La Crosse Labor History, by Terry Hicks

Introduction & Preface

Work!

The acquisition and retention of it defines us, the performance of it refines us, while the necessity of it confines us. It is the single most important aspect of every human being’s life (if important is chiefly defined as that which is life-supporting as far as being able to pay for our own creature comforts). Work consumes over eighty percent of our waking hours, either in actually laboring at it, traveling to and from it, cleaning up from it, and then resting after it. If defines us both practically and philosophically. The job we hold with its wages determines where we live, how we dress, what we eat and how we recreate. Our wages determine whether we attend social functions at private clubs and dine at expensive restaurants. For it is our ability to afford the costs and membership fees which allows us to pursue such entertainment. Society often judges us by our appearances. And our appearance is somewhat dependent on the material things we own. The schools that we attend and that we send our children to are decisions also driven by our income. Money from our wages is the deciding factor in most decisions, and our behavior and our very societal influence is often affected by the amount we earn.

Our own self-perception of our social standing is far too often determined by whether we see ourselves as average laborers or as professionals. We are sometimes self-limited in our activities in our community by our own feelings of inferiority (or superiority) that our job definition and wage scale can give us. We often are confined to a particular section of the town or city we reside in because of the amount of money our wages allows us to budget for either rent or for home ownership. The same budgetary restrictions affect our children’s schooling and recreation opportunities as well. Do we belong to a fraternal club or the county club? Do we dine out at the fine restaurants, or at the nearest fast-food facility? Confinement of our very spirit is also evident in the economic decisions our jobs’ earning power dictates every day of our lives!

Yet, in spite of these facts most of us do not actively plan to acquire a specific job. Nor do most of us spend much time in planning for our lives’ work. Rather, we allow our own geographical location and simple random chance to make these choices for us. Additionally, many times we simply follow the examples set by our parents and other relatives, and enter the same occupation as them. Is this due to our laziness or just a lack of reflection and study? Or, is it because we innately respect and honor our family’s standards and traditions?

The whole spectrum of the human experience is rampant with examples of the conscious and unconscious influence of our need to deal with work. It permeates our entire life. Even our very birth is couched in terms of the world of work! The Doctor on duty in the delivery room delivers us after our mother has gone into labor in the labor room! After spending a few years in the care of our parents we are bundled up and sent off to school. Where, for the next twelve to sixteen years of our life, the knowledge we gain and the training we acquire are primarily geared to preparing us for a job and or career. Five days a week in the classroom, we work to accomplish our schoolwork. Then, for good measure, we bring home homework, which often occupies some of our weekend hours. Consider also our descriptions and conversations about our home life, our schooling, and even our leisure time. We run our households by scheduling and completing our housework. Many homes have a workroom used for the creation of craftwork, or for repair work on our clothing or our homes’ furnishings. A workshop in the basement or garage, for woodworking, or other hobby work is rather commonplace. Each year the homeowner or renter faces yard work as the seasons change. We work around the house and we do the chores, run our errands and work in the garden. Then in our spare time we also volunteer to do charity work and work as a volunteer for our favorite cause!

Even our very behavior and attitudes are given a work connotation, as in when we are counseled to work at developing a good marriage and work at our relationship with others, and to work to succeed, or work hard to get ahead. Work, work, work, we are totally absorbed by it, and must bear it stoically, even if it is not pleasurable or interesting. It is an immutable and immovable force that must be reckoned with.

Try as we might, most of us cannot successfully escape it. This being so, the wages and conditions of the workplace should receive close scrutiny by the laborer. Modification and improvement of wages and working conditions should be influenced by any workplace organization that the workers can form. If one must devote the greatest share of ones’ life to earning a living by work, one should assign the greatest importance to any group or association that attempts to help control and influence this work and its’ lifelong demands on our time and energies!

As might be expected of a topic so all-consuming, humans have invented many names and terms for themselves and their bosses. We announce to ourselves, and to our families and associates many times a week that we are off to put our shoulder to the wheel, or to put our nose to the grindstone. Leaving the home we say good-bye and think to ourselves that it is time to; head back to the sweatshop, do the old nine to five, bring home the bacon or earn our daily bread, to make a living or to punch in and do our shift. We also say that we are off to do our job, or to work at our pursuit. Sometimes it’s to do our chores, finish our task or just to get back to the old daily grind. Often we look at working as slaving away, or being back in the old salt mine.

When we arrive at our job, or occupation, trade, craft, task, work site, workplace, business, store, factory, or place or work, we are met by our superior, boss, chief, headman, big cheese, administrator, supervisor, foreman, manager, overseer, taskmaster, proprietor, head honcho or owner. Sometimes we are not so flattering and we refer to the boss as the big shot, big wheel, big cheese, slave driver or master. We may also use the terms the warden, or ‘the suit’s, and the taskmaster.

Whatever we call our employer, they also know us by many names as well such as, employee, staff, team, teammate, crew, crew-member, associate, sales associate, partner, workforce, hired hand, or ‘the help’ or the wage-worker Sometimes our employers call us an artisan, tradesman, craftsman, apprentice or journeyman or even skilled laborer. In other situations we are known as subordinates, represented workers, bargaining unit members or union members. Some bosses call us plodders, underlings, drones, peasants or subordinates.

The wages and profits of work are the fuel that drives the engine of society. Wages and profits are created by the sweat, intellect, and energy of the workers. Having stated this it follows that owners and employers are vital and all-important in this process. As a civilized society everyone must have adequate resources to be able to fund the collectively agreed upon public needs. All wealth is created by the mind and muscle of labor; a fair share of this wealth is the social contract that the philosophers speak of. These wages and profits are in turn shared with the local, state and federal governments in differing proportions of taxation levied upon the employees and employers in a never ending battle of viewpoints of what constitutes social justice complicated by the ever opposing philosophies of our major political parties and their specific political agendas.

Earning a living, means trading labor for wages to pay for shelter, food, clothing and education for us and for our families. These wages as previously mentioned are subject to taxation by our governments. Then, after having taken care of our basic needs and obligations to our democratic institutions, we must play our assigned roles as consumers in our free market economy. This role is an inherent mainstay of our form of economy, and we are the primary market for our own manufacturers, owners, and providers of services. Numerically, workers far and away surpass those in our society that comprise the segment of our nation that are very wealthy.

Tens of millions of workers purchase goods on a daily basis with the wages that their own labor has earned them. The few thousands of millionaires or the several hundreds of thousands of our extremely wealthy Americans do not purchase goods in proportionally large enough numbers to drive the market by themselves. So they too, have a vested interest in the well being of their employees, if they wish to see a continued demand for these same goods and services and funding of public services. To put it succinctly, well-paid laborers help maintain and create generous and continuous profits and assure the continuance of our economy.

All work is honorable and of value, unless it is immoral or illegal. However, because of the importance of unions in the workplace and of unionism this book will deal primarily with workers whom have formed workplace organizations. The workers of La Crosse will be the focus of this work, as the majority of unionized workplaces were located within the city limits of La Crosse that employed significant numbers of union workers.

For those interested in the history of the average working person this work will break new ground. Dr. Eric J. Morser in his doctoral thesis, Manufacturing Pioneers: Commerce, Government, and manhood in La Crosse, Wisconsin, 1840-1900, cites in a footnote on page 32,

“For the most part, scholarship that explores working-class people and growing class conflict in hinterland communities such as La Crosse remain sparse.”

I hope to flesh out that lack of detail about the circumstances and lives of those working-class men and women that Dr. Morser wrote about in our hinterland community! The class conflict status is a natural byproduct of unionization and so it to will be visited and examined in La Crosse Labors.

The footnotes in this work, are for the scholars of the future that may wish to expand upon the history of work and workers.

For the casual reader I will try to flesh out the real-life experiences of work and workers of La Crosse in this book.

Preface

Unions and Organized Labor In La Crosse
Organized labor! What Is I? Why Do We Need It?

Websters’ dictionary defines a labor union as the organization in any industry, of the workers for collective bargaining with the employers over terms of employment and conditions of work. In blue-collar terms, unions exist to secure for all workers, their dignity on the job, their safety on the job, and to gain economic justice for all workers and their families for such work performed.

Currently (historically America has not universally accepted its’ workers right to wrest profits from their employers) all workers are under attack, including organized labor. Unions are battling to survive in the global marketplace economy that demands cheaper and cheaper wages, purportedly to keep a business competitive. This is an agenda that is the rage of all big business think tanks and many of our fiscally conservative political leaders. The very concept of unionism is once again viewed as a drag on the profits of the global stock markets and multinational owned corporations. Guess what? That is the role of a union! Profits are viewed, as co-jointly owned, not the exclusive property of the owners. This is still viewed as a radical viewpoint by far too may of our fellow citizens, I am afraid. American wages are being dragged downward by this global marketplace mentality. Unfortunately aided and abated by many of our own elected officials and corporate CEO’s. The recent battles over lifting the unofficial ban on increasing the federal minimum wage laws, and the expansion of NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) under a recent ‘Fast Track’ federal bill, have demonstrated the huge barriers workers are still struggling to overcome in our own society.

An old labor truism from the Eight Hour Day Movement of yesteryear put it in simple terms, Eight Hours for Work, Eight Hours for Rest, and Eight Hours for What we Will! The battle for the eight-hour day was won. But even this simple and commonly accepted benchmark of what constitutes a humane and just workday, is now again under attack. Individual workers cannot hope to stand up to the sophisticated and highly organized efforts of the global corporations that demand these severe labor law changes. If history has taught the average person anything it should be that the individual could attain a little, but that groups of individuals banded together can attain greater benefits, protections and rights for all members of the community! Unions, in particular, are based on the premise that all will work together and secure improvements for all workers, not limiting these goals to just those individuals in the union movement, but rather all of our nation’s workers and their families.

This is the subject that this work (there’s that word again) will attempt to deal with. La Crosse has a rich and varied heritage of laborers and their labor organizations and I will try to follow the advice of Charles Dickens’ character in his novel Hard Times when he said, “Facts...Facts alone are wanted in life.” Or as the late actor Jack Webb said on the old television show Dragnet, “The Facts Ma’am, Just give us the facts!” The facts are out there, and I have liberally mined the depositories wherein they rest. It is my pleasure to have been allowed to uncover them and after shaking the dust and dirt of inattention off them, to expose them now, for the first time to the full sunlight of public examination. Many thoughts and many pundits have remarked on work and labor, a few are now examined for their valuable comments on this subject.

“Home is the girl’s prison and the woman’s workhouse.” Wrote George Bernard Shaw on the subject of housework and being a housekeeper. Countless thousands of coulee region women and girls have learned first hand the meanings of these words. James Russell Lowell, penned these lines on the gentler genders’ efforts, “No man’s born into the world, whose work Is not born with him; there is always work, And tools to work withal, for those who will: And blessed are the horny hands of toil!” Labor is frequently mentioned in the Bible, as in Genesis, Chapter 4, Verse 19 which reads, “By the sweat of your face shall you get bread to eat, Until you return to the ground, from which you were taken; For you are dirt and to dirt you shall return.” Labor has long roots and union labor is older than most would believe. In fact it is as old as Christianity!

Having quoted biblical writings that relate to the issue of work and workers, I would direct your thoughts to the pedigree of labor unions. They are not as recent or radical as many would have you believe. In a book by Jim Bishop, an ancient reference to labor unions is cited. Bishop consulted theologians, scholars and even the Pope of the Catholic Church, His Holiness Pius XII, when he researched the last day of Jesus’ life for a book entitled, The Day Christ Died. ^[1] This work treated the last day of Jesus’ life hour by hour, each hour of that last day comprising a chapter of the book. The date chosen was April 6, AD 30. In a chapter called Background on page 58, Bishop writes of unions that existed in the Jewish world that Christ lived in.

He was detailing the everyday influences that ordinary men and women of that time faced in the business of living and working. He wrote...Unions were organized and labor guilds were held in esteem. Before a new union was organized, it was necessary to get the permission of the Roman Emperor, who withheld it only if his advisors told him that the union was being organized for seditious purposes. The unions throughout Palestine regulated the working hours for the various crafts, regulated the days of work, negotiated for better salaries, and insured members against losses in donkeys and tools.

Having noted the lineage of unionism, what is the worth of recounting the philosophical value of it? For those that wonder of the worth of a history of workers and their labors’, I quote those two wits... “It is one thing to show a man that he is in an error, and another to put him in possession of the truth.” wrote the English philosopher John Locke, and lastly from the author, Samuel Johnson, “Whatever withdraws as from the power of our senses; whatever makes the past, the distant, or the future predominate over the present, advances us in the dignity of thinking beings.”

The best printed explanation for why we need a modifying force in our society to protect all of our workers and fellow citizens that I have found is explained by a passage from Edward Bellamy’s book, Looking Backward (2000-1887) ^[2] . Bellamy wrote this novel, which first appeared in print in 1888, using the premise that it was the writings of a man from the year 1887 that had fallen into a trance and had not awoken until the year 2000. Using this method of writing and speaking as a person whom was looking back on social conditions he last viewed 113 years ago, he was able to address social issues he keenly felt with biting irony and wit. When he wrote this novel, child labor still existed, the eight-hour day was still to be won, labor laws and protections were mostly nonexistent and modern unions were in their infancy. It is an eloquent allegory that puts in the language of his era, simply but movingly, the philosophical premise of the redistribution of wealth among the nation’s peoples. Ironically, his book was published when the AFL was but a one year old labor organization.

Cloaking his personal socialism beliefs in prose Bellamy wrote this telling analogy...“Perhaps I cannot do better than to compare society as it then was to a prodigious coach which the masses of humanity were harnessed to and dragged toil somely along a very hilly and sandy road. The driver was hunger, and permitted no lagging, though the pace was necessarily very slow. Despite the difficulty of drawing the coach at all along so hard a road, the top was covered with passengers who never got down, even at the steepest ascents. These seats on top were very breezy and comfortable. Well up out of the dust, their occupants could enjoy the scenery at their leisure, or critically discuss the merits of the straining team. Naturally such places were in great demand and the competition for them was keen, every one seeking as the first end in life to secure a seat on the coach for himself and to leave it to his child after him. By the rule of the coach a man could leave his seat to whom he wished, but on the other hand there were many accidents by which it might at any time be wholly lost. For all that they were so easy, the seats were very insecure, and at every jolt of the coach persons were slipping out of them and falling to the ground, where they were instantly compelled to take hold of the rope and help to drag the coach on which they had before ridden so pleasantly. It was naturally regarded as a terrible misfortune to lose one’s seat, and the apprehension that this might happen to them or their friends was a constant cloud upon the happiness of those who rode.”

This paragraph of course was a biting commentary on the status of the elite and the wealth with a warning of the depths of poverty to which they might return at any moment. Calculated to impress on the wealthy of his time, their duty to cultivate a social conscience it was also an implied warning message. It continued with a morale object lesson in the next paragraph, “But did they think only of themselves? You ask. Was not their very luxury rendered intolerable to them by comparison with the lot of their brothers and sisters in the harness, and the knowledge that their own weight added to the toil? Had they no compassion for fellow beings from whom fortune only distinguished them? Oh yes, commiseration was frequently expressed by those who rode for those who had to pull the coach, especially when the vehicle came to a bad place in the road, as it was constantly doing, or to a particularly steep hill. At such times, the desperate straining of the team, their agonized leaping and plunging under the pitiless lashing of hunger, the many who fainted at the rope and were trampled in the mire, made a very distressing spectacle, which often called forth highly creditable displays of feeling on the top of the coach. At such times the passengers would call down encouragingly to the toilers of the rope, exhorting them to patience, and holding out hopes of possible compensation in another world for the hardships of their lot, while others contributed to buy salves and liniments for the crippled and injured. It was agreed that it was a pity that the coach should be so hard to pull, and there was a sense of general relief when the especially bad piece of road was gotten over. This relief was not, indeed, wholly on account of the team, for there was always some danger at these bad places of a general overturn in which all would lose their seats.”

That paragraph was very strongly worded and both attacked some religious attitudes towards work and workers as well as attacking some social programs and charitable groups. The authors’ point being that it was better for workers to demand fair treatment and just wages than to accept charity or to just to accept suffering as their lot in life. The next several paragraphs are the most damning of all. It attacks the era’s intellectuals and the wealthy alike. Bellamy gives his characters an ugly description of elitism when he paints them of believing that they were somehow better than common workers and that it was beyond the ability of society to every change the system at all. He wrote, “It must in truth be admitted that the main effect of the spectacle of the misery of the toilers at the rope was to enhance the passengers’ sense of the value of their seats upon the coach, and to cause them to hold on to them more desperately than before. If the passengers could have only felt assured that neither they nor their friends would ever fall form the top, it is probable that, beyond contributing to the funds for liniments and bandages, they would have troubled themselves extremely little about those who dragged the coach.

I am well aware that this will appear to the men and women of the twentieth century an incredible inhumanity, but there are two facts, both very curious, which partly explain it. In the first place, it was firmly and sincerely believed that there were was no other way in which Society could get along, except the many pulled at the rope and the few rode, and not only this, but that no very radical improvement ever was possible, either in the harness, the coach, the roadway, or the distribution of the toil. It had always been as it was, and it always would be so. It was a pity, but it could not be helped, and philosophy forbade wasting compassion on what was beyond remedy.

The other fact is yet more curious, consisting in a singular hallucination, which those on the top of the coach generally shared, that they were not exactly like their brothers and sisters who pulled at the rope, but of finer clay, in some way belonging to a higher order of beings that might justly expect to be drawn. This seems unaccountable, but, as I once rode on this very coach and shared that very hallucination, I ought to be believed. The strangest thing about the hallucination was that those who but just climbed up from the ground, before they had outgrown the marks of the rope upon their hands, began to fall under its influence. As for those whose parents and grandparents before them had been so fortunate as to keep their seats on the top, the conviction they cherished of the essential difference between their sort of humanity and the common article was absolute. The effect of such a delusion in moderating fellow feeling for the sufferings of the mass of men into a distant and philosophical passion is obvious. To it I refer as the only extenuation I can offer for the indifference which, at the period I write of, marked my own attitude toward the misery of my brothers.”

A totally different force in the modern workaday world has replaced the societal classes Bellamy discoursed about. That, being the retail giants and global themed manufacturing, finance and communication corporations and their governmental allies that together, threaten the very existence of all worker representative controlled worksite organizations. Wal-Mart has become the all-encompassing black hole of the retail world. All moneys and workers that pour into its’ vast system are totally dominated and manipulated by the corporate plan and individuality is erased from the scene in a falsely portrayed “we are all associates” theme park of employer-employee fantasyland machinations.

 

Chapter 1