Document text
Accession no.
4
1. 3615
WPA L. C. PROJECT
Form -3
liritetzs' UNIT
illiklarlt._Collection (or Type)
Date received
10/10/40
Consignment no.
1
Shipped from Place of originehiCagC.e Ii.111201111 Date...4/1.9/4.9
hash. Office
Label
Amount
ep
Project worker BOtty ,butrk•
Project editor
Remarks
Forms to be Filled out for Each Interview
maw° FOLKSTUFF
FORMA
Circumstances of Interview
STATE Illinois
NAME OF WORKER Betty Burke
ADDRESS 1339 South Troy Street
DATE April 19, 1939
SUBJECT Stockyard worker's job
1. Date and time of interview April 14, 1939, 6 p.m.,and after
2. Place of interview 6401 Ellis Avenue
3. Name and address of informant Mary Siporin, 6401 Ellis Avenue
4. Name and address of person, if any, who put you in
touch with informant.
None
5. Name and address of person, if any, accompanying you None
FOLKLORE
CHI CAGO
6. Description of room, house, surroundings, etc.
Lives with husband in kitchenette apt. (one room) in rooming house.
Outside yards district. Says when she lived right there on top of the yards,
there on Ashland, she used to get the cheapest toughest rottenest meats. Hand-
ling the best meat in the world at work and when you come home you can't buya
decent piece of meat for love or money in the whole neighborhood. Says housing
facilities are terrible and rents very unreasonable and high, in spite of the
fact that fire hazards and unsanitary, inadequate plumbing, if any, is the
rule.
(Use as many additional sheets as necessary, for any of the forms, each
bearing the proper heading and the number to which the material refers.)
W3615
FOLKLORE
FORM B
Personal History of Informant CHICAGO
CHICAGO FOLKSiukk
STATE
NAME OF WORKER
ADDRESS
DATE
SUBJECT
NAME OF II1FORMANT
Illinois
Betty Burke
1339 South Troy Street
April 19, 1939
Packinghouse worker
Mary Siporin
1. Ancestry Polish, American born
2. Place and date of birth Back of the yards, 24 years ago
3. Family Three grown brothers, one crippled. The other two have worked
in the yards for years. One hates the yards, always has. Father used
to work there. Too old now, for that kind of work.
4. Places lived in, with dates Back of the yards until a year after marriage.
Went to France with her husband for a short time. Lives near Chicago Universit
at present.
5. Education, with
10 hours a day,
3 days a week.
6. Occupations and
Has worked
dates Eighth grade grammar school. Went to work in the yards,
came home, ate, went to Englewood nite school, 3 hours a nite,
Did that for four years.
accomplishments, with dates
in more than ten different departments in the yards.
7. Special skills and interests Packinghouse union first interest. Belongs
to progressive youth groups. Supports new housing project for the yards
distriot, on a community committee working for it.
8. Community and religious activities Raised as strict Catholic, not religions.
9. Description of informant.. Blonde, big and soft looking. Sociable, likes to get
around. Talkative. Usually has all sorts of meetings keeping her busy evenings
le. Other Points gained in interview
FOLKLORE
STATE
NAME OF WORKER
ADDRESS
DATE
SUBJECT
NAME OF INFORMANT
FORM C
Text of Interview (Unedi0d)
CHICAGO FOLKSTUT
Illinois
Betty Burke
1339 South Troy Street
April 19, 1939
Packing house worker's job
Mary Siporin
CHICAGO
I'm in the sliced bacon. The work is very simple but very fast.
They brought a lot of new machinery in. The man who ,makes all that
detailed machinery is only a worker. Be gets paid a little more and
the girls who lost their jobs because of his junk, Jesus Christ you
couldn't count tem. In sliced bacon where there were 20 girls working
there's 6 now. Once I went up to that guy, he was on the floor, and I
asked him how much the machinery was stepping up production. My God,
kid, you should have seen the superintendent rush up and tell him not
to talk to me and for me to mind my own business and get back to my
table. Then for instance here's one thing you ought to put dawn about
sliced bacon department in Swift's. I used to think Swift's was the
cream. You know, they pat you on the back and make out you're just one
of the family, a great big happy family. Lots of the girls go for that.
And than they start laying them off right and left and some of these girls
even then will say 'well, they were nice about it, they said they were
sorry to have to do it.' Amway, in sliced bacon, that's supposed to be
the cleanest, lightest place to work in, why they wouldn't take on a Negro
girl if she was a college graduate. There's plenty of them doing all
kinds of dirty jobs in the yards but sliced bacon, oh, that's too good
FOLKLORE
FORM D
ExtrA Comment
CHICAGO FOLKSturF
STATE Illinois
NAME OF WORKER Betty Burke
ADDRESS 1339 South Troy Street
DATE April 19, 1939
SUBJECT Packing house worker's job
NAME OF INFORMANT Mary Siporin
CHICAGO
to give a colored girl. In Swift's now, they're laying off this way
too. Say if a married couple work there they lay off one of them.
There's many like that, you know.
Reminds me of Wilson's. Boy, what a crapholeA In '34 they had me
going like a clock 10 and 12 hours a day. I used to get home so tired
I'd just sit down at the table and cry like a baby. That's where I was
blacklisted. Some spy found out I was friendly to the union, you know.
It took no a long time to catch on to why they kept laying me off. They
broke up my seniority that way, see, and then finally they wouldn't put
no back at all. Well, I went to see the head employment manager, I didn't
waste my time fooling around with the foremen and the small time guys around
the office. I asked him how it was that I wasn't put on when I knew other
girls were working, girls in my department. He just looked at me a while,
Then he said 'We've got the girls in that department like this,' and he
clenoiled his fist. 'That's the way we'll keep them. You couldn't do a
thing with them, even if you had the chance which you won't have.
Of course, you van go out and sit in the employment office and wait.
Come every day if you want to. That's all he said, didn't mention union,
FORM C page -5-
CHICWO FOLKSTune
organizing, not in so many words, but I knew I was through as far as
Wilson's was oonoerned.
Here.'s the psychology of a girl it the yards. She tries to forget she
works in the yards after work. She'll tell people she works in an
offioe, at best, she'll say she's an office worker in the yards. She'll
go around with everyone except yards girls. That's the single ones.
Married ones are different. Of course the union hasphanged that attitude
to a certain extent. But say like in Swift's, sews Swift beat the union
to the draw. They raised the wages before the union got established theya
and so the workers think Swift's is the nuts. They fail to realize that if
it hadn't been for the union they wouldn't have got that in the first
plaoe. And if the union don't oatch hold there they'll get out so fast
they won't know what struck them.
You know, thousands of yard workers have occupational diseases.
Rheumatism, varicose veins, cardiac conditions, all those sicknesses
are widespread. There's a rash they get called hog's itch. It looks
awful, irritating and sore, and it spreads. A fellow I kapr had to
quit his job 3 years ago and the doctors can't (sure him. EW can't work.
Lots of them get that,
My brother worked in the hog kill for 8 years and work's getting so
scarce they're starting to cut into the 8 -year seniority bunch. Be la
was lucky they just transferred him to beef kill. In 1919 my brother
walked out with the others, you know, and while he was walking through
the yards a watchman called out 'who goes there!. Well, my brother
FORK O page -4—
CHICAGO FOLKSTUFF
was damned if he was going to report to a squirty watchman and
so he didn't answer. The watchman shot him in the leg, put him
in the hospital for a year. You'd think that'd teach him some-
thing but it didn't. BM never joined the union. He's just a
suckhole for the company. He sticks up for Swift (1 Company like
he owned the damn place. That's all right, though. KM can get
along without guys like him.