“THE PRESS OF PROGRESS”

It was a moment of imagination. Just a year ago, Reuben Soderstrom had inaugurated the opening of Chicago’s newest public housing project, Olander Homes, christened in honor of his lifelong friend and colleague. Reuben was delighted; he saw affordable, publicly-owned housing as a shining example of American opportunity, a symbol of what he called the “press of progress.” For the first time, he argued, workers and progressive thinkers across the nation were awakening to the radical idea that they no longer had to take for granted the intractability of social ills. In speeches and essays throughout 1954, he made his case:

If working people would always bear in mind, when delving into our social problems, the possibility of progress, more of our problems would be solved. Many of us are too inclined to think that the problems which we are accustomed to having with us have to be, never realizing, as we should, that by changing conditions and a few laws, a problem will disappear. Everyone once thought tuberculosis was a disease that man must live with and endure. Today we know that by purifying the water and milk which we drink, and providing sunshine and ventilation in our workshops, tuberculosis will disappear. Once slums were considered an undesirable but inevitable part of a city. Now we are beginning to understand that slums can be cleared if we want them cleared badly enough, and intelligently plan the job to clear them. Things which labor’s opposition are most against are the things that have never been done before. But men of vision, faith and plans, down through the ages, have always advocated and done the things others thought impossible.[1]

The conviction of Reuben’s will and optimism, however, was matched in intensity by the fatalism and fear-mongering of labor’s opposition. From public housing to workplace safety, fair elections to fighting discrimination, Soderstrom would explicitly challenge the notion that the problems of poverty, disease, corruption, and racism were inescapable evils. To the Illinois Federation president, these were man-made problems that could be solved with man-made solutions. Despite strong opposition without and limitations within, Reuben and his ISFL started to change the conversation about labor. He began convincing workers that the problems they faced should be not just abated but eradicated. Fueled by a growing post-war construction boom and accompanying economic optimism, his audience was primed for just such a message. It was the dawn of the American Age, and Reuben proved its ready messenger.

PUBLIC HOUSING AND DESEGREGATION

Public Housing and Private Corruption

Of all the issues Soderstrom tackled in 1954, none encapsulated the aims of labor or the ills it faced better than the fight for affordable housing. Industrial interests, which had long attempted to manage the lives of its workers both on and off the factory floor, vigorously opposed attempts to loosen their control. The company towns of the late 19th and early 20th centuries were perhaps the clearest example of industrial social engineering. These privately owned and operated communities not only kept laborers in debt with exorbitant housing and food prices; they also enabled owners to control the social and private lives of their workers. From the fun they were allowed on Saturday night (saloons were frequently forbidden) to the sermons they received the following Sunday, everything in workers’ private lives was under their employer’s influence. Even in non-company towns, early industrialists managed their employees’ lives through behavior contracts that forbid “undesirable” activities, even when the worker was off the clock.

Although employers had largely abandoned company housing by 1950, they eagerly joined with construction companies and apartment moguls to undo the provisions of Truman’s Housing Act of 1949, which sought to replace decrepit slums with affordable public housing. Such opposition appeared contradictory; after all, the expressed purpose of the company town had been to provide a healthy, safe environment for its workforce. Affordable housing, logically, would be good for business regardless of who was providing it. Reuben made this point himself, writing:

Employers, with all other elements of the community, have a vital interest in good housing. But sometimes perhaps the employer is unable to see how good housing helps him, as well as helping his employees. Here is why the employer has a big stake in elimination of slums and their replacement with dwellings fit for human beings: slums mean bad health. Bad health means inefficiency. No matter how bright and airy working conditions may be, workers who have to live in ill-ventilated, unsanitary homes cannot do the best possible work. Unhealthy living conditions mean more accidents on the job, more absences from the job because of sickness.[2]

Employers’ reflexive opposition to any and all government oversight, however, led them to make common cause with those who had a financial interest in restricting access to safe living conditions. This opposition attacked public housing as “creeping socialism,” with foes like the National Apartment Owners’ Association calling it “a breeder of communism.”[3] Only private companies could adequately provide low-rent housing, conservatives claimed, asserting that “the ultimate responsibility for housing the American people must rest with private enterprise.”[4] These protests were crouched as philosophical objections to the means, not the ends. In the words of R.G. Hughes, President of the National Association of Home Builders, “The home building industry is in accord with the principles and objectives…to reinvigorate the drive to eliminate slums.”[5] Opponents claimed they simply wanted government funds and assistance to go through the more “efficient and effective” hands of private business.

While some of the opposition may have been genuinely motivated by fears of communism and distrust of government, many more used these arguments to cover far darker motives. Profit, not principle, proved to be foremost in the minds of home builders who sought government money for affordable housing projects. In his Weekly Newsletter, Reuben ran a series of stories covering the housing fraud engaged in by private business, exposed by a series of congressional investigations into the Federal Housing Administration (FHA). These abuses, committed by builders who obtained Government-insured FHA loans, ultimately led to the resignation of FHA chief Guy Hollyday. As Reub’s paper detailed in April of that year:

Nationwide housing frauds that might have cost home owners many millions of dollars were revealed as the White House accepted the resignation of the Federal Housing Administration head and the head of the Housing and Home Finance Agency seized FHA files. HHFA Administrator Albert Cole disclosed that many homeowners had been cheated through home improvement loans far in excess of the cost of construction projects…He said that investigation had unearthed 251 cases, with more to come, in which builders got Federal loans far in excess of the cost of multiple-family projects that involved $75,000,000. Cole charged that thousands of homeowners had been cheated out of millions.[6]

Such industry graft hurt renters as well as homeowners. According to ISFL reporting:

Families in some developments have to pay 15 to 25 per cent more rent than they otherwise would because of profiteering on the Federal Housing Administration’s apartment-house construction program. That charge was made by Sen. Harry Byrd (D. Va.), chairman of the Joint Congressional Committee on Nonessential Federal Expenditures…Meantime, Senate Banking Chairman Homer Capehard (R., Ind.) applied a tongue-lashing to the president of the National Association of Home Builders and charged that NAHB members were responsible for abuses in the FHA program.[7]

In the 1950s, the abuse of government assistance deeply undercut claims that private companies could act as a better steward of public funds than the government. This shoddy record was even worse when compared to examples set by many of the officials and agencies who oversaw public housing projects. Foremost among these was Illinois’s own Elizabeth Wood, the crusading Director of the Chicago Housing Authority since 1934. Like Reuben, Wood was a preacher’s child (her parents were missionaries to Japan) whose commitment to social justice and progressive ideals were matched only by her political skill and sterling reputation. She skillfully managed Chicago’s housing projects through careful tenant selection, strict rule enforcement, and the cultivation of a genuine sense of community. The CHA flourished under her leadership; historian Thomas Dyja notes:

Even with all the built-in pitfalls of housing policy, what Elizabeth Wood and the CHA created in the 1930’s and 1940’s succeeded. For those, white and black, coming out of kitchenettes, these first projects were a godsend, clean and safe, with playgrounds for the kids and health clinics on-site. “We felt it was just paradise,” said one resident. Wood and her staff of social workers established each project as “an engine for upward mobility and an incubator of the middle class.” Tenants were carefully screened, and inspectors made annual visits to enforce a list of rules and fines. “If the grass needed cutting and you didn’t cut it, they cut it and they charged you,” recalled residents of Altgeld Gardens. At the same time, positive behavior was reinforced…”Project People was a term of pride,” Wood later said, “Our problem was preventing the tenants from becoming snobbish.”[8]

Race and Riot

Sadly, it was not government malfeasance but the ugly specter of racism that would ultimately prove to be the director’s undoing. In the 1940s, Wood, a committed integrationist, quietly eased segregationist dictates to “follow neighborhood composition” and began mixing in families of different races and ethnicities. Public reaction was swift and violent. When black war veterans John Fort and Letholian Waddell moved in to the Airport Homes housing project on December 5, 1946, they were attacked by white rioters who threw rocks and bricks, overturned cars, and even attacked a squad car. The violence against Waddell and Fort (who was decorated with four battle stars for his wartime heroism) forced the men out of their homes and ultimately lost Mayor Kelly his job. His successor, Martin Kennelly, stripped the CHA of much of its authority, but Wood persevered, doubling down on the fight over integration.

So did the mobs. In 1947, 5,000 white rioters laid waste to Fernwood Park in response to the arrival of eight black families. A race riot in Cicero in the summer of 1951 saw 4,000 white men and women assail the apartment of WWII veteran and Fisk University graduate Harvey Clark Jr. with stones and fire over the course of three days, until the Illinois National Guard was finally able to restore the peace. Despite the fact that the CHA played no role in the Cicero incident (Clark was renting from a private apartment owner, not a housing project), Wood became a personal target of white rage and a convenient scapegoat for City Hall. By the fall of 1953, a third of all Chicago cops were assigned to some racial conflict as tensions continued to mount. No one of color was safe, even in houses of worship; black Catholic parishioners living in white neighborhoods had to be escorted by policemen to receive the Eucharist, and in May of 1954 three black women were severely beaten by a white gang for the temerity of attending Mass at a traditionally white church.[9]

All this violence culminated in the months-long siege of black families living in the Trumbull Park Homes at 105th and Bentley. For over a year these men, women and children (26 in all) were terrorized in what local papers described as “an unending series of riots and disturbances (that) has necessitated the continued detail of as many as 3,000 police to the area at an accumulated cost of more than $5,000,000 to the taxpayers.”[10] Many within the black community suspected this “protective” presence was actually a calculated attempt by police to manufacture outrage from neighboring communities, who were told to blame any rise in crime on the increased demand for patrols of Trumbull Park. White leaders did little to calm their communities. “If the police would crack down at Trumbull Homes and enforce the law,” Rev. King Range of Range Memorial Baptist Church told his flock, “order would be restored and the police returned to their beats. We seldom see a squad car in my neighborhood.”[11]

If the intent was to create an intolerable situation, it worked. In September of 1954, Elizabeth Wood was forced out of the position she had helped create, blamed by the CHA board and in the press for “one of the most disgraceful situations involving race frictions that has ever occurred in an American community.”[12]

Reuben Responds

In the early 1950s, President Soderstrom turned more urgently to the insidious presence of racial discrimination in labor. In the last General Assembly, his ISFL introduced the Equal Job Opportunity bill, HB 861, legislation which was far ahead of its time—like the Fair Employment Practices Commission bill Reub championed in 1951—and sought to bring an end to racial discrimination in the workplace. As Soderstrom explained upon receiving the Chicago Journeymen Barbers’ Civic Achievement Award for his work fighting prejudice that year:

Illinois Labor is determined to do everything in its power to help working people, regardless of race, color, or religion, to win for themselves and their families a greater share of the wealth which they produce. The Illinois State Federation of Labor is also determined to eliminate all misunderstanding and all opposition and all prosecution so that we can work together, in closer unity and more unitedly than ever before, for the things that are right. Work together to usher into existence that period of human brotherhood of all mankind.[13]

Reuben refused to let the General Assembly’s failure phase him, charging forward into the political storm of racial politics to advocate for fairness and justice for all. The “Five Point Plan” he put forward at the 1954 Illinois State Labor Convention included the passage of his proposed Equal Opportunity Act as a vital legislative goal for organized labor. As he told those in attendance:

This proposal is designed to eliminate bigotry, intolerance and discrimination with respect to race, color, creed and national origin…It deserves serious attention on the part of our delegates. With proper planning, work, and enthusiasm it might be enacted in the next session of the General Assembly.[14]

With respect to the housing projects, however, Reuben appears to have viewed race as a red herring, an ignorance that the enemies of public housing exploited to sour working men and women on policies that were in their own economic interests to support. Reub’s response to this problem was a classic example of his beliefs and leadership style.

Consequently, Reuben set about convincing his membership of the righteousness of desegregation. In his Weekly Newsletter, Soderstrom detailed the benefits that ending segregation would bring to all workers, building an argument that the end of discrimination was not only morally good but in labor’s self-interest. He touted “gains for Negro unionists” as an unqualified good, impressing upon his audience that the AFL itself had labeled “the fight against intolerance and discrimination (as) one against injustice.”[15] Echoing the American Federation’s support in his newsletter, he reprinted President Meany’s call for equality:

We in the A.F. of L. are determined to do everything in our power to help all workers, regardless of race, color or religion…The American trade union is committed to this cause. We have helped to prove that tolerance works. Wherever racial and religious discrimination has been eliminated by community or trade union action, wherever segregation has been outlawed by state and local legislation, the results have been highly beneficial to all concerned.[16]

The AFL credo was itself a call not only for equality but integration. Again quoting Meany, Reub reprinted:

One man’s slavery is a threat to the freedom of every other human being. It took us a long time to learn that truth, but today it provides the moral force for our whole effort to attain world peace, freedom, and security. That effort can be undermined by the perpetuation of racial and religious bigotry and discrimination here at home. The American people cannot proclaim to the world that we believe that all men are created free and equal unless and until we practice what we believe…our unions have, for the most part, come to recognize that segregation is also a form of discrimination, and in many communities the first non-segregated gathering within the memory of their citizens has been the local union meeting.[17]

Right next to these explicit AFL calls for desegregation, Reuben placed articles in support of public housing. As he had done with desegregation, Soderstrom made clear the AFL position, chronicling the organization’s struggle in Congress and its insistence that 135,000 housing units be built yearly, as called for in the 1949 Housing Act.[18] He also reprinted, in full, essays by officials such as AFL Housing Committee Chairman Harry Bates that labeled efforts to replace public housing with 100% insured FHA loans as a scheme to benefit builders, not those in need. As Bates reasoned:

There is not the slightest reason to believe that this program will ever make housing available to even hundreds of low-income families. Yet there is need for decent housing for hundreds of thousands of such families…Relying almost entirely on this untried and probably unworkable program to meet the urgent housing needs of low-income families, the President grudgingly proposed only a token 35,000-unit program for public housing. Yet in the test of actual experience, the low-rent public housing program has made good homes available to hundreds of thousands of low-income families at rents they can afford in communities throughout the nation. It is the only program which can provide decent homes for families in the lowest income brackets.[19]

By printing articles promoting public housing alongside calls for racial integration during the height of the Chicago desegregation fight, Reuben was linking the two labor causes in the minds of his readership. He wanted them to see the benefits of desegregation and public housing as one in the same. Furthermore, by framing the positions featured not just as his own but also the AFL’s, Reuben hoped to give them added weight.

The AFL Executive Council did indeed believe affordable housing to be an issue of the upmost importance. That February they met in Miami to outline a 4-point housing program that included a call for at least 600,000 units of low-rent public housing in the next three years.[20] In May the group met again in Soderstrom’s own Chicago to issue a new call for congressional action, setting goals of 200,000 low-rent units in the next year for low-income families, direct low-interest rate loans for cooperative non-profit rental housing, and a commitment to slum clearance and redevelopment (not just “renewal,” which the AFL viewed as slums by a different name). Recalling FHA abuses, the statement they issued after their Chicago conference read in part:

Public interest must come first in America’s national housing program. No government agency, charged with a public trust, can be permitted to become an exclusive caterer to commercial profit, which the FHA has become. We ask that labor and the consumer be given participation in the administration of the FHA.[21]

While Reuben grounded his arguments for housing reform in AFL positions and policies, he made no attempt to hide his own positions or beliefs on the matter. To Soderstrom, the best vision of what public housing and desegregation could or should look like was embodied by Olander Homes, the housing project named after his old friend and colleague. He repeatedly returned to it as a template of what labor should strive for, using the project’s “Let’s Get Acquainted” festival in August of 1954 as a perfect example of a sort of urban utopia for workers:

The party…was a happy occasion for Olander tenants and an object lesson in brotherhood for all Chicago to ponder. Tenants at Olander Homes represent some sixteen different nationalities and races. They are all Americans who trace their ancestry from Italy, Poland, Ireland, England, Bohemia, Sweden, Germany, Czechoslovakia, Abyssinia, the Philippine Islands, Mexico, Puerto Rico and Austria. They are Caucasians, Negroes, Filipinos and Asiatics. Some are Protestants, some Roman Catholics, some Jews, and some adhere to Asiatic religions. But they don’t dwell on their differences. The important thing is: they are neighbors, and they like each other.[22]

LABOR AND SAFETY

Headed Down the Highway

Part of the focus on public housing in 1954 came from fears that construction simply wasn’t keeping pace with demand; as the AFL Executive Council warned in their Chicago statement:

Housing construction in the first four months of 1954 was at the ratio of 856 units compared with each thousand last year, and barely touched the annual average of the past five years. Yet in the course of these five years our population has grown by 11 million. Thousands of new plants have been built and whole new industrial areas have sprung up, clamoring for new housing.[23]

This ravenous need for homes helped fuel a building boom. While AFL data showed declines in housing construction, the U.S. Commerce and Labor departments reported record overall construction in the first three months of 1954, beating the previous year’s first quarter outlays by over $100 million.[24] By September of that year private outlays jumped to five percent over 1953.[25]

While some of this increase came from an expansion of private residential housing, here was another factor that was beginning to jolt the American economy—highway work. Highways had been a part of the American experience since 1916, when the Federal Aid Road Act first provided matching funds to states to create and connect their major roadways. Over the years this somewhat messy patchwork had grown in fits and starts. When Eisenhower became president in 1952, however, the former general brought with him the vision of a nation intimately connected by a network of interstate highways just like the ones he had seen in Europe during the Second World War. Although ostensibly for defense (Eisenhower’s Secretary of Defense was in fact the former President of General Motors), most saw this system of roads as a way to connect American culture and commerce on an unprecedented level, and everyone saw its potential. By 1954 many states, including Illinois, began building in preparation. Roadway construction became so lucrative In Illinois that many state employees, including Assistant Director for State Public Works, Thomas Humphris, quit their posts to work for road construction companies.[26] While the states salivated, the President began laying the framework for what would by 1956 become the Federal Aid Highway Act. One of his biggest concerns was safety. Already, there were concerns that roadway accidents incurred a dangerously high death rate. In January of 1954 the National Safety Council reported that the previous year’s Christmas traffic season had been one of the deadliest in history, with 532 roadway deaths.[27] Over the last two years alone, traffic fatalities totaled 38,000 a year, with more than 1,350,000 injuries (100,000 of which resulted in permanent maiming).[28]

Fearing government regulation, automobile companies attempted to affix blame on driver behavior as the root cause of highway accidents, specifically what would be described decades later as “road rage.” In an early media blitz, the Inter-Industry Highway Safety Committee (an auto industry organization) headlined an ad campaign telling drivers, whom they described as “Emily Post as a host but a heel at the wheel,” to “make courtesy your code of the road.”[29] It was a brilliant (if disingenuous) move; creating a campaign that focused on driver behavior, they created the impression that drivers, not the safety design of the cars themselves, were responsible for vehicular death rates, letting car companies completely off the hook. In the words of IIHSC chairman W.F. Hufstader, “The real solution to the highway safety problem lies in the mind of the individual.”[30]

Eisenhower, however, wasn’t convinced. He wanted a comprehensive approach to this safety problem before the rollout of his new Interstate Highway System. To that end, in February of 1954 the President convened a massive White House conference on highway safety, with officials from every state representing seven core interests, including labor.

Governor Stratton asked Reuben to help represent Illinois at this conference, and for good reason. As ISFL president, he had long been an outspoken advocate for safety legislation. Moreover, Soderstrom had personally experienced the cost of unsafe roads when his brother, Lafe, was killed in a traffic accident. This conference gave Reub a chance to make a meaningful difference in the lives of his membership, while helping to prevent the same kind of tragedy that took his best friend and brother. Soderstrom accepted the call.[31]

In the end, the three-day conference produced the first-ever permanent advisory group to provide a “direct line of communication from the White House to the grass-roots.”[32] While the initial focus was primarily directed towards driver and pedestrian behavior, Reuben and his labor compatriots were able to raise public awareness on the importance of automobile manufacturer safety as well. An increased push for “safety-tested” cars emerged. Union mechanics in 1954 donated their time to groups like the Lions Club to offer “safety lane checks” where automobile owners could have their cars inspected for free.[33] To combat drunken driving, Soderstrom and the delegates considered calls for increasing punishments from fines to jail time.[34]

Carl Soderstrom’s Reelection

While highway safety was important to Reuben, his main goal remained keeping laborers safe at work. In 1953 Reuben and his son Carl, now a State Representative, had introduced HB 20, an innocuous piece of legislation that sought to promote best safety practices among workers based on research conducted by the state’s Department of Labor. Industry, led by the Illinois Manufacturers’ Association, fought back tooth and nail, screaming that such a program was a socialist infringement of their rights, complete with dire predictions that allowing IDOL instructors on the factory floor to conduct safety classes today would invariably lead to state control of the production line before week’s end. With a combination of manufactured outrage and money, the IMA and its allies were able to defeat the bill, with Carl only able to pass legislation creating a congressional committee to explore safety issues.

Not satisfied with the bill’s defeat, anti-labor interests set their sights on the bill’s author. In 1952, the Republican Carl faced no primary opposition. In 1954, in contrast, Carl’s 39th district became the most contested in the entire state, with nine other Republicans battling for the chance to claim one of the district’s three seats in November[35] Carl received quite a shock when, despite being the only incumbent, he came in second in the primary race.[36]

The blows didn’t stop there. In an unusual move, the Republicans announced their intent to field three candidates in the General Election. By law, Republicans could hold only two of the three seats, so the decision ensured that at least one of their own would face defeat in November. On its face, the move made no sense; by splitting their vote among three candidates, the Republicans risked losing one of their seats to the Democrats, who would only be fielding two. For Carl’s enemies, however, the potentially suicidal nature of such a move was the very point. They were sending a clear message: It would be better to have a Democrat in La Salle’s seat than a Soderstrom.

Reuben, characteristically, responded to these attacks by doubling down. First, he called on friends from every corner to help in his son’s re-election fight. To Soderstrom, there was no doubt as to who was behind these efforts; as he wrote to Verna Albert, a friend on the LaSalle Trades and Labor Council:

Beyond a shadow of a doubt my son, Carl W. Soderstrom, is now the ablest State Representative from the county of LaSalle. Big business, corporation executives and rich reactionaries are opposing him because he is my son, and a symbol of labor in the General Assembly. Please move heaven and earth to re-elect him. He cannot win without special help in the west end of LaSalle County.[37]

When it came to the safety benefits he’d sought, Reuben didn’t back down or pare back his expectations; he expanded them. In speech after speech across Illinois and beyond, Soderstrom called for new, expanded worker safety protections. First, he called for the radical expansion of the Workmen’s Compensation and Occupational Disease Acts. As he explained in a speech that January at the Fifth Annual Central Labor Union Conference, held at the University of Illinois Institute of Labor and Industrial Relations:

There is no comprehensive and systematic statutory provision in Illinois for the protection of working people against loss of earnings due to non-occupational sickness or accidents…Private insurance is, of course, available to the individual to cover non-occupational illness or accidents—but here the benefits and protection is uneven, unequal and sometimes uncertain. Only a portion of hospital, doctor and medical bills are paid. A comparison of that situation with the Workmen’s Compensation Act reveals the tremendous advantages contained in the Illinois law. The injured wage-earner does not supplement these expenses with any financial contribution of his own. His doctor bills, hospital bills and medical bills are paid, not for six months or any other time limit. They are paid by the employer under the provisions of the Illinois law until he is cured.[38]

This was nothing short of revolutionary. By calling for the current worker protections to extend to non-work related health issues, Reub sought a public solution to the critical problem of weak bargaining power individuals encountered when trying to purchase insurance on their own. Discounted bills for predetermined amounts of time were not enough, he argued; the emerging health care crisis could not be solved unless the average citizen’s medical bills were covered in full until he or she had fully recovered.

Reuben didn’t stop there, however. After providing a laundry list of improvement and expansions he and his ISFL would seek in the coming General Assembly, Soderstrom turned to the legislative process of amending Workmen’s Compensation and Occupational Disease itself. Every year, Reub said, he and his ISFL faced off against industry and the IMA, clawing for every incremental increase. It was time, he argued, to end the annual stand-off once and for all with automatic increases to end the “continual bickering in the legislature.” Industry and its allies, of course, protested that such ideas were dangerous and untested. Passing such legislation, they warned, would expose the people of Illinois to potentially disastrous experimentation. To those critics, Reub responded:

The things that labor’s opposition consider impossible are the things that have never been done before. But for ages men of vision, faith and plans have advocated and done the things others thought impossible. From Samuel Gompers and John Williams to William Green and George Meany our labor history tells the story of humanity’s march forward because of men of courage and plans lived and worked. Those who do not dream and plan for progress are defeated before they begin, but those who see a prospect of influencing the employer and the Legislature for better things ahead, work to change undesirable conditions and bring about a better life and a better day![39]

Soderstrom carried his call for expanded safety all the way to the 1954 Illinois State Federation of Labor Convention. He made headlines with his keynote address, fighting the IMA’s attempts to neuter the Illinois Department of Labor with a proposal to create a new division within the IDOL dedicated to promoting and monitoring safety. He vowed to fight in the coming Assembly for an appropriation big enough to hire at least 12 safety engineers, proclaiming “there are too many casualties of a preventable nature incurred by wage-earners annually, and legislation is needed to bring about improvements in this safety field.[40]” He also declared that he would push for a boost in Workmen’s Compensation benefits from $28.50 to $38, raising it to half the average wage of $76 per week. In his audacious proposals the ISFL President made it clear to any and all opposition: he was not going away.

Labor’s Worth

In all his calls for expanded safety and compensation, Reuben continually drew his audience’s attention to the long road labor had traveled and the unlikely odds it had already beaten. In a Chicago speech to the Flint Glass Workers Convention in 1954, Reub began by recalling his own experiences as a child laborer on the factory floor:

Some 40 odd years ago, in the State of Illinois there wasn’t any labor legislation on the statute books. As a matter of fact, no child labor law of any consequence was in existence at that time. I worked two years in a glass factory and one year in a print shop before the eight hour day was established for children. I recall my hours of labor started at six in the morning and finished at six in the evening. When the eight hour day for children under sixteen was established I was called upon to work a split shift. I started my day at six in the morning and worked four hours on and four hours off. I returned at two in the afternoon and worked till six in the evening. I was so accustomed to a long work day that I hardly knew what to do with the four hours of freedom which was assigned in the middle of the day.[41]

That eight-hour work day and the subsequent protections children enjoyed in the workplace didn’t appear out of thin air or industrialist largesse, Soderstrom said. They were hard-fought concessions painfully wrung from owners and managers by organized labor, and they were part of a bigger plan to secure rights for all those working men and women who had been harmed or marginalized in the course of their work:

In addition to child labor protection the Illinois State Federation of Labor had worked out some 47 bills. It was merely a program of proposed legislation. Labor had high hopes, of course, that one day that legislation would be enacted into law. They didn’t even take care of blind people 40 odd years ago in the State of Illinois. A blind person would sit on the street corner with six pencils and a tin cup and an instrument to eke out a livelihood…There wasn’t any protection for widowed mothers either. If a breadwinner died and there were five or six children, the courts had a fashion of adopting these children to five or six different families…

We had no protection in the field of wages either. There was no collection wage law on the statute books and there was no legal way to collect wages of employees. I thought the coal operators were the worst offenders. They oftentimes worked their people two weeks and frequently at the end of that period they would say there wasn’t any money to meet the payroll, but if they worked another two weeks perhaps at the end of 30 days they could be paid. At the end of 30 days the company was usually bankrupt and busted…[42]

Now, because of the ISFL and its work, those people and more enjoyed protection under the law. The blind and widowed had pensions, as did the elderly, enabling them to live and raise their children in dignity. Workers could have the wages they earned ensured by the state without cost to them. They could assemble peacefully and speak freely to bargain for a better wage thanks to the Injunction Limitation Act. They were guaranteed one day rest in seven. And of course, they would be compensated if they were injured on the job or grew sick as a result of their work. None of these achievements, Soderstrom reminded , would have been possible without the ISFL:

We have actually changed the state from a very backward commonwealth into a very progressive one. Today Illinois is regarded as one of the leading states in the field of labor and social legislation. Glass Workers unions affiliated with the Illinois State Federation of Labor helped to bring about the enactment of this program of labor bills. So the next time someone asks you “what have your labor unions ever done?” do not question that person’s lack of information but take him in hand and open his mind to the greatest power for good that the world’s workers have ever known.[43]

This was the message that Soderstrom drove home to union men and women across the state. In speech after speech, Reub charged union men and women to proudly proclaim, whenever challenged, exactly what organized labor had done for them. As he told the Operating Engineers at a Chicago dinner that October:

May I request you, the next time someone asks you what labor unions have ever done, not to pity that person’s lack of information but to take him hand in hand…compare the work day of 45 years ago with today. Show him the teamster who slept in the hayloft, too tired and weary to go home for a few hours rest. Show him the coalminers who labored a 14 and 16 hour work day…Show him the printer—my own organization—who worked a 12 and 14 hour day on morning papers…The same is true of the carpenter, the machinists, and even your own organization. The eight-hour day is a fact, and some of the organized trades are now discussing a seven or even a six-hour day so that the worker may enjoy to a greater degree the good things of life.

If the union’s successful efforts in reducing the work day is not sufficient excuse for our existence, you can show him how the workers’ agitation gave us our free school system, with its free school books. How we raised wages and established a vast chain of benefits; how we forced the employer to safeguard life and limb, how shop conditions have been bettered by men standing together and protecting each other from blacklisting.

Show him how the labor unions spend their dollars for labor laws that benefit the organized and unorganized alike. Show him how the unions were the first to start a fight and direct legislation against child labor and scores of other reforms. And more than all this combined, you can show him the effect of unionism on the character of the men—how it develops independence and manhood, how it equips men to assert themselves instead of standing cowed and servile with cap in hand before the employer…Upward was the trend out of slavery and bondage until today we stand almost sixteen million strong with a representative in the President’s cabinet and Governors and statesmen glad to say they once belonged to a trade union.[44]

“The Road to Peace”

Of all the types of safety that concerned Reub, none mattered more than the safety of the nation. In July of 1953 the Korean War had finally come to an end, and Americans began to realize that the struggle against Communism would not take the form of a new world war—not immediately, at least. Instead of an active, “hot” conflict like the one against Nazi Germany and imperial Japan, the struggle with Soviet Russia and its allies would be an indirect “cold” war waged through proxies. The main reason for the difference between this conflict and the last was the looming presence of the atomic bomb. As Reub wrote:

Through the media of motion picture reels on April 1, 1954, the public of the United States witnessed for the first time the horrible and terrific spectacle of the first hydrogen bomb explosion. The central fireball approximately three miles wide which speedily breaks into a deadly and terrific mushroom was but a catastrophic and tremendous warning of what will come unless the world decides to solve its problems at the bargaining table.[45]

America and her enemies needed to learn the language of compromise and accommodation, Soderstrom believed. And who could be a better teacher than organized labor, that democratic body which had through trial and tribulation perfected the skill of wringing rights for its people from an often unreasonable opponent through tough and persistent negotiation? This was the case Reuben had been making for years, and it was in no small part because of his writings and speeches linking American labor and international peace that the AFL Executive Board decided to send Reuben to represent the organization at the 69th Annual Convention of The Trades and Labor Congress of Canada. It was an unusual act; as ISFL Secretary Stanley Johnson later explained:

Usually fraternal delegates given out-of-country assignments are selected from International Unions. This is the first time that the officers of the American Federation of Labor have appointed a representative of the Illinois State Federation of Labor to serve in an international capacity. President Soderstrom was singled out and selected because of the great amount of work he has performed and the heavy responsibility which he has borne…[46]

Reuben’s work and reputation made him an easy choice; he did not disappoint. That August, Reuben and his daughter Jeannie loaded up the family car and motored up to Regina, Saskatchewan, where the convention was to be held. They arrived the Sunday before and stayed as guests of the Canadian Congress before Reuben gave his address, entitled “The Road to Peace,” on the Convention’s opening day. As Reuben approached the podium, he thanked the Canadian delegates and officials for their welcome and briefly recounted the long American-Canadian history of union collaboration before he came to heart of his speech—his roadmap for peace:

The labor movement of the United States is not only apprehensive of the uncertain economy which lies ahead but is also afraid of what might happen if the kind of tensions there are in the world today keep growing and atomic weapons and other instruments of destruction get stronger and deadlier. Our labor leaders as well as our diplomats and statesmen believe that one way to prevent the outbreak of small wars which could lead to big wars is through collective defense – through the United Nations. What I think the labor movement would like to see done is to have all civilized and peace-loving nations of the Earth get together and deal with the causes of war. Arrange for peaceful settlements of disputes and raise the standard of life and labor throughout the world so as to eliminate huge, depressed populations with nothing to lose on whom aggressors, from either the right or left, can play…

The forces of reaction have been noticeably active and in the ascendency in the United States during the past year. Their political policy, thus far, is to do nothing – and in the event they are pressed hard, to do very little! This is definitely not the way to head off the danger of Marxism. Marxism is not the solution to industrial problems and unrest in a workable, free democracy such as ours. But reasonable social progress is a practical solution—and the American Federation of Labor includes in its hopes, aspirations and plans a lot of social progress! Intelligent, thoughtful, fighting trade unionism is for reasonable social progress because that is an acceptable answer to our problems and a sensible solution or answer to the threat of communism.

The capitalistic system of the United States is not a bad system, but it needs to be improved and perfected. Unions must become strong enough to compel employers and corporations to establish and improve our social welfare plans to better protect the worker and his family…Labor is opposed to the communistic scheme, to bring about the collapse of communism. That is why intelligent leaders of the A. F. of L. lambast and expose short-sighted business people and industrial overlords who do not subscribe to the labor movement’s work of humanizing capitalism by eliminating poverty and abolishing human misery[47]

In one fell swoop, Reuben firmly established the union mission of “humanizing capital” as the greatest weapon in the West’s fight against communism. Equally as important, by naming the reactionary forces and their refusal to address the issues causing communism, he openly accused “politicians who support oppressive laws and who want to repeal the social gains of the last half century are playing into Soviet revolutionary hands.”[48] Just as he had at the start of the year, Reuben called for ambitious –even audacious—solutions to big problems. He wanted to eliminate poverty, abolish misery, and raise the state of laborers not just in America or Canada, but around the globe. It was a compelling speech, breathtaking in its structure and simplicity, yet inspiring in its articulation.

A YEAR IN REVIEW

Despite all the strife and struggles of 1954, Reuben ended the year on a high note. His son, Carl, won re-election handily, with his 27,460 votes beating out both Republican challengers (former Sheriff Clayton Harbeck won 25,130 votes, Michael Signorella, 21,844).[49] While Republicans still controlled both houses of the Illinois General Assembly, the labor-friendly Democrats made significant gains. Nationally, Reuben’s friend and best ally in the US Senate, Paul Douglas, whipped his Republican opponent by more than 240,000 votes[50] The coming year looked increasingly hopeful, not to mention a validation of his ambition and optimism.

Still, Reuben took the success and subsequent cheers in stride. As Reuben told the Journeymen Barbers while accepting their Civic Achievement Award, “My aunt used to say that flattery was like perfume—something that should be sniffed and not swallowed.”[51] Still, Reuben admitted to the chuckling crowd, he couldn’t help but enjoy the praise, at least a little, because of his human nature. He continued:

I think we are all human. We have our faults and we all need a check on ourselves of some kind. Every human being has his likes and dislikes and favoritisms because he is human. It is human failing. The employer is no exception. The employer requires a check on him the same as anyone else. If he didn’t have a check on him of some kind he would allow his likes and dislikes and prejudices to run away with his judgment at times, the same as would the employee. The labor union, therefore, is a very good check on the employee and the employer, and the intelligent employer knows it, and appreciates it, too…

I honestly believe it would be the ruination of most employers if they were permitted to have their own way altogether—and we propose to save them from that ruination by keeping a check on them through our labor unions, and also keeping a check on them through legislative enactment.[52]

There was no doubt that Reuben would be “keeping a check” on business for many years to come.

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