THE TRAGEDY AT CHERRY MINE

Workmen’s compensation—the idea that workers and their families should be made whole for harm suffered at work—is a familiar feature of the modern American workplace. It wasn’t always that way; at the start of the twentieth century, laborers who were injured on the job had little recourse. Unable to work during their recovery, they often endured poverty and starvation. A worker disfigured by their injuries fared even worse; nothing prevented an employer whose dangerous conditions led to the loss of a hand or leg from simply casting the maimed aside like so much trash. If a worker was killed on the job, those who depended on his paycheck found themselves instantly destitute. Unprotected, too many widows and orphans had to make sacrifices to survive that left them battered and broken. For over a century the American public, though broadly sympathetic, did little to change situation.

This deplorable state of affairs finally began to change at the dawn of the twentieth century, when a series of high-profile industrial tragedies stirred the public consciousness. Of these, perhaps none was more impactful, or dramatic, than the terror at Cherry Mine. The horrors the Illinois miners, many of them Streator residents, suffered on November 13, 1909, ultimately resulted in one of the nation’s first—and arguably its most important—Workmen’s Compensation Act.

Of all the trials and losses labor faced in 1909, few shook it so deeply or forged its resolve as profoundly as the tragedy at Cherry Mine. In an instant, an unthinkable, wholly preventable disaster cost hundreds of hard-working men and boys their lives, leaving thousands of widows and orphans in its wake. The horror it caused drew worldwide attention, turning this tiny mining community a few miles northwest of Streator into a macabre spectacle that attracted thousands.

Yet through the veil of death and bereavement, small signs of hope could be seen. Heroes who gave their lives became martyrs, galvanizing the public and inspiring reform. The tragedy shined a light on the terrible conditions working men and children who had long labored in the darkness of the mines. Most importantly, lasting change—slow and painful as it was—was made possible through the concerted, relentless efforts of energetic reformers like John Williams and his compatriots in labor. The tireless efforts of these men resulted in new laws for worker protection and compensation, along with the belated enforcement of long neglected legal protections. The losses at Cherry also drove a young Reuben into labor leadership for the first time, pushing him to fight ever harder for the rights of workers and their families.

The City of Cherry

Cherry was a fairly typical mining town; just seven blocks long and five blocks wide, its life began and ended with the use of its local mine. It was a “company town,” built by the St. Paul Coal Company to for a singular purpose—to attract and house miners. The company, buoyed by the mine’s nearly inexhaustible supply of high-quality bituminous coal, invested over $200,000 in the town and mine itself. City designs called for a park, school, bank and several general stores. They also built a first-class train station, and on June 21, 1905, they offered 120 acres and reduced train fair rates to attract potential buyers for an auction of town lots predicted to sell out by noon.[1]

A successful mining community didn’t simply house and feed the miners; it had to cater to their needs as well. That included entertainment; seventeen of Cherry’s thirty-five businesses were saloons. More than simply a place to drink, saloons were social centers for miners, providing the creature comforts of home away from the needs and pulls of family. As one miner said:

A saloon is the only decent place we fellows have to go. We have a newspaper to read, another fellow to argue with, and we can put our feet on the table and eat all the free lunch we want. We have a blooming fine fiddler who plays for us—say, wot’s a fellow livin’ for, all work?[2]

Like Streator, Cherry was a melting pot. Italian, German, Russian, Lithuanian, Swedish, and a host of other tongues kept neighbors isolated and nearby communities wary. Local farmers grumbled that “we would have been a heap better off if they had never been brought here.”[3] Native miners also weren’t fond of their foreign counterparts, who were often willing work longer and endure more dangerous conditions for less pay. As one miner put it, “No American would work as hard as they did because the foreigners didn’t have any sense.”[4]

While Cherry was like other company towns in many ways, the mine’s wealth set it apart in a few key respects. The quality and accessibility of local coal meant miners in Cherry could work year-round, keeping them out of the debt that often crushed other communities. Also, unlike the cheap identical houses produced for most company towns, the homes of Cherry were built from one hundred and twenty different designs. This gave Cherry a uniqueness and architectural quality most such towns never enjoyed. The only exception was Steele Street, where the poorest miners lived. Steele would later be known as “Widows Row,” after all but four of the street’s fathers, husbands, and sons died in the disaster.

A Day Unlike Any Other

The morning of Saturday, November 13 started like any other. Reporting to the Streator Free Press early that morning, Reuben may have seen the sizable group of miners from Streator, including mine manager John Bundy, making their way to the mines of Cherry. There Bundy’s men joined a workforce of over 500 men and boys from all corners of life. Many of these had come from across the globe, filling the cramped tunnels with voices speaking a dozen different languages. Together they rode the hulking metal cage over four hundred and eighty-six feet to deposits hidden deep below.

The work was hard, with miners crouched for hours on end, faces smeared black and lungs filled by air fouled with dust as they hacked at the inky streams of “black diamond.” It was also dangerous; accidents and even deaths in mining were so common that the men and their families had become numb to the loss. As one miner’s wife put it “A natural death is such a strange thing here that when one hears that So-and-So is dead, they ask at once, ‘When was he killed?’”[5] Another miner compared leaving for work every morning with going off to war. “You never step on that cage without wondering if you’re going to come back or not. Being a miner is just like going into battle. There is always this fear of the mine.”[6] Between accidents, the wearying work and the disease that came with it, the average miner was lucky to make it to fifty. Still, Cherry Mine was said to be safer than most. The town sat atop a nearly inexhaustible supply of bituminous coal of unrivaled quality, and the St. Paul Coal Company had built Illinois’ largest mine to tap it. “The equipment of the Cherry Mine was supposed to be the equal or superior of that of any other mine in the state,” the Chicago Daily Tribune later reported. “The tower and all upper works were of steel and were constructed on a magnificent scale.”[7]

It was to be year-round and state-of-the-art, complete with concrete foundations and engine, boiler, and fan houses all made of brick and stone. The boxcar alone cost $10,000, while the tipple, where mine cars were emptied of their coal, was rated by its engineer as one of the world’s safest. It even had electric lighting, the hallmark of modernity.

Except, like much at Cherry Mine, things weren’t all working as they were supposed to. The electric lights that were supposed to illuminate the lower shafts of the mine had been broken for nearly a month. Superintendent James Steele had made repeated requests for replacement wiring, but had yet to hear back. Instead, miners labored under a series of kerosene lamps strung along the rock face to provide light, while some miners relied on small torches on the front of their helmets fueled by a slick grease nicknamed “sunshine.” Those kerosene lamps hung low; so far down that they were mere inches above the hay cars brought down to feed the forty plus mules use to move the coal-filled cars along the tracks. After lunch that day six bales of hay were sent down to the second level stables, but instead of taking it directly from the cage to the mules, operator Alexander Rosenjack and his assistants left the hay near the air shaft while they emptied a nearby cart instead.

It is unclear what set the hay on fire; it could have been a leak from the kerosene lamps, an accidental touch from a miner’s open helmet flame, or both. What is certain is that once that small flame was fed by the open air from the shaft, it burned hard and quick. Trying unsuccessfully to extinguish it, Alex dumped the smoldering mass down the sump in the main shaft, hoping the water collected at the bottom would kill the fire. Instead, the burning bales hung up on the next level; almost an hour passed before anyone signaled a problem. By the time they did, it was already too late. Any attempt to stem the fire only fanned the flames, incinerating the wooden stairs and ladders that were the only means of escape. To starve the fire, those topside tried shutting down the fans, which succeeded only in cutting off oxygen to the trapped miners while allowing the “black damp,” a deadly mix of carbon dioxide and nitrogen, to fill the mine.

As the fire raged, the tunnels became thick with smoke, causing many to panic. Overpowered by terror, miners fought the chaos and each other to reach the ladders out. Shouts and warnings gave way to screams as men’s throats became seared by the smoke and crushed their chests, sucking out all the air. The furnace-like heat drove some to desperate action, running blindly into the smoke and flames, never to return.

Heroes and Martyrs

The whistle finally blew just after 3:00pm to signal a problem. Knowing the sound of the “hazard whistle,” the entire town ran to the mine to discover less than half of the work force had crawled their way to the surface. With terrified children clinging to their skirts, women wept and wailed as they looked desperately for their husbands and sons.

A few men made it out, with skin scorched, hands cracked and bleeding. One of them, manager Bundy, wasted no time in rallying to save his fellow men. His voice hoarse from smoke, Bundy called for volunteers to dive back into the mine. Those who had just clawed their way out didn’t hesitate; there were more volunteers than places on the cage. Despite the pleas from friends and family, a dozen men leapt on the platform and descended into the fiery pit in search of survivors. It was an act of unbridled bravery that inspired all who saw it. As newspaper accounts later reported:

In the annals of the world’s heroic deeds few achievements are recorded more glorious than those accomplished by the eleven rescuers at the St. Paul mine…Six times they were lowered into the burning mine. Leaving the cage they penetrated into the body of the mine, lifted up the miners as they found them, and sent them to the top, some in the cage, and many, one by one, up the air shaft bound singly in chairs.[8]

The rescuers faced a hellish mess. The air was too thick with smoke to see, causing disorientation and making it nearly impossible to breathe. The stench of burnt flesh stung their noses as they crawled over a carpet of burnt bodies to grab those still breathing and bring them back to the cage. Once full, they’d ring the gong signaling to those topside that they were ready to return with more souls for the makeshift hospital set up outside.

Again and again the volunteers plunged into the mine, bringing up more survivors each time. Driven by will and adrenaline, they pushed past their exhaustion and fear to make one more trip, save one more life. With each return the crowd pressed forward, anxious to see if a husband, son or father was one of the wretches pulled from the inferno. On their seventh journey down, however, the rope went limp, with no signal from the rescue party.

The cage operator Crowley hesitated, worried he might leave the party stranded if he pulled the lift too quick or too early. As the minutes passed with no signal, those around him started clamoring for him to pull the cage, but Crowley seemed paralyzed with uncertainty. By the time he relented it was too late. As the Chicago Tribune described:

It had been four minutes, but no signal had been sent. The engineers, however, dared wait no longer. The car came up fast, but faster came the burst of flame. The cage and the flame came together to the level of the ground. But no one stepped from the cage. Ten of the eleven heroes already were dead. The eleventh, Tom Flood, still breathing, was dragged from the heap. He was able to articulate a little. “The flame caught us,” he gasped. Then he, too, was dead.[9]

Disaster Felt Around the World

Word reached Streator by late afternoon, and people flooded their local churches to offer assistance. The final news was a nightmare. In total 259 of the miners and the 12 rescuers—more than half the workforce—had died, 46 of them Streator natives. Hearts breaking with grief, families made the journey to keep vigil at the mine, clinging to the ever-diminishing hope that they would see their loved ones again. For the majority, that last unbearable reunion would be as their husband, father or child was loaded onto one of the bread trucks that pressed into service to help carry the dead to a local storehouse that served as a makeshift morgue. In the words of the Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette:

Cherry mine to-night is a scene of grief and terror. Women and children are moaning and crying in the streets. Many wives whose husbands did not return from the fiery tomb are crazed with grief. Every family in the stricken town has felt the blow of the calamity.[10]

Meanwhile, the scene at the disaster assumed a gaudy, almost circus-like atmosphere. News of the tragedy had spread, with the Italian, French, and Russian governments dispatching consuls for support. Onlookers and curiosity-seekers arrived by the trainload. The Chicago Daily Tribune set the number at 20,000 in all.[11] Complete with food vendors and spectators sporting their Sunday best, they descended like locusts, buying up all the local food and goods, leaving the already bereft mining families to starve. Mayor Connelly of Cherry made a desperate plea for help. “We need aid and plenty of it, and it must be forthcoming quickly or there will be great suffering among the destitute families of the miners,” he wrote. “If the weather becomes very cold, the suffering will be terrible.”

Hope was briefly kindled when, eight days after the after the fire, 21 survivors were brought to the surface after having built a makeshift wall to protect themselves from the poisonous gas. Among them was George Eddy, a Streator native. A night laborer who was not working when the fires started, George ran to the mine when he heard the alarm and had been trapped while saving others. Like his compatriots, half-dead from hunger and dehydration, George believed he would not make it out alive. Sharing a single notebook and pencil, the men had written goodbye letters to their wives and children in the hopes that at least their bodies may be found. George wrote:

Dear wife and children, I write these few lines to you and I think it will be for the last time. I have tried to get out twice but was driven back, there seems to be no hope for us, I come down this shaft yesterday to help save the men’s lives. I hoped the men I got out was saved. Well Elizabeth if I am found dead take me to Streator to bury and move back. Keep Esther and Florence and Jennie together as much as you can, I hope they will not forget their father so I will bid you all good bye and God bless you all.

Many of those still waiting on word of their men took heart at the discovery, filled with the hope that George and his party would be the first of many rescues. Unfortunately, they were the last to make it out alive. As the weeks passed, families of the miners still unaccounted for insisted on keeping the air shafts open in case any other trapped miners had survived. This became increasingly difficult as dumping thousands of gallons of water down the shafts failed to extinguish what had become a roaring fire. The November 28 decision to close off the shafts with concrete in order to starve the fire drew huge protests. The sheriff, his deputies, and two companies of the Illinois National Guard’s sixth regiment struggled to keep order as throngs of miners and their families mad with despair tried to push through the line. Some tried to prevent their loved ones from possibly being buried alive, while others attempted to dive down the shaft themselves to be buried along with them. Work at Cherry would not resume until February. Two and a half months after the fire, crews opened the mine and pumped water from the third level, revealing dozens more bodies. Five miners who survived the disaster volunteered to clear the rubble, removing the bodies of the dead as they were brought to the top. Sadly, the tragedy continued to take lives long after the terrible events of the day as many family members proved unable to come with the loss. Margret Bredinski, whose story spread through the presses, was one such example:

Margaret Bredinski of Kewanee, who lost two brothers in the Cherry mine disaster, has disappeared. Relatives who have made an unsuccessful search for her for a week believe her mind is unbalanced by her misfortune and that she is wandering in the country between Kewanee and Cherry. All her savings of six years had been entrusted to a lost brother, who is believed to have carried the money on his person, having feared to deposit it anywhere.[12]

Aftermath

Though horrific, the Cherry mine disaster was merely the most poignant example of the much broader problems of workmen’s safety and compensation. Cherry was in fact only the nation’s third largest mining disaster; a 1907 explosion in the mines of Monogah, West Virginia had killed 362, while a 1913 explosion in Dawson, New Mexico would claim another 263 lives. On December 23, less than six weeks after Cherry, a gas explosion touched off by the flame of an open lamp killed eight more men at the Herrin, Illinois Muddy Coal and Iron Co. More than 18,000 miners had been killed in the United States in the last ten years alone. Although mining was universally dangerous, it was clear that the lack of worker protections made mining in the United States especially so. The mortality rate in the US was four times higher than in Europe, where regulations were far stronger.

In the aftermath of Cherry, a generous public did all it could to ease the pain. The Chicago Tribune began a relief campaign fund, publishing daily lists of contributions:

FOR THE SUFFERERS: THE TRIBUNE will receive subscriptions for the immediate and temporary relief of the families of the victims of the Cherry mine disaster. The sums subscribed will be delivered to the Red Cross or any other fit organization as soon as possible. But THE TRIBUNE is prepared to send relief today. Subscriptions in whole or in part taken up by the churches this morning cannot be put to better use than the care of those who were dependent upon the dead miners. THE TRIBUNE subscribes $1,000.[13]

Montgomery Ward & Co. gave $500 in cash and sold $1,800 worth of supplies to relief fund managers at cost. The Tribune also sent 250 loaves of bread and 100 pounds of sausage for the starving families, and sent shipments of clothes and shoes to 175 women, children and infants.

Still, as generous as this aid was, it was not equal to the task at hand. In the days after the fire Illinois UMWA president Duncan McDonald tallied 200 probable widows and nearly 1,000 probable orphans. As he reported:

Almost two-thirds of the missing men leave widows. Each of these widows has from one to three children. I saw one woman who has nine children, all under twelve years old. She has not enough money to pay for a week’s provisions. In a month from now, the distress of these people will be pitiable.[14] The sheer number of dead, widowed and orphaned in Cherry forced the nation and its leaders to take action on what had been a longstanding but previously ignored problem. President Taft recommended that Congress create a federal bureau of mines to review mining practices and regulation. In Illinois, a new workplace safety law went into effect January 1, 1910, requiring extensive restructuring of the work environment. It mandated every furnace or forge, receptacle of molten metal or corrosive fluid, electrical apparatus or system of power transmission, and all power-driven machinery to be “located as to not endanger employees, or else the dangers must be enclosed and the workers protected.” Businesses also had to provide 500 cubic feet of air for each worker, plus fresh air without any harmful drafts. Any business that failed to comply faced a fine of no less than $10 and not more than $50 for a first offense. Second and subsequent offenses brought fines in the amount of $25 to $200. Over 4,771 facilities were inspected the following year.

The effects of the Cherry mine disaster would reach far beyond this initial legislation, however. Amid the call for increased safety measures from the UMWA, mines operated by the LaSalle County Carbon Coal Company in Union, LaSalle, Rockwell and Jonesville would eventually include water pipes installed down the shafts, a telephone system, and all electric lights with no torches or open flames. Attempts were also made to limit the workday to more reasonable hours. The state legislature passed a law mandating a ten-hour workday starting July 1, 1911, which the Chancellor of the Circuit Court of Cook County, Judge Richard J. Tuthill, later ruled the law unconstitutional. However, a similar law establishing a ten-hour day for women was ultimately upheld by the Illinois Supreme Court.

Other protective laws which had been ignored prior to Cherry mine were now finally enforced. Chief among these were child labor laws. One of the saddest scenes in the aftermath of Cherry mine was the recovery of the young boys who had worked sifting coal in the mine, their burnt, lifeless forms a sad reminder of lives taken before their time. Although Illinois had passed child labor laws in 1903 and 1904 that prevented boys under the age of sixteen from working in the mines, it was believed that over fifteen hundred children still worked under false affidavits. Chief state inspector Edgar T. Davies made a renewed push in the wake of Cherry mine to remove anyone under sixteen from the mines.

Of all the laws to follow in the wake of the tragedy at Cherry Mine, however, none had a greater impact on Illinois (and Reuben) than the Worker’s Compensation Law. Forged by Soderstrom’s mentor John E. Williams, this Act, which fundamentally changed the relationship between employers and their workers with respect to safety, would serve as the bedrock for one of Reuben’s pillars of labor.

THE WORKMEN’S COMPENSATION ACT

Origins

The modern workmen’s compensation movement began in Prussia (modern-day Germany) in the 1880s.[15] This progressive innovation drew worldwide attention, and in 1897 the United Kingdom followed suit with an act of its own.[16] Before long, many prominent American leaders began clamoring for the passage of similar laws in the United States, asserting a worker’s right to their life and livelihood was equal to, if not superseded by, an owner’s right to their property. As the progressive President Theodore Roosevelt argued:

We believe in property rights normally, and in the long run property rights and human rights coincide; but when they are at variance we are for human rights first and for property rights second…If one of the machines owned by an employer is damaged, the employer has to pay for the damage; and if the man who runs it is hurt, it is just as much the duty of the employer to compensate him as it is to repair the machine. In each case those who use the product will in the end, and quite properly, pay for the damage.[17] Despite this growing enthusiasm, compensation legislation advanced little in the US during the first decade of the twentieth century. That all changed in 1911, when ten states, including Illinois, passed their own Workmen’s Compensation Acts. While the Prairie State was not the first—that honor went to Wisconsin, which signed its act into law two months before the Illinois Assembly passed its own—Illinois’s Workmen’s Compensation Act was arguably the most important, as the state was the most populous and industrialized of all those affected.[18] Further, like Wisconsin’s Act, the Illinois law was based on the unprecedented agreement between the widows of Cherry Mine and its operators, a deal arbitrated by Reuben’s mentor John Williams. This agreement, born out of tragedy and forged through dialogue, helped to redefine the relationship between workers and employers with respect to workplace safety and formed one of Reuben’s pillars of Labor.

Manufacturers Attack Compensation For Injured, Widows

The struggle for workmen’s compensation was not an easy one; industrialists across the country used their considerable money and influence to resist all efforts at reform. Fred Wilcox, Chair of Wisconsin’s Industrial Commission, later described it as a “bitter and prolonged campaign” marred by “caustic, heated criticism” on behalf of the nation’s employers.[19] The battle was especially pitched in Illinois, where the powerful Manufacturers’ Association controlled the legislative landscape. They characterized such legislation as a well-intentioned road to moral reprobation. The speech given by LC Blanding, Assistant Secretary of the Moline Plower Company, at a meeting of the Association’s Tri-City chapter was a typical example of the manufacturers’ rhetoric:

Workmen’s compensation presents a perplexing problem…Reports of operation of workmen’s compensation acts in Germany and elsewhere show that at the outset an attempt was made to observe and follow within reason its essential requisites; yet from year to year following adoption, more and more latitude has been followed, until now it no longer is a system for providing benefits to those properly entitled to receive them, but become an enormous octopus sapping alike the character and manhood of the people and feeding on the vitality of the nation.[20]

Workers, Blanding continued, were prone to “seek something for nothing,” and were aided in this endeavor by so-called advocates who were compelled not by compassion or justice but by the intense desire to “give away other people’s money.” He continued (apparently without irony) to explain at length the heroic risk that businessmen took by profiting from “hazardous lines of industry…the savings of a lifetime can be wiped out by a single catastrophe.” By “imposing unnecessary obligations” like workmen’s compensation, he warned, “the incentive for continuing the business is gone.”[21] Arguments against workmen’s compensation often took a moralistic, scolding tone. Employers viewed efforts to make them legally accountable for the safety of their employees as foreign and antithetical to American values. Labor historian Philip Dray explains:

Early nineteenth-century law governing the relationship between employer and employee had been colored by the ideology of free labor. A hiring was an agreement between independent entities. Employees took the risk of injury as part of this “contract,” while employers accepted the blame only in instances of extreme company negligence, and then usually with paltry restitution to victims or their survivors…Injured workers might be cared for in union hospitals or compensated by brotherhood funds, or even by irregular funds kept for such purposes by employers, but lawsuits seeking substantial awards had the challenge of proving employer negligence. This was extremely difficult, as potential witnesses to an accident were usually themselves employees and were often intimidated by the prospect of testifying against those who paid their wages.[22]

As Dray notes, attempts by workers and their families to sue rarely succeeded. In practice, the employer (legally defined as the “master”) was almost never found responsible for injuries suffered by the worker (“servant”). Masters routinely avoided culpability by claiming injury and death was an “ordinary hazard” of the profession, or, when necessary, by blaming another employee for the accident (the “fellow servant” defense). Even if a servant could prove the master was at fault, all an employer had to do was prove that the worker knew of their negligence. If a miner went to work knowing that the mine’s operator failed to meet legal safety standards, for example, then the operator could not be held responsible when those violations lead to that miner getting maimed or killed! In the rare instances where a servant successfully sued, their lawyer, who almost always worked on contingency, received 25%-50% of the amount recovered.[23]

The courtroom protection employers enjoyed extended beyond civil suits. Early American workmen’s compensation laws in Montana (1909) and New York (1910) were declared unconstitutional by the Court of Appeals under the 14th Amendment. The New York ruling on March 24, 1911, drew national attention twice; conservative interests initially cheered the decision when it first came down, crowing “It appears that in this State, at least, there is a fundamental law with guarantees and safeguards which may not be abolished except by the regular process of constitutional amendment.”[24] Those voices were mute the following day, however, when New York again made national news, this time for a horrific fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire which killed 146 workers. As the New York Joint Labor Conference of Workmen’s Compensation wrote following the tragedy:

The holocaust of March 25 has stirred public feeling to the depths because of its dramatic circumstances and because of the large number of lives which were snuffed out within a single hour,” But it should not be forgotten that workers are being slaughtered in smaller numbers and in a less public manner every day…Nor should it be forgotten that the Court of Appeals of this state has just wiped off the statute books a law, admittedly just and beneficent, which would have assured compensation for economic loss to persons injured, and to the families of persons killed at their work, and whose indirect effect would have been to make it unprofitable for employers to permit dangerous conditions to exist in their places of employment.[25]

Cherry Mine Arbitration

Like the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York, the tragedy at Cherry Mine galvanized public opinion in Illinois. In the wake of the disaster, the Governor called for the creation of the Cherry Commission, which included members from the UMWA, the Red Cross, the Illinois Coal Operators Association and the Illinois State Board of Control. The commission was vice-chaired by none other than Reuben’s mentor, John Williams.

As their investigation continued, Williams grew increasingly concerned about the welfare and protection of those the tragedy left behind. Several of the widows of Cherry mine had filed lawsuits against the Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul Railroad (which owned the company that operated the mine), and many more would need assistance for months and years to come. Their suits, however, had little chance of success under the current law. Even in the unlikely event of a favorable ruling, the widows were unlikely to receive payment, as their rewards would likely force the operators into bankruptcy. In search of a just and permanent solution, John took it upon himself to arbitrate a joint settlement on behalf of the widows of Cherry, pushing both the mine and the law to recognize the principle of workmen’s compensation in the process. It was a role for which Williams—a former miner turned businessman who had successfully arbitrated a previous coal strike in 1889—was uniquely qualified.

Over the course of the next several months, Williams shuttled back and forth between the mining company, the widows and orphans, state officials, and union leaders to slowly build consensus. Progress did not come easy; Albert Earling, the president of the Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul Railroad, originally held firm at $250,000, half of what Williams believed was needed. Meanwhile, some within United Mine Workers—distrustful of Earling and hungry for a public trial—were less than enthused by William’s efforts. One of his bitterest struggles was against one of the miners’ own lawyers, Seymour Stedman, whose actions he feared would jeopardize the entire bargain. He wrote to the counselor:

Shall it now be said that is failed in the Cherry case? Shall the reactionary employer be able to point to Cherry and say “I told you so. The working men are unappreciative, ungrateful and thankless?” Shall we justify the critics of President Earling who predicted that any man would get the worst of it who tried fair dealing in a personal injury case?[26]

Stedman responded in a scathing letter personally attacking Williams for seven pages. It read in part:

Mr. AJ Earling must smile in his sleeve at your naïve expression, especially when he considers how easily his company is being relieved of the whole affair and that the stockholders will not materially suffer...You say you were “led to enter this affair as a mediator to settle a precedent.” You flatter yourself. You have been a tool in the hands of the company…[27]

Stedman’s caricature of Earling was hardly fair or accurate; by all accounts he was unaware of the safety conditions at the mine, and sought the settlement for moral as much as financial reasons. “No one could have gone to Cherry in its hour of disaster without being profoundly impressed with the futility of mere legal remedies,” he later wrote. “No corporation worthy of receiving from the State the right to transact its business could have closed its treasury in the presence of hunger and destitution simply because no legal responsibility rested upon it to furnish food and clothing. At such an hour as that the question of legal rights and duties become insignificant as compared with the impelling call of humanity.”[28]

Ultimately, Williams convinced Earling of the need for a more sweeping agreement. Using the English Workman’s Compensation Act of 1906, which placed compensation at three times the deceased employee’s annual salary, as a model, John persuaded to the president to accept a $400,000 settlement in the fall of 1910. This, combined with donations from the Red Cross, the United Mine Workers, the State of Illinois, and others, came to nearly $850,000 in total funds. In addition to an initial payment of $300 to $500, widows with families would be given a monthly stipend of $20 plus $5 per child until they came of working age (14). In all, it is estimated that each victim’s family received an average of $3,261.72.[29]

The Williams settlement generated interest in other businesses. After all, the idea of a voluntary contract between a company and its workers establishing pre-determined payouts for workplace injuries made financial sense for employers as well as employees, as it shielded them from expensive litigation.[30] Later that year the International Harvester Company, with 25,000 employees, offered an indemnity contract with its employees based on the Cherry arbitration.[31] In 1911, the General Assembly adopted the Cherry Mine agreement as the basis for the Illinois Workmen’s Compensation Act. The new law, which went into effect on May 1, 1912, made voluntary to avoid the constitutional troubles of the New York and Montana acts, radically redefined the relationship between employers and employees with regard to workplace safety. Public officials and the press largely hailed the legislation as groundbreaking; as an editorial from The Rock Island Argus and Daily Union explained:

The new workmen’s compensation act is ranked as the greatest piece of industrial legislation ever passed at Springfield. It applies to specified hazardous employments, and it is made optional both with employers and employees. Employers electing not to come under the act forego the common law defenses of assumption of risk, fellow servant and contributory negligence. The death compensation is four times the annual earnings of the employee; graduated compensation is provided for injuries. If any employee is completely disabled, he receives one-half his average wage for the first eight years of his disability. Afterward he gets a life compensation equal to 5 percent of the death benefit, but not less than $10 a month.[32]

There is no question that the Cherry Mine arbitration and subsequent Illinois Workmen’s Compensation Act were fundamental achievements for unions both, within the state and nationally. They were also foundational to Soderstrom’s understanding of the needs and priorities of organized labor. Years later, Reuben would help make the law mandatory, and expand its scope to include all occupations.

While the Compensation Act was a valued first step towards the recognition of the principle that the employer, not the employee, bore responsibility for a safe working environment, labor sought more than simple repayment. “What workingmen desire and demand,” wrote UMWA President John Mitchell in his call for passage of the Workmen’s Compensation Act, “is not so much compensation as prevention of injury.”[33] That struggle—the fight for a work environment safe from danger and disease—would lead to the formation of yet another of Reuben’s pillars of labor: workplace safety.

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