THE CRACKLE OF THE NEW CENTURY

Reuben began 1906 with a sense of excitement and ambition, his trademark optimism reflecting the mood of the nation. From its art and literature to the progressive politics that followed the Gilded Age, the United States was growing by leaps and bounds. He soon set out from the Streator train depot to experience the crackle of the new century in cities like Chicago, St. Louis, and Madison, working as a barnstorming linotype operator with eyes and ears wide open.

A Young America

The America of 1906 was fast-paced, and 18-year-old Reuben wasted no energy slipping into the quick current of the times. He was in many ways a reflection of the growing nation, home to many different cultures, religions, and traditions tied together by love of country. “Patriotism was a real thing in those days,” Olga writes. “There was a real feeling by everyone for love of country, and we had pride in being Americans. It was so much a personal thing, because it was a personal expression of love for our country. Patriotism was not legislated like today, like saying the pledge at every meeting…it becomes so commonplace that it loses its meaning. In the old days, it was something special, almost like a prayer.”[1]

The American melting pot produced new advances in art, literature, and technology. Authors such as Jack London, Alice Hegan Rice, and Owen Wister told distinctly American tales of wilderness, passion, and transformation. “Happiness novels” (forerunners of modern romance novels) dominated book sales, appearing alongside investigative works like Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, published that year. Painters like Winslow Homer and Frederic Remington captured American life on canvas, while architect Frank Lloyd Wright perfected the iconic “Prairie House” in Chicago. Automobile sales swept the nation, prompting 15 states to post speed limits of 20 miles per hour by 1906. This new mode of transportation spurred new fashions, from caps with goggles and linen dusters for men to shorter skirts for women to accommodate stepping into cars and trolleys. Man flew for the first time at Kitty Hawk; industrialization and mass distribution made the Sears Roebuck and Montgomery Ward catalogs the most read books outside of the Bible. American politics had also taken a positive turn in the form of the new president. Teddy Roosevelt had a reputation as a man of action, resigning from his post as Assistant Secretary of the Navy at the start of the Spanish-American War to form the First U.S. Volunteer Cavalry Regiment, popularly known as the “Rough Riders.” As a New York City police commissioner and state governor, he made a name for himself by fighting corruption and reforming government. This earned him more than a few enemies, who engineered his spot as McKinley’s running mate in 1900 as a way to rid themselves of him. Their plans backfired when McKinley’s assassination in September 1901 led to Roosevelt’s swearing in as the 26th President of the United States.

Reuben Soderstrom was an early and ardent admirer of Teddy Roosevelt. At 42, Roosevelt was America’s youngest President, and his term in office was largely defined by his maverick spirit and intellectual vigor. He was known to read two or three books a week, and wrote over 150,000 letters and twenty volume’s worth of books during his lifetime. Even more importantly for the nation, Roosevelt was the first progressive President. Early in his career he had read and was greatly affected by muckraker Jacob Riis’s How the Other Half Lives, which exposed the condition of New York City’s impoverished. He believed deeply that those who had benefited financially from a free society had an obligation to give back to it. “We demand that big business give the American people a square deal!” Roosevelt announced in 1902. He soon began breaking big-business trusts, establishing clear standards of purity for food and medicines, and working with unions like the United Mine Workers of America. By 1906, Roosevelt was well into a second term he had decisively won two years prior.

Brimming with new ideas, powerful leaders and luminaries, and infused with deep patriotism, America in 1906 was a world full of potential and possibility. It seemed especially so to the teenage Reuben, whose tutelage under John Williams had made him increasingly aware of a much bigger world just outside, just beyond his reach. For the first time since he called Streator home, Reub yearned for the road.

Reuben the Reporter, Editor, and Linotypist

At the print shop, Reuben quickly moved beyond setting type. He started to write for the Streator Independent Times. It was Mrs. Fred Leroy, the paper’s editor and “a very remarkable lady,” who first gave Reub this opportunity. “Once in a while when she ran out of subject matters for the editorial column, she’d come down and ask me to write the editorial that day, and so I’d sit down and do it.” Reuben later recounted. “I always had something current that was interesting for the public to read, and I could do that work very well. Folks have said that I’m a good speaker, but I think that I’m a better writer.”[2]

It was about this time that Reuben began to work as a reporter as well. He covered prize fights, which flourished in the region after Governor Yates ordered the closing of all professional fight clubs in Chicago.[3] This was not only a huge responsibility but a thrill for the young man who had gotten into more than a few fights himself on the factory floor. At that time, fights that didn’t end with a knockout had no official winner or loser; it was instead left to reporters like Reub, who called the fights based on their own opinion and experience. Reub followed every block and blow with rapt attention, and often produced columns without a byline or extra compensation. The chance to see his words in print and call the fight was its own reward.

Of course, Reub continued to spend most of his day glistening with sweat as he worked the linotype machine. He ran back and forth into the loud press room to see the broadsheets roll off the press to be rapidly cut and folded. It was Reuben’s work as a linotype operator that provided the lion’s share of his family’s income, and he made enough to buy them some nice items. As Olga remembered:

I had seen a fake fur coat that I wanted so badly. I asked Mother if I could have it, she said to ask Reub. I remember I went to where he worked, he was running the linotype machine there and he was working right in front of the shop. Both the machine and Reub were in full view right behind the huge glass pane window that made up the store front. I went in, and I remember he put his arms around me and I asked him for the coat. He took his purse out, gave me the ten dollars, and I went home a happy girl.[4]

Celebrations In Streator

1906 was indeed a happy time for the Soderstrom family. “Christmas, New Years, the Fourth of July and Labor Day were always times of big celebration,” Olga remembered fondly. Of the winter holidays, she said:

Dad was the one that made Christmas a real occasion…he would decorate the Christmas tree and little gifts would be put under the tree. No electric lights in those days, but candles (such a fire hazard) would be put on the tree and lighted. We always received our gifts on Christmas Eve after we came home from church. Dad would string popcorn to wind around the tree. The Swedish custom for giving gifts was to come and leave the gifts at your door, knock and then hurry away.

New Year’s too was a big occasion. Mother entered into this spirit, and prepared many special foods, such as pig feet pickled in brine along with pork and heart, and tongue. Also we had head cheese which was jelled and could be sliced. There would be home-made bread, cake and pie all set out on the table and each could eat at will. The boys always had guests with them.[5]

Reuben’s guest that year was his pretty Scottish girlfriend Jeanne, with whom he would spend his free time, if and when they could find it. Reub worked from first light to close, and Jeanne routinely worked as a telephone operator until ten at night during the week and past midnight on the weekends. Still, Reub made a point to be there, waiting for her when she got off work so he could walk her home. They spent many celebrations together, including the Fourth of July, a very big event in those early days. “Aunt Emma Lind and Grandpa would come down on the Fourth of July from Chicago,” Olga tells us, “and Auntie Lind would give me a quarter, which was a lot in those days. Flags were always flown on the Fourth…there would be parades, speeches, carnivals in town and activities for all.”[6]

Despite his happiness in Streator, Reub was engrossed by the wider world just outside. He knew he had to travel, and it was here, among the flags and celebration, that Reub finally broke the news to Jeanne: he was going to be a barnstormer.

BARNSTORMING THE MIDWEST

To become fully admitted to the International Typographical Union (ITU), Reub spent the next several years barnstorming the Midwest, learning the trade in different shops and taking his education in labor to a whole new level. In every city he encountered new ideas, inventions, and leaders, each of whom had a unique vision for America. But Reuben would always return to Streator to visit his parents, brothers and sister Olga.

“Owning the Job”

In the world of newspaper printing, barnstorming, also known as tramp printing, involved traveling members and apprentices of the ITU who traveled to multiple, often distant newspaper print houses (“barns”) to run the linotype machines. Barnstorming was not only encouraged but expected of young printers, and allowed young printers such as Reuben to adopt and share new techniques in new towns. Barnstormers substituted for veteran printers, who got valuable time to step away from their jobs without losing them (similar to modern vacation time). Most importantly, the entire practice reinforced the radical idea that a printer owned his job regardless of where he practiced it. As Reuben explained:

The printers are free, they can select a substitute. If there’s a substitute around, you don’t even have to consult the authority in the composing room. If you walked into a print shop and you carried a card and I knew you were a competent printer, I could say, “Well, represent my job. Sit down here and go to work until I come back.’’ And that’s all there is to it. You sit down and go to work. There’s no need to consult anybody but me. And you can stay there until I come back.[7]

And therein laid the unmatched power of the ITU, one of the finest and best organized unions in the country; if a typographer owned his job, then the union contract was the all-important proof of ownership. According to Reuben such a contract was a worker’s property, with “a personal value as real as a deed to a house or a title to a car.”[8] Eager for a deed of his own, Reub set out on the road.

The Brothers Soderstrom Hit Chicago

In 1906, Reub boarded the train at the Streator depot and moved to Chicago. Nearly inseparable, his brothers Lafe and Paul moved with him, waving goodbye to their parents and younger siblings Joe and Olga as the train pulled out of Streator depot. In Chicago, the three happy brothers shared a room in their Aunt Emma Lind’s well-occupied apartment which, in addition to the brothers, included cousin Jenna, the adopted Tina and old Grandpa Anders Soderstrom. The lively family spent nights around the piano in the parlor singing songs. Paul soon found work as an automobile mechanic, and Lafe continued his apprenticeship in a small print shop.

Living together in bustle and grandness of the nation’s Second City, the Soderstrom boys soon concocted dreams to match. Aged 20, 18, and 16, (Paul, Reub and Lafe, respectively) the young men must have had the time of their lives walking the streets of the big city, paying to see boxing fights, reading newspapers in the shoe shine shops, drinking ale on the corner, or dodging draft horses and trolley cars on the streets. Reub tried to convince his brothers to live off his salary so they could save their money and go into business together, but he would never get them to agree.[9] Still, the brothers grew exceptionally close, and they soon settled into their respective roles. Reuben was the responsible center, feet planted firmly to the ground while planning for tomorrow. Lafe was the adoring younger brother who aspired to be just like Reuben, and eventually became Reub’s right hand man. Paul, meanwhile, inherited both his mother’s willfulness and his father’s insatiable sense of wonder. He never liked to stay in any place, job, or relationship for long, and loved any thrill he could get his hands on; to him, it was pure excitement to see automobiles adopted on the streets of Chicago.

Although 80 miles from Streator, Reub maintained close connections with his friends and family there. He was missed, and Olga’s postcard shows the affection and longing she had for her energetic and care-taking older brother. Reuben continued to support his family and sent most of his earnings home to his father, who was still cobbling and preaching. He also corresponded with his mentor, John Williams, who now helped direct Reub’s growth from a distance. Reub obtained a Chicago Public Library card and, as before, stopped by daily to check out newspapers and books on a wide variety of subjects.

Thanks to Williams’s considerable efforts, Reub the teenager was able to attend the Illinois State Federation of Labor (ISFL) convention—held that year in Streator—as an invited local guest. It is with great poignancy that Reuben’s long and illustrious career at Illinois labor conventions was commenced by his mentor’s sponsorship for a meeting that happened to take place that year in his hometown. Reuben must have proudly attended that convention in a new suit (or a hand-me-down from Paul), where he saw the delegates elect Edwin R. Wright as president of the ISFL. This must have been a thrill for Reub because Wright was president of Reuben’s own 3,100 member-strong Chicago Typographical Local #16. Wright had recently gained national acclaim for his leadership during an ITU strike earlier that year, for which he was attacked by the anti-union Judge Holdom with injunction, jail, and heavy fines.[10] During the convention, Williams introduced the young barnstormer to President Wright in the smoke-filled hallways following one of the convention’s marathon sessions. Reuben, beaming with enthusiasm, proudly shook hands with Edwin Wright, the man who held the title that Reuben himself would someday assume: President of the Illinois State Federation of Labor.

A Terrible Loss

In January 1907, Reuben’s happiness was brought to a sudden halt with the death of baby brother Joe, aged 11. Born a “blue baby,” Joseph was “very frail all of his short life.”[11] Childhood death was a sadly familiar at that time, and infant mortality had already visited the Soderstrom family with the death of Reub’s baby sister Ruth back in Minnesota. Still, Joe was no baby; in 1906 he was well past eleven years old. “Little Joe” had survived poverty, disease and many moves to new households. With the older brothers gone, he grew especially close to his mother, Anna. He was her “little man,” her joy.

It was particularly devastating for Anna, then, when Joe developed a fever and rasping cough in the first week of 1907. As the weeks passed, Anna watched helplessly as her child’s fever climbed above 104 degrees, sending him into crushing headaches and fits of delirium. After nearly a month of excruciating pain, little Joseph Soderstrom died of Typhoid fever in his bed at home in Streator, near the end of a cold dark January in Streator. In a sense, the fever took two lives that day. “My mother never really got over Joseph’s death,” Olga recounted. “We used to walk to the cemetery (about two or three miles) three or four times a week, and Dad took me…about every Sunday.”[12] From that day forward, Anna never fully recaptured her adventurous spirit.

Paul, Reuben and Lafe had lost their kid brother. A spell had been broken; the happy dreams of the last year in Chicago were vaporized as they carried the small casket through the Streator graveyard, witnessed only by the tall, naked trees against the blue grey sky and a small group of Swedish Lutheran parishioners. Most likely, John Soderstrom stoically delivered the miserable task of standing in front of the shivering group to read from his well-worn Bible while Reub and his brothers consoled their mother and Olga.

As the family’s provider and protector, Reub took the loss especially hard and turned his grief into action. He soon left Chicago, and found work at a print shop in Madison, Wisconsin. For the first time since childhood, Reub was alone again; there would be neither family nor friends, no Friday nights singing, no playing cards. Isolated, Reub threw himself completely into his work and studies. He took any work he could, including covering local politicians, speakers, and a local Chautauqua, where he first heard the booming orations of a controversial, populist politician.

MADISON, WISCONSIN AND FIGHTIN’ BOB LA FOLLETTE

With a proud tradition of unions and a history of progressive politics, Madison was the capital not only of Wisconsin but of the Midwest’s broader labor movement. It was also the adopted hometown of one of the nation’s most recognizable progressive leaders, Robert M. La Follette. A US Senator since 1906, the legislator had previously served as Governor, championing the rights of local farmers, small businessmen and workers throughout his political career. “Fightin’ Bob” tirelessly argued for government as a check against the power of corporate business and publicly opposed the prosecution of labor leaders, including the well-known socialist Eugene V. Debs. In addition to being a deft and principled politician, La Follette was a powerful and pugnacious orator who mesmerized and mobilized his audiences. In the spring of 1907, Reub became transfixed by La Follette, who had just transitioned from Wisconsin governor to US Senator. The connection was partly biographical; like Reub, La Follette had supported his family financially since adolescence, running the family farm while finding time for self-education. Reub also identified with the senator’s energy and tenacity. In his 1900 campaign for Governor, La Follette gave over “208 speeches in 61 counties—sometimes 10 or 15 in one day.” The Senator’s words echoed John William’s teachings on direct democracy, business regulation, and workmen’s compensation. The Madison print shop where Reub worked always posted notice of when and where the Senator would speak, and soon Reub traveled by train to Milwaukee to attend his events. As Reuben became more active in the shop’s union, the members of his Local nominated him to attend all of La Follette’s speeches, paying for Reub to travel throughout the state to record and report on the Senator’s appearances. The more Reuben learned about the dynamic politician, the more he embraced his political beliefs and philosophy.

Breathing in the cold Wisconsin air and standing in crowds amidst men in tweed overcoats and hats, Reuben studied La Follette’s fiery and formidable speaking skills. He paid attention to the Senator’s captivating presence, dramatic pauses, repetitive themes and thunderous conclusions. Reub most likely agreed with this assessment from The Milwaukee Journal:

Disgust, hope, honor, avarice, despair, love, anger, all the passions of man, he paints in strong words and still stronger gestures. This may sound like exaggeration—but into the most commonplace of his word paintings he throws the energy of a man apparently fully impressed with the whole force and truth of his statements. He never wearies and he will not allow audiences to weary. He carries his subject and his hearers both, and compels the latter to listen, if he cannot compel them to endorse what he may say. Near the conclusion of his speech, as he folds his arms across his chest with the air of a man who has done all that can be done, and in a quiet and impressive way delivers his peroration, there is a wonderful change. It is a change that does not detract from your opinion of the orator, but rather aids it. You realize then that he has been speaking a long time. He has tired you out, but you did not know it before. However, he does not seem to have become weary himself. As he bows for the last time and withdraws he seems as fresh as ever. You are impressed with the belief that the man is a sort of steam engine. He is iron in the sense that iron conveys the idea of endurance.[13]

Eighteen year-old Reuben was personal witness to one of the great thinkers and orators in American history, and the man’s personal presence and political positions gave a young laboring man a lot to reflect upon.

Back Home Again

Reub remained the rock of his family, sending home money to help them out. He and he alone paid for little Joe’s funeral. His visits to Streator were a joy for Olga: “When Reub was away those few years, when he’d come home I’d run to meet him as he walked down the tracks, and he would always have fifty cents in his hand to give me.”[14] Although his brothers still lived in Chicago, some weekends Lafe would travel home and the brothers would catch up. They’d talk about work and labor, but it would soon turn to conversations like how Tommy Burns won a decision in a 20-round fight with Philadelphia Jack O’Brien that summer for the heavyweight boxing crown.

While he loved his family, Reub also came home for the chance to spend time with Jeanne. Both of them practical, stalwart, and more than a little stubborn, the couple had accepted the necessity of separation. Still, they stole time together whenever they could. They’d stroll down the city streets, sharing whatever hours they could before Jeanne went to work. Often the sweethearts would stop for a treat at the Hill Brothers confectionery store, famous for its golden brown peppermint lozenges with the cream-colored stripes. That summer, Reub escorted her to the grand opening of the local Majestic Theater to watch a traveling vaudeville show including musicians and live magicians. They were thrilled at Herbert Germaine and his aerial diving show of gymnasts and rebound artists, and amazed by the stage imitations of Bessie Browning.

In October of 1908, Reuben returned home, but again, he couldn’t stay long because his apprenticeship was not yet complete; he had more than a year’s worth of barnstorming work ahead of him. Still, Reub took the time to spend the difficult holidays (the first since Joe’s death) together with his family. He picked up work at Andy Anderson’s small print shop, operating and maintaining the machines. Inspired by the ISFL convention in Streator, he grew more involved with his local union and labor activity. He also began attending the early morning Streator Trades and Labor Council meetings on the last Sunday of every month, listening closely.

Reub’s brothers were back in Chicago and he felt their absence keenly. In 1908, Reuben spent a short amount of time in Chicago, where he worked alongside Lafe in a print shop. The two brothers became especially close, sharing not only a trade but a passion for labor issues. They met for dinner most nights and spent hours discussing work rules and pay scales. Before long, Lafe started researching in the library alongside his brother, and they developed a natural rhythm, with Reub leading the way and Lafe ready at his side. At their Local meetings, Reub gave short speeches about current issues in their shop.

Reuben Travels To St. Louis

As 1909 dawned, Reub decided to complete his apprenticeship in the Midwest’s other great city, St. Louis, where he could work in a print shop equipped with the most modern linotype machines. Once again, he left Paul and Lafe in Chicago and headed south.

Sitting on the Mississippi River and filled with storehouses, railroad lines, and breweries, St. Louis was the “Gateway to the West” and attracted all sorts of activity, legitimate and illicit alike. Hundreds of steamboats brought tourists to the docks while massive barges carried goods of all types south to New Orleans or north to Chicago. All this led to a population boom; in the last ten years St. Louis had grown by over 100,000 residents, many of them black Americans willing to work for low wages. The migration brought with it innovations like rag-time jazz, and famous musicians like piano player Scott Joplin would spend years in the city in the early 1900s, writing and performing hits like “The Entertainer” at local clubs such as the Rosebud Café in Chestnut Hill. The population boom also brought poverty and tension. Impoverished and ostracized, new arrivals helped fill the streets of the city’s Red Light District, while the city’s “dogtown” was a barren refuge for the dispossessed, like the Tamm Avenue home for Jewish orphans.

Walking the dirty but colorful streets in St. Louis, Reuben felt the strong current of an America beyond the Midwest, stretching down the Mississippi River to the South and New Orleans. The river culture of cargo and barges was much different from Chicago’s web of rails, with a population almost as big and twice as chaotic. His mind must have reeled as he sat in an open-air bar, drinking Anheuser Busch’s Bavarian lager, Budweiser, from a thick glass bottle that came from a factory in Streator, where it was possibly crated by one of the boys he had gone on strike with a few years earlier. In a moment like that, Reuben likely felt the overwhelmingly grand American experiment that he was living, from his immigrant parents to his hometown factories to his apprenticeship in a racially charged river city.

A simmering unrest flowed through America’s “Fourth City,” which made it a natural home for organized labor. A significant number of strikes and lockouts filled the air with the electricity of union strife. While labor struggles often involved a proposed increase in wages, local owners forced an almost equal number of strikes with demands for wage reductions. Many of the small breweries and businesses still demanded that potential employees sign contracts stating they would not join a union if hired. Such a prerequisite for employment endured despite the United States Supreme Court ruling against such “Yellow Dog” contracts. Many non-English speaking immigrants didn’t know their rights were being violated and owners readily used linguistic and cultural barriers to keep workers isolated and unorganized.

Just a few years before Reuben’s arrival, St. Louis played home to a bitter streetcar workers’ strike. The event was marked by violence when a mob attempted to bomb the company car barns at Easton and Prairie avenues, endangering the lives of over 150 strikebreakers, 50 policemen, and “citizen’s posse” that repeatedly attacked the striking workers. Several died in the riots before the Suburban Road Company reached an amicable settlement with the strikers after nearly a month of violence.[15]

For a 21-year-old Reuben, all this made St. Louis a dynamic, engaging and dangerous place. Working the night-shift in a local print shop, he spent the next nine months exploring his new home. He most likely was a voyeuristic tourist to the city’s raucous nightlife, enjoying the games and music it offered. He could be reminded of his car enthusiast brother Paul when he watched the stock car races at the fairgrounds, where Packards, Buicks, and Pope-Toledo’s approached speeds of 6o miles per hour.

Nightlife and race cars weren’t the only things turning heads in St. Louis. Girls at the time started wearing “hobble skirts”—long, tight skirts that the St. Louis police captain attacked as “an impediment to locomotion” because they forced traffic police to stop minding wagons and cars to help the poor women across the street, while “mashers” held up traffic watching the women get on and off the streetcars. Another police sergeant huffed that a girl “with any modesty would discard such a skirt unless she enjoys being molested.”[16] The St. Louis police were also charged with patrolling the city’s first newly opened public bathhouse at the corner of 10th and Carr. The red brick and glazed-tile structure had two tubs and eight showers for ladies, and one tub and twenty-two showers for men. The spot was so popular that patrolmen had to be assigned to “keep order among the unwashed waiting their turn.”[17]

Of course, it wasn’t all fun and games for Reuben. He continued his studies at the Crunden Branch Library on Cass Avenue, reading scholarly papers, Greek philosophy, and the four major daily city newspapers. The Carnegie-financed facility had acquired several fine private collections over the years and offered its services free to all. The ornate chandeliers and intricate molding throughout reminded him of the grand Carnegie library in Streator where he spent so many glorious hours charging through John Williams’ syllabus. And when he couldn’t find something at his local library on Cass Avenue, Reub would visit the nearby St. Louis University Library.

Reuben also attended local union meetings during his time in St. Louis. As in Madison and Chicago, Reub would occasionally speak on work-related activities concerning the local shops where he worked. Often these shops reported on their status and conditions, and it was expected that apprentices such as Reuben be involved.

But the excitement and adventure of tramp printing his way across the Midwest must have begun to fade as Reub looked homeward. He had paid his dues as an apprentice and picked up a flurry of work skills and street smarts from the colorful troika of Midwestern cities he inhabited. In a way, it was his own rough-and-ready college education. But Streator was home. His aging parents were there. His siblings were there. Jeanne was there.

He was coming home.

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