Women working outside the home for wages were a small minority of the wage-working class at least until the post World War I era. There were virtually no women employed in the brewing industry until the 1930’s. Industries that employed a substantial number of women in St Paul around the turn of the last century were garment manufacturers, especially producers of men’s work clothing, and the printing industry, which employed women as bindery workers. There were a few predominantly female unions, notably the United Garment Workers and the Bindery Girls (sic) Union. These industries were located in the downtown manufacturing district.
One business enterprise that employed women almost entirely was the laundry industry. Men were employed as delivery drivers, but women were the inside workers, doing hot and heavy labor. There were scores of laundries throughout the city, including some substantial ones on West Seventh Street. Records of the women working in these places are hard to find, however, Mattie Dahl, a Swedish immigrant, was employed in 1890 by the Globe Laundry, and lived at 412 Smith Avenue, a residence long since displaced by United Hospital. Lizzie Mara worked at the Minnesota Steam Laundry and lived, probably boarded, at 117 Smith Avenue, likewise long gone.
In this bygone era, there were probably at least 20 Chinese owned, operated and staffed laundries. Unlike the big steam laundries owned by Caucasians, Chinese laundries catered to individuals, especially single men who did not have access to laundromats, or unpaid female labor.
]]>Workers from Bohemia, and other Slavic minorities within the Austro-Hungarian Empire did not predominate in a single industry, like the Germans. Their most enduring monument is the three-story Czech and Slovak Protective Society building just off W 7th Street at Michigan St., which celebrated its 125th anniversary in 2012.
The Czech and Slovak “Sokol,” a word meaning literally “falcon,” but with the sense of “club” or “organization” was a group dedicated to health and physical and mental exercise, like the German turnvereins, predominantly composed of “freethinkers,”— religious non-believers, or at least non-participants. The St. Paul CSPS hall, located next door to the Bohemian St. Stanislaus Catholic church, makes an interesting counterpoint. According to oral tradition, an early priest at the parish used to visit the CSPS to have a drink or two with the infidels.
One member of Rad Cech No. 12, meaning essentially Czech Sokol No. 12, Jan Rachac, was the lead carpenter in the construction of the Minnesota State Capitol, and a member of Carpenters Local 87. He also did fine finish work on the James J. Hill mansion on Summit Avenue. He built his home at 309 Harrison Street nearby. Although substantially altered over the years, the house is still there.
]]>Closely allied to the Omaha’s Randolph Street Shops was the Orme Brass and Iron Works at Drake and Armstrong streets, a foundry that furnished a range of cast iron and brass items to the railroad’s shops. Workers at the Orme Foundry belonged to one of the oldest labor organizations in the state, Iron Molders Union Local 232, probably organized in 1872. Leading members of Local 232 included Edward Curry, James McDaniels and Michael Fahey, none of whom lived in the West End, however. The three union officers are representative of the predominantly Anglo-Scot-Irish workforce in the industry.
]]>Constructed beginning in the late 1800’s, the railroad shops of the Chicago, St Paul, Minneapolis & Omaha Railway (the “Omaha”) at Randolph and Toronto Streets employed nearly 1,000 workers for the first half of the 20th century. The West End construction project represented a major expansion of the Omaha’s operations in St Paul. The shops maintained locomotives and other rolling equipment, and constructed railcars, primarily wooden boxcars. The machine shop, erected in 1899, was built for $22,000, the equivalent of over half a million dollars today.
Other major buildings were the blacksmith and boiler shops, and the locomotive roundhouse. Just down the hill from the Omaha’s shops, accessed by a double tracked spur (or vice versa, depending on your perspective) was the Omaha’s Western Avenue switching yards, containing about 27 tracks until just a few years ago, when Shephard Road was re-routed through, eliminating all but about 6 tracks.
Railroad shopworkers belonged to a variety of craft unions ranging from blacksmiths to laborers to car repairers. The journeymen machinists, enrolled in the International Association of Machinists, were the largest labor organization in the railroad shops. In 1922, railroad shopcraft workers, numbering about half a million nationwide, went on strike against wage cuts. The strike lasted six months and ended in defeat. Hundreds of Twin City shopcraft workers were blacklisted and the unions eliminated from the shops, not to return until the labor upsurge of the 1930’s.
]]>“In the legal profession, Labor found a friend,
A lawyer on whom the toilers could depend.
A fearless advocate of truth and right,
And foe to every wrong upheld by might.
This man was Erwin, dauntless, bold and free,
Whose name shall live in glorious memory.
Whenever workingmen, who toil for bread,
Remember July 6th at brave Homestead.”
(A tribute to WW Erwin by an anonymous worker-poet in 1893.)
WW Erwin’s parents must have intended him to be a battler for justice. They named him “William Wallace,” after the legendary fighter for Scottish independence who stood at the Stirling Bridge against the forces of English King Edward I. History does not disclose whether Wallace looked like Mel Gibson, who played him in the 1995 film, “Braveheart,” but in St Paul he was known as "a tall man with the body of a giant,” as a medieval Scottish historian described Wallace. Pseudonymous columnist Benjamin Backnumber of the St Paul Daily News remembered Erwin as a “six-foot frame of sinew, tireless strength and panther suppleness. The working people of St Paul and beyond knew him as “The Tall Pine,” and honored him for his defense of labor’s rights. Erwin was arguably THE outstanding defense attorneys here. He was, the St. Paul Dispatch wrote on the occasion of his death, “the greatest criminal lawyer the Northwest ever knew.”
At the peak of his powers and success, Erwin embraced the labor movement that erupted in the last two decades of the nineteenth century. Perhaps because his legal career had been devoted to defense of the underdog, he offered his forensic talents freely to insurgent workers brought before the courts. Erwin was the outstanding defense attorney for participants in two of the three biggest labor battles of the nineteenth century, the Pullman railroad strike and boycott of 1894 and the strike against Andrew Carnegie’s Steel Works at Homestead, Pennsylvania, in 1892. These strikes were met with heavy military and judicial repression—and with unprecedented enthusiasm and solidarity from the ranks of labor.
On July 6, 1892, an armed force of about 300 men from the Pinkerton Detective Agency that industrialist Andrew Carnegie had procured battled over 1,000 striking steel workers, family members, and supporters who had massed on the banks of the Allegheny River to confront Carnegie’s men. The violence that followed left nine workers and three Pinkertons dead. Mass protest meetings, sponsored by city central bodies of the American Federation of Labor (AFL), were held all across the country in support of the steel workers. When strikers at Homestead were indicted for murder, riot, conspiracy and even treason, the St Paul Trades and Labor Assembly, some 900 miles removed, took a remarkable initiative procuring the services of Erwin to serve as lead counsel for the defendants. Erwin quickly secured the acquittal of the first two defendants; the prosecution of the remaining defendants was abandoned.
In 1894, Erwin went to Chicago to join the defense team, which included Clarence Darrow, representing American Railway Union leaders including Eugene V Debs, and Minneapolis railroad worker Sylvester Keliher, who were charged with contempt of court for failing to heed a Federal Court injunction instructing them to terminate the nationwide boycott by the ARU in support of striking Pullman workers. Denied a trial by jury, the defendants were convicted and sentenced to six months in prison. Nonetheless, Erwin’s performance in the courtroom was celebrated far and wide.
“Bill Irwin’s Oratory,” the New York Sun reported, “is the wonder of the bar and the admiration of the Northwest . . . . His voice now cracks into ice, now boils into geysers, is now thrown at the jury like a hammer . . . now leaps like thunder . . . now stops with the guttural protest of a Third avenue cable car kicking against the brake. The plaster drops, the nails are drawn out, the ceiling topples, the floor sags, even the janitor trembles in his slippers.”
Erwin’s home at 481 Iglehart was unfortunately torn down in the 1960’s.
]]>The impressive house on the southwest corner of Lexington and Laurel Avenues (127 N Lexington) was built for Italian stonecutter Anthony Ambrosini in 1886. (Took out building permit April 30, 1886) He must have brought his bride, Augusta Strehlin, to the home, since city records indicate they were married on October 19, 1886.
Ambrosini was from a family of Italian stonecutters. In 1880 Ambrose and two brothers, all stonecutters, were living in Chicago with two Ariola brothers, also stonecutters. It appears that Anthony emigrated from Cercino, Italy, not far from Cararra, the archetypal marble quarrying location since Roman times. By 1883, Anthony was in St Paul, living at 1050 W 7th Street, and working as a stonecutter..
In 1885 Ambrosini had set up as an independent stone contractor with partner John Peterson. Their stone yard was located on Oak Street near Walnut, close to the Mississippi River in downtown St Paul, a typical location for a stone yard, facilitating delivery by boat.
By 1887, the partnership had apparently dissolved and Ambrosini was working for the Lauer Brothers, a major stone contractor operated by two Alsatian brothers. The Lauer Brothers were one of the contractors on the construction of the State Capitol building. A significant structure they financed and built are the “Lauer Flats” at 226 Western Avenue. And by then the house on Lexington Avenue had been sold.
By 1890, Ambrosini was in business for himself again, carving and selling headstones and monuments conveniently located across from Oakland Cemetery at 941 Jackson Street. Within three years, Ambrosini had made another move, and was conducting his stonecutting business in marble and granite at the newly opened Forest (now Forest Lawn) Cemetery on Edgerton Street, where he also was employed as superintendent.
Forest Cemetery was the first in St Paul to offer cremation as an option, and describes itself as the “11th oldest cemetery in the nation to offer cremation.” The idea of cremating the remains of the deceased was so novel that a number of early cremations were written about in the local newspapers. Superintendent Ambrosini himself was pictured in the March 26, 1903 Saint Paul Globe scattering the remains of Mrs. Dike about the grounds of the cemetery (in this case identified as “Forest Hills”). Eventually, Anthony’s oldest son John took over as superintendent at the cemetery.
Augusta died March 20, 1917. It appears Anthony died in Glendale, California in the 1930’s.
]]>- The dispute between Charles Comiskey and orgainzed labor over the opening of Lexington Park -
On April 30, 1897, St. Paul's legendary Lexington Baseball Park opened to the public for the first time, the start of nearly 60 years as the site of professional baseball. One hundred years ago professional baseball was the sporting entertainment for the urban masses, many of whom were deeply affected by the resurgent labor movement of the last two decades of the 19th century. Those who put their wares before the city working classes strove not to offend the new unions and their enthusiastic adherents. Boycotts and protests against non-union enterprises by labor-oriented consumers were vigorous and frequent.
Baseball entrepreneur Charles Comiskey was the beneficiary of the construction of the new St. Paul ballpark, located at the southwest corner of Lexington and University Avenues, by a Buffalo, N.Y. capitalist named Edward B. Smith, who put $75,000 of his own money into the park, big money in those days. This, of course, was at a time when no one would have dreamed of asking for public money for such a facility.
Manager Comiskey who became the focus of a crescendo of complaints from St. Paul unions. At a meeting of St Paul's Trades and Labor Assembly in early April, a complaint against the manner of constructing the park, initiated by the Carpenters Union, was referred to the Building Trades Council. A particularly sharp grievance emanated from Local 20 of the Theatrical Stage Employees Union, who were engaged in a struggle with the management of the Metropolitan Theater over the employment of union stagehands. As a result of the dispute a boycott had been placed on the theater by organized labor, and the local was incensed when it learned that a sign advertising the Metropolitan was to go up in Lexington Park in time for opening day.
A special committee was appointed to visit Comiskey to raise these and other grievances -- asking additionally that only union label cigars be sold at the park and that only union musicians be employed at the ballpark. However, all did not go smoothly. The band Comiskey employed on opening day had misrepresented itself to him as a union group. Non-union cigars were on sale. The sign was still on the outfield fence. The Metropolitan sign had been placed in the park, Comiskey said, because he had been "hoodwinked" by the theater manager. Comiskey, the committee reported, claimed he had rented the space to a wily entrepreneur who had then sublet it to the Metropolitan over his protests. The Assembly notified Comiskey that if the sign did not come down, a boycott would be instituted.
At the May 14 meeting the baseball committee reported progress "but no assurance of a satisfactory settlement," and the boycott was imposed. Shortly afterward the sign came down. Comiskey wrote to the Assembly stating that "the Met has did just what it agreed to with me in regard to my fences and will put no sign on it." At the May 28 meeting of the Assembly the boycott was officially declared off. And finally, on July 16 James Nelson, Local 20's secretary, reported that as a result of labor's boycott the Metropolitan Opera House had closed for the season.
]]>Before there was the “DFL” there was the “FL.” The Minnesota Farmer-Labor party existed as an independent party of workers and farmers from 1918 to 1944, essentially from World War I to World War II. The core of its support was the trade union movement and organizations of working farmers. It elected three governors, Floyd B Olson, Elmer Benson and Hjalmar Peterson, and innumerable state and local officials, including William Mahoney as Mayor of St Paul in 1932.
William Mahoney was a printing pressman by trade and a socialist and labor politician by avocation. He was born in Chicago in 1869 and died in St Paul in 1952 at the age of 83. In his long and active life, Mahoney was President of the St Paul Trades and Labor Assembly and editor of the St Paul Union Advocate, newspaper and the prime mover of the organization of the Minnesota Farmer-Labor party. At his death he was still a delegate to the Trades and Labor Assembly, representing Pressmens Local 29.
Mahoney had many friends across the political spectrum, including legendary newspaper columnist and former Mayor Larry (“Larry Ho”) Hodgson, who wrote to Mahoney in 1934 that “I think of you as a friend that would stand by me in any personal calamity.” Reflecting on Mahoney's defeat in the 1934 election, Hodgson said, “in the last week I have been wondering if the great moneyed concerns can ever be dethroned except by Revolution.”
Mahoney had called for municipalizing Northern States Power Company, the predecessor of Xcel Energy as a city-owned utility, provoking ferocious opposition from the city's business and banking establishment. St Paul residents, he said, were “paying the highest electric rates in the nation and 10,000 unemployed and destitute families were accorded an inadequate subsistence by public and private charities.” Mahoney wrote and circulated a proposal for legislation “to Establish a State-Wide System of Public Industries for the Employment of Out-of-Work and Needy Citizens.”
Mahoney's former home is at 1852 Dayton Avenue. Main Street, on which the St Paul Labor Center is located, is co-named “William Mahoney Street.
]]>Located on the north side of Selby Avenue between Virginia and Farrington Streets, this pleasant, tree-filled square-block park honors St Paul's outstanding African American union leader. In 1973 the Ramsey Hill Association proposed naming the park for fur trader and capitalist Norman Kittson. A counter proposal came from the Selby-Dale Freedom Brigade, who argued for Frank Boyd as a fitting and proper designation. On May 1, 1976 the park was dedicated by a group of “labor oriented black citizens of St. Paul” led by Reginald Harris, a member of Firefighters Local 21.
Frank Boyd was born in Kansas City, Kansas, in 1881. As related by Arthur McWatt, a chronicler of African American history, “Boyd arrived in St. Paul in 1904 and found work as a porter in a Black barber shop. He worked there for three years before deciding to try working as a Pullman porter for the Northern Pacific Railroad. During World War I, Boyd joined the Railroad Mens International Benevolent Industrial Association. Boyd helped to organize the local in St. Paul. The local elected George Shannon its president.
After the war, Boyd was instrumental in the organization of a branch of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters Union in St. Paul.” The fraternal organization began its formation in New York City in 1919. A.W. Jordon was elected president of the St. Paul branch. Frank Boyd was chosen as its delegate to the Chicago convention that October. On January 13, 1926, Local 3 held its first meeting at the Welcome Hall Community House, located on Farrington and St. Anthony Streets. Mainly through Boyd's efforts Local 3 grew to over 700 members. He died in California on May 2, 1962. His body was returned to St. Paul. He is buried in Elmhurst Cemetery.
Frank Boyd Park is dedicated to the memory of this outstanding leader of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters Union and St. Paul's African American community. A bust of Boyd is located at the southwest corner of the park and a plaque reads: "Frank Boyd, 1881 – 1962. He was a fighter for his Union, his People, his Class."
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