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Strike: Two Hours on the Job
Sarah-Eva Carlson An old man sits in his dusty blue recliner, a cane leaning on either side. His hazy blue eyes stare peacefully and tranquilly across the room. His large frail hands, softly folded in his lap, hold a story of labor. For Edwin Belin, known as Eddie, work was not an unfamiliar fact of life that was reserved for the older generation. Rather, the labor world caught him at the early age of twelve. With the onset of the Great Depression in 1929, work became Eddie's duty to himself and family. In one swoop all the good times were gone with no explanation. "You never asked why. You just knew. I was not a dumb kid. I figured it out for myself." Life took a new shape. "No one laughed anymore. All they talked about was the Depression." Just keeping food on the table became a daily struggle. With his parents engrossed in trying to keep the farm and house, Eddie replaced his small jobs of selling berries and subscriptions with a job as a busboy at Forest Hills Country Club in Rockford in 1930. In his spare time between work and school, Eddie restored a World-War-I vintage motorcycle he had purchased at a junkyard for eight dollars. Also, on weekends he constructed his own car. Wood and wooden boxes formed the chassis. A ten-horse engine from an air compressor powered the cre-
ation. When Eddie and his buddy rolled out in their new masterpiece, the whole neighborhood was "whooping and hollering." At fourteen, Eddie began work at B&G Grocery. "Now that was hard work. I had to unload the rail cars that brought the merchandise to the store." The bananas were the most feared, for within the bunches lurked tarantulas. Within the confines of the warehouse, out crawled the tarantulas. "Before they had a chance to bite me, I'd squish them." More feared than the tarantulas, though, were the rats that infested the basement walls. "I had to go down that black hole often. I could hear them chasing each other along the walls." "'Eddie,' the owner would call, 'Ya done enuf vurk fur today, go hum,' and she would take my card and check me out. That's where the pay stopped. I've never known any other job to do that." Eddie worked long hours, often late into the night with little time to devote to his studies, a sacrifice he wishes he never had to make. "But you were just glad to have the job." Even after sixty years the crude ways of the factory workers still linger in his memory. At fifteen he was thrown into this type of labor at National Lock Company in Rockford. "I don't know how it happened, but somehow I managed to catch my glove in the punch press. Within a second my hand was pulled within the machine." Frantically, Eddie searched for something to stop the machine. He had seen many a man with only stubs for fingers. He did not want to become one, at sixteen, not with a whole life ahead. Eddie grabbed a pole and shoved it into the machine cutting off the flow of oil, stopping the machine. Slowly he withdrew his mangled hand. All five fingers miraculously remained. "I was so scared. I don't think I've ever been so scared." At this time labor unions were growing in Rockford. In 1933 National Lock Company experienced the first major strike in Winnebago County. The National Labor Board ordered all workers reinstated. To stretch his money, Eddie joined the ROTC. This allowed him to wear a furnished uniform to school two days a week, during his high school years. Eddie graduated from Rockford Central High School at sixteen. He spent the next two years working on farms to earn a few more dollars. 'There were no jobs. You just snooker somebody out of a few bucks to go to school." By the fall of 1936 Eddie had earned enough money to enroll at Augustana College, Rock Island, with 490 other students. His tuition was $75 for a semester, and room and board was an additional $125. His savings from working night shifts at fifteen were now invested in his education. "You behaved yourself. You were allowed there by their [professors'] sufferance." In May 1938 Eddie returned to the Case Company where he had worked the summer before. He begged, "Please, Mr. White, can't you give a poor kid a job. I need money for college." "'Sure,' replied Mr. White. 'You can start by going to the parts warehouse and pick up this list of things.'" Eddie took his two-wheeled cart across a small foot bridge to the parts warehouse. There a "ten-foot" black man stopped him. "'What ya doin?' barked the man.'" "White sent me to pick up some parts." "'You put that down! We on strike!'" "Please, let me get the parts. I need this job for money for college." "'I don't care about college or nothing! Leave the cart.'" Eddie returned to the factory. Strikers stopped him at the bridge. They commenced throwing bricks at him. "I am lucky they were such bad shots!" The strike put fifteen hundred men out of work. It began April 26, 1938. The United Auto Workers of America (UAWA) refused to allow workers to enter the factory because they had joined another union, the American Federation of Labor (AFL). The strike was violent and required a twenty-four-hour police guard. Four AFL union leaders' homes were bombed. On June 1 members of Local 378 of the UAWA accepted the plan proposed by a federal mediator. As a result, on June 2, 1938, all workers who were on the payroll as of April 25 returned to work. Eddie was not called back. He instead received a check in the mail for two hours of work. That fall he did not return to Augustana for lack of money. He returned to the family farm with the hope of earning enough money to return to college. Instead, he farmed for forty-one years. "I know what hard times are; don't let anyone kid you about that. You know you get tired of it, sick and tired."—[From Augustana Observer, Sept. 24, 1936; student historian's interview with Dorothy Belin, Aug. 28 and Sept. 24,1997; student historian's interview with Edwin Belin, Jan. 5, Jan. 19, Aug. 28, and Sept. 24, 1997; Conrad Bergendorff, Report of the President of Augustana College and Theological Seminary, Academic Year 1936-37; James M. Brady, "Growth of Organized Labor in Ups and Downs Over the Years," C. Hal Nelson, ed., Sinnissippi Saga; student historian's interview with Elizabeth Carlson, Sept. 24 and 29, 1997; Rockford Morning Star, Apr. 29, May 14, May 27, and June 2, 1938.]
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