Los Angeles herald., 1906-06-10
BY MYRA G. REED

~ packing plant in the Chicago
stockyards five memorable days
a year ago last summer.
It was the time of the big strike
when all the employees of the yards had
quit work.
exist on the meager pittance eked out
to them by the unions while the union
leaders haggled with the packing house
employers week after week without
any signs of a compromise.
Meanwhile the packingtown popula-
tion starved.
The big packing houses were en-
ploying any sort of non-union help.
who were hired at double and
treble the wages of their predeces-
sors. And in rage and hate and bitter
hopelessness the union men tried tc
prevent the strike breakers entrance to
the yards. When that failed they be-
came raging demons and spent their
time plotting murder and bloodshed
and revenge.
They were capable of only one
thought, the apparent fact that some
one was killing them, starving their
families.
Workers Grow Desperate
No one dared use the street cars to
the yards, for pickets from the union
stood outside the stockyard gates and
woe to the unlucky ones who tried to
enter those gates. The pickets were
armed with pistols, heavy canes and
stones and they all had the will to use
them.
Every day the saloons grew more
crowded, the patrol wagons and ambu
lances were oftener seen in the stock
yard district, and the prices Of food
scared higher.
Each day the laboring man grew
more desperate and each day the care
worn wife watched more anxiously as
she saw her husband stagger out of the
saloon next door. Each day the chill
dren stopped their search for scraps in
the garbage choked alleys and looked
with dull eyes for the food that never
came.
The little tots cursed and swore when
they saw yard boss go by and the
very ours of the street would stink
away with their tails between their
legs
Sweethearts forgot the sight of each
others faces. What right had they to
love when mother lay dying with weak
ness and worry? What right had they
TO be happy when baby was starving
and the father only came home to
curse and moan in a drunken rage?
Husband and wife forgot they had
ever had time for love. The children
wondered within themselves If anyone
was ever good and clean. Their eyes
had never beheld anything but the dirt
and stencil of a slum street, with it's
rows of lofty tenements where gene
rations had lived and died in one long
ound Of misery.
A Non-Union Worker
Meanwhile the packing house mag
mates waited. To them that horde of
hungry men was like so many rebel
hous cattle who must be starved into
submission.
All they had to do was to wait and
their slaves would come back, just a
little more humble than before. This
from the viewpoint of the workers.
And so 1 was hired with the other
non-unionists to keep the big plants
going until the strikers had exhausted
their strength. l was to be paid seven
dollars and a half week and a dollar
more If would sleep in the yards. The
usual wages were three dollars a week
The hours were from seven TO six.
One employer took us out on the
train In company with three or four
hundred hungry looking men who had
braved the revenge of the unions and
taken their lives in their hands to keep
their families from the street.
The car I was in was half filled with
negroes. That ride was the beginning
OF horrible nightmare
Arrived at the stockyards we were
il bundled on the train and told to
walt. On one of the platforms the
men were shoveling the cans from a
freight car.
Begins Life Of Worker
The platform was dirty with the mud
Of many weeks and as they worked the
men expectorated tobacco juice over
the cans. Their work was TO shovel
cans, not to care where their saliva
went. They never glanced once at the
spectators. Their hands and bodies
moved feverishly.
They were on piece work and were
tspeeded up" They had to earn enough
while the strike was on TO pay for
many months of idleness when they
would be displaced by the regular gang
After we had waded through the mud
we found our working place 1t was
The basement of well known packing
house
TO enter this cellar the cable upon