REUBEN’S FATHER, LUTHERAN MINISTER

In the 1860s, John Soderstrom, Reuben’s father, a Lutheran preacher and journeyman cobbler, traveled to the United States from Sweden in no small part to pursue religious freedom. He wanted to break from the established church, which in his view had become unequal and materialistic by charging pew fees, among other injustices. He came to the New World to worship as he pleased. 

While serving as a pastor in Minnesota, John met and married Anna Cedarholm, who had also emigrated with her family from Sweden. John and Anna soon began a family of their own, naming their sons after Biblical characters—Paul, Reuben, Levi (Lafe), and Joseph. They named their daughter Olga, derived from the Swedish word “holy.” Even as John moved his family across Minnesota, repairing shoes and seeking an elusive profit from farming, he remained perched in a pulpit. The Soderstrom children regularly spent Sunday mornings listening to their father’s sermons, followed by an afternoon of hymns played on the family organ.

A gentle man, John always cared for those in need, routinely waiving the meager fees he earned as a cobbler for his poorest clients. From an early age, he taught Reuben the need to empathize with those less fortunate. “My father was a very thoughtful sort of person…intensely interested in proper care” for the sick and aged, Reuben later recalled. “He was interested in religious activities and, like most Scandinavians, [he] devoted a good deal of time to church work and activities of that type…He was the kindest man that ever lived.”[1] Reuben carried that lesson forward as a state representative and president of organized labor in Illinois. Over the decades, he enacted several pieces of social legislation directly inspired by biblical principles, including the Old Age Pension Act, Workmen’s Compensation Act, the Occupational Safety Act of Illinois, and pensions for widows who lost their spouses to workplace accidents. 

“LIKE A PRIEST CARING FOR HIS FLOCK”

Throughout Soderstrom’s 18-year tenure as a state representative and 40 years as president of organized labor in Illinois, he maintained a relentless pursuit of fairness, justice and equality of opportunity for all people. As president, Reuben would often speak at various churches, especially during the annual labor conventions. Addressing congregations of all types, he would talk of the shared values and responsibilities of faith and labor. “It is clear that organized labor and the churches have a duty to perform,” he said. The challenge of bringing the nation’s powerful to account “is a moral issue which can be solved jointly by these two great moral forces. Organized labor and the Church must set all leaders an example of Christian fairness and human brotherhood—real Christian human brotherhood—in order to restore understanding, tranquility, and peace on earth.”[2]

In 1931, during his first full year as President of the Illinois State Federation of Labor (ISFL), Reuben Soderstrom set a precedent—continued throughout his entire career—by attending local churches in manufacturing towns to speak to congregations of laborers and their families. In that year, Thomas Downie, editor of the Galesburg Labor News, wrote:

One of the outstanding features of the presence of the convention is the fact last Sunday… a labor leader took to the pulpit… At the First Christian Church, President R.G. Soderstrom made the address in the morning, bringing out some very clear facts in regards to the present economic conditions, and the part that the church can play in the solution. Those who heard Brother Soderstrom, express the opinion that the speech they heard was one of the best that had been rendered in a long time. The minister and the members of the church were well pleased with the speaker.[3]

President Soderstrom welcomed all who walked through the doors of a union event. “In our union halls and convention halls,” he said, “Men and women of different faiths come together to acknowledge a common devotion to the Great Ruler Above and His divine authority over our lives.”[4]

Reuben’s message won him many religious allies. One of the earliest was Father John Maguire, professor and president of St. Viator College in Bourbonnais, Illinois. Fr. Maguire was a powerful advocate for labor; Reuben called him the “one man in Illinois who has been at the beck and call of every branch of the labor movement in the state…He does not carry a card, but he truly represents our people, because his heart beats with the heartbeats of the workers.”[5]

When Father Maguire died in 1940, Soderstrom introduced a new priest to the labor faithful. Father Joseph Donahue, chaplain of the Chicago Building Trades and himself a union lather, was a familiar face to union delegates. At Reuben’s invitation, he spoke at most of the state conventions held during Reuben’s tenure as president and, like Fr. Maguire before him, was frequently called to argue for labor bills at Soderstrom’s side. The labor priest was more than just a colleague; he was also a personal confidant. “Father Donahue was a close friend to Reub, and gave him much comfort in later years,” his sister Olga recalled. “He was there when [Reuben’s} wife passed away. Also when [his brother] Paul passed away…[Fr. Donahue] always said a prayer that helped us in our sorrow.”[6]

Father John Brockmeier, a union printer, attorney, and chaplain of the Springfield Federation of Labor, was another Catholic leader Reuben often asked to address the delegates of the convention and the legislators of the General Assembly. Like Fathers Maguire and Donahue, Fr. Brockmeier saw complementary roles as a Catholic priest and union advocate. When asked if he had to convince the Church to be in favor of the labor movement, Fr. Brockmeier replied, “No. There was no occasion for it… labor became Christian the very day that the young man—the child Jesus—picked up the carpenter’s tools of Saint Joseph, his foster father, and began to work.”[7]

In 1950, Reuben’s friendship with the Catholic Church was commemorated with an apostolic blessing bestowed by Pope Pius XII himself. The most unusual aspect of the apostolic blessing Reuben received was the fact that it was given to a non-Catholic. Soderstrom cherished the honor. “This Blessing becomes my most treasured possession,” he wrote to his friend Father Donahue, “And I am having it framed so that it will be preserved for grandchildren and generations of Soderstroms yet unborn to reverently view and meditate upon.”[8]

During his time as president, Reub befriended and enrolled a number of ministers—including Episcopalians, Methodists, Evangelicals, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Baptists, Disciples of Christ, and of course, Lutherans—to speak at the Illinois labor conventions. At Soderstrom’s request, most of these leaders also lent their voice to labor’s cause in the Illinois General Assembly, for which Reuben was eternally grateful. “The leaders of religion have left a deep impression upon the labor movement, and upon labor officials,” he said. “Representatives of the Church have frequently come to the rescue when labor needed help in the legislative halls.”[9]

Soderstrom felt a kinship with the preachers and teachers he worked alongside. “Reub felt his job was like a priest caring for his flock,” Bob Gibson, Soderstrom’s protégé and future Illinois AFL-CIO president, later explained. “You have to believe in yourself; you have to believe in what you’re doing, or it won’t work.”[10]

JEWISH SOLIDARITY

Soderstrom forged a deep and lifelong bond with his Jewish friends in Illinois, including several rabbis and Jewish trade unionists in Chicago. It was certainly not lost on him that the great A.F. of L. was founded by an immigrant Jew, Samuel Gompers, or that the union tradition owed a heavy debt to organizing Jews. “The American Federation of Labor has long adhered to the fundamental principle laid down by our forefathers—that all men are created equal,” he said. “One of our first acts was to draft a set of principles dedicating the A.F. of L. to the idea of equality of opportunity without regard to race or religion.”[11] In Reuben’s 40 years designing and presiding over the ISFL and Illinois AFL-CIO annual conventions (he handpicked the guests of honor and closely choreographed the agenda), he invited rabbis to deliver invocations or address the delegates on 17 occasions.[12]

Soderstrom declared labor’s support for German Jews when the Nazis introduced anti-Semitic legislation, and called on Germany “to stop the persecution of the Hebrews, not merely because they are Hebrews, but because persecution is wrong.”[13] In 1938—and against the backdrop of increasingly troubling news out of Europe—Reuben invited Rabbi Harry Paster of Anshai Emeth Temple to speak to the Illinois labor delegates. He called on labor and the nation to reject both intolerance and fascism. “You cannot have democracy without tolerance, and you cannot have tolerance without democracy,” he warned. “If you love democracy, then with all your heart and soul guard the spirit of tolerance. Take the spirit away and you will have a dead husk, a corpse.”[14]

In the late 1940s, Soderstrom supported the creation of a Jewish state, declaring “We believe the independence of the State of Israel is a matter of deep concern to all who favor freedom and democracy.”[15] He also served as an honorary chairman of the Israeli Federation of Labor, Histadrut, and helped lead fundraising efforts for the organization in Illinois. At home, Reuben joined with the Jewish Labor Committee to promote an end to all discrimination based on race, color, or creed. In 1953, the Jewish Labor Committee of Chicago honored his efforts with an extraordinary dinner banquet, presenting him with a long and moving tribute which read in part:

With courage, conviction, and clarity, you have championed the cause of the wage earner, the needy, the aged, and the disenfranchised of our community, our State, and our Nation. Every legislative measure designed to promote the welfare of the people of Illinois for nearly two score years past bears the imprint of your mind and is influenced for good by the zeal of your mission…You are truly a vigorous, distinguished, and happy warrior for human rights and human liberties.[16]

In his acceptance speech, Soderstrom renewed his commitment to liberty and equality, reaffirming that “The trade union movement has made important gains for all workers, white and black, Christian and Jewish…We will never halt our struggle until discrimination is banished.”[17]

THE CARPENTER OF NAZARETH

Soderstrom’s commitment to Judeo-Christian principles permeated every aspect of his leadership, including his interactions with individual laborers in need. Throughout his entire 40-year career as president of organized labor in Illinois, Reub received and responded to letters from people at all levels of life. He frequently found ways to help a widow get her husband’s pension payments, a family to qualify for unemployment compensation, or an unemployed worker to find a job—all part of his mission to make the world a better and more just place. He spoke frequently about how biblical values had inspired the labor movement: 

Christianity and its representatives laid down the principles upon which good trade unionism and living is founded… Representatives of the churches have tried to fill our labor halls and our convention halls with a spirit of human brotherhood. They have tried to make our labor temples and our convention halls similar to the temples of God, a place where the truth should be told… The similarity between the philosophy of the churches and the philosophy of organized labor, too, is striking. Both the representatives of the churches and the representatives of the labor movement want wage-earners to respect the truth, to tell the truth, to detest the things that are false. Moral principles and moral law were given to mankind by outstanding writers in the Holy Scriptures…Organized labor wants wage-earners to try and preserve the democratic heritage of equal opportunity for all men to earn and learn. Closer unity between labor leaders and religious leaders has done more to humanize and civilize the human-race than all the statesmen and warriors combined.[18]

Reuben often joked that, “Some of us believe that if the Carpenter of Nazareth was on earth today, he would carry a union card.”[19] As he wrote in his 1945 “Carpenter of Nazareth” speech, a moving and inspired tribute: 

The Carpenter of Nazareth was a man born in a small village, the son of a peasant woman. He grew up in another village and worked in a carpenter shop until he was thirty years of age. Then for three years he was an itinerant minister. He never wrote a book; he never held an office; he never had a family; he never had a son; he never put his foot inside of a large city; he never traveled more than two hundred miles away from the place where he was born; he never did any of the things associated with greatness. He had no credentials except himself.

While still a young man, the tide of public sentiment was turned against him. His friends ran away. One of them denied him. He was turned over to his enemies. He went through the mockery of a trial. He was nailed to the cross between two thieves. While he was dying, his executioners gambled for the only piece of property he had left, which was his coat. After he was dead he was laid in a borrowed grave through the pity of a friend. Nineteen wide centuries have come and gone since these incidents occurred, and today He is the center piece in the column of progress.

I think I am well within the mark when I say that all the armies that ever marched, all the navies that ever were built, all the Parliaments that ever sat, all the kings that ever reigned have not influenced the life of mankind as this one man, the Carpenter of Nazareth.[20]

Like the Carpenter of Nazareth, laborers were simple folk, men and women who were unlikely to hold positions of importance or travel far from home; who organized for their rights and were met with scorn and derision; were sometimes treated like criminals by the authorities; and departed from this world with hardly anything to their name. Yet, Reub believed, their principles—unity and compassion—had the power to change the world.

No finer ideal exists in all the world than the trade union utopian goal of human brotherhood… The thoughts of the lowly Nazarene too have come closer to assuming reality in America… The poor boy has a chance to rise from obscurity to positions of great power and influence if he has it in him.[21]

No doubt he saw the saw the union movement in that, and certainly a bit of himself.

* * *