LIFE, LABOR, AND POLITICS

The September Club

Opposite this page is an intriguing 1914 photo of Streator’s “September Club,” a collection of dashing gentlemen who are obvious colleagues, strategists and scholars most likely motivated around issues of politics, labor and life itself. Despite extensive efforts to learn more about this seemingly underground society, little has been found to confirm its existence. But here sits this photograph with “September Club” scrawled beneath it, and undeniably present is the youthful figure presiding over the meeting: R.G. Soderstrom, proudly standing at the head of a table populated by men his age and older.

It is likely that the “September Club” was a more private version of the somewhat public Trades and Labor Council: an underground debating society, think tank, and dinner club first mobilized around issues of politics and labor. Or perhaps the club was a vestige of the old Knights of Labor, which used to meet late at night in a building off Bulldog Alley. But judging by the twinkling tone of the men in the photo, it would be no surprise if the club also involved lively discussions about boxers of the day, tales from life in the big city, or simply enjoyment of local beer and cigars purchased from an Italian immigrant earlier that day in Streator’s City Park. The photo shares the jocular spirit of earlier photos of Reuben, Paul, Lafe and friends posing around the warehouses of Streator with hats and their Sunday best, and also speaks to Reuben’s affable, social nature. Plain and simple, he liked people, ideas and conversation.

It’s possible the club had its origins in the Streator labor council’s selection of five members to formulate outreach for the council’s central body, and perhaps that group morphed into the group we see in the photo. But it’s more likely that the club was the brainchild of Reuben, Lafe and others who wanted to create a specific strategy around the political primaries—always held in September—and how to advance labor’s interests therein. In 1914, the man of the hour was Reuben, colleague, friend and leader, and his time in politics was fast approaching.

During this time, Reuben lived in his childhood home with his wife Jeanne, sister Olga, mother Anna, and 3-year-old niece, Lorraine. Everyone helped out; Jeanne cooked meals before leaving to work her evening shift as chief operator at the Streator telephone office. Olga helped with daily chores and babysat Lorraine, while the widowed Anna struggled to overcome her melancholy. Family friend “Maw” Bottom often visited to babysit Lorraine, and the increasingly pregnant Jeanne began resting more. Working shifts at Andy Anderson’s print shop, Reub both provided for the household and saved to eventually purchase a new house for himself, Jeanne and their newborn.

Soon after joining the Streator Trades and Labor Council, and with the help of his “September Club” cohorts, 26 year-old Reuben became the organization’s president. His peers saw him as a natural choice. Reub later reflected, “They felt that anyone who was eloquent and who could put into words the feeling that these folks had in their hearts and was faithful to himself and his real feelings with respect to labor’s great cause would naturally become a leader…the strange part of it was that they selected a young man. Most of these men were 20 years older than I was.”

He was called upon to negotiate strikes, promote the cause, and represent the Council at the state level as a delegate to the ISFL. His self-confidence belied his age, and people must have initially been surprised at the youthful delegate from Streator . . . until he rose to speak. He was highly informed, intellectually adept and full of conviction. His allies and adversaries alike would agree with his sister’s assessment of him. “He dominated every situation and every conversation,” Olga writes. “It was hard for him to just listen, and you couldn’t change him. He believed he was always right (and mostly he was), so he’d never give an inch. But, like his Dad, he was good and kind and generous. He wanted to help everyone, and he did!”[1]

National Labor in 1914: From Rockefeller to Ford

At Andy’s print shop, Reub no doubt followed the national labor news with rapt attention. Just the year before, in 1913, AFL President Samuel Gompers, while under a prison sentence, testified before Congress:

This one fact is sure: That in all the world there is now an unrest among the people--primarily among working people--with the present position they occupy in society…In our own country it takes the form of the trade-union movement…formed to conform as nearly as it is possible to the American idea, and to have the crystallized unrest and discontent manifested in the American fashion; to press it home to the employers; to press it home to the lawmakers; to press it home to law administrators, and possibly to impregnate and influence the minds of judges who may accord to us the rights which are essential to our well-being…[2]

There was indeed deep unrest in the nation, and the American Labor movement continued to “press it home” to businessmen and politicians. They unseated anti-progressive President Taft and the pro-business Republicans to elect a Democratic Congress and Woodrow Wilson, only the second Democrat to be elected president since the Civil War. They promoted boycotts and published “unfair lists,” even under threat of violence and imprisonment.

In September 1913, coal miners in Ludlow, Colorado went on strike against John D. Rockefeller Jr.’s Colorado Fuel and Iron (CF&I) company. Most of their demands were typical, such as a 10% wage increase, the right to unionize under the UMWA, and the ability to elect the all-important checkmen who weighed their coal. But even in the wake of Cherry, mine workers still struggled to attain the most basic rights: enforcement of federal work protections, freedom to choose where they lived and shopped (required to buy goods from the company store), and removal of the infamous union-busting “guards” from the Baldwin Felts Detective Agency, long feared for their lethal brutality.

In 1913, CF&I’s Vice President Lamont wrote to his boss, John D. Rockefeller, referring to the UMWA as a “vicious gang,” which came to Ludlow to help the workers organize. “Our net earnings would have been the largest in the history of the company by $200,000 but for the increase in wages paid the employees during the last few months,” Lamont whined. “With everything running so smoothly and with an excellent outlook for 1914, it is mighty discouraging to have this vicious gang come into our state and not only destroy our profit but eat into that which has heretofore been saved.”[3]

Rockefeller and Lamont responded to these “outside agitators” by immediately kicking the striking miners out of their homes. For months, over 1,200 miners and their families lived in a tent city occupying public property. CF&I used the Colorado militia and Baldwin Felts agents to surround the strikers and lay siege to the makeshift homes. To sow fear they randomly fired into the tents, killing innocent people while on “patrol” for months on end. On March 10 1914 the militia launched a devastating attack on the city while occupiers were burying several infants who had died days before.

They brutalized the protesters and killed the leading miners, leaving their bodies in the railroad yard for three days in full view of passing trains. Those who had taken refuge in one of the city’s tents were burned alive when the militia set it on fire. Soon the “Ludlow Massacre” was on every front page in America. The account in the New York Times was typical. “The Ludlow camp is a mass of charred debris,” the Times described, “And buried beneath it is a story of horror unparalleled in the history of industrial warfare. In the holes which had been dug for their protection against the rifles’ fire the women and children died like trapped rats when the flames swept over them. One pit, uncovered the day after the massacre disclosed the bodies of 10 children and two women.”[4] President Wilson sent federal troops, but by the time they arrived on June 1, more than 70 people had been killed. By late November most miners returned to work after the company had literally starved them into submission.

In Michigan, another great industrialist, Henry Ford, recognized the “wage incentive” early on. He decided to offer a wage of $5 a day, twice the national average, bringing a swollen, colorful sea of immigrant men from all across the country. A blizzard blanketed the 10,000 men who had lined up at the gates of Ford’s auto plant in Highland Park, Michigan auto plant on January 1, 1914. Filled with the hope of landing one of the 4,000 jobs the company had advertised, most of the men spent the night shivering as they stood huddled around curbside fires.

But Ford’s wages came with a price. Employees would have to start a bank account, learn English (in company-provided schools) and become US citizens. To prevent turnover, workers could only collect half of their pay in their monthly check, with the other half deferred as a bonus if they stayed the full year. Ford also wanted power over his workers’ personal habits. They weren’t allowed to smoke or drink, on OR off the job. They couldn’t rent out rooms in their homes, nor could anyone else in the household have a job. By keeping his employees from socializing and away from other income, Ford believed he could prevent unions and make his workers financially dependent on him. He wasn’t alone; in the years leading up to prohibition, manufacturers greatly increased their control of the private lives of their workers, making a host of personal activities and associations fireable offenses.[5]

A CAMPAIGNER IS BORN

Under Reuben’s leadership, the Streator Trades and Labor Council closely followed the events in Michigan and voted to help the newly striking copper miners there by adopting a resolution in support of them. As a result, the Streator UMWA Local 800 donated $200 to the families of the strikers. At this point, Reub’s natural leadership began to beg a basic question: Why not make the race?

Reasons to Run

That was the question ISFL President John Walker asked Reuben in January of 1914. The “race” he was referring to was for the Illinois House of Representatives, and it wasn’t a casual question. The labor movement, spearheaded by Gompers and the American Federation of Labor, had initiated a deliberate program to gain political power and influence. To affect change in the political arena, Gompers asserted, labor had to “elect our friends.” Rather than creating a labor party as in Britain or a revolution as in Russia, he advocated placing working union men as candidates in America’s already established political parties. Walker, the newly elected President of the Illinois State Federation of Labor (ISFL), had decided on a bold new legislative agenda that could make Gompers’s mandate a reality. Reub remembered that Walker, “had a great deal of imagination. He worked out a program of 47 bills to be enacted into law…the Federation is certainly indebted to him for his program of legislation. He was a pioneer.”[6]

In order for his 47 bills to succeed, Walker knew the first thing he needed was a strong team. He was keenly aware of his own limitations; although inspirational and charismatic, Walker was too much of a firebrand for the task at hand. In the words of Eugene Staley “Walker is a man of strong emotions; feeling, not logic, is the key to his spirit…Walker feels and talks the ‘decency of humanity,’ leaving the subtleties of constitutional law to others.”[7] As a member and activist in the Socialist Party, Walker could never become the legislator the movement needed. Walker needed a leader with both passion and practicality, and he was convinced Reub could be that man.

One issue was Reuben’s age. At nearly 26, he was far younger than most politicians of his time. “Politicians generally were somewhat amused at the ambitions of a young labor official desiring to enter the field of legislation,” Reuben later recounted. “No such thing had happened in that district prior to that time.”[8] In fact, the American political system of the time was defined more by patronage than popularity, and as a young man without many markers or connections would face an uphill battle.

Another issue was party. When Gompers advocated that friends of labor join established parties, the issue was which one: Democrats and Republicans? Both hosted pro-labor politicians, but Democrats had the edge. However, Streator sat square in the middle of Republican territory. “It’s always been Republican,” Reub later explained, “In fact the whole county of LaSalle is Republican.”[9] Furthermore, both parties already had strong incumbent candidates. Young Reub did not have a natural party to call home.

The final consideration for Reub was personal. With a sister, mother, young niece, and pregnant wife to support, he had to seriously consider if he was ready for another major commitment.

Walker Recruits Reuben

Given the gusto Reub had for public policy, he was likely very flattered by the attention, but unsure if the legislature was his natural home. To close the deal on his prized recruit, President Walker came to Streator to personally make his pitch. Reuben later recounted:

When I first met John Walker, he came to the city of Streator and wanted me to become interested in legislative work and he told me that he had been the President of the United Mine Workers of Illinois for 6 years, and during that period of time he had worked out this program of 47 bills, and he felt that with the fine arguments that we have that that legislation could be enacted if they had someone on the floor of the house that could present these controversial bills without antagonizing people and without making people mad. And he turned that whole list over to me….I was a little dubious about trying for that type of place [the General Assembly], not knowing whether people would vote for me or not, but Mr. Walker stated he thought they would. I tried to explain to him that I was merely a labor official and that didn’t mean folks generally would vote for that type of person.[10]

Walker continued to press him, however. “I think you’ve got the qualities, the temperament, and you are the person that they might vote for,” Walker told Reub. Walker stated that the future for labor was building politicians directly from the ranks of labor, rather than relying on the sympathies of elected officials. There was nothing to lose, and everything to gain, so “why not make the race?”[11]

Reuben eventually agreed, and on January 25, 1914, at their January meeting the Streator Trades and Labor Council unanimously adopted a resolution to nominate one of their own to the state legislature. The following morning, the Streator Daily Free Press published the endorsement, “Resolved that the Streator Trades and Labor Council request the local Progressive party to do all in their power to place the Vice President of this council, RG Soderstrom, a well-known Streator Trades unionist and an aggressive progressive since the inception of the party, as candidate for representative on the Progressive ticket at the Spring primaries; and be it further resolved that we heartily endorse said union man and pledge our support…and do all in our power to elect RG Soderstrom in the coming fall election.”[12]

With that announcement, Reuben officially became a new breed of unionist who would fight for the rights of working men from the legislative floor. And he wouldn’t be going it alone. Reub soon pulled in Jeanne, Paul, Anna and his steadfast confidante, Lafe, for support. Although still living in Chicago, Lafe often traveled to Streator on the Santa Fe train to join several of the September club meetings and work on Reuben’s campaign.

In July 1914, Reuben and Jeanne welcomed their son Robert into the world. He was born in the family home with Anna and Olga working as midwives to bring another Soderstrom in the world. Little Lorraine would now have a Soderstrom cousin: Baby Bobbie. Reuben and Jeanne were full of happiness as they held their bundle of joy in their arms and stared into the baby’s sparkling eyes. Reub cried wishing his father could meet his first child, but was so grateful to share him with Anna, Olga, Paul and Lafe. It was a busy year, and the young Trades and Labor president could add another line to his resume: father.

Bull-Moose Reub

As noted in the announcement, Reuben made the decision not to run as a Democrat or a Republican, but as a Progressive. Formed in the summer of 1912 by former US President Theodore Roosevelt, the Progressive Party began as a splinter group of the Republican Party founded primarily to support Roosevelt’s run for the White House. After splitting the Republican vote and effectively awarding Wilson the Presidency, the question by 1914 was whether this new faction could survive on its own. Reub bet his first run for public office on the belief that it could. He had been enamored of Roosevelt since his first term as President. Roosevelt’s “Square Deal,” a domestic program based on conserving nature, regulating corporations, and protecting consumers spoke directly to Reuben’s own beliefs. As Olga remembers:

Reub always believed that the worker had a right to share financially in the wealth he produced; that the worker had a right to a decent living, a right to have sufficient (support) from his labors to see a little of this beautiful country—A right to vacations, medical care in illness, and a right to warm clothing, all of which takes money. Certainly, a right to a decent home, some luxury, and a right for his family to eat well and enjoy life. And for this, Reub spent his entire life and being, and every hour he worked to achieve these ends.[13]

Although Roosevelt lost his 1912 bid for the Presidency, his party still continued. In 1914, it placed candidates on the ballot in a wide number of state and local elections; whether or not these candidates succeeded would determine the future of the party itself. By running for election as a candidate for the Progressive Party, Reuben placed himself square in the middle of this existential fight.

The decision to join the Progressive ticket was also politically canny. According to Illinois’ unique “majority rules, minority rights” voting system, each district elected three representatives, only two of which could be from the same party. Each voter was likewise accorded three votes, which could be cast in any combination. In districts where one party was strongly favored, like Reuben’s 39th, the majority party typically fielded two candidates instead of one. Majority voters would cast two votes for the first candidate and one for the second, while minority voters would cast all three for their party’s choice (”plumping” the minority candidates vote totals). By running as a third party candidate, Reuben could pull off an upset win in the general election if enough progressive Republicans and pro-labor Democrats all three of their votes for him.

Campaign Life

Once endorsed, Reuben began the long, hard fight to win his party’s primary. His political support extended beyond the Trades Council; in recent years, the local Labor movement in Streator had placed members on the city council and in the mayor’s office. These men would become allies in Reuben’s campaign fight. Reuben took to many podiums that year, speaking at union meetings, fraternal organizations, and to Streator’s communities of Italians, Irish, Germans, Slavs, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Catholics, the Knights of Columbus, or anyone else. As a matter of integrity, he also paid for the campaigns out of his own pocket, no matter the hardship. “I bankrolled my own campaigns, every one of them” Reuben stated. “I wouldn’t accept a penny.”[14]

Ultimately the election of 1914 would be a harsh introduction to Illinois politics for the idealistic 26-year-old. It was also at this point that a large and powerful character—well-heeled, weighty and often-fraudulent—lumbered into Reuben’s life. It’s appropriate to spend a few pages becoming acquainted with this looming and soon-to-be nemesis.

THE ILLINOIS MANUFACTURERS’ ASSOCIATION (IMA)

Of all the labor opponents Reuben faced, none was more determined, powerful, or implacable than the Illinois Manufacturers’ Association (IMA). Forged in direct response to the rise of labor unions, big capital organizations like the IMA existed for one sole purpose—to defeat or neuter any legislation written to protect workers or enhance their quality of life.

Humble Beginnings: Undoing Women’s Rights and Worker Safety

The IMA originally formed in 1893 to stop a proposed law, inspired by Jane Addams and the Illinois State Federation of Labor (ISFL), limiting the toil of women in factories to eight hours per day. Calling the bill an “outrage on the liberties of the working women” (the vast majority of whom supported the legislation), the IMA rejected all offers of compromise and used their influence in the courts to have the law declared unconstitutional in 1894.[15] After a brief respite, the organization reconstituted in 1897 to defeat a law requiring metallic fire escapes on factories. The IMA ran a publicity campaign casting the law as the product of a corrupt ring of fire escape manufacturers seeking to get rich by making their new (life-saving) products mandatory. They urged manufacturers throughout the state to simply ignore the law, forcing inspectors eventually to declare it unenforceable.[16] Despite its best efforts, organized labor watched helplessly as its cherished reforms withered in the face of these vicious, well-funded attacks.

JM Glenn: Architect of a Lobbying Empire

Having defeated labor in the courts and in the streets, the IMA turned its attention to the lawmakers themselves. The Association appointed a permanent secretary, JM Glenn, to kill “obnoxious legislation” on the floor of the General Assembly before it ever saw the light of day. An uncompromising true believer, Glenn was the perfect vessel for the IMA’s cause. As the historian Alfred Kelly writes, “In his methods and philosophy, JM Glenn personified all that the Illinois Manufacturer’s Association stood for. The man was an excellent salesman…passionately convinced of what he later called ‘the manufacturers’ cause’…it was he who first realized that the real future of the Association lay in resisting organized labor upon the floor of the state legislature.”[17]

Glenn soon grew the Association into a lobbying juggernaut. Its membership exploded from fifty parties in 1897 to over 1,100 by 1909.[18] Under his guidance the Association became labor’s primary foe, dedicating itself to fighting what it considered the “menace of the labor union.”[19] Glenn’s attacks were often personal, incendiary, and just shy of slander. As the ISFL weekly noted when describing Glenn’s attacks on Chief Factory Inspector, Oscar F. Nelson, “The editorial in question is characteristic of ‘Johnnie’s’ tactics, in that, while containing a number of insinuations, it evades direct charges which might render it liable to become a defendant in a libel suit.” In his response, Inspector Nelson pulled no punches. “To indict and convict you, Mr. Glenn, of inconsistency, insincerity, and untruthfulness, requires no effort,” he wrote in an open letter to the IMA chief. “Your record as a misrepresentative of the manufacturers’ interests is known to a majority of the manufacturers in this State, practically all of the Legislature, and so exceptionally well known to the Laboring people of the State that it has often created antagonism between the employer and the employee where such antagonism would not have existed but for your misrepresentations.”[20]

Factory Inspectors like Nelson were the first and favorite targets of Glenn and his Association. In 1907 he defeated the Comprehensive Factory Inspection Act, a bill designed by Illinois State factory inspector Edgar Davies and Dr. Charles Henderson of the University of Chicago to reduce Illinois’ woeful industrial accident record. Despite its broad support from numerous public figures, Glenn denounced the bill as “unfair, unjust and un-American.” He successfully used the IMA’s considerable resources to label the act’s supporters as terrorists, the “anarchists the police of the large cities are trying to suppress.”[21]

In 1909, Glenn trained the IMA’s guns on The Women’s Bill, an act crafted by the Women’s Trade Union League and the ISFL to prohibit factory owners from compelling women to work more than forty-eight hours in a six-day week (after the US Supreme Court found such acts constitutional earlier that year). With a showman’s flair, Glenn arranged for a series of hearings before the Senate Committee on Labor, presenting not only manufacturers who warned the law would be “absolutely ruinous” but carefully selected working women who testified that the law would inhibit their earning power. He labeled the bill “class warfare,” crafted to “work harm to our women employees by denying them the right to use their option in working overtime”[22] Although unable to stop the bill, Glenn was able to water-down its restrictions to 10-hour days.

JM Glenn’s biggest early fights, however, were over workman’s compensation. For years he managed to beat back legislation compelling companies to pay for those maimed and killed in their service. In the wake of the Cherry Mine disaster, however, even the IMA’s vast resources were unable to prevail against the powerful example of dozens of victims, widowed and orphaned by industrial negligence. Glenn tried every trick he had by undermining commissions from within, assailing them from without, marching hundreds to the capital in protest of the signing, and even attacking the constitutionality of legislation in court. But despite his best efforts, JM Glenn was unable to defeat the Workman’s Compensation Act.[23] It was after this loss that Glenn and the IMA made a fateful decision; if he couldn’t convince the legislature or courts of his cause, he would just have to pick the legislators and judges himself.

Big Business Elects Its Friends

In 1911, the IMA overhauled its legislative strategy and moved into the arena of electoral politics. JM Glenn had decided the best way to prevent pro-labor legislation was to “secure the election of a legislature more friendly to business interests,” and he wasted no time in doing so. He divided the state into districts and placed in each a committee of Association officials. These Association Committees would then interview all candidates, and instructed its membership to “vigorously support”—particularly financially—those candidates found “acceptable.” Glenn also kept scorecards of legislators and would issue them in voter pamphlets.

Under Glenn’s instruction, members of the Association also used their power as employers to influence the vote. Days before the election, factory owners would call their workers to mass meetings where they “made employees aware of the best men available for the election.”[24] While no explicit threats were issued, it was not uncommon for owners to assert that if their candidates were not selected, firings could be necessary in the wake of ruinous legislation.

Once an IMA candidate was elected, he was carefully overseen by Glenn’s Legislative Bureau. As Kelly writes, “The Springfield office [of the IMA Legislative Bureau], open during the entire assembly session, watched all bills carefully as they moved forward to enactment. Its fundamental assumption was that all laws were inherently bad; the best that the Association might hope for would be the enactment of as few statues as possible. The blocking of legislation was, in fact, the measure of success or failure which the Association applied to its own efforts.”[25]

In this way Glenn and the IMA ruled the Illinois legislature with an iron fist. From 1911 through 1929, only one piece of legislation survived the IMA’s objections and became law.

Elect Our Judges

Glenn’s election strategy also extended into the courtroom. Judges were vital in the fight against labor. Glenn and the Manufacturers Association depended on the courts not only for the overturning of unfavorable laws but for the issuance of injunctions—restraining orders that barred union leaders from talking to or even going near striking workers. While some justices were openly corrupt, many—like the famous “injunction judges” Denis Sullivan and Jesse Hodom—were motivated by ideology and the conviction that they were legally compelled to issue any and all injunctions filed. When labor tried to defeat the judges at the ballot box (judges were elected in Illinois), the IMA responded by helping to foster popular outrage against the “union bosses,” inspiring grassroots movements to support pro-injunction judges. The IMA publicly cast the targets of injunctions as:

Labor union dictators who live by the fees extorted from their hapless victim, the ignorant worker…it was the self-interest of these leeches, in their search for issues to delude the laborer and the public, which kept ‘social reform’ alive…The half-baked college professor, steeped in his doctrinaire theories of economics and sociology, the silly minister, who believed that he could legislate God’s Kingdom onto the Earth, the addle-brained women’s club secretary with her feeble-minded interest in social welfare—these were the dupes of a cunning group of ‘racketeers’, the labor union leaders.[26]

These portraits convinced some conservatives to join “patriot” movements expressly created to help elect pro-injunction judges like Sullivan and Hodom. The most famous were the “Minute Men of the Constitution,” formed by Gen. Charles G. Dawes. Dawes, a former President of the Northwestern Gas Light and Coke Company and Republican politician who would later serve as Vice President under Calvin Coolidge, insisted that he was non-partisan and not anti-union, telling the press, “We seek to bring a sense of gratitude and admiration of all good citizens to those courageous American citizens in labor organizations who, in defiance of labor demagogues and enemies of law support law enforcement and good government at the polls”[27] These men rang doorbells and manned the polls to sway the vote in favor of anti-labor judges and politicians. A heavy turnout always helped the Manufacturers Association win the day.[28] When 26 year-old Reub Soderstrom threw his modest hat into the ring in the 1914 primary, it’s likely that JM Glenn and the powerful IMA hardly took notice; their favored candidate in Streator, former Sheriff Ole Benson (pronounced “Oley”), was a well-funded and unbeatable mainstay.

THE ELECTION OF 1914

In the primary election on September 10, Reuben was defeated by 27 votes in his bid to represent the Progressive Party.[29] This came despite the unequivocal support of labor and President Walker. However, the candidate who won the Progressive bid later withdrew and Reub took his place in the general election, where he appeared on the ticket with the IMA’s Ole Benson. On the day before the November vote, Reuben ran an ad seeking votes, stating:

I am the Streator candidate and if the local voters stay with me, regardless of politics, it means election. As a people we may be republicans, democrats and progressives--but we live in the same city and we love our families and our homes, and we have the welfare of Streator and Streator people at our heart…And with that feeling friends, I’m looking forward, unafraid, as your Streator candidate for state representative.[30]

Despite his best efforts, Reuben was unable to use the three-vote/three-candidate system to his advantage. Much to his chagrin, the Democrats tried to capitalize on the Republican/Progressive split by making the unusual decision to fielding two candidates in the general election. The move siphoned off many of the votes Reuben had been counting on. In the end, the Republican and Democratic incumbents retained their establishment edge. The final tally from the general election was not kind to Reuben, who came in a disappointing of the fifth.[31]

Reub Soderstrom went home a loser. He gathered the family in their small dining room and discussed the loss with Olga, Lafe, and Jeanne as she held baby Bobbie. He no doubt analyzed his late entry into the race as well as the IMA’s broad impact, which rippled across the state and into every district.

In 1914, Reub suffered from the lack of a solid party and poor name recognition in the rural outreaches of LaSalle County. He had campaigned aggressively in the city but had failed to gain traction in the countryside, where more voting tended to be more conservative. But in any event, the new father—recruited specifically by ISFL President Walker—had found a taste for politics beyond the Trades and Labor Council of Streator, Illinois.

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