Hundred Dollars after selling all our belongings in Minnesota. Mother was determined that this money was to buy a home—it was to be the full payment—no more mortgages and no more losing our home. We lived with Aunt Sophie until a house was found. One was, but it was on the wrong side of the tracks. It was in need of repairs—it had no water—just a well, no foundation, and was a two-story house with four rooms down and three rooms upstairs. Dad had his bedroom upstairs and two things we did bring from Minnesota were Dad’s organ and his desk which had a roll top…  One upstairs room was used for closet and storage. The three boys, Paul, Reub and Lafe, slept in one bed, and downstairs, Mother, Joseph and I slept in one bed. Half of the kitchen was made into a shoe shop so Dad could get at his trade and there was a little Swedish Mission Church just up the street from us and Dad would serve as pastor. We bought our furniture second hand…and I remember we had two carpets—wall to wall—Mother used one in the summer and the other in the winter…We used the well to preserve food. We’d place it in the well which kept it cold… One thing Reuben hated was wash day. No electric washers in those days, and our wash machine was one you could stand or sit and work, like a hand car.  Pull the top lever with your hand and push with your foot. Some machines worked with a wheel that you turned. When Reub came home for lunch, he’d have to work this machine…[9]

The Soderstrom household was a mere 30 feet from the train tracks; the sights and sounds of the massive metal cars rocking and rolling through town were awesome. The coal cars provided a welcome target; pieces of coal that fell from the heaping mounds in the hopper cars were quickly put to use in the family’s stove.  When the train stopped, it became the covert target of neighborhood boys clambering up the side to toss a few valuable chunks of fuel down to co-conspirators before being chased away by gruff train hands.  

Energetic and industrious, Reuben also took care of the house. With his younger brother Lafe, he installed gas and water lines for a new furnace, stove, kitchen sink, and indoor bathroom. Reuben also built the front porch, dug a partial basement, and installed a concrete foundation and sidewalk. Reuben protected the house, too, waking in the middle of one particular night to the smell of smoke from his father’s kerosene heater; Reub smashed a window and kicked the lantern outside before it set the house on fire.

While Reuben continued his job in the glass factory at the beginning of 1903, his father began working at Lloyd’s Shoe Store for $10 a week.  But John soon quit and opened his own shop in the basement of a saloon at the corner of Main and Park. He also resumed preaching at the local Lutheran Church. “Reub used to carry a hot lunch to Dad everyday, as he, of course, came home everyday for his own lunch,” Olga fondly remembered. “I remember after school I’d have to go to Dad and get twenty-five cents for which I’d buy meat for the next day…Dad used to give us a penny and we’d stop at Hill Brothers Ice Cream Parlor and get either a penny ice cream cone or a penny’s worth of scrap candy—the crumbs of candy left in the tray when the larger pieces had been sold.”[10]

Reub’s brothers soon found work as well. Eldest brother Paul went to work at Ted Taylor’s bicycle shop, maturing into an excellent mechanic. Reub’s younger brother Lafe, meanwhile, developed a love for the earth and worked for a gardener in the summer. Still, the family’s income continued to be undermined by their father’s good intentions and itinerant, wistful ways. It was at this point that Reuben finally confronted his father; Olga writes:    Many times Reub had to pay Dad’s leather bills. Dad was so kind and generous—often put soles and heels on shoes for people who never paid for them. Dad would never bill them. They were poor and he felt that if they had had the money they would have paid him. He used to have a safe, too—for what purpose, I could never guess, for there was never any money in it….At times, Reub also had to pay the rent for the shop…When Dad first opened his own shop downtown, he again became restless and wanted to leave Streator. Reub was about fourteen years old and one day went down to Dad’s shop. He said he talked to him for more than an hour, and counseled him against this constant roaming. Dad was past sixty years old, and nothing could be gained by moving. Dad took Reub’s advice and we stayed in Streator.”[11]

It was then that the Soderstrom family experienced a touchstone moment; fourteen-year old Reuben overruled his own father and became the family leader. Not only had he forged an original path in a new and exciting town, he worked under extraordinary conditions to pay the household bills and taxes, with an unusual strength and courage that inspired his family to follow him all the way to Streator. Though the family’s second son, he was the one who took charge, putting a conclusive end to their itinerancy. Streator was home, and it was here that Reuben Soderstrom first assumed his role as a leader.  

REUBEN’S FIRST STRIKE

On May 1, 1903, the boys at the Streator Bottle Company went on strike. Undoubtedly, 14-year-old Reuben Soderstrom was in the middle of the mix, experiencing the impact of organized labor for the first time. Reuben and his coworkers, boys 12 to 16 years of age, performed all manner of tasks, from keeping the furnaces stoked to operating as “pickers” who picked cooled bottles and placed them into shipping cartons, which they carried to a loading dock. The work could be backbreaking; as Bennett notes, “There was a great deal of human labor and drudgery required to produce bottles.”[12] For this work the boys received at most 75 cents per day—a miserly amount.

Demanding a higher wage, the boys walked out. Although their strike was primarily about pay, it had an ethnic dimension as well. The boys, mostly native-born Americans, were also protesting the loss their jobs to unskilled adult Italian co-workers when production was slow. Not only were the Italians given their jobs, the boys asserted, they were paid 25 cents more per hour for the same work.

Of course, the Italian wage advantage was nothing compared to the salary of the German glass blowers. The artisan twisters averaged eight times what the Italians earned for their normal work.[13] Unlike the boys and Italians, who were at the bottom rung of the laboring classes in Streator, the Germans were strongly organized. The Green Glass Blowers of America was a particularly strong group in Streator, which had hosted the organization’s 1896 convention.[14] As a condition of their employment, the blowers required that their sons serve as their helpers and learn the craft. This further worsened relations within the factory, which was split between Italian men, German families, and a rag-tag army of native-born boys, of which Reuben was a member.[15]

Outrage over these disparities drove the boys to form a committee to present formal grievances to Superintendent Evans of the Streator Bottle Company. At the heart of their demands was a 20 cent per day wage increase. There is no historical record of the boys’ actual meetings amongst themselves, likely held in walks home after exhausting days of work or in the shade of trees along the Vermillion River far out of earshot. Whatever the process, one must admire the gumption of these children as they stood across the street from the bottle factory on May 1—the day immediately following payday—as they were jeered by some workers, ignored by others, and respected by none. For the first time in Reuben’s life he stood up for workplace principle, and it is no small coincidence that this burgeoning self-confidence immediately followed his principled confrontation regarding family stability with his father months earlier.   Superintendent Evans’ response was dismissive, replying that the boys could “stay out and play” without their strike ever affecting production. He said he was fully aware of the wage difference between the boys and the Italians, but that the latter were full-grown men with families to support. He further argued that the boys, unlike the immigrant Italians, had the opportunity to become high-earning glass blowers someday, provided they “behave themselves.”[16]  

The motley group of boys must have wandered town, committed to neither school nor work. They must have strategized, plotted, and stewed about their predicament. Perhaps there was a charter and rules, or a club that most likely devolved at some point to sandlot baseball. At home, they may have been supported or disciplined. Ultimately, the strike lasted less than a week. The boys begrudgingly returned to work without a single concession. They had no underlying union structure or leadership to hold the line against Superintendent Evans. Further, their strike was ill-timed. Glass work was seasonal; factories generally operated from September until June, when the furnaces were relined.[17]

Although it ended in failure, the strike taught Reuben some valuable lessons. First, it demonstrated the importance of solidarity. Had all the workers struck, there might have been a chance for success; without such support the movement was doomed to fail. Further, racial divisions at the factory were toxic and portended many challenges ahead in the American labor movement. Lastly, he learned successful strikers must be armed with patience and prepared for sacrifice and long struggle.  

But mechanization was rapidly changing the glass industry. 1903 also saw the invention of the automatic bottle-making machine, a device making blowers increasingly expendable.[18] The “boys strike” of May was quickly followed by a strike by the skilled blowers that August. Like the boys, the blowers soon went back to work, unable to gain any compromise.[19] But Reuben’s eyes and ears were now open to the world of labor and management, and to the value of solidarity, patience, and strategy. As 1904 began, a series of changes would soon expose him to a more positive, powerful, and practiced type of organized labor, and a man who would become one of the most important influences in young Reuben’s life.

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