Document text
FORM B
Personal History of Informant
CHICAGO FOLKSTUFF
STATE Illinois
NAME OF WORKER Betty Burke
ADDRESS 1339 South Troy Street
DATE May 1, 1939
SUBJECT Packing house worker
NAME OF INFORMANT AMMA Novak
1. Ancestry Polish, American born
2. Place and date of birth lisoonsin about 30 years of age
FOLKLORE
CHICAGO
3. Family Married, husband and two children, boys, 10 and
13 years old.
4. Places lived in, with dates
5. Education, with dates
Grew up in an orphanage in Wisconsin. Came to
Chicago, lived near or back of the yards since,
14 years.
Eighth grade and one half year high in St. Redwigis
Orphanage.
6. Occupations and accomplishments, with dates
Worked in the canning rooms most of the time in the
yards.
7. Special skills and interests
Likes her union work. Is the shop steward.
8. Community and religious activities
Belongs to a neighborhood !WU center. Good Catholic,
but criticises various aspects and activities of the church's freiy, probably due
to husband's influence, his cynical attitude, and his advanced political views.
9. Description of informant
Medium blonde, bright blue eyes, big and healthy,
.absolutely overflowing with life. Irrepressible and fearless in defense of her
union, at work or wherever she goes. Sociable and just phorally a happy kind
'M(uttler roints gained in interview) of person.
Brings her boys with her to every party she attends.
Very proud of her two boys. Hates her crowded home and would consider govern-
ment housing projects in the yards area a godsend to her family life but thinks
the loctlactWoiant in the neiWoOlosilgat control of real estate there to gush
an ex e suo oronects
FOLKLORE
FORM C
Text of Interview (Unedited)
CHICAGO FOLKSTUFF
STATE Illinois
NAME OF WORKER Betty Burke
ADDRESS 1339 South Troy Street
DATE May 2, 1939
SUBJECT Packing house worker
NAME OF INFORMANT Amma Novak
,..T••••••
CHICAGO
I.' ye had eight years of the yards. It's a lot different now, with
the union and all. We used to have to buy the foremen presents, you know.
On all the holidays, Imes, Easter, Holy Week, Good Friday, you'd see the
men coming to work with hip pockets bulging and take the foremen off in
corners, handing over their half pints. They sure would lay for you if
you forgot their whiskey, too. Your job wasn't worth much if you didn't
observe the holiday 'customs'. The women had to bring 'em bottles, just
the same as the men. You could get along swell if you let the boss slap
you on the behind and feel you up. God, I hate that stuff, you don't knomj
I'd rather work.am place but in the stockyards just for that reason alone.
I tried to get out a oouplece times. Went to work for Container Corp.(box
factory near the yards). Used to swing a hammer on those big wooden boxes.
Look at my hands, now. (Her hands are misshapen; blunted, thickened fingers
and calloused at every joint.) My husband wouldn't let no keep on there,
it got to be too much for me to handle. I had to have work so I went back
to the yards. I worked in the canning rooms and in sausage packing at
Armour's. My God, the canning roomst In summer time they're full of damp
and steam so dense it's like a heavy fog and you can't breathe, and in
FOLICLORE
FORM D
Extra Comment
CHICAGO FOLKSZUYV
STATE Illinois
NAME OF WORKER Betty Burke
ADDRESS 1339 South Trey Street
DATE May 2, 1939
SUBJECT Packing house worker
NAME OF INFORMANT Ammo. Novak
CHICAGO
winter the steam penetrates your clothes and turns cold and clammy on
your skin, your hands and feet simply freeze. When the union came they
made me steward of the girls in my department. Then they started laying
me off, because we were getting somewhere with the union, see, and they
thought they'd scare me, so they layed me off a couple of times and broke
up my seniority that way. Then after I got through testifying at the Nat-
ional Labor Relations Board they layed me off for good. I used to come up
to 'Old Lady' McCann, she hires all the women for Armour's, and I used to
ask her why I couldn't get back. I'd say, 'Haven't I always done good work,
haven't I been a steady worker?' And she'd say, Yes, Anna, you're a good
worker, and an experienced girl, but you see now that your seniority is
broken I can't do anything for you.' And all the time I'd be sitting there
talking to her I'd know she was giving me the horse laugh. That dame got
many a shiner from girls for her mean tricks. There was a time when she
couldn't step out of her office without an escort because girls and women
she'd laid off would wait for her right outside. I mean hundreds of them.
I'm tellin' you, when McCann would OOMB around and the girls at work got
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caIum FoLuTuFF
a load of her and her latest shiner, they would feel ten times better
all day. It would be a picnic. Everybody has it in for her, because they
all know what Ws like to go through her mill. But she's God Almighty
as far as Armour's is ooncerned, when it comes to getting work. No moon
Nits in or out of Armour's without her say so.
Here's one thing the union changed while I was in Armour's. Like
the white girls in Armour's if they work 15 years they have some kind of
honor system and they usually get better work. A little easier job, you
know. Mat do you think they give the colored girls who work that long?
They give them a black staropasted on their time cardat They hardly ever
get a chance at anything but the dirtiest, wettest jobs, that even the
white men can't stand or just wouldn't take. And then that star business
is such an easy way for the bosses to spot the colored women so that
they won't accidentally give a good job to one, in some emergency. The
union is putting the heal; on that particular practice. The colored girls
cone into the union easy, and at union meetings you'd be surprised now
they stand up and have their their say. The Polish girls and the Lithumiand
they're the hardest to get in. You know how it is. There'll be a bunch
of Polish and a bunch of Lithe working and the foreman will play them
against each other and they'll fall for that stuff. They'll be so busy
calling each other names, lousy Lugano or dumb POleoks, that when the
time comes to get together, they can's, they're so used to fighting.
The big reason thpugh is that they're ruled by the priests and the priests,
lots of them, say, 'The CIO is against religion and the church!, They
FORM C page 4
CHICAGO FOLESTUFF
tell the Polish women, You have no business going to union meetings,
you should stay home and be concerned with raising a family of good
Catholics.' Around here they always yell about the married couples
who have no children. They don't leant to give them absolution. Raise
children, raise children, raise children, that's all they know. But
how to feed the children, that they don't know. I have a time down at
work with some of the women, especially the older ones. They'll say,
'If God wants me to be happy, I'll be happy, if HS wants me to be laid
off, it's His will, and I must accept it and not doubt Himt I'll say,
'Listen, don't you blame God for everythingt Just because you're afraid
to join the union and do something to keep your job safe and your
children fed decently don't throw it on Godt
You should see, sometimes I'll be up early in the morning, and just
sit down at the window, you know, and watch old ladies, 70 years old and
more, going to work in the yards, so bent over and shriveled up and sick
it makes you want to cry just matching them, such old, tired women, grand-
mothers most of them. The bosses make it so miserable for them too. They
should give them the easier jobs, at least, if not a pension for thong
after they get so old. Instead, they'll set an old woman to work at a high
truck and have her bending over, taking heavy cans out of it, all day long.
You know that's too hard for old women like that, they'll be so gray in
the face after a day's work, almost dead looking. Poor old ladWis they
have to sit down there on the floor and rest for half an hour after work
before they have the strength to get up and go home at night. Sometimes some
FORU C page 5
CHICAGO FOLKS TUFF
of us change jobs with themlbr a while if the foremen aren't around,
but when they catch us we get bawled out. They want to make the old
ladies quit, see.
I've been working at Agar's for eight months now, since Armour's
put me on the blacklist. Our contract expires in July, our union contrast
and we're negotiating for another one with them now. I was appointed
steward by the union but when we get our contract we'll elect our
stewards by union membership vote. Agar's isn't so'bed now. Half the
plant was organized before I got my job there, but did we have to
orawl to get the others in. Now what we want is a good contract and
if they won't bargain, all we need to do is tie up the killing floor
and the order department and Agar's will close up tighter thmin a cia
clam. They oalet afford that. And we've got the plant with us
solid.
One thing, you should see the rash the girls get, those that have
to handle poisoned pork. And the acids frost cans, it just gets you so
that you can't stand up. You don't know what's the matter with you
but work you can't to save your life. Then it's so easy to catch col4
one girl working right next to another coughs and you know she can't
turn around, she's got production to make on a line, and there you are.
The whole table of girls will be coughing and sneezing over their work.
A girl can't take time off on account of a oold, the company wouldn't let
them and they can't lose all that pay, anyway. Another think, in our
department we have two toilets for 100 people, girls. You should see
before we got the union, you could scrape the muck off the floor with
FORK C. page -6-
CHICAGO FOLKSTurY
a knife. MW made them put in a new floor and they promised to give us
some new lookers, so far there are 30 lookers for 100 girls. Well,
we're on their necks all the time, now: Mien we want to eat we've
got to go over by the lookers and they're right on top of these two
stinking toilets. If you know the amelll And girls have to et theret
I wouldn't have lunch there if I had to walk four miles for a cup of
coffee% You can't imagine what the combination of toilets and disin-
footant and cigarette smoke and 'meat and stookyardi smells likst
lhen we kick about things like that and we talk about the union we make
the boss mad. Men he gets good and mad and he knows he can't stop us
from talking, he hollers, 'Every dog gets his day and when I get minei
And we just laugh and say, 'Oh, the !dogs, have their day now, you had
yours 10 years ago, before the union came., Does he get sorel
In the departments where there's that salt water on the floors,
every month it would do for a pair of shoes. It eats the leather out,
you know, W. got after the government inspectors and the company, and
the union made them keep sawdust on the floors after that.
Once I was working nights and it was one minute to eleven. 14 'ars
supposed to start at eleven and the girl next to me was waiting, and she
had her thumb in the dry cornmeal machine bin, picking at something. At
the other end of the roam was the girl who turned on the machinery switch
when it was time to start. 19411, that lousy foreman we had, thought held
rush work, and so he came up to the machine starter and hollered lAlright,
shake your funniest, It's eleven olclooki She pressed the switch, and
this other girl at the end of the roam screamed her thumb was out
FORK C page
CRICALGO FOLKSTUFF
clean off. Because of a man so eager to push company production that
observing safety restrictions meant nothing to him if he could manage
to chisel even a minute of the girls' time without having to pay them
for it. Ws things like that the union is here to prevent from
happening, and to see that when some worker does meet such an accident
she won't be thrown out on the dump heap, maimed and thrown a little
compensation sop that wouldn't last a year. The companies can't get
away with that anymore. People know mors4.