Over a longer period of time. [unknown] Actually, the
pressure and the anxiety [unknown] before they finally
actually had to take it by main force with physical violence; the
pressure of the people and all, I'd say it went on the longest. And it
was quite embarrassing, coming from a so-called union. That's what I
told Silas that day; I said, "It's very embarrassing to have to stand up
and. . . ." I said, "We have a hard enough time to organize without two
unions having to fight each other." That's the way I felt about it. And
I still say today I'm proud of the way we acted. They would have never
been able to have won the election if I had not agreed to the company.
The company asked me, and the mayor of the town and a good friend, Mr.
Charlie Russell (who was a very
Page 26 good friend of
mine who ran the hotel—and I was at that time living in one of his
houses); they came and talked to me about getting the plant open. And I
agreed. I said, "Well, there's nothing I have to do with opening. The
company can open any time they want to as far as I'm concerned." And I'm
still proud that we did not attack another union; we did not attack any
of their members; we just merely tried to protect ourselves. I'm proud
of it, although we lost the shop. And, I'm sorry to say, a lot of the
people knew they was making a mistake. But they'd rather work that way
than not to work. Most of the people still feel today (well, of course,
that's a long time; the old-timers know). . . . In fact, there's a new
group of workers in there now. They tried to take the other plant, but
by that time Clifford Lay had become. . . . He didn't go back in there,
and he was the sheriff at the time this happened, county sheriff. The
first time he ran he ran against an old man who was already in his
seventies, and he did defeat that old man—barely defeated him. And he
went back in, and it was during the time he was sheriff this was
happening. After all this violence he resigned as sheriff (I'm pretty
sure it was under pressure from the governor, Governor McCord, because
Charlie Russell told me that he went to see the governor). He resigned,
and they put the former chief of police there in as sheriff. He went
outside of town and hired—no, he didn't hire him, but the city hired—a
man from outside as chief of police. And the climate was much better;
they couldn't get by with doing the violence to us in the other plant,
although they tried. They tried every way that they could. The local
management there was playing with them; they thought if they could get
rid of us. . . . They knew it would be a weaker union that wouldn't
understand our work, and they were really playing footsie with this
other union. But the people resisted.
Page 27 And we had
to call a strike of our own during that time for violation of the
contract. They tried to run some scabs in, but they didn't get to first
base. I told the chief of police that we weren't going to stand for it.
He said, "I'm not going to have any fighting." I said, "Well, if the
scabs show up there's going to be some fighting; and I can go to jail as
well as anyone. But there weren't enough scabs. [unknown]
Our people there were stronger, and the pressure couldn't be put on
because they knew with the new sheriff, the acting sheriff. . . . I'm
trying to think of his name. But he was a very fine person. He was a
railroad detective, and he had been chief of police during the time. And
he did his best to try to get us. . . . He came and talked to me, and he
said he thought he had some good leads as to who had beat up Franz
Daniel and Ed Blair and wanted my permission—or wanted me to prosecute.
I told him just what I told you, that I did not want to get involved and
try to cause any trouble in another union. And he got a little bit
disturbed then. Henry Sutton his name was; Henry Sutton.